[O] Oil Leases

Dear Friends,

The Obama Administration has decided to sell more oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico.  The following is from a story in The New York Times (here).

Making good on a promise, the Interior Department announced Friday that it had scheduled its first sale of offshore oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon disaster last year. But it is changing some of the rules to ensure that leased parcels are actually drilled and not hoarded.

For reasons that I cannot understand, President Obama continues to provide the oil and gas industry with more opportunities to pollute our planet.  At a time when we should be focusing on alternative sources of energy and energy conservation, President Obama continues to try to win support from the oil and gas industry by letting them drill where ever they want to.

The oil and gas industry continues to claim that they can stop leaks and blowouts but all the evidence is to the contrary.  The following is from a story from the Guardian (here):

Shell admits risk of further North Sea oil spill

The final amount leaked could be four times the volume that has spewed into the sea in the past week

• Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 August 2011 21.41 BST
• Article history


The Royal Dutch Shell platform Gannett Alpha in the North Sea. Photograph: Ho/Reuters
If efforts to dam the Shell oil spill prove unsuccessful the final amount of oil leaked into the North Sea could be four times greater than it is at present, the company admitted on Wednesday.
More than 200 tonnes of oil have already poured into the sea, with unknown effects on marine life, making it the worst spill in UK waters in the last 10 years. But Shell has estimated there could be up to 660 tonnes still in the affected pipeline.

You will of course remember from my earlier post (here) that Shell is the company that the Obama Administration is preparing to permit to drill in the Arctic Ocean. 

All I can think of is "When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?" from the song by Pete Seeger, "Where have all the flowers gone?".  For those of you that do not know the song here is a link to the words.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

[D] Drilling in the Artic Ocean

Dear Friends,

Another item that you may have missed in all the ado about the debt ceiling is that the Obama Administration has given Shell Oil approval to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean.  Here is the first paragraph from The New York Times yesterday (here).

The Department of the Interior on Thursday granted Royal Dutch Shell conditional approval of its plan to begin drilling exploratory wells in the Arctic Ocean next summer, a strong sign that the Obama administration is easing a regulatory clampdown on offshore oil drilling that it imposed after last year’s deadly accident in the Gulf of Mexico.

If oil companies cannot safely drill in the relatively favorable conditions of the Gulf of Mexico, how can they drill safely in the Arctic Ocean?

Shell is the same company that finally admitted to  some of its oil spills in Nigeria.  Here is part of the report from the Guardian (here):

The impact of an oil spill near Ikarama in the Niger delta. Photograph: Amnesty International UK

Shell faces a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars after accepting full liability for two massive oil spills that devastated a Nigerian community of 69,000 people and may take at least 20 years to clean up.
Experts who studied video footage of the spills at Bodo in Ogoniland say they could together be as large as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, when 10m gallons of oil destroyed the remote coastline.
Until now, Shell has claimed that less than 40,000 gallons were spilt in Nigeria.

The article goes on to describe the spills and Shell's complete lack of response.

The crude oil that gushed unchecked from the two Bodo spills, which occurred within months of each other, in 2008 has clearly devastated the 20 sq km network of creeks and inlets on which Bodo and as many as 30 other smaller settlements depend for food, water and fuel.
No attempt has been made to clean up the oil, which has collected on the creek sides, washes in and out on the tides and has seeped deep into the water table and farmland.
According to the communities in Bodo, in two years the company has only offered £3,500 together with 50 bags of rice, 50 bags of beans and a few cartons of sugar, tomatoes and groundnut oil. The offers were rejected as "insulting, provocative and beggarly" by the chiefs of Bodo, but later accepted on legal advice.

And these two spills are just the tip of iceberg.  Shell has a long history of spills and no clean up.

Later this week the company will be heavily implicated by the UN for the environmental disaster in the Niger delta which has seen more than 7,000 oil spills in the low lying swamps and farmland since 1989. Shell first discovered oil in the Niger delta in 1956. According to Amnesty International, more than 13m barrels of oil have been spilt in the delta, twice as much as by BP in last year's Gulf of Mexico spill.

The Obama Administration is rewarding an well known polluter and once again ignoring the risks of drilling in oceans in an attempt to be more like Republicans.  He is failing as an environmentalist.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal