Oil & Gas Land Drilling Rigs: June 2010

The millions of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico each day for the past two months is like a serious wound. It’s been so long since the injury occurred, the body has stopped transmitting pain messages to the brain.

For most of the country.

Americans living along the Gulf Coast are hurting now, and will continue to hurt, as both BP and our federal government fumble toward some kind of resolution.

The horrible truth is that it now seems evident BP engineers do not have a workable solution to the problem, and the Obama administration is leaning on a president whose rhetoric and posturing are having no meaningful effect.

The paralysis that has seized the decision-makers needs to be eliminated, and the best way to do that is for someone — anyone, really — to take action.

We make no claim of expertise in these matters, but it seems logical that Congress could start a chain reaction that might spur the docile creatures frozen in the headlights to start doing something.

And since it is apparent BP can’t stop the gusher, and that a good portion of the body of water that supplies a majority of the nation’s seafood is being suffocated by clouds of oil, perhaps the best place to begin the process of fixing what’s broken may be at the offshore rigs themselves.

One possible benefit of the BP disaster — if it’s even possible to call anything associated with the ruination of a national treasure a benefit — is that the labyrinthian ownership network of offshore rigs has been revealed.

For example, the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded and sank into the gulf two months ago was built in South Korea, operated by a Swiss company under contract to a British oil conglomerate, and the primary responsibility for safety inspections was with the minuscule Republic of the Marshall Islands, a financially challenged nation in the Pacific Ocean, whose officials have never had the capacity to inspect oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and in fact outsourced many of its oil rig-related chores to private companies.

International law allows offshore oil rigs to be treated like ships, which can be registered in faraway countries, such as the Marshall Islands, or Panama, or Liberia — places where the environmental health of the Gulf of Mexico and the people who live on its shores are of little or no concern.

In other words, rigs like the Deepwater Horizon are veritable time bombs, with many of them under the supervision of tiny nations whose officials could care less about oil spills and ruined lives.

If Americans are so paranoid about acts of terrorism that they’ll willingly submit to virtual strip searches at airports, they should also be willing to entertain the notion that our federal government needs a far bigger role in the inspection of safety operations for offshore rigs.

Some members of Congress are having similar thoughts. A House subcommittee hearing is scheduled Thursday, the subject of which is the maze of ownership in the offshore oil business, and the need for new rules that will ensure tougher safety inspections, and more stringent regulation of an industry that has now demonstrated, beyond any doubt, the ability to wreak havoc on a great number of this nation’s citizens.

The job of any government is to protect those being governed. It is now painfully clear that our government has failed, miserably, with regard to ensuring the safety of offshore oil operations. The Obama administration and Congress need to collaborate — beginning immediately — on correcting that mistake.

This is an extract from http://www.lompocrecord.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_8c39406c-7901-11df-8024-001cc4c03286.html

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Crude oil prices settle overnight

Crude oil prices dropped under $77 per barrel after oil executives testified in Washington that the gulf oil spill was an anomaly.

Oil executives defended the industries' track record and called the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico a rare event.

Attempting to ward off tighter regulations after a spill now reported to be leaking up to 60,000 gallons per day into gulf waters, Exxon Mobile Chairman Rex Tillerson told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Tuesday that oil spills "should not occur," under normal circumstances, The New York Times reported.

Chevron Chief Executive Officer John Watson told panel members "Chevron's deepwater drilling and well control practices are safe and environmentally sound."

This is an extract from http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2010/06/16/Crude-oil-prices-settle-overnight/UPI-56371276697762/