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This description of the right way and the wrong way to put down oil booms is really interesting. I first read it last week, and I keep telling people about it, so I guess that means I ought to write about it. After you read this, every picture you see of the booms in the gulf will leave you fuming, because they're all wrong, and consequently totally ineffective.
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"In the last three years, BP refineries in Ohio and Texas have accounted for 97 percent of the 'egregious, willful' violations handed out by OSHA." Twenty years from now, young conservatives will complain about the evils of excessive regulation against oil companies, mystified why fuzzy-headed liberals figure that the market cannot regulate oil companies for us. The last six weeks is why. The plight of fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico is totally decoupled from BP's financial health. This is one of those areas where capitalism is powerless—it's up to government to prevent and halt this sort of thing.
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I think Reich is right. The White House has all of the responsibility to get BP's mess cleaned up, but with no power to actually do so. Ironically, the people criticizing the president most loudly are the very people who believe that private enterprise solves all, and government has no role in dealing with the problems of business.
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When you young lawyers go looking for a way to make environmental regulation actually work, here is a hint: Take primacy for spill response away from the RP (responsible party) and put it under licensed professionals not paid by the RP. Do it with bonding and permit fees. We don’t allow suspects to clean up the crime scene do we?
This isn’t complicated, but it is a commonwealth, so we have the right to set the rules and sanctions. You need to make it assuredly very expensive to screw up. Put in required jail time for violations by the RP AND regulatory personnel. Shareholders and cautious regulators will take care of the rest.
You don’t need to wait twenty years. You can head over to BearingDrift’s comments right now and hear all about how this spill is the Federal gov’ts fault.
I think when we young evil conservatives talk about excessive regulation on oil companies, we refer more to the ability to expand drill sites, explore new drill sites, open new refineries, and the like. At least with a large portion of us, it has nothing to do with safety regulations.
Exxon only had 1 of these violations. The free market could still work if enough people decided to support Exxon/Citgo/Sunoco, etc. rather than BP. :-)
I don’t think there are many (sane) conservatives who support broad deregulation of the health and safety regulations for offshore oil rigs. (I know a lot of you are just itching to end that sentence after “conservative”. :-)) I think most of us support OSHA, and we all mourn the lost lives.
There are a lot of conservatives, however, that think if shallow-water or land-based drilling was more open and available that this type of leak wouldn’t be such a problem. I’m not sure I totally agree with that sentiment, but I can definitely see where they’re coming from.
Then again, I don’t blame Obama for the leak, so maybe I’m not a good enough conservative.
The huge O&G volume of this underwater spill apocalypse points out the simple fact – the big plays are in deep water. Deep water drilling is the future of a culture that remains addicted to hydrocarbons. And it will resume because you will pay lots more for a tank of gas than you will for a blackened redfish dinner. After the obligatory funeral for the Gulf coast ecosystems we’ll be right back at it.
During his campaign, the President repeatedly told the Drill Baby Drill crowd that we could not drill ourselves out of coming oil shortages. And yet, even now they remain in denial. We’re just one more fix/tweak/deregulation away from oil nirvana. Dirty fucking addicts. Every one of us.