That technology seems to be working really well, since the BP well that is nearly a mile underwater is now thought to be dumping about 5,000 barrels of crude oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. That is over 200,000 gallons a day.
The attitude of BP (or Transocean, which drilled the well for BP) seems to be an amazing one of "hey, it could be a lot worse". That'll play really well as the oil begins washing ashore. When it starts washing up on the beaches of the Redneck Riviera, maybe we can ask all those Palin supporters there: "How's `drill, baby, drill' working out for you?"
Stephen Colbert weighed in:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill | ||||
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The sad and hilarious part is that it's all for naught. 90% of the continental U.S. and continental shelves have been thoroughly thumped, mapped, and exploited to exhaustion. That 90% lasted 90 years. What that means is that even if we drill, baby, drilled every single one of the remaining unexploited acres, we'd get at most 10 years worth of oil out of it. Is that worth despoiling beaches and killing oodles of marine life? Well, I suppose, if you're a heartless greedy Republican asshole...
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Oil Penguin
We've pretty much taken all of the low-hanging fruit when it comes to underground Jurassic Juice.
ReplyDeleteThere's the stuff in places where mistakes mean huge environmental catastrophes. And the folks in Alberta don't seem to care that large swaths of their province will be turned into dead zones from mining oil sands.