The News about
the Oil in the Gulf is Not Good
Shannon Bohrer
(July, 2010) Those of you who read
my article last month remember the topic was a lack of
trust for government and big business. This month's
article is a continuation along the same topic with a
focus on the news and the big oil spill in the gulf. When
I started writing this the spill was 40 days old and I
thought - it will be capped before this goes to print.
Then again, maybe not.
According to the news the large
oil leak in the gulf is threatening our environment. If
you recall, when the leak started it was 4,200 gallons of
oil a day. Gradually it grew to over 200,000 gallons a
day. I am not a math wizard, but 4,200 gallons is not
close to 200,000. Did the first person at the news
conference write down the wrong number? Maybe they were
taking notes and their pen ran out of ink and they had to
rely on memory for the numbers. I know that my memory is
not as sharp as it once was. Of course there is always the
possibility that the oil company was giving out the wrong
information… After all, if your company might be
responsible for the largest environmental disaster known
to man, you may wish to minimize the impact.
While discussing the oil spill
with a few of my curmudgeon club friends over coffee, we
developed some ideas that could solve the problem. Our
best idea – to create a machine that can separate water
and oil. I know this sounds pretty complicated, but we
think it could be done. If we had such a machine you could
just pump in the oil and water together on board a ship,
separate the oil and pump out the water. If you are
thinking this may take a while to invent, you may be
right; at least that is what we thought. However, a little
google-ing reveals that a lot of companies say they can
already do this. Apparently oil and water do not mix - who
knew.
Since so many companies say they
already have the equipment, or at least claim they have
the equipment, the responsible oil company, (did I just
put word responsible and Oil Company in the same
sentence?) should purchase the machines and then give them
to the unemployed fisherman. The fishermen could go out
every day and skim the oil and water together, separate
the oil and store it in tanks on the boats. And when they
return to the docks, the oil company should buy the oil.
At $80 a barrel a fishing boat could make a lot of money.
Small fishing businesses that are hurting, and will be for
some time, would be transformed and they could hire more
people. So many businesses could be created that would
help the region out of the recession.
If this worked the oil company's
executives would be given bonuses and congress would hold
hearings. The norm today is that whenever large
corporations give big bonuses to executives, congress hold
hearings. The hearings would determine that private
enterprise, the fishing boats collecting oil, worked with
very little government involvement.
One side would argue that putting
congress in charge means they would develop a regulatory
agency for conversion of fishing boats to oil skimmer
boats and oil would have never been skimmed -at least
until the regulations were completed. Conversely, the
hearing would also make clear that because of a lack of
government involvement, in regulating the drilling
industry, we have an ecological disaster from which we may
never recover. The end result is that all sides could
claim they were right and nothing would change.
Since the oil leak started there
has been controversy about who is in charge and who is
responsible. One side wants the government to be the
leader, to which the government responded that only the
oil companies have the expertise to stop the leak. However
the government also said that they are in charge and are
telling the oil company what to do. This tends to confuse
me… It sounds as if everyone wants to be in charge but
nobody wants the responsibility…..
If you recall congress already had
hearings with the three involved parties – the platform
owner, the oil company, and the company that concretes the
pipe. All parties pointed fingers at each other… And these
are our ‘experts?’ We seem to have a lot of EXPERTS
working on this problem: experts in the oil industry,
experts in the government and experts in major colleges
and universities. Maybe, just maybe, we have created a
problem we can not fix, or at least fix it in what we
consider a timely manner. We have not cleaned up this mess
and they (the experts) are already arguing about
continuing to drill in deep water. Remember – experts have
often made predictions that never occurred.
"By 1980 we will be
self-sufficient and will not need to rely on foreign
enemies… uh, energy" President Richard Nixon, 1973
responding to the oil crises.
With the current problem it was
the experts and engineers that said, "The platforms and
drilling platforms are fail safe" (In 2009). Typical of
big business – "We have the best people in the industry
working on this" (reported after the leak started). Sound
familiar? That is because they copied it from financial
industry. If our government, big business and industry
acquire any more expertise we could be in a lot of
trouble.
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