Monday, October 17, 2011

BP Regains Bidding Rights For Gulf Drilling

Remember those guys that did such a great job drilling in the gulf last time?
Let's give em another shot!
The Obama administration has infuriated environmentalists by giving BP the green light to bid for new drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico.

The move – seen as a major step in the company's political rehabilitation as an offshore driller following the Deepwater Horizon accident – was revealed by the head of the US safety regulator after a congressional hearing in Washington.

"They don't have a deeply flawed record offshore," said Michael Bromwich, head of the newly formed Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. "The question is: 'Do you administer the administrative death penalty based on one incident?', and we have concluded that's not appropriate."

Drilling rights are sold off on a regular basis but many believed BP would be ruled out as unsuitable after the gulf well blowout that killed 11 workers and polluted the beaches of southern states. The next sale comes up in December, when more than 8m hectares (20m acres) of offshore rights will come up for grabs.

BP declined to comment, but Friends of the Earth said it was appalled. "Governments should be administering the death penalty to all deepwater drilling rather than waiting for yet more devastating incidents like the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico or in any other part of the world," argued Craig Bennett, director of policy and campaigns at the environmental group.

"It is not just BP operations that are deeply flawed," he added. "There is not a single oil company that can say with a high degree of confidence that it can drill safely and how it will clear up if something goes wrong. It is clear in the context of climate change we need to develop new clean technologies, not hunt for fossil fuels in ever more remote and hard-to-reach areas."
The "they don't have a deeply flawed record" quote is jaw dropping, but the statement from friends of the earth really hits the nail on the head. BP's non-reaction to the gulf spill was essentially the airing of a dirty secret that no one has the slightest clue what to do when something goes wrong with one of these things.

So let's obviously keep doing it, and why not let the same people who fucked it up last time go for it again?  Awesome.

2 comments:

  1. Well, it's not like they can do any worse, right?

    ReplyDelete
  2. "worse"? ... maybe. Not ruling that out.
    Twice? Yes. That they could do. Apparently.

    godamnit.

    ReplyDelete