Yesterday there were back to back hearings on Capitol Hill with executives from BP, Transocean and Halliburton taking turns blaming each other for the massive oil spill out in the Gulf, which continues to spread unabated.
At the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, Gulf Coast Senators participated as witnesses along with those executives, and the disparity in how the different states in the region feel towards offshore drilling was never more apparent than when Louisiana's Mary Landrieu spoke, followed up shortly afterwards by Florida's Bill Nelson.
Landrieu said flat out "We need the oil industry." And she seemed to be looking over at her Democratic colleague from Florida when she said, "we're absorbing 100% of the risk." And she added for good measure:
The record will show from 1947 to 2009, 175,813 barrels have been spilled out of 16.5 billion produced. That is one one-thousandth percent of the total production. I think it is important to keep that in perspective. I also think it is important to understand that America uses 20 million barrels of oil a day. We produce less than half of that."
Needless to say, Senator Nelson's take on the situation, and on the oil companies, was slightly less optimistic. Nelson began his testimony by saying that with the current situation "One of my worst nightmares might be coming true. …it's going to get into the Loop Current…we are looking at a major economic disaster in the gulf and the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. There shouldn't be an more exploratory drilling. "
Nelson also slammed the Minerals Management Service – the government agency inside the Interior Dept. responsible for ensuring the safety of oil drilling and collecting royalties from oil and gas companies (an obvious conflict of interest that only now is being addressed).
This article appears in May 5-11, 2010.