Oil in the Gulf

It has now been three months since the explosion at the British Petroleum oil rig that killed 11 men and sent millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. At the moment, the ruptured pipeline is capped, for a temporary solution, and relief wells are being drilled for a permanent end to the environmental and economic disaster. Hopefully, we will see no more clouds of methane and unrefined oil pouring into the water.

According to my personal observations, it appears that the efforts to cap the well and stop the flow of oil have thus far been a massive case of "making it up as you go along." There were obviously few, if any, concrete plan Bs to implement should - as happened - the blowout preventer fail to function properly on a ruptured deepwater oil pipe. The responsible parties are just now where they should have been before such an accident happened on a deepwater oil rig. Both BP and the US federal government should have had both technology and disaster plans "at the ready" prior to the April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon offshore installation.

Much has been made of President Obama attempts to temporarily suspend deepwater drilling. But, I don't see that he has much choice. Until both the federal government and petroleum companies can demonstrate that they can effectively handle future accidents, continuing such operations would be illogical.