Last year, just after an explosive oil spill in the Timor Sea had continued for 74 days straight, Senator Mary Landrieu reacted angrily during a Senate hearing to suggestions that expanded offshore drilling in the United States might not be a good idea. The Timor Sea disaster could never happen in American waters, Landrieu said. She brushed off the dangers of offshore drilling, saying “The risks associated with offshore oil and gas drilling are far outweighed by the benefits.”
Is that what Senator Landrieu will be saying tonight to the families of the four workers that have been critically injured, and the eleven workers who are still missing, after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded yesterday – that the risk was worth the benefit of filling American SUV gas tanks? Actually, Senator Landrieu released a statement about offshore drilling yesterday, not long before the rig exploded. In that statement, Landrieu takes sides in a fight between states about which ones can get the most money from expanded offshore drilling, saying of landlocked states: “They can have 100 percent of zero, or they can have 65 to 75 percent of something huge. Now let them go figure it out.”
The oil rig is still burning tonight, and there is no estimate about when the fire can be extinguished. In the meantime, oil leaks into the water, and dark toxic smoke spews into the air. Oil rig workers were forced to jump more than 90 feet down into the water, then cling to the legs of the burning rig, in order to escape being burned alive.
There was a report this morning that the missing workers had been found, but tonight we’re learning that this report was false. The Coast Guard now says no one has any idea where those missing workers might be. They very probably are dead.
Additional details:
- 13,000 gallons of oil are being burned or leaked at the disaster site every hour.
- The fire is so bright that it can be seen from 70 miles away.
- The strategy for stopping the fire involves sending a remote-operated underwater vehicle down underneath the rig to shut off the flow of oil from where the presumed blowout took place, but the fire is burning so hot that a ship can’t get close enough to launch the unmanned vehicle.
- The Deepwater Horizon is now tilting 70 degrees to the side, and may soon completely tip over into the sea
A larger version of the following photograph of the Deepwater Horizon disaster site today, and other photographs, are available from the Coast Guard.
and, of course, the COST of this tragedy will be passed on to “the consumer” at the pump.
from an artistic point of view these images are compelling as the solar fire storms.
from a political stance, this is bad for the “drill baby, drill” crowd. barrack may have jumped on the bandwagon a week too soon.
Update: About 1940 square miles have been searched for those 11 “missing” workers. No one has been found.
Wow! It actually sank! Has that happened before in the Gulf of Mexico? How the hell do you clean up a mess like that?!!!! What will this do to the environment? I think all future construction plans should be put on hold immediately until this is figured out! This is a WTF? Moment.
I agree. All the people who have been following Sarah Palin and Barack Obama on the Drill Baby Drill bandwagon need to step back and look at the likely consequences of the agenda they’re pushing.
What happened to DWH was That Protocol was not followed. Trying to cut corners ,Does not work in this line of work.