https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TINzvWrtjYI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyutuErxPo8
Carol Browner, Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy in the United States of America, has been all over the Media, announcing the policy to “kill kill kill this” BP nightmare story, telling the world that a turning milestone point has been reached :-
https://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/PDFs/OilBudget_description_%2083final.pdf
Have they decided that BP have been punished enough now for the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher, and the reputation of the company needs to be rehabilitated sharply in order to protect the Economy ?
I made the mistake of taking in a BBC TV news bulletin on the matter. I heard several talking heads say it’s “good news” that roughly three quarters of the accountable oil from the spill has “disappeared” :-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10870159
Breaking this story is “good news” for the stability of pension funds, maybe. But what is the real extent of the real damage to the real world, the world of oceans and fish and plankton ? Will the world be watching as the researchers scavenge data and clues to the marine ecotastrophe that is still unfolding ?
Barack Obama hopes there’s nothing left to see of this car crash, and that we can all move along. It leaves a number of unanswered questions. Pre-eminent in my mind is the question “how likely is it that another deepwater drilling oil spill could happen ?”
I bet Barack Obama is slightly regretting announcing more “unconventional” oil drilling in March, and he’s attempting to patch up his own reputation, possibly why he’s pushing so hard to get this “good news” out now about BP’s clean-up operation :-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APOMoS0s7xI
Of course the White House want to clear the trouble from peoples’ minds and move on to other matters because the administration of the United States of America is peppered with oil-made men (and women). Plus, there’s heaps of fossil fuel lobbyists on every carpet, in every corridor, in every chat, in every consultation :-
At some point this difficult question will have to be answered : if oil spills and other hydrocarbon problems are going to become more frequent in future, as exploration, discovery and production become more and more “unconventional”, how is this going to impact on the profitability of oil and gas companies ?
Will there come a time when “growth” is no longer possible in fossil fuels, as the profit margin between production costs and sales revenues tightens to a thin wafer ?
Who is paying for the BP spill clean-up, by the way ? The American Government are all over it. Has the work been partly paid for by the taxpayers ?