Drill, spill and drill again

The Gulf slowly dies, sufficated by BP’s massive spill, and yet nothing of substance changes.

In the days since President Obama announced a moratorium on permits for drilling new offshore oil wells and a halt to a controversial type of environmental waiver that was given to the Deepwater Horizon rig, at least seven new permits for various types of drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted, according to records.

The records also indicate that since the April 20 explosion on the rig, federal regulators have granted at least 19 environmental waivers for gulf drilling projects and at least 17 drilling permits, most of which were for types of work like that on the Deepwater Horizon shortly before it exploded, pouring a ceaseless current of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Asked about the permits and waivers, officials at the Department of the Interior and the Minerals Management Service, which regulates drilling, pointed to public statements by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, reiterating that the agency had no intention of stopping all new oil and gas production in the gulf.

Department of the Interior officials said in a statement that the moratorium was meant only to halt permits for the drilling of new wells. It was not meant to stop permits for new work on existing drilling projects like the Deepwater Horizon.

And so it goes in the United States of America — a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil industry.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

One thought on “Drill, spill and drill again”

  1. The gulf oil \”spill,\” oil volcano, gusher is a huge ecological disaster of historical proportions that continues every second of every day. Fairly or not, Obama will take the blame for this eco-Armageddon. Hopefully, it will slow down the drill baby drill mentality and postpone any further off shore drilling for years to come.We should be making an all out commitment to renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, tidal, etc.) and wean ourselves off of fossil fuels and nuclear energy, as Germany did in 2000. It will take decades but we should devote the same energies to renewable energy as we did to the moon mission. How many times do we have to get hit over the head before we realize that fossil fuels are irreversibly poisoning our planet.

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