Slashdot Mirror
How the Biggest, Most Expensive Oil Spill In History Changed Almost Nothing
merbs writes: Tthe biggest oil spill in US history, despite incurring the largest environmental fine on the books—$18.7 billion, handed down this month—has done almost nothing to change the nation's relationship to oil. Five years after the spill, and, by BP's count, $54 billion in projected total expenses, there have been no serious legislative efforts to improve the oversight or regulation of the United States' still-expanding offshore oil operations. Public opinion of deepwater drilling barely budged during the ordeal; today, a majority of Americans favor doing even more of it.
Country run by oil barons does nothing when there's an oil problem!?!
Film at 11.
No sig today...
We've had plenty of significant events happen in the past couple decades. One and only one - 9/11 - changed how the government does anything. Everything else caused only momentary pauses, and then everything went back to business as usual. This was great if you were on the payout end of government decisions, not so great if you were burying a loved one as a result of shitty government decisions.
Obviously, the Deepwater Horizon disaster wasn't going to change anything either.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Nobody wants to eat anything that comes out of the gulf
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Public opinion of deepwater drilling barely budged during the ordeal; today, a majority of Americans favor doing even more of it.
In light of all the rockets that have exploded and astronauts killed over the years, I favor doing even more space exploration.
Just because something is unsafe, doesn't mean I want to stop doing it. Sometimes it's worth doing so long as it can be done more safely.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Amazing that nearly everyone agrees that the government fumbled the ball but nearly everyone in this set also insists on waiting for government intervention.
The American lifestyle is no different. We need oil. We drive vehicles that burn gas. We need asphalt to pave our roads. We fly in airplanes that burn jet fuel. We depend on plastics to make everything that exists in our lives. In order to buy everything, we need it shipped from half-way around the world in freighters that burn diesel and in trains to get it across the United States. Practically everything that makes our modern lives modern depends on petrochemicals. If you want a more thorough list, go here.
We won't give up on oil until we run out.
Energy production has impacts all over our culture and economy - it's short-sighted to look only at the (clearly negative) environmental effects. We also need to consider the job and GDP growth that oil can produce, at a time when our economy badly needs it. Then there are the (clearly positive) national and economic security implications of being energy-independent.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't also have a balls-to-the-wall, fully government-assisted race toward cleaner energy. But we're far from being able to rely on that for more than a small fraction of our needs. The R&D and infrastructure upgrades will take decades, and our only usable "bridge" to get there is to continue burning anything that will hold a flame.
Or, in spite of the most hysterical screaming of anti-American crusaders, most of us figured out that shit that bubbled out of the ground was part of nature and that nature dealt with it. Yeah, the beaches were pretty nasty. Now they're not. Keep ranting, while I enjoy a grouper sandwich.
If it had been an American oil company, would it have gotten a fine?
It is the very regulations that you want more of that have forced the oil companies to *do* deep water drilling.
After 20 years of Karl Rove and Fox News a sizable number of Americans are opposed to any regulation. Rand Paul (or maybe his dad) argued that instead of govt regs you let the folks who own the contaminated land Sue for damages. If it's international waters I guess you'd have to prove your land was contaminated...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Nothing can just be an accident, can it? Someone screwed you over somewhere...
They are getting away with it, and again, Congress does nothing. (Well except the initial authorization to manage deep sea drilling, and those managers now require use of an improved version of the wellhead thing that broke) But other than that, nothing!
Something must be done! Will no one think of the children?
Electric motors have been mass produced for decades. The only rechargeable battery chemistry that is $100/kwh, is old fashioned lead acid. Lithium ion has dominated consumer electronics for the last 20+ years. The recent decline in lithium ion cost has been from car companies cutting out the middleman in distribution, and r&d becoming a smaller percentage of sale price, from bigger volumes. I think the low lying fruit is goine.
Now, having said that, a $30,000, 100 mile range electric car might be good enough. If oil dries up, poor people can take a bicycle, electric bus, or electric car Uber.
Again. One would expect the biggest change(s) to come from BP. Both title and summary ignore this.
post here if you avoid buying gas from bp/arco stations.
that is essential and the best solution available, people do not automatically shift to far inferior systems that also have failure modes.
We are not "addicted" to oil because of some nasty conspiracy. We use oil because it is currently the best mix of [1] portability [2] energy density [3] availability [4] safety [5] storability [6] simplicity of handling and using, available. There was a day when the western world was "addicted" to actual horse power. Then a guy built a steam engine and the world got "addicted" to coal (the horses were relegated to pets, ceremonial use and racing). When oil and engines that use it became widely available, "big coal" went away and we all got "addicted" to oil (the coal-powered stuff rapidly went to museums or the scrap yards). This is what is normally referred to as "being intelligent", but is now derided by leftists who dream of de-industrialization and most of whom are clueless about just how much they would hate living in the de-industrialized world they dream of (lots of these people are addicted to iPhones and Twitter etc). No government regulations are required to move society to an actually superior solution - the people rapidly move themselves if the solution is truly superior.
Investor money is like mob money; it flows to whatever business makes money. When booze was outlawed, mobsters were in alcohol. When prohibition ended, the mobsters got out, but they did not go away, they moved to other high-profit illegal activities like prostitutes, drugs, construction site scams, etc (whatever makes money in the illegal realm). Same with investor money. If there was a better energy solution, the billions of dollars that currently are in "Big Oil" would shift to solar or wind or nuclear or whatever and then the Marxists would be whining about "Big Solar" or "Big Nuclear" or whatever.
Perhaps this shows some level of sanity? The reaction to everything bad that happens cannot be to create yet more laws and regulations. We have plenty. There was an accident, investigations were done, fines were issued, etc. That seems like a working system. Would it be better to not have had an accident? Yes. But there are limits to how far you can stranglehold things before they become completely dysfunctional. Risk vs. reward (or cost versus diminishing returns) has to be taken in to account for everything we do.
"...there have been no serious legislative efforts to improve the oversight or regulation..."
A good way to get people to read the article. But the existing settlement and damages is $54 billion (as mentioned and discussed fully towards the end of the article).
Why does anyone feel the need to improve the regulation or oversight, if the punishment fits the crime already? And what's additional punishment going to do?
If the punishment for murder is life in prison, is adding another mandatory 20 years to the sentence going to fix anything?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For 83 days I sat and watched reports about the Gulf Oil Disaster We all did but most of us don't remember it was that long before the first help was sent.. BP was complaining no one had a Sub that could go fix it .. but the US Navy had quite a few not to mention all of the other oceanic research crews government tax dollars pay for. ... If they simply placed a clamp and a cap on that well within the first 10 days most of this could have been averted. Unfortunately no one did anything to help. I actually drew up plans on a method to cap that pipe and I sent them along with the knowledge no one would take my suggestions.. after all .. all I am is a certified mechanical engineer and a Chemist who worked for the government in the past... and I am a Certified by FEMA in Disaster Relief and Construction Methods.... No we all sat there and talked about how bad it is but the people in power did nothing.. Its the same as FUKUSHIMA nothing good is happening there and Japan is home to some of the highest level Robotics and Remote Control Engineering.. they could fly by cable some backhos to excavate those reactors and place the rods in transport / long term storage containers but years later radioactive water is pouring into the ocean.
Obama did nothing .. absolutely nothing for 3 months.. then when it was over billions were spent.. or handed out.. and still nothing good resulted...
Remember Hurricane Sandy in Jersey and NYC? there are still homeless people from that disaster...
That disaster in Haiti where Obama sent 15,000 troupes and America sent 9 Billion Dollars.. those people are still homeless..
The answer is Solar on every home which will power industry by day and fuel our backup batteries .. then wind at night .. we need to do this at every home and have large farms of it.. we can place solar along every interstate and railroad line.. but we should create a 10 mile wide dead mans zone on our southern border and fill it with solar and have it run by the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense .. in one fell swoop we power our nation and we cure the illegal alien problem along that border.. then we do the same on our northern border.. 5 miles of dead man zone buffer 3 miles of solar and 2 miles of interior buffer.
The answers are simple but no one will implement them
Solar on every new home over $250k should be mandated by law because it would only cost about $25k to outfit a home for hot water and photovoltaic and the hot water can be used for home heating....
People aren't stupid.. we all would do this but Obama thrashed our Solar industry .. GE shutdown their American plants that had been producing for 30 years after Obama was done.. not to even mention the billions wasted on companies like solindra and when they went bankrupt after the plant was 100% built another company didn't come in and buy it at rock bottom and build tons of cheap solar panels .. that plant was boxed up and sent to china... Our tax dollars bought China about 10 huge factories that were 95% automated where no human hand was needed to produce the product... and now they are making panels ...
.
Its outrageous .. but its life.. and its your future if you continue to elect people who take hundreds of millions and billions of dollars from the low lifes of humanity.
How, pray tell, are you going to regulate Chinese or other nations' platforms that are (just) outside of your territorial waters?
Related: regulating (punitively, not preventatively) the companies from your own countries that produce oil such that they outsource it to companies that are not under your country's legislative purview does exactly what for saving Gaia?
I'm all for environmental conscience but if you are going to settle for curb-stomping the companies you can get to in lieu of the ones you can't, does that make it an agenda rather than a strategy? What might you expect (economically speaking) the markets to do when this happens? Can you think of any other markets where capricious non-uniform regulations have resulted in unintended consequences?
Hey, the US doesn't OWN all of 'offshore', or even Gulf of Mexico, you know! If BP wanted to do something silly again, they could dodge any and all regulation, by simple selection of a foreign drilling site.
But, BP won't do something silly again. Not for a long time. BP will, for purely profit-seeking reasons, manage better in future. BP employees, for their own personal safety, will be more inclined to caution and prudence.
The best thing the US government can do, is to insist on full disclosure of any and all safety-related information, that could be of use in future planning (including regulation) by any and all persons, anywhere in the world, The courts (not regulators, not legislators) did perform that function, I hope adequately. BP cooperated, responsibly (IMHO).
The author of the article clearly wants restrictions on 'them', as a kind of punishment for a criime, even if it means some kind of ex-post-facto criminalization. He's missing the productive possibility of doing things better, because he wants to see someone's time wasted in a public pillory.
Seriously, the far left is busy trying to kill off everything today, which is NOT going to happen.
Instead, what should be done, is moving from tactical thinking to strategic thinking.
For example, consider keystone pipeline. The far left is working hard to kill it off. Will that stop the tar sands? Nope. They will continue, only they will use rails and cause more accidents.
However, if the left were to cut a deal with the right, and allow keystone,
BUT in return change the EV subsidies (base it upon the battery size),
along with a new subsidy to move new Commercial/large passenger (think suburban) vehicles to Nat gas, and within 3 years of that, to be ONLY for Comm Vehicles that are series hybrid using nat gas.
With the above, within 5 years, all of the new commercial/large passenger vehicles will be electric backed up by nat gas. Within 10 years, we will have figured out how to do all vehicles on electric.
That is how you stop it in less than 10 years. OTOH, the left are basically accomplishing NOTHING. In fact, in many ways, they actually stop forward progress because so many dislike the approach.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is the most insightful post so far.
People like to blame others for the problems they participate in themselves. No one with car should have the right to complain about getting rid of oil. Even an electric car because more than likely, a lot of your power comes from burning oil or coal. Even if you are getting nuclear, hydro, or hydro power directly (which you are not because the grid is all tied together and your power comes from all of them, only administratively from a local plant).
Oh, you need your car, everyone else should get rid of theirs? Your small car is fine but that bigger car the neighbor has is the the a waste? Oddly the person with a small moped thinks your small car is a waste. People set standards of what they have and think everyone else is the problem, or the government is the problem, or is it the boogy man? You want to run your A/C because it is hot and humid. Guess what jackass, so does everyone else. But you have a new geo thermal unit!!! the guy without A/C is like pfftt. Geothermal this buddy.
Option 1: The government spends millions of dollars inspecting and enforcing safety rules. No accident happens, and the government collects nothing. Profit for the government: negative millions.
Option 2: The government spends nothing on inspections or enforcement. An accident happens, and the government collects billions of dollars in fines. Profit for the government: positive 18.7 billion dollars.
The largest money spills were in the US.
The largest oil spills were in Kuwait.
Largest Oil Spills
Please check your facts before issuing the headline.
Since some people just can't get it into their minds that they are dead wrong.
The exploration is expanding because consumption hasnt decreased on the contrary, it has increased.
How about the population adopts fuel efficient cars...Less mustangs and more prius?
The entire regulatory apparatus for the oil industry was significantly shaken up almost immediately after the event (the MMS was split into a revenue collecting body and regulatory enforcing body). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/us/12interior.html?_r=0. Unfortunately, it's a perfect counter example to the assertion that "there have been no serious legislative efforts to improve the oversight or regulation of the United States' still-expanding offshore oil operations."
That is how you stop it in less than 10 years. OTOH, the left are basically accomplishing NOTHING. In fact, in many ways, they actually stop forward progress because so many dislike the approach.
You don't like what the left is doing, so you are trying to reframe the debate. But in truth, you are a failure: The left has succeeded in reframing the debate, which is in sharp contrast to what you call "nothing". By continually pushing for environmental reform, the left has successfully got some environmental reform — precisely what you suggest they would accomplish by not actually trying to fix things.
The truth is that ten years is too long to wait to fix this problem, we on the far left know that the rest of you won't get your shit together, and the best we can hope to accomplish is to point this out continually so that when we're all well and rightly fucked, we know who to point at. And it's you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Spend that fine on electric car rebates, at least 10 billion of it, and get rid of our need for oil. Washington should list to Elon Musk.
The biggest oil spill was in Mexico waters in the 70's off the Yucstan coast. The Mexico spill was about 10 times the size of BP's. If the communists EPA was interested in the mythical clean-cheap-energy-unicorn we would have 6 nuclear power plants in every state in the union and oil drilling in California where oil is easy to get.
There was virtually no requirment to show direct damages. I was inudated by email from scammers to let them help me join the reparations process (recently ended). I think it was partly beacuse showing cause of economic harm was difficult and much of the Gulf coast operated on an undocumented underground economy. Even the famed reparations lawyer Ken Feinberg of 9-11 and Colorado Theater Shooter fame was kicked off the case for wanting a minimum level of standards for reparations.
Not so. Nuclear fuel isn't actually meaningfully radioactive - it's fissile, so when bombarded by neutrons it shatters (aka fissions), but leave it alone and it will decay so slowly that it emits essentially no radiation. Basically the longer the half-life, the less radioactive the material, and nuclear fuel has a very long half life - it has after all been present since long before our planet formed from the remnants of ancient supernovas. Uranium-235, the most common fuel, has a half-life of 700 million years. Plutonium-239, the other common fuel, has a half-life of "only" 24,000 years, but the banana you just ate is still far more radioactive than a warehouse full of freshly refined nuclear fuel.
Shatter it in a fission reactor though, and the resulting fragments tend to be very radioactive. Some are *extremely* radioactive, with half-lives in the range of hours to weeks, but store those for a few years and they pretty much completely decay into inert atoms, so they aren't a big problem. Dealing with those is why spent fuel typically has a "cooling off period" of a few years before being shipped away from the nuclear plant.
Most fragments though have half-lives in the range of a few months to many years - short enough to be dangerously radioactive, but long enough to present some challenges for storage - it will take many centuries to decay to safe levels. Still, bury it in a nice deep hole in good dry, stable ground, and it will probably decay to safe levels before it manages to escape. Something like Yucca Mountain would likely be well suited to this.
The REAL problem though is that current reactor designs only consume a few percent of the fuel, and then we go and store that highly radioactive waste still all mixed in with the 90+% of unused fuel. And that gives us the worst of both worlds - it's highly radioactive, and as the waste decays it releases a bunch of energetic neutrons which cause some of the surrounding fuel to fission, creating fresh new waste to replace the stuff that just went inert. The combination of waste and fuel will thus remain dangerously radioactive until all the fuel has been converted to waste, a process that will take tens to hundreds of thousands of years. And on those timescales there's no realistic way to contain it reliably, you're starting to get into geological timescales there, and there's no longer any such thing as stable ground.
THAT is why fuel reprocessing (or radically better reactors) are important - not just because it reduces the amount of waste, but because it simultaneously radically reduces the time it will take that waste to become inert, down to timescales where human ingenuity can at least hope to contain it.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Well, earthquakes in the Pacific Rim haven't caused anyone to abandon their coastal cities, so why should people abandon oil?
No, people like Musk are making changes.
You and the far left, really are not.
Take the case of stopping keystone. Has it lowered the CO2? Nope. Has it harmed tar sands? Nope. Will it stop tarsands? Nope.
So, what would stop tar sands? Simple. Get the vehicles to change. Then and ONLY then, will that happen.
By cutting a deal to allow keystone, but in return moving new commercial vehicles to nat gas, and then to electric via series hybrid (still using nat gas), it will plummet the price of oil since America will no longer import within 10 years. And if America drops our importing of oil, then per barrel is going to be below $50. That will kill tar sands.
The nice thing about this approach, is that the far right will go along with it out of short term greed (though oil companies will fight that). And within 10 years, America's CO2 emissions would be less than 1/2 of where they are today, which right now, we are at 14% of the world's total. IOW, we would be below 7%, and possibly lower.
Pppl like you are making serious mistake because your approach will NOT slow down the emissions. For what I suggest, it absolutely will force down CO2 emissions.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Take the case of stopping keystone.
What do you think that has to do with the far left? That's a moderate leftist issue.
By cutting a deal to allow keystone, but in return moving new commercial vehicles to nat gas, and then to electric via series hybrid (still using nat gas),
No, stop right there. See, again, even moderate leftists are against fracking, which is where nat gas comes from now. Far leftists are anti-trucking. Pro-local, pro-rail.
Pppl like you are making serious mistake because your approach will NOT slow down the emissions. For what I suggest, it absolutely will force down CO2 emissions.
You don't get it, do you? Neither one of us is going to get what we want, but your way is still destructive and you haven't even begun to describe the far left position. You have become deluded, and you think that there are far left Democrats. There's no such thing, buddy. You can register whatever you want so you can vote in a primary, but if you really self-identify as a Democrat, you're a centrist.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, I am registered Libertarian that was hard core from 1994 until 2010. However, W's/neo-con's economy was an eye opener. As such, I now lean more towards original republicans ( nothing to do with the current GOP which is really neo-cons and tea* ).
That is why I believe that we need to solve this CO2 issue with economics rather than with regulations. Economics will force the situation better. Heck, look at Coal plants. The mass shutdown has had little to do with W's mercury regulation or O's new regulations. It is all about nat gas's, as well as Wind's, prices being far too low for them to compete.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Most US politicians, more Republicans than Democrats, shy away from any legislation that lobbyist claim is bad for business. And with a constant political stalemate none will ever happen. Other than a military putsch like in Chile, mainly caused by political stalemate that was unable to take on the issues of the time.