Hillarysworld

Sanders · Diamond

"Spill raises new concerns over drilling: Clinton" (Bloomberg 5/2/10)

freespirit · Moderator

I totally agree. It should raise new concerns about it. However, I saw the headline of an article yesterday or the day before, stating that the spill had not changed the opinions of some republicans who were pro-drilling.

Sanders · Diamond

Yes, it does raise new concerns. Our long-standing assumptions that offshore drilling is done relatively safely with good containment procedures... these assumptions are all stand on their head. The disaster in the Gulf off of Louisiana is many fold worse than the one in Prince William Sound which due to the nature of the enclave ended up being well contained within the PW Sound. Yes, it happened in pristine waters in Alaska and to this day the spills are affecting the fishermen's livelihood.. but what we are about to see happen in the BP disaster is many fold worse because of the hurricane prone waters of the Gulf. This oil will hit the shores, REPEATEDLY!

But, we may not have much choice in the matter of drilling offshore... given the options on our table.

Here is a good article, well fact-laden.

Despite disaster, U.S. has little choice but to drill offshore (McClatchy, 5/6/10)

The offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon burns in the Gulf of Mexico shortly before it sank April 22, 2010. (Photo courtesy Jon T. Fritz/MCT) |

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — If the oil spill off the Louisiana coast leads to a federal ban on ultra-deepwater drilling and production it could cripple an increasingly important source of America's domestic oil supply.

So far, the Obama administration hasn't imposed any ban, temporary or longer term, on existing ultra-deepwater operations, but it's delayed new exploration in deep water of the Mid-Atlantic coastline and the eastern Gulf Coast off Florida.

Industry speculation is that cementing around the exploratory well gave way, but that's just the most frequently mentioned of several potential causes. What caused the disaster will determine how much new regulation and costs are imposed on a little-known but increasingly vital segment of U.S. oil production.

"The stakes are going to be ... big, big, big. This is going to have all kinds of consequences for the oil and gas industry in a lot of different ways, both anticipated and unanticipated," said David Dismukes, associate executive director of the Center for Energy Studies at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. "Clearly, you are going to have changes in regulation. ... What implications it will have for cost is not very clear right now."

Costs are an important part of the equation, since ultra-deepwater drilling, defined as water depths of 5,000 feet or greater, isn't cheap.

"To drill a well in the ultra-deepwater it's not uncommon to spend $1 million a day, and you might be on location for 150 days," said Art Schroeder, a technology expert for the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America, a public-private nonprofit group that promotes unconventional oil extraction and was created by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. "If you have to spend $150 million, you want to make sure you are placing the well in the right location."

While near-shore oil rigs often are built down to the ocean floor, ultra-deepwater exploration and production rigs are tethered to a series of anchors thousands of feet below the surface.

These rigs move like marsh reeds in the wind and tides. Think of them as atop the beanstalk in the fairy tale, although the beanstalk leads to the ocean floor, not up into the clouds. Ultra-deepwater production involves miles of vertical pipe. The BP exploration well that's leaking was 18,000 feet below the seafloor, which itself is 5,000 feet below the ocean surface. That's 23,000 feet of tubing, or more than four miles of pipe.

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