Tuesday, May 11, 2010

There's no way to stop the leak. Really?

Let me get this straight: We let people drill for oil 5,000 feet - and deeper - under the ocean surface. We also don't require them to have any way to stop an oil leak 5,000 feet - and deeper - under the ocean surface.

Wait, that can't be right. But, unbelievably, it is. As BP is proving, there are no options currently in existence for dealing with a broken pipe at those depths. Yet companies can drill anyway - while being exempted from most environmental reviews - so long as they promise they won't make a mess.

Well, they did ask nicely ....

We've all heard about the oil spill in the gulf by now, to some degree or another. First it wasn't so bad (according to BP spokespeople). Then it was kind of bad. A week later, you're like, wait, there's still oil coming out of that pipe and the explosion killed 11 people? Now, we're looking at environmental and economic ramifications that have the potential to be unprecedented.

But that should be impossible, according to all the relentless campaigning by oil companies and drill-baby-drill politicians telling us how safe offshore exploration is. Yet thousands of gallons of crude are billowing into the water every day, and BP is powerless to even slow the gush down.

Funny, they don't let you in on that unable-to-contain-the-leak part when they gravely intone about the importance of offshore drilling. Sort of like they don't tell you that a spill like this in the Arctic would be around for eternity as things stand right now, because no technology exists to clean oil off of ice, either.

There seems to be some debate about how much oil is actually leaking, and by debate I mean BP propaganda being taken as a legitimate source of information. The company still insists "only" 5,000 barrels are escaping every day, though that number is multiplied by more than 10 to about 70,000 by a Purdue scientist analyzing video of the spewing crude. If he's right - and my money is on the guy who isn't on payroll solely to manipulate information and public opinion - that's an Exxon Valdez disaster EVERY FOUR DAYS.

We're currently on Day 27. In other words, this is what is often referred to as a "worst-case scenario."

When drilling for oil, if I understand things correctly, the way to stop an explosion that caused this disaster is something called a "blowout preventer," or a BOP. It's basically a huge stack of valves that are supposed to absorb the escaping pressure and seal the compromised pipe. Despite its optimistic moniker, however, the BOP didn't work in this case. Nobody knows why. OK, mistakes happen. What was the backup plan?

There wasn't one.


Read the above link for in-depth info, but BP's first response was a "containment dome" that took weeks to build and had never been tried at such depths. Didn't work. Now BP is constructing a "tophat", or smaller dome, drilling a "relief well" and may resort to literally pumping garbage into the pipe in hopes that it will clog. Like your sink drain. What's next? A genie?

As clumsy as all of these options are, that's not my real problem. My real problem is that they had to create this "containment dome" (BP has a gift for comical misnomers) from scratch. Took weeks. Ditto for the tophat. The relief well is being cut as we speak and should be ready in about THREE MORE MONTHS. How on earth were these things not immediately available? Other than everybody knowing they wouldn't work, because the EPA didn't require them to be, and, shockingly, a company didn't assume the responsibility itself.

That's a mind-boggling amount of ineptitude and simple gambling to be associated with something so massive and potentially dangerous. This, however, is how the "system" really works, which is something to think about no matter where you stand on offshore drilling.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Pssst ... you're an ENVIRONMENTAL organization

OK, I don't want to jump on Defenders of Wildlife too hard because ever since I joined my first environmental group a couple of years ago I've been so bombarded with mail solicitations you'd think supporting green issues involved revolving credit.

That said, generally the letters and envelopes are at least recyclable. That's where DOW sets itself apart. Maybe the group wants to be remembered, so in that case I guess it's working, but I can't think of a much worse sales pitch to your target demographic than bombarding people with a plastic-wrapped piece of cardboard held together by two pieces of plastic tape containing a 6x8 piece of, yes, plastic containing a junky plastic pen that says "Defenders of Wildlife" on it (I have at least four now).

Big marketing mistake, guys.