Perhaps you could explain a bit more clearly what wordsmithing has to do with the “moratorium” … and how it has facilitated foreign countries in competing with us. In the end, the moratorium will have deferred oil production from the Gulf by nine to twelve months. But the delay in production will not destroy the oil, which will still be there, and, presumably, will be produced at higher prices than today.

In any case. it is high time that we all stop believing in the fairy tale that by drilling more wells in this country we could become self-sufficient or affect the price of oil, or the price we pay at the pump. That ship has sailed long ago, back in the 70s. The United States simply do not have sufficient reserve to affect the global oil market.

So, I am not clear about the role the Russians or the Chinese, who seem the be the bogey-men of today, are playing or will play in this. Perhaps they will export oil (I doubt the Chinese ever will, as they do not have sufficient reserves for themselves)…. Since we can’t be self sufficient, what is the difference anyway who we buy oil from, whether is Canada, Mexico, the Middle-East, or Venezuela? Wherever it comes from, it has the same price, and that is a factor we cannot control. Unless, of course, we reduce consumption substantially.

Coming back to the original discussion, I have no interest in discussing with you my background, on which you happen to be wrong. I agree, when it comes to fire, every building is different. That is way in most responsible companies and organization generally there are people who plan for emergencies, and there are drills to make sure that everybody knows what to do should one occur. Similar things happen in hotels or other places where substantial numbers of people congregate. I even have similar arrangements in my family (and I suspect that you do too). I hope it will never be necessary, but we have rehearsed what to do in the case of fire.

When thinking of safety (life safety, protection of the environment and property), the generally accepted approach is to prioritize events to be addressed on the basis of risk. Risk is a combination of probability of occurrence and of consequences. So, generally the single events that have the possible highest consequences are the ones that are addressed first, like natural disasters.

In the drilling business, the possibility of a well blow out, which can lead to loss of life, environmental disasters and loss of property is clearly one of the top issues to worry about. While I agree with you that it may not be possible to eliminate entirely the possibility of occurrence, mitigating the consequences is absolutely vital. This is where the industry did fall down, probably because of complacency.

I never suggested there were no regulations or standards. What was missing was a real contingency plan. The industry was caught flat-footed, possibly because of complacency. After all, a problem of similar proportions occurred once before, and even then it took a very long time to shut down the well. But it was long ago, and it was not on this side of the Gulf, so it was perhaps easy to forget.

Now that the problem has become real, and with the spotlight of public opinion shining on the industry, on all sorts of emergency plans, together with equipment and resources are being created, identified, developed and put in place. That should have happened sooner. The investment needed to achieve that has proven to be much less than what BP, the industryand society at large will have to pay as a consequence of Macondo.

This was a bit like building a city without thinkink of having a fire station.

The delay due to the “Moratorium” real? It was real. No longer real because it was shot down in court. He did not lift it. That same directive was under redraft when Obama’s Admin instituted the word change; “should” to “must”. That has nothing to do with rig availability and I never suggested it did; or what you now refer to as a “red herring”.

Drilling, as in new or exploratory drilling, has indeed left the Gulf for American companies. There is no way to incorporate all the changes. On the other hand the Russians and Chinese are on their way to fill that void and we can buy it from them. Wonderful. Obama suggests further that the US would “like to be Brazil’s biggest oil customer”. And wants to gave them a couple BILLION to start. (nothing for residents of the Gulf mind you) Terrific.

I think precaution is fine but don’t get crazy. What was the “plan” on 9-11 for rescue at the Twin Towers? Is there a plan in place now? 3,000 died including over 300 Fireman. Maybe close all the Fire Dept’s until they come up with a better plan. After all they did have big losses. It’s extremism. ,

Over 40,000 dead in US car accidents each year. I don’t see them stopping traffic or shutting down GM.

What’s truly unforgivable is thousands of job losses and billions in lost wages precipitated by the Moratorium which is now de facto via the word smithing by the Dept of Int; the disingenuous support of foreign countries to competing with us; and 5 trillion in debt expansion since 2008.

And let’s stop this nonsense about the language of the documents (which is a red herring) and about drilling having left our shores. As soon as permits are issued, wells are being drilled. There is no shortage of drilling rigs in the Gulf. That was always a red herring. The delay due to the moratorium is real, but there is no delay due to unavailability of rigs.

But to my point, tell me honestly, how many people have something in their car in case they drive off a bridge and wind up inside a car, perhaps inverted, with water around. It’s nearly impossible to break a window without a tool yet cars are sold without this tool. Don’t tell me you have one. Planes and cars are actually safer if all the passengers were to face the opposite direction. It’s engineering fact yet no one does it. It’s impractical and accidents don’t occur that often. The same holds true in this case. More to the point is that the volumes of oil, while slightly problematic, had no where near the devastation contemplated by the media because they don’t understand volume or large numbers. As humans we the terms billion and trillion just seem like large entities but we are not grasping the ratios intuitively. The volumes of water far exceed that of the spill and biological breakdown occurs. The wells are still under a moratorium instituted by a bureaucratic manuever by the Obama Administration after having lost in court regarding the written directive. The regulations governing this were reworded, literally, changing all terms that said “should” to “must”. So drilling left our shores and is being welcomed by other countries which this Administration says they will help fund, so long as it is in a foreign land.

I could show you a thousand things you touch each day and there is no formed solution for resolution in emergency. Each case can be different. In the big scheme of things they apply guidelines.

I would only add that, unfortunately, the fact that blowouts and spills in these depths take months to stop, true as it is, is not the whole story. To me the worst aspect was realizing that the industry did not have a clear strategy for dealing with these problems, and they literally had to make one up as they went. By comparison, let’s think of a situation where there is a major fire in a high rise building, and when the firefighters get there they say something like “Let’s sit down and think this through…. what are we going to do next?”

The point of the maps and animation, in my opinion, is not necessarily to show the sheer number of wells being drilled, it’s to show the number of deep water wells that have been drilled in the past decade. And, obviously the emergency preparedness has only gone so far with these wells, since recent history has proven that blowouts and spills at these depths can literally take months to stop. I assume this would not be the case for wells that are in water depths of 300 feet or so.

P.S. – “illigitimate” is actually spelled “illegitimate,” and I assume you meant to write “have now rendered a decision” when you wrote “have no rendered a decision.” Search on spell check and proofreading if you need help.

Gotta love the comments like “I hope you are saving up to buy your wife and I a couple of ponies!” Yep, “buy I a pony”. Sounds good. Search on nominative and objective case if you need help.

Mexico keeps its territorial waters to itself, alllowing foreign companies only in very specific instances. The US allows anybody to bid for a lease, which is a concession to drill offshore. When offshore acreage is put up for sale, anybody has the right to bid, and the highest bidder get the lease. US companies are no more or less regulated than anyone else in what they can do offshore. Remember, no matter who finds oil in the Gulf, whether they come from Brazil, Norway, France etc., the oil still belongs to the US, and all these companies pay royalties to the US government.

If the US government was interested in raising the price of oil it would not lend money to others to drill to find more oil. In any case, despite all the nonsense that comes up from all sorts of directions, the US cannot control the price of oil, because the national production is just a small fraction of what other countries produce. And even if we started drilling everywhere in the US, we could never produce enough to affect the price of oil, which is set by other countries and other people.

What might make people conserve is not necessarily the price of oil, whixh individuals do not really buy, but the price of gasoline, which is affected by the price of oil, but also by other things. If the government wanted to raise the price of gas, instead of trying to push up the price of oil, which it cannot really do, it would be much easier to put a tax (say $1) on every gallon of gasoline.