Let’s Be Logical

I don’t think that people, including myself, have been calmly accessing what has occurred and what should be done. Too often when you see birds and eggs covered in oil, petroleum covered sea turtles washing up dead, dolphins beaching themselves, you become angry and want to drown boards of directors in their own oil. We must look at this logically to ascertain the correct actions to take.

The Miami Herald says that the Gulf oil spill has ‘perfect precedence’ in 1979 disaster. It was very close, but there was one difference – the water depth.

The Bay of Campeche is only 170 feet deep and has the warmest water in the Gulf. That difference accelerates the evaporation of the oil and increases the ability of the microbes to break it down. Admittedly, other than that the Ixtoc I, the worst accidental oil spill ever, and the Deepwater Horizon blow out followed the same script.

It was something that came to mind when the New York Times decided to print this profile, Expert Is Confident About Sealing Oil Well. Mr. Campbell’s “well yeller” schtick might impress the Times, but the Ixtoc I didn’t listen to Mr. Campbell’s mentor, Red Adair, and continued to flow after Mr. Adair’s attempts to cap it.

Every industry develops through experience what are known as “best practices”. These are the procedures that, if followed, almost guarantee success. The oil business has them and if they had been followed there is a high probability that this accident would never have happened. The record shows a series of things that were done to speed up the process of switching the well from the drilling mode to the production mode. It is fairly obvious that if regulations were written requiring that “best practices” be used when drilling off the coast, the number of spills would be radically reduced.

So, we should require “best practices” be used and continue drilling, right? No, we should ban drilling.

When you look at the abysmal record of those charged with regulating drilling it is obvious that government regulations are not going to work. The oil companies are going to do whatever they want to maximize short term profits and don’t care about fines. If they were interested in the future they would already be using “best practices” to safely create wells that would be productive. The people in charge are only concerned with the price of the stock in their portfolios, and don’t have any reason to be concerned with the long term survival of the company. The management of BP has proved this repeatedly.

Banning drilling off the coast is the only way to prevent what has happened. The oil companies have repeatedly demonstrated that they can’t be trusted and won’t follow the regulations. Banning them is all that is left.