Last I heard, the Exxon Valdez was a tanker ship transporting oil drilled from on-shore fields which crashed. It was a terrible incident, but to say that it somehow is evidence that risk controls are insufficient in offshore drilling is like attempting to prove that it's dangerous to ride a Segway in central park because of multi-car pileups which sometimes happen during reduced visibility due to weather on the German autobahn.

I think the message of the Exxon Valdez is simply that the cost and environmental damage which attend any major oil spill are enormous. It's analogous to saying that the cost and damage which would occur in the event of a nuclear plant meltdown would be enormous. I don't believe that claim is an exaggeration. What is at issue is the probability of a meltdown. In that case, the industry was sufficiently fearful that there might be a meltdown that they strongarmed the government into passing a law that would limit their liability. I would anticipate that the oil extractors will similarly claim that the probability of a major blowout is zero but, just in case, they would like protection from the inevitable cost. If the probability of these unlikely events isn't zero, then the open and public discussion should turn turn to an evaluation of what the risk is.

Agreed that probability is the real issue, but to the extent that history is an indicator it would appear that existing safegaurds have been quite effective (there's even an economic motivation for the drillers to prevent spills which grows with the price of the oil that would be lost to those spills), but no system is perfect and there's always an unforseen possibility in any endeavor.

I haven't yet seen any indications of a serious puss for reduced regulation of drilling operations (something whch I wouldn't get behind myself if it did come up), just a push to stop prohibiting new drilling at the federal level and leaving it to the states which control the relevant coastlines (in which case, the west coast would almost certainly remain closed to new drilling for the forseeable future, although the gulf states would likely be more amenable). Allowing regulated drilling has its merits, and could provide significant revenues through the royalties paid by the drillers as they could be set relatively high for new operations given the price of the oil to be produced, as opposed to current drilling leases which were set in 1998 for a multi-decade term with contracts which illegally left out the requirement for royalty increases based on oil prices crossing certain thresholds based on a law passed in 1996 (hopefully these contracts have been brough into compliance since oil prices passed those thresholds years ago, but the issue lost traction in the press a while back and I haven't seen anything about it since).

I wouldn't expect a request for reduced regulation as much as one for limited liability, like the nuclear industry has obtained.

Funny how those nukes work just fine in Europe. You'd think more Dems would want nuke plants, since they seem to be the hot ticket in socialist countries. Oh well.......it's a NIMBY thing.

There are now, I believe, 443 operating nuclear power plants in the world and the total number has changed little over quite a few years. Two of these have already suffered partial meltdown and the fact that it wasn't complete was largely due to luck and suicidal efforts by some workers. I don't think a 1 in 220 failure rate is anything like the million to one shots the supporters promise.

The existing offshore platforms don't have them.

BTW, they survived Katrina and Rita without spills...

Are you talking about Cernobyl and TMI?

If so, Cernobyl has no more relevance than comparing the safety record of the Pinto to that of a Toyota. And TMI released no radiation and caused no harm. The safety record of nukes far exceeds that of the generating system as a whole and has only gotten better as operators gained experience. Plus of course, there's the no GHG angle...

Nukes, solar, possibly algae2oil and eventually fusion are the only games in town for green power generation at anything like the scale we need. The rest is just patching.

What I said was that I expected the drillers would request it.

I wouldn't necessarily interpret they haven't gotten it to mean they haven't asked.

I believe we are talking about drilling at far greater depths than is the case for the Gulf of Mexico. It would seem to me that anchoring the rigs in a fixed position above the actual well is much more difficult and that more motion of the rig relative to the well in bad weather would be expected. All in all, I would think it will be a much more difficult procedure than in the Gulf and therefore more prone to accidents and failure. It will be interesting to see EIRs on the proposed drilling.

Lots of the new holes would not be at greater depths. Remember, they've been trying to drill since the 70's, when they hadn't reached anywhere near today's common depths.

This isn't a technology issue. It's a political issue. If they can drill deep in the North Sea and in the hurricane-blessed Gulf, they can handle Souther Cal.

I wanted to add some information to this discussion regarding recent oil spills, environmental impact of drilling, and platforms vs. hurricanes.

First, there are hundreds of reportable oil spills every month. Most are very small spills, but some reach hundreds and thousands of gallons. For example, there was a million-plus gallon crude oil spill in Lake Charles LA in 2006. The previous year saw millions of gallons spilled offshore as a result of Katrina and Rita. Followed by a tank ship stricking a submerged platform and spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil. It's true that these spills were not caused, directly, by the drilling platform (though many smaller spills are), but they are a result of the drilling. The oil must reach the shore via tank ship or pipeline; these conduits result in numerous spills annually.

Environmental impact isn't caused solely by oil spills. The gulf coast is loosing hundreds of acres each day to erosion caused by ship traffic in major shipping lanes as well as by boats working in smaller canals cut through the wetlands for maintenance of pipelines. Additionally, when a platform stops producing oil often it is abandoned in place - as is. We are all aware that metal and salt water aren't a good combination. Without maintenance these platforms (many of which are little more than pipes sticking out of the water) corrode and break off, becoming hazards to ships traveling through the area. Several recreational and commercial vessesl crash into these hazards annually, which costs the owners and taxpayers lots of money in response and clean-up efforts.

Finally, offshore platforms did not survive Katrina and RIta without spills. Over 100 platforms were lost as a result of the two storms. Yes, I mean lost. A few were unlocatable for several months after the storms. Each lost platform spilled oil since the pipes that channel the oil from the depths to the surface were ripped apart. Some continued leaking oil for months after the storms becuase the wreckage prevented workers from getting to the broken pipes or because there simply weren't enough workers available to plug the leaks.

News of oil spills generally does not reach mainstream media because the public is not interested. Not many people consider the Gulf of Mexico a vacation destination. Chances are most spills that occur on the west coast aren't common knowledge either, just the spills that the public actually sees.

When considering opening new areas to drilling all costs and benefits must be weighed. There will be spills. Environmental impact will occur. Hurricanes will keep coming.

Just a thought and some information.

(This link gives a list from the Mineral Mgmt Service of damaged pipelines and platforms.)

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for providing factual information and remaining calm throughout. I learned something from your post. Should this info change my view? I guess that depends on the severity of the damage. If the damage from the hurricanes was not severe, I'd say that's a good enough test of our ability to pump responsibly, remembering that many of those wells were put in place decades ago, and that the offshore sites are in very high profile locations, meaning that the drillers are likely to work hard to avoid the really bad publicity that surrounds spills.

I think the public is interested in learning about the real environmental costs of oil production, especially now as we consider whether to expand production in the US. I'm surprised that the media didn't cover the damage from Katrina at the time. It certainly hasn't stinted in covering past spills. There was lots of coverage of the very minor spill in the SF Bay a couple of years ago. Maybe it's all about where it happens...