The libertarian Local Puppy Trainer has had it with “Drill, Baby, Drill”: Another oil myth evaporates

First to go, there was the myth that offshore oil drilling is reliably safe.

Then there was the myth — often cited by local drilling supporters — that oil rigs don’t cause spills, only tankers do.

Do a little research and you can watch another myth vanish beneath the waves. This is the myth that today’s spill is difficult to stop because it’s so far under water; the leaking well is about 5,000 feet down. If it were in shallow water, we’re told, it could’ve been plugged in a jiffy.

And they look at Ixtoc I to take out that myth. This is what the Republicans have been selling in Florida to open the coast to drilling, hoping to plug the huge hole in the state budget with drilling leases. Well the hole is a hell of a lot bigger because of the impact of this spill on property values and tourism, and if they think BP is going to come to the rescue, they haven’t been paying attention.

The LPT also noted that Ankle-deep mousse-like oil on beach at Alabama-Florida line, which is not the real lead. The lead should have been that oil has gotten by the booms and through Perdido Pass to the wetlands beyond.

Escambia County. Florida officials are annoyed that Baldwin County, Alabama officials told the “Unified Command”, but didn’t tell them. The Unified Command is supposed to be coordinating, but it doesn’t seem to have the necessary resources to do its job. Somebody needs to fix the problems quickly because people are getting really tired of all of the red tape and delays. Things are not working smoothly.

Take a break and watch Mark Fiore’s latest.

Now you don’t.

In comments Jack the Grumpy Forester noticed that the “Unified Command” web site was not the .GOV address that would be expected if this was a GOVernment entity, but a .COM, as if BP was in charge.

So I was looking at the site and noticed this post: BP to Donate Net Revenue From MC252 Well Leak to Protect and Rehabilitate Wildlife in Gulf States.

First off MC252 stands for “Mississippi Canyon lease 252”, AKA the Well from Hell. Then you notice the use of “Net Revenue”, which at this point is probably going to be a negative number depending on the expenses deducted, so this is a major, BFD PR thing, and confirms that the Unified Command site is another BP scam.

The plot thickens.

The Christian Science Monitor noted one of the major problems of not finding out how much oil is coming from the well. BP can’t contain what is coming up their cap. They don’t have the capacity to deal with the volume of oil they are collecting because they don’t have the equipment to handle it at the site.

This is a replay of their response plan to the Exxon Valdez: they sent two skimmer vessels to the leak, but didn’t send any barges or tankers to take the oil away after the skimmers collected it, so the skimmers had to sail back to port when their tanks were full, and then go back out to the site after dumping them in a tank at their port.

Now McClatchy reports that BP intends to burn thousands of barrels of oil it can’t store. That’s right, it’s going to light it off out there in the middle of the Gulf. It doesn’t have the resources to off-load it to barges, so it will be burned… the recovered oil that was going to help rehabilitate the wildlife is now going pollute the air instead of the Gulf.

A note for any visitors from the UK who stop by – we don’t hate BP because it’s British, we got over that a hundred years ago, we hate BP because they are destroying our environment with their total bloody incompetence and the fact that their CEO is an arrogant git.

Louisiana’s purportedly Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu says that Drilling moratorium causes economic harm

Speaking today on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Landrieu said the moratorium was issued without much economic analysis and said the deepwater rigs in the Gulf “employ, directly, hundreds of people and indirectly thousands.”

I have some economic analysis for you Senator – If the oil spill only affect the Gulf Coast, the spill may cost the Florida economy $10.9 billion and erase 195,000 jobs, and Moody’s warns oil spill impact on Florida could be worse than recession.

Kiss my grits, Mary. You have blocked any meaningful regulation for years and have voted to get oil companies tax breaks to earn your “campaign contributions”, so don’t try to tell me you are worried about the impact on anyone but yourself.