For what reason oil not capped?

We can think of many reasons why the massive oil spill currently spreading through the Gulf of Mexico hasn’t yet been plugged.

And none of them have anything to do with someone, somewhere, not having the technological capabilities to stop the flow of crude oil into waters that are vital to thousands of chains of life.

Most of them have to do with lost profits to a mega-corporation.

In recent email communications between local, state and federal marine experts and officials from BP Oil, it’s only the officials from BP that deny the possibility that the Florida Keys will, at some point, be a resting place for crude oil from the spill.

Of course, to admit such would be to force the company to start pumping money into the area to help it recover from what promise to be long-lasting effects from the spill.

BP officials’ statements are peppered with “if it becomes necessary” or “if needed at all” when responding to questions from local groups who are simply trying to get out ahead of the potential damage and be prepared—prepared to help us in protecting our ecologically valuable shorelines and near-shore waters.

The amount of money spent to date by BP Oil in cleaning up only a small part of the mess it’s made in the Gulf of Mexico has not yet taken one penny from the operational capabilities of BP Oil. The company will have just as much money to fund its operations, maintain its business and pay its billions in bonuses next week as it had last week,

What BP Oil won’t have is net profits of that amount. It will still have net profits, but those net profits will be decreased by the amount of money the company spends on cleaning up the mess it’s made in the Gulf of Mexico.

Why, if the company could thread a pipe into the sea floor leak that captured one-fifth of the oil escaping, couldn’t it thread a pipe into the sea floor leak that captured four-fifths of the oil escaping?

We’ll never know that answer. Trade secret.

And our national elected leaders have fallen into lock step with the officials of BP Oil. They want to refute any science from anywhere that paints a picture anything deviant at all from the exact picture BP Oil wants painted.

But no one can contain the sources of information for long. The electronic age has seen to that.

Extending the liability cap for BP Oil from $75 million to some outrageous number even this spill can’t reach would seem to be a no-brainer. That’s why our elected officials didn’t raise the cap. It would require brains.

BP has said it will pick up the tab for all clean up efforts and all damages done as a result of this, what many have begun to call the worst environmental disaster in history, and will honor all legitimate claims.

Of course, BP gets to decide what’s legitimate and what’s not, and BP gets to decide what actions are taken to control the spill and what actions aren’t taken.

It doesn’t take a marine or sea life expert to come to the conclusion that BP will take whatever actions least affect profit margins, which is why capping the leak isn’t on the table at the moment.

Once the “relief well” is drilled and BP is set up to continue pulling crude oil from the ocean floor that it can use to add to its profits, the leak will miraculously be closed by some mundane method no one thought of until then.

Yes, this all sounds like some conspiracy theorist gone mad. But all the signs point in that direction.

It’s time for our elected officials to tell BP Oil to get out of the way, plug the leak, and ban the company from ever conducting deep-water drilling again.

If that happened tomorrow, it probably wouldn’t save the coming impact on the Florida Keys.

Our only hope is that BP Oil officials are at least half right in their assumptions that the oil isn’t going to have a detrimental effect on the Keys.

Our greatest fear, however, is that when profit becomes the backbone of science, the science has no backbone, and choices are made that lack that little intangible we call common sense.

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One Response to “For what reason oil not capped?”

Comments

1. Ron Cole Jun 13 2010 / 6pm

   Steve,
   There is even more to this disturbing story than is being disclosed. No one is talking about the High Altitude Aerosol Dispersants (HAAD) being used to mitigate the gases (Billie Causey from NOAA estimates 30-40% of oil mass) escaping into the atmosphere from the spill site. Massive amounts of methane (25 x more damaging than CO2) and other green house gases are escaping into the atmosphere as the oil mass “evaporates” – doing great damage to protective Ozone layer. It is believed that other HAAD operations seek to mitigate the damage to ozone depleted areas by creating a protective UV shield at altitude downwind of spill site. Want to know more?
   Captain Ron
   Plantation Key