With Your Head Down in the Pig Bin Saying, "Keep on Digging"

by Eric Martin

Why should we bother oil and gas companies with the nettlesome requirement to get environmental permits and the like?  And why shouldn't we trust industry to regulate itself and look after the public interest in general?

In its 2009 exploration plan for the Deepwater Horizon well, BP PLC states that the company could handle a spill involving as much as 12.6 million gallons of oil per day, a number 60 times higher than its current estimate of the ongoing Gulf disaster.

In associated documents filed with the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the company says that it would be able to skim 17.6 million gallons of oil a day from the Gulf in the event of a spill.

But let's make sure we keep that cap nestled tightly on the well BP's liability lest we discourage more reckless behavior responsible oil exploration!  Drill baby drill!

(via)

Comments

[Slartibartfast]

I loves me a little Animals in the morning.

[chmood]

Good news about BP's "capability" - any chance of them getting on with it???

[hairshirthedonist]

I loves me a little Animals in the morning.

It's in my car's CD changer as we type/read.

[Keifus]

"Why should we bother oil and gas companies with the nettlesome requirement to get environmental permits and the like?"

They've got to stem the evil tide. (But keeping it all on the inside was never really the point.)

[Tony P.]

Whereas the current GOP line is that raising the liability cap to $10B would be doing a favor to the major oil companies because it would price small independents out of the oil drilling business;

Whereas the GOP must believe that its line sounds logical to somebody; and

Whereas a child of 10 could spot the howler in this 'logic';

Now therefore I ask, in all sincerity:

Is there anybody in the entire universe of ObWi readers who is willing to say that it sounds reasonable to him?

Or can we safely assume that even the staunchest conservatives among us now feel that the GOP's 'logic' is an insult to their intelligence?

--TP

[efgoldman]

"logic" and "GOP" are, to grab an appropriate cliche, like oil and water.

seriously, i can't remember any actual GOP official saying a single logical thing since January of '09. Can you?

[Tony P.]

seriously, i can't remember any actual GOP official saying a single logical thing since January of '09. Can you?

Well, no. But I am a commie pinko librul. I can't be expected to appreciate GOP logic the way clear-minded pragmatic conservatives can.

On the $10B cap argument, specifically, the GOP cannot possibly imagine that they sound persuasive to me. But the whole point of making an argument is to persuade somebody, so I'm just wondering who that somebody might be.

Some of our fellow commenters have defended GOP logic in the past. I'd like to see whether a single man jack of them is willing to do so on this one:-)

--TP

[Nell]

Scientists in the NOAA complained about the MMS' lax treatment of the oil companies a year ago, and no one in the Obama administration did a single thing about it. Ken Salazar and Lisa Jackson are empty suits at best, industry shills at worst. Their boss is a triangulating pol who didn't even campaign on strong environmental positions ("clean coal"? puh-leeze). This isn't just down to BP.

[Eric Martin]

No, Nell, the point of this post was actually not BP's malfeasance, per se, but the regulatory/philosophical environment that embraces leaving industry to regulate/monitor itself and freeing industry of troublesome rules.

For the record, Ken Salazar was one of his very worst appointments.

[efgoldman]

For the record, Ken Salazar was one of his very worst appointments.

I s'pose he coulda' kept Gale what's her face, like he did with Bob Gates. Or brought James Watt back from retirement (or beyond retirement, I guess).

Maybe he owed a political debt. Its happened once or twice in cabinet appointments, you know.

Obama's not beyond criticism. But generally his cabinet and agency appointments have ranged from middling to excellent. I certainly don't see any Bush-like disasters there.

[Eric Martin]

No, not Bush like - but that's a relatively low bar.

Maybe he owed a debt to Salazar, but the pick was terrible.

I'm also not thrilled with his financial team - or at least, the Summers/Geithner portion. I like Goolsbee and Volker well enough, at least when they're not being marginalized.

[Nell]

generally his cabinet and agency appointments have ranged from middling to excellent.

Maybe so, "generally." But specifically, Lisa Jackson and Ken Salazar are at the below-middling level.

And this was to be expected given Obama's clear lack of real environmental convictions (beyond the "green jobs" hooey -- exposed as such by the administration's willingness to jettison Van Jones at the first peep of Glenn Beck crazy talk).

[Hogan]

For the record, Ken Salazar was one of his very worst appointments.

I s'pose he coulda' kept Gale what's her face, like he did with Bob Gates. Or brought James Watt back from retirement (or beyond retirement, I guess).

I don't think Eric was saying that Salazar was the worst possible appointment to that position, just that he was significantly worse than most of Obama's other appointments.

[Eric Martin]

Hogan is correct.

[Michael Cain]

Maybe he owed a political debt. Its happened once or twice in cabinet appointments, you know.

At least a contributing factor... For the last 40-50 years, it has generally been regarded as a political necessity to appoint someone from one of the states entirely west of the 100th meridian to the Interior post. Those are the states where from 30-80% of the land area is owned by the federal government. There continues to be a substantial anti-federal attitude in most of those states due to the perception that Interior Secretaries from "back East" make decisions regarding management of that land without adequate consideration of local state interests (with some historical justification). Failure to appoint a western Secretary can cost a substantial amount of support in the next election cycle.

It doesn't justify making a bad choice, but it does reduce the pool of candidates.