It’s Sort of an Almost Moratorium.
Well, one thing you can say is that at least, given the horrendous catastrophe that is still ongoing in the Gulf of Mexico is that there’s a moratorium imposed on drilling in the Arctic. Makes sense when we’re still in the middle of the biggest environmental disaster the country has ever seen to give it a rest while we assess, and figure out where to go next.
It’s nice to know that we can focus our energies on clean up, and prevention, and not have to worry about what might happen if this same thing were to occur only hundreds of miles away from a major city, and under a sea full of floating ice while we’re still in the throes of the current tragedy.
Let’s just double check what “moratorium” means.
Main Entry: mor·a·to·ri·umPronunciation: \ˌmȯr-ə-ˈtȯr-ē-əm, ˌmär-\Function: noun1 a : a legally authorized period of delay in the performance of a legal obligation or the payment of a debt b : a waiting period set by an authority
2 : a suspension of activity
“Suspension of activity” seems pretty clear cut. Whew.
Not so fast.
Apparently in matters of offshore drilling, where BP and the administration are concerned, we may need to add another definition. Allow me.
3 : a suspension of drilling activity, except if it’s BP and if it occurs on a man-made gravel island in arctic ice-filled waters in the middle of nowhere, where the plan is to drill two miles down and then turn a corner like a giant bendy-straw and drill for another 6-8 miles horizontally to tap into a giant reserve of oil under federal waters.
Nope. Not kidding. Bendy straw.
This fall, BP hopes to pull off a record-setting feat: Using a high-tech drill from a gravel island in the Beaufort Sea, it plans to reach two miles deep, turn and bore another six to eight miles horizontally to tap an oil reservoir in federal waters.
The moratorium imposed on new deep-water drilling and drilling in Arctic waters, imposed in the aftermath of the Gulf spill and BP’s inability to contain the leak, imploded Royal Dutch Shell’s plans to begin exploratory drilling in Alaska this summer. But BP still has hope of seeing its latest Alaska venture succeed.
Wednesday, the U.S. government confirmed the drilling “pause” does not apply to BP’s new project, called Liberty.
“The deep-water moratorium does not apply to this particular project, which is based from a man-made island and would potentially be drilling directionally into formations under shallow water. If drilling permit applications are submitted for the project, the Department of the Interior will review them at the appropriate time and determine, based on safety and other considerations, whether the project should move forward with drilling under federal waters,” said Kendra Barkoff, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Guess we’ll be seeing a lot of new manmade “Islands.”
It’s expected the oil will come up the entire east coast by summers end. Watch the video here:
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-human-condition/2010/06/03/even-more-bad-news-about-the-oil-spill-slick-to-travel-up-the-atlantic-coast.html
Paula, isn’t it awful? A scientist was on tv a few weeks ago talking about this, and he was roundly smacked by big oil pundits as being a fear-mongerer.
Hopefully it won’t reach us here in NC. This is such a sad situation. Big money took the easy way out (Mr. Cheney) tried to slip another cheat and now he is in hiding. Save a 1/2 million and now it is costing everyone billions. (Counting jobs, lives, environment, animal loss.)
Wow.
Just… wow.
Good grief. Is there no way to stop this BP stuff. Another record? Isn’t the record-breaking spew then can not control enough?
Sigh. …THEY can not control…..
Arrggh! Bendy straws, is it? I’ve got their bendy straw right here! Oy, vey!
I’m gonna need a bendy straw and more than a passing conversation with Jose Cuervo before I read anymore posts and comments…but that’ll be After Graduation.
Yes, 3rd mayhaps gratuitous reference to tonight’s graduation, but these graduates know from “suspension of activity.” They are already better citizens than many of their elders who are older but no wiser.
Now I’m really leaving to preen, then to go pal around with graduates and those who love them. (Can you see my gorgeous Obama-style grin from your house?)
Welcome back, thatcrowwoman! Haven’t noticed your insightful comments of late – perhaps I just missed them, but I seem to remember you were with LittleBird on some sort of adventure. Glad to see you back. We’ve missed you!
I was going to post this at the open thread, but here seems more appropriate:
http://ran.org/content/mountaintop-removal-american-tragedy is a very concise description of mountaintop removal coal “mining.”
Several of you have asked for this, and Rainforest Action Network has actions you can take.
But US Representative from Alaska Dung said the other day that it is not a disaster. Not an environmental disaster, not to mention not an economic, or social even, disaster, or any combination thereof. He’s just so positive. Or Blindly Oblivious. Or heavily medicated. Or brain dead.
Dump Don. Lose Lisa.
yon dung and fish eye and bug eye
Ditto
All of the above?
If there are two or more pages of comments, how do you access them? I can only see the first page (about 49-50 comments).
Hi Daisydem – I don’t think it rolls over to another page. As of right now for this topic, the home page shows 20 comments, but looking at the page, the last number is 16, so the other 4 comments are responses to those and they will have additional numbers, such as 8.1, etc.
Hope this helps clear it up.
I won’t look at another “bendy straw” the same.
To be upfront – horizontal & directional drilling has been around for quite awhile, it will be completed on “land” and is used quite often to reach oil without damaging the surface. The “footprint” of the drilling rig & well head can be virtually miles away from the actual underground site of the oil pool.
When I was feeling about as good as a pile of moose pie droppings with a red naughty monkey heel squichin’ into the middle of it, I reeeeeeally appreciated bendy straws, and my sweetie make sure I had an ample supply in the house.
I went to hear an international speaker from Europe last week. She brought her own water–nothing special, just the complimentary one from the hotel. She didn’t have or require bendy straws. She also kept her audience riveted with answers and ideas about how to address the problems that participants were dealing with. And for about 1/15th the price of a Sarah retread speech.
Maybe this is Hayward meant by “wanting his life back”? Here’s a Congressional Quarterly piece from last year on the challenges and shortfalls of directional drilling: http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000003149753
What? No nearby volcano?
So, AKM, can you do another post with email addresses that we can use to voice our discontent? I think that could be powerful, particularly if we pass it on to friends who may not read your blog.
This is very disturbing. Does BP have a contingency plan for a disaster like we are seeing in the gulf for this “bendy straw” drilling under a sea of ice? Seems doubtful since they don’t seem to know what they are doing now and are “winging” it.
Project Liberty should absolutely be paused and and I would like to know if the Department of the Interior is influenced ($$$$) by the oil lobby.
Years ago there was a commercial for a new margerine and the ad showed “Mother Nature” tasting it and thinking it was butter. When told it was margerine she stood up and said “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”
Drilling two miles down and then taking a turn and drilling 6-8 more miles horizontally??? BP, stop the f**k fooling with Mother Nature!
Harry Crawford is running against Don Young. Get involved, donate to his campaign, help spread the word, put up a yard sign. Young is incredibly insensitive. He is out of touch. He has been in there too long.
For your reading displeasure, words of nonsensical wisdom from your former lovernor….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/03/sarah-palin-blames-enviro_n_598977.html
That fecking, know nothing, biatch needs to keep her yap shut. I’m sorry to be so testy but I am positively sick to death of that self agrandising, intellectually challenged, stupid, backwoods, ignorant, shrew.
If God had wanted us to use oil like there is no tomorrow, it wouldn’t have been put so far out of reach in the first place. It’s hard to get at because God loves us and wants us to be healthy and happy, NOT rich and sick.
Watch and weep.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in_the_oil.html
This has got to stop. I did not have the stomach to get through more than 3 of those disasters. And your person Alaska) saying essentially no problem – whoa – just where is he coming from?
Weep I did. I read the comments and one that struck me was “humanity sucks”. How do we as a species destroy our planet and not feel compassion for all who share this planet with us? I am sickened and beyond sad for what is happening.
I am probably not going to popular here today but the bottom line is that we cannot live without petroleum products at this point in time. we can scream and yell to the high heavens that it is wrong but it is a fact of life until we responsibly develop alternatives. This does not make the fact of what is happening in the Gulf any less horrendous. Thank god there is a moratorium on off shore oil drilling in the arctic right now. i do not want to see this happening now or any time in the future. I feel sick for the people and animals and environment that this will affect for years to come in the Gulf. I feel ill that the Exxon-Valdez disaster is now being referred to as the “incident” in the media.
However, EJ in E MT is correct that horizontal and directional drilling has been around for a long time. Many of the platforms in Cook Inlet (if you could see underground) would look like spiders from above. It is a way to drill with less impact on the surface environment. The Liberty island project is not new. They have been putting a lot into building that place so as to not be drilling in the way that they were drilling in the Gulf. Oil spills are horrible no matter where they occur but it is much easier to “clean up” on land than when the oil meets water. So, if we are looking at this with non-emotional eyes, the Liberty project is far less impact on the environment than the drilling alternative.
I am withholding judgement on BP until all of the facts are known (not that I don’t hold the oil companies–all of them involved–responsible for the loss of life, livlihoods and environment). I am sure that they (as a corporation) are lying frequently to cover their a**es. Please understand that I am by no means defending them. They did not stop what they were doing when all signs indicated that they should have. I do not know who gave the orders or made the decisions to keep going at that point. Whomever made those decisions and the people above them that pressured the decision to be made should not be getting any sleep right now (or ever). They absolutely (as a corporation) need to do everything that they can to make this right (not that I think it can be made right–and that is a great sorrow). However, if you think of this from the corporation side, it is not as if they enjoy watching their dollars spewing out of that pipe into the Gulf creating a PR nightmare. Every day that that thing is spewing they are losing more money and more credibility. Bottom line, it is very possible that the only way they know how to stop this is with the relief wells that cannot be drilled in a day or a week or a month. They are doing all of these other things to appease the public and the press probably knowing full well that they won’t work because they have tried them and failed before (on the Mexican spill in 1979). The sad thing is that our technology hasn’t come further in 31 years but we continue to engage in drilling off shore just playing the odds that it won’t happen again. And the public has a short memory (esp if it wasn’t in our waters and messing up our beaches and wildlife and businesses). Be honest, how many people here knew there was a disaster off the shores of Mexico in the Gulf in 1979? I didn’t until this happened.
We can express all kinds of outrage (particularly if it is happening in your backyard). The most important thing that we can do is insist on the political will to change and seek out alternatives. and to change our own lifestyles as best we can to support those alternatives. The rest is just screaming in rage (and we are all entitled to do a little of that). I, for one, because I have a husband in the oil patch (not a corporate shill), am asking questions and trying really hard to understand what happened and why and how things can be changed in the future. I cannot just scream at the injustice of it and spend every waking hour with this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach without knowing what actions to take and who to listen to.
Yon Dung should be strung up in public next to our drill baby drill princess. We, as a people, need to put our thinking caps on and come up with viable alternatives and promote them like crazy. We need to be proactive, not reactive. We need to get rid of the politicians who spew forth nonsense and elect those who will insist on reforms with teeth. It would seem that the Minerals Management Service is as corrupt as all of the rest. Because we have been ignorant of this until now, we have also been complicit. Now we know. we are now responsible for making sure that this cannot happen again. In order to do this we must educate ourselves. Talk to people who know the oil field and how it works. Because, like it or not, oil drilling on land, at least, will continue. I think that all of our Congresspeople (including Begich) are going to jump on the open ANWR bandwagon asap because this gives them the perfect excuse. Cold, hard, rational education is what we need. We can’t fight this like screaming monkeys. No one really listens to emotional talk for very long.
I go to this place because I fear for my husband’s life when he goes to work. He works in an incredibly dangerous environment every day and I want him to come home safe. It is much like the coal miners being as safe as they can be under the earth. If the company he works for isn’t doing everything that it can to keep him safe I WILL have something to say about it.
If we do not do this, we will continue to poop where we eat and eventually we will go extinct.
I call BS.
I remember the 1970s “oil shortage.” We allowed big oil and all their money to BS America back then. Had we started then we’d be free of oil. Just look at technology- like what I am using now, a laptop w/ wireless! Wow! We went from “A computer in every home” to laptops to handheld everything in what -10 years? Or even 1 year (as what’s new this year is old school next). You cannot tell me they cannot do the same thing with energy? With cars? They sure did it w/ phones!
I, too, hope your husband is safe. And mine driving with a CDL (with lots and lots of regulation, drug testing and time sheets), and every other person doing any job w/ risk.
But we are talking about our planet. All creatures. All humanity. Life as we know it. Or knew it.
When do we ALL scream BS! Make it stop! We’re done! When? When nothing is left at all?
“I am withholding judgement on BP until all of the facts are known”
I applaud you for that thoughful decision, but I encourage you (and all the other outraged mudpups here) to watch the interview done by Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes on May 16. He interviewed a rig worker (the chief electronics technician in charge of the rig’s computers and electrical systems) who escaped from the explosion on Deepwater Horizon and who has some very enlightening information about what happened. If everything he says is true, there are very few punishments I can think of that are severe enough for the executives of BP who so callously put their own greed ahead of the lives of the rig workers and thousands of people (and animals) who will be affected by this disaster.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6490348n&tag=contentMain;contentBody
(If the link doesn’t work, here’s the name and date of the story:
Deepwater Horizon’s Blowout, Part 1and 2
May 16, 2010 6:04 PM)
Leenie,
Believe me, I heard it all even before that 60 minutes. Almost every guy with a brain in the oilfield knows how stupid and greedy the guys at the top are. Most of them could tell you almost exactly what happened and why just by looking at the log books. Often the engineers who make the decisions know less about what is really going on and how it really gets done (as opposed to how the books say to do it). Ask the guys with the dirty coats and boots and they will tell you the truth. I don’t know how many times my husband has come home and talked about a bunch of guys in suits standing around and scratching their heads instead of asking the guy with the wrench, who is looking at the pressure guages, who sees them every day, for his opinion. And I dare not ask how many times it is actually done the wrong way. I have to put in kudos to my DH who always opend his mouth and somehow humorously cons them into using common sense.
It seems like it’s always the ‘boots on the ground’ folks who know what the hell they’re talking about and will tell you the truth while the suits are all too often clueless liars.
Good on your DH for having the guts and the speechifyin’ skills to make sure things are done the right way!
The link works. Thank you Leenie17. We don’t watch much TV. That was very powerful and very scary.
Paula- Not to argue but the keys on your laptop and many of the parts of your cell phone require petroleum products in order to exist. Anything and everything made of plastic (that includes many parts of our current technology), polar fleece clothing, tennis shoes, carpet in your house, multiple products made for the medical field in hospital surgical units, etc. If we all quit driving gasoline fueled cars and heated our homes and buildings with something other than fuel oil or natural gas and we all had access to wind and solar energy for ALL of our electrical needs tomorrow, products made of petroleum products would still be required.
It will stop when we find other methods and invest in making them work. I wish I could stop it today but I can’t. I would give up everything that I have if I could make it stop (and that is a fact, considering that my husband’s job is what pays more than half the bills right now).
And yes, sad to say, it may not stop until there is nothing left….
Watching Rachel right now…. devastating,
Excellent one, LoveMyDogs! You speak truth. beth.
Arrgh – the above was in response to 18… beth.
[Sorry: I've been operating today on 3 hours of sleep...6-hour emergency room visit last night w/ DH and a full non-negotiable schedule of '*must* get done' stuff today, has left me more than a bit loopy and too tense, still, to hit the sack this fine evening. I need me some good, old-fashioned mudflats-unwind therapy magic (has it been patented yet?), so I'm off to read the rest of the wit and wisdom in these threads...b.]
Here’s a link to a site which is helpful when trying to visualize the current size of the slick.:
http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/
Unbelievably awful already.
((((LoveMyDogs))))
May you be safe, may your husband be safe, may all manner of things be safe.
Yes, directional drilling isn’t new- the company I worked for was using it in the Canadian North forty years ago, with each drill site capable of up to 8 wells (usually 3 or 4) so that there was less scarring of the permafrost. And ice islands began maybe 30 years ago near the McKenzie Delta, to protect for the pressure of pack ice. Reason 1 was to reach a reservoir without drilling on top of it.
Reason .2–Imagine the rock as a oreo cookie, with the middle being the layer holding oil- more often 20 feet or less thick rather than a hundred. Oil comes into small holes in the side of the pipe and doesn’t flow sideways very well unless the rock is soft sand or gravel. (Gas flows much better.) When you hit the icing layer if you can turn and drill sideways through the icing, letting many times more oil flow into the pipe, Pipe can now be flexible enough to be delivered in huge rolls. The technology is amazing.
But it’s only as good as the operator and if the operator is only as good as the law forces him to be, that’s ***. It’s not the straw that’s the problem, it’s that it’s BP sucking on it. And that (I read recently) the final approval of the Horizon well took ten minutes to be granted.
The hole has been blowing sand as well as oil, so what’s down there now is a big cavern, and the shaft is being sandblasted bigger and bigger. When relief wells do reach it, there’ll be a huge plugging job needed.
“On 3 January 2008, the US Minerals Management Service approved BP’s development and production plan for the Liberty field. During 2007, $25 million was spent on pre-project planning for Liberty, including engineering, environmental studies and permit applications. Development plans for Liberty, which lies offshore to the east of the Endicott field, include ultra-extended reach wells to be drilled from pads at Endicott and processing Liberty oil production through existing Endicott facilities.”
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/set_branch/STAGING/common_assets/downloads/pdf/ara_2007_annual_report_and_accounts.pdf
From the mouth of BP itself, yes, the MMS approved it!
(Oh, everybody please remember, who was president in Jan. 2008? Two guesses and I’ll give you a hint, his initials were not BHO.)
Not a sterling endorsement right now, is it?
Seriously, I am starting to think Sarah’s dogged insistence on drill baby drill particularly in Alaska (technically, Liberty is not ‘deepwater’) has more to do with some vested interest that has to do with Todd. After reading several of the released e-mails, it is clear that Todd is the one who is getting and sending info that is oil related.
Sarah’s not the ‘energy expert’ – Todd is.
New rules:
If you want to drill a well, you should have to drill three.
That would leave two “relief wells” just in the case they are needed.
They can afford it…they are, after all, oil companies.
Notice how the price of gasoline has dropped—don’t want folks to get angry about that, too.
Actually, I think that has more to do with how relatively inconsequential the US oil market is to the price we pay at the pumps, kinda belying the meme that we must drill in ANWR now!!!! Can we add to the supply? Sure.
But the analogy is the same: If amount of oil being spilled into the Gulf is not consequential to our environment, aka a mere ‘drop in the bucket’, then so is what we would be able to supply (a drop in the bucket) to the world market, all while taking risks of these kinds of disasters happening again and again for … what reason?
How many times to we have to tell people, drilling more oil in the US will not lower your gasoline costs, or at least not by more than perhaps a few cents?
Now, if we nationalized the oil industry and said that the resources were ours and we should benefit from them, then we would ensure our oil went to us first and we would have a terrific tax on companies that sold their oil to foreign companies from which we would still benefit and life would be full of no taxes and rainbows and ponies and leprechauns eager to guide us to their pots of gold!
But that’s just crazy talk.
In the early 1980′s, Edward Abbey, author of “The Monkey Wrench Gang” as well as many other books, drove up to an interview with the Whole Earth Review in a big old Cadillac. The interviewer questioned him about this as it seemed to be a contradiction to his environmental and resource conservation beliefs. His answer is something I think of often and believe to be somewhat prophetic, he said “the sooner we burn up all the gas, the better off we’ll be.” Love My Dogs is 100% right on, we all rely on oil and to say otherwise would be a lie. There is no question that GREED is root of the problem and that is what we need to address. The current environmental disaster in the Gulf is a result of that greed. I do not think it is too late to elect good people into positions of power and authority that have all of humanity’s interests and needs at heart. Thank you all for your comments and insights.
Anybody watching over the Gulf oil spill, I HIGHLY recommend watching Rachel Maddow’s entire show tonight, reporting from down in the gulf!!
link Maddow Thurs. 6/03/10
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#37500762
The whole show was educational and clearly Rachel was outraged while she showed more details of the impacts and some of the ineffective response efforts during her travels.
But, what was especially interesting, was when Rachel directly confronted one of the ‘Obama Spill Commission Co-chairs’ about his potential conflicts of interest w/Boards he sits on.
You know Rachel, she comes armed with the facts and doesn’t back down (even while being polite). At the very least, I think she made it VERY clear that this Commission will be extremely well watched and reported on!
My grandfather was a rough neck in the 1910′s through the late 1970′s and in the end was running many oil leases himself. According to him, (before he died–hit by an oil tanker on his way home from one of his oil leases. No, not one of his tankers.) the oil companies lied and pulled shady deals 100 years ago and just got better at it as the decades rolled on past. Think how good they are at it now.