Concerned Citizens

Just when I thought we were finally getting on the same page about the oil spill caused by the Deepwater Horizon incident the politicians showed their true faces regarding the oil spill. This is really sad when you look at the damage of the spill and its impact to the region in the years to come. Since the incident happened millions of gallons of oil have poured into the Gulf with no complete relief in sight for months. Yesterday BP was able to finally secure a containment cap on the wellhead but officials are not sure if the cap will provide a secure enough seal to capture the escaping oil from the well. Video of the placement of the cap seemed to indicate the pressure of oil escaping may be too much for the cap but we can only rely on the expertise of BP and the government, something that’s proven wrong in the past. However, what really seemed to be the shocker of the day was the Republican response to the incident.

The first shocker started with the queen of Republican rhetoric, Sarah Palin. Yesterday on her Facebook page Palin essentially blamed the offshore incident on “extreme environmentalists.” In the message Palin blamed the environmentalists for forcing more offshore drilling by “locking up” safer drilling areas onshore. “Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country’s energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It’s catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proves it,” said Palin in the posting. I guess this makes sense in Palin’s weird, unique world of thinking.

Then came the mouthpiece of the Republican Party on the Gulf, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, who told Mississippi Gulf residents this was nothing to panic about. According to the Natchez Democrat “Barbour said most of the slick is just ‘a very, very, very thin layer of oil residue.’” Barbour blamed most of the “fatalistic” reaction to a failure of his office to communicate to Gulf resident the real impact of the spill as communicated to him by officials connected with the spill. The problem is that communication by officials has been faulty and overly optimistic as we have learned more about the amount of oil escaping, the extent of the spill in the Gulf, and the impact to wildlife. However, it is an election year and Barbour doesn’t want to get the oil and gas industry mad.

To really understand the impact of the spill Barbour should look to another Gulf coast governor, Bobby Jindal (R-Louisiana). Jindal has been facing one of the largest crises to his region since Katrina. The problem with this one is that it’s direct impact will be felt for years. Jindal has bashed both BP and the government for their lack of response to the spill. But then again, it’s an election year so when the federal government put a moratorium on future permitting in the Gulf until they had an understanding of what happened and how to prevent it Jindal came back with a request to Pres. Obama to rethink the moratorium. You can read the back and forth between Jindal and the White House at the link.

To make matters worse BP is having to deal with a PR disaster in the responses from its CEO, Tony Hayward. Hayward has been less than forthcoming with the public response on the extent of the disaster and the impact to the region. As reported by the NY Times “Mr. Hayward has turned into a day-after-day reminder of BP’s public relations missteps in responding to the crisis, which began six weeks ago and looks likely to continue well into the summer.”

Some of Hayward’s most memorable lines include “The spill is not going to cause big problems because the gulf ‘is a very big ocean” and “the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest.’” Probably one of the most callous comments by Hayward came this week when he said “You know, I’d like my life back,” having to apologize to the families who lost 11 men in the accident.

I really wish politics hadn’t entered into this disaster. When it comes time to deal with how to prevent future disasters like this the political posturing will surely enter into the mix. As has been discovered in documents revealed by the media the oversight of offshore drilling was shoddy at best with regulators almost giving up regulation to the industry, accepting football tickets, barbeque invitations, and other perks in exchange. In response, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has split the Minerals Management Service into three parts to hopefully provide a better checks and balance approach to its management practices.

Until the government and BP have researched what happened and how to prevent it in the future we do not need to lift the moratorium. Until the spill is finally controlled and in containment mode only we do not need to diminish the impact of the spill. Until the oil and gas industry institutes safer practices in deep water drilling we do not need to back off environmental control of our regions. We do not need to ever experience the disaster of Deepwater Horizon again.