Drill, baby, drill
October 5, 2008, 8:04 pm
Posted by Eduardo Peñalver
From the AP:
Hurricane Ike’s winds and massive waves destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines. The environmental damage only now is becoming apparent: At least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas, according to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.
Ike’s winds came through Louisville a few weeks ago, and, as a result, we got temporary waiver on RFG gasoline. This morning, gas (RFG or otherwise?) was selling at $3.409/gal, give or take for 89 octane. Other places?
Typical AP reporting – put it in context.
500,000 gallons of oil is infinitesimal. The Exxon Valdez alone spilled more than ten times that into a body of water 60 times smaller than the Gulf. Moreover, 200 times more oil naturally seeps up from the Gulf sea bed every year.
And my hunch is that the number of small spills every year that don’t make the headlines adds up to a whole lot too.
Yet the industry has such power that the US and other major countries are quarreling about “whose ocean is it” regarding drilling rights to the Arctic Ocean as the ice cap melts from global warming. It’s a truly obscene state of affairs that affairs of state are now so blatantly dominated by corporate interests.
It’s another nonsense issue from the McCain campaign that we need to drill (NOW!) to “free ourselves from foreign oil”. We don’t have a foreign oil problem. We have an expensive oil problem. Even if we could find some reserves, world demand is increasing. How are we better off is we are paying $4 a gallon for exclusively American oil?