Right about this time a year ago, Americans were learning about a massive explosion aboard an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico called the Deepwater Horizon that had occurred the day before. Video footage of the flame-engulfed rig began splashing across television screens, and we were told that 11 workers on the rig were “missing.” (In fact, those workers had been killed.)
Also unclear or unrevealed was the extent of the environmental harm that was being done. In the day-after stories, BP and the federal government expressed the view that pollution was not much of a concern. Here’s what the New York Times article said,
Officials said the pollution was considered minimal so far because most of the oil and gas was being burned up in the fire. “But that does have the potential to change,” said David Rainey, the vice president in charge of the Gulf of Mexico exploration for BP, which is leasing the rig.
And change it did. The months-long ooze of crude oil from the well beneath Deepwater Horizon eventually came to be the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
We learned the facts about the BP oil spill slowly, as presumably did BP and the federal government. And according to an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun this morning by CPR President Rena Steinzor, we’re acting on the lessons of the disaster even more slowly. She notes that post-spill reforms at the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (the renamed Minerals Management Service) haven’t undone the fundamental conflict of interest confronting the operation: that Interior both regulates drilling safety and collects money when it approves oil drilling leases. She goes on,
Another reason to expect the worst is the attitude of Big Oil, which has sought to persuade Congress that the spill was the sole responsibility of an outlaw rogue: BP. This self-serving narrative bears little resemblance to reality: BP isn't all that different from the other huge oil companies in the gulf.
Even if you buy the story that BP was a company blinded by its ambition to become the biggest oil producer in the world, its partners in the Deepwater Horizon project, Transocean and Halliburton, continue to serve the likes of Exxon, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. Consultants' contribution to the disaster was the major reason why the blue ribbon commission selected by President Obama to investigate the disaster concluded that its "root causes" were "systemic" and that without reform the disaster "might well recur." All the other companies have the same disaster plans as BP, use the same blowout preventers, hire the same consultants, and cash the same huge checks.
Where the BP Spill is concerned, we’ve both learned and acted slowly.
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Matthew Freeman | April 21, 2011
Right about this time a year ago, Americans were learning about a massive explosion aboard an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico called the Deepwater Horizon that had occurred the day before. Video footage of the flame-engulfed rig began splashing across television screens, and we were told that 11 workers on […]
Alice Kaswan | April 21, 2011
The Supreme Court arguments in American Electric Power Company v. Connecticut on Tuesday raised profound issues about the respective role of the courts and administrative agencies in controlling greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources, emissions that remain uncontrolled notwithstanding their significant climate impacts. As my CPR colleague Doug Kysar has noted, at times the Court […]
Douglas Kysar | April 20, 2011
Cross-posted from ACSblog. In one of the most, er, hotly anticipated cases of its term, the Supreme Court yesterday heard arguments in the climate change nuisance suit of Connecticut v. American Electric Power. From the beginning of this litigation, pundits have questioned the plaintiffs’ decision to seek injunctive relief gradually abating the defendants’ greenhouse gas […]
Ben Somberg | April 20, 2011
So far as regulatory safeguards are concerned, we’ve come a long way in 27 months. The Obama Administration started with federal agencies that had been devastated by eight years of an explicitly anti-regulatory president. Turning that around is not easy, and no President could do it in a day. So, as much as you see […]
Ben Somberg | April 19, 2011
Claudia Rodgers, Deputy Chief Council for the Office of Advocacy at the U.S. Small Business Administration, testified earlier this month at a hearing conducted by a House Oversight and Government Reform sub-committee. The session ("Assessing The Impact of Greenhouse Gas Regulations on Small Business") was a sparsely attended affair on all sides of the room. […]
Amy Sinden | April 18, 2011
In politics, repeating something over and over again can sometimes make it stick, whether it’s true or not. From Reagan’s welfare queens, to the specter of “socialized” medicine leading to imminent communist takeover, these sorts of myths often start on the far right but then move surprisingly far to the center. And as the EPA […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | April 15, 2011
Congress charged the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) with the job of representing the interests of small business before regulatory agencies, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). As an agency of the federal government, it has an obligation to taxpayers to get its facts straight before it speaks. Lately, […]
Celeste Monforton | April 13, 2011
Cross-posted from The Pump Handle. President Obama received an award last week for his efforts to improve openness in federal agencies. Jon Stewart poked fun at it (see clip) and I actually thought it might have been an April Fool’s joke because of what I’d learned earlier in the week. The President’s own Office of […]
Matthew Freeman | April 13, 2011
CPR Member Scholar John Echeverria was on Capitol Hill yesterday, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the Constitution. His topic was a proposed bill from Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) to impose federal limits on state and local use of eminent domain – the authority to condemn private property so that it can be […]