BP’s oil disaster is grim reminder

Drilling down to the truth may be painful

During the 2008 election, Sarah Palin, then governor of oil state Alaska, made popular the slogan “Drill baby, drill!” as shorthand for a change in national energy policy. You betcha!

The phrase became a simple, timely, and powerful demand to reverse the country’s cautious approach to offshore oil production.

The mantra brushed aside the difficult technology and risks of deep water oil drilling. It promised to lower gasoline prices that had risen above $4 a gallon in the 2008 campaign by increasing supply.

So, it wasn’t surprising that political leaders began to re-think their concerns about such drilling.

Governors in coastal states across the country abandoned their uncompromising opposition. Florida Gov. Charles Christ said in his successful 2006 election, “Offshore oil drilling, I’m adamantly opposed to it.” Running for the U.S. Senate this year, not so much.

Governor Beverly Perdue of North Carolina, long an opponent to offshore drilling in her storm alley state, shifted her stance in the 2008 election. She was prodded by her Republican opponent, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, who became a cheerleader for “Drill baby, drill.”

California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had planned to approve drilling off California’s coast to raise money to balance the state budget. He changed his mind this week.

The biggest surprise to some was President Obama’s green light for oil exploration for Atlantic coastal exploration in a major policy address March 30. Such drilling has never been popular in Atlantic states, many of which have active tourist and fishing industries. And there are the hurricanes.

The BP tragedy is a deadly and disastrous reminder of why Americans were cautious in the first place. The public has a notoriously short memory, and it forgot or didn’t know about earlier oil spills. Generations X and Y weren’t even born when California’s Santa Barbara oil rig spill made national TV and headlines in 1969. The Exxon Valdez spill was in 1989.

The Deepwater Horizon, BP’s Gulf of Mexico drilling platform, exploded April 20 at 10 p.m. in calm seas. Surviving crew members say that there were two underwater rumbles before mud, oil, and gas blew up through the drill pipes. The gas ignited and the platform, as large as two football fields with 126 men aboard, was engulfed in flames. Eleven were killed outright. The Horizon burned for two days before sinking.

BP’s fail-safe system for capping the well failed. The 210,000 gallons of oil a day pouring into Gulf waters already have closed down Louisiana’s fishing fleets.

But this is not just a Louisiana catastrophe. Look at the satellite photos of the slick, now as large as the state of Delaware. You can see how it could foul beaches from Texas to Florida.

Some environmentalists say that the spill is so large that unlucky weather could push oily waters south where they could be picked up by the Gulfstream. They could then be carried into the Atlantic Ocean. States such as Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland would share in Louisiana’s misery. That’s a worst-case scenario.

BP said it was prepared for such a worst-case calamity and it wasn’t. No one ever is. But they happen. And the oil keeps spewing into Gulf waters.

It’s dishonest to think we can stop offshore drilling tomorrow. Energy needs in the country are too great and the profits of oil are too excellent for the United States to say “never” to such oil production.

The Deepwater Horizon’s fate, however, is reason for coastal states and President Obama to reconsider the very expensive risks-to human and ocean life-that ride with offshore oil exploration.

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