Lies And The Lying Liars In Charge
CBSNews.com producer David Morgan actually does some fact checking: “Not One Drop Of Oil Spilled”? Not Quite
… As former Sen. Trent Lott told MSNBC on Tuesday, “We didn’t have one drop of oil spilt when we had the biggest hurricane in, you know, recent history, Hurricane Katrina.”
Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., also told Fox News on June 27, “When Katrina, a Cat-5 hurricane, hit the Gulf Coast, not one drop of oil was spilled off of those rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico. So we know that the technology to drill offshore is extraordinarily safe and environmentally friendly. And it’s not something that we have to be as worried about as we do a refinery on shore or some other type of issue.”
Newspaper columnists and editorial boards also jumped on the “not one drop” bandwagon. The Wall Street Journal published an editorial on June 12 saying, “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita flattened terminals across the Gulf of Mexico but didn’t cause a single oil spill.”
Meanwhile, on Monday Nancy Pfotenhauer, an energy lobbyist and senior energy adviser to McCain, said on MSNBC, “We withstood Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, and we didn’t spill a drop.”
And the Washington Post on Monday quoted Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as saying, “I think people are reassured that not a drop of oil was spilled during Katrina or Rita. Those rigs in the Gulf, there was not a single incident of spillage that anyone reported.”
Others have used slightly hedged terms, such as Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., who told Fox News on June 26, “That’s one of the great unwritten success stories, after Katrina and Rita, these awful storms – no major spills.” And Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne told the Fox Business Channel, “When Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast where we have about 4,000 oil and gas platforms … we had no significant oil spill.” (July 15)
It really ticks people off along the coast when they flat out lie like this.
This article has a picture of the off-shore platform that was blown ashore at Dauphin Island, Alabama. I remember that rig from the idiot local media personally sent to die on report from the beach during the storm. The gist of things was the local experts saying “I’ve never known one of those to break loose during a storm.” Well at least a half dozen more were just flat gone after Katrina.
Morgan goes on to cite the U.S. Minerals Management Service [MMS] report published on March 22, 2007 detailing the spills.
As a result of both storms, a total volume of 17,652 barrels (or roughly three-quarters of a million gallons) of total petroleum products, of which 13,137 barrels were crude oil and condensate, was spilled from platforms, rigs and pipelines. 4,514 barrels were refined products from platforms and rigs…
…MMS also noted that an estimated 8 million gallons (or 191,000 barrels) of oil was spilled from nine onshore facilities in the Louisiana Delta, where large holding tanks were breached by Katrina.
Well it wasn’t “a drop” – it was more that 200,000 barrels of oil spilled. The breaching of the tanks made some communities that had survived the storm and the water flooding, unlivable from a flood of oil.
They lie and almost no one bothers to call them on it.
4 comments
Don’t get me started on “offshore oil drilling.” Eyes are on the channel here and the chants of “well they have oil derricks out there now!” are getting louder and louder.
Santa Barbara doesn’t have industry, per se. We have the tourist trade. They come to enjoy the beaches, the pretty views, taking whale watching trips. Tourists don’t come when there’s thousands of gallons of oil gunking up everything, including the apperatus that dolphins and whales use to breathe.
Our whole society is trained to think of quick, easy solutions (pop a pill and it will be all better) and blank over when confronted with the true facts and extent of the problems. First solution….cut the demand. Oh, forgot….but that won’t work with “the American” lifestyle.
People need to accept that the era of oil is over and move on. Desperately pumping a little more out of the ground isn’t going to change the fact that it is a finite product.
Cleaning up the mess left by an oil spill cost more than any possible “benefit” because there aren’t any major finds still out there.
If we had gotten with the program when Carter proposed it, then we could justify the attempt, but the demand has gotten so great that what’s unpumped would even slow the increases in prices.
They lie to increase the profits of their friends.
While most Americans are struggling with high gas prices to get back and forth to work to put food on the table for their families we should be concerned about how many drops of oil were spilled during a major natural disaster?? And we should be concerned about how many tourists will visit an area of the country when they can’t afford the gas to get there? We, in the real world, need to focus on drilling here, and drilling now on our way to AFFORDABLE alternative energy. If we had drilled 10 years ago, we would be energy independent and not be having this conversation.
If we had drilled in all of the proposed locations the price of a gallon of gasoline would be reduced by 3 to 6 cents according to government and oil industry figures. The oil companies haven’t been drilling on huge oil leases they already own because of the costs. The drilling is only profitable if the price of oil is in the $130+ range.
There are capped wells all over the US because it costs too much to pump with oil below $100 per barrel.
You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t think saving you a dollar or less when you fill up your car is worth the destruction of my local economy or the sea life in the ocean.
Oil is over. The supply has peaked and is going down, which is why Iran wants nuclear power plants, because they can see the end of oil. There is absolutely no reason for oil companies to spend money drilling for new supplies when they make so much money in the current situation.