Mother Jones: Obama's Sluggish Oil Spill Response

[highplainsdem]

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/05/obamas-sluggish-response-oil-spill

Obama's Sluggish Oil Spill Response

Why has the administration been so slow to take charge of the disaster in the Gulf?

— By Kate Sheppard
Tue May. 25, 2010 3:00 AM PDT


-snip-

There are several possible reasons for the administration's reluctance to take charge of the recovery effort. No one—not BP, not the administration—seems to know how to stop the gushing well. Nor do they know just how bad this mess could get. The administration would prefer that the blood stay on BP's hands.

There's also the awkward fact that weeks before the spill, the White House announced a vast expansion of offshore drilling. Eighteen days before the Deepwater Horizon blowout, Obama observed, "It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills." Even in the wake of the disaster, he's continued to support offshore drilling, only calling for a time-out on expansion plans. Perhaps because of the administration's need to defend its embrace of drilling, it hasn't used the BP debacle to push for an end to fossil fuel dependence.

In fact, last week at the Senate panel, Salazar dug in to defend the administration's drilling plans. "We should be honest with ourselves…we are dependent on oil and gas and we will be," Salazar told senators. "That frankly sounds like something we’d hear from Bush administration folks," says one Democratic aide. "That's not encouraging." Obama, too, reaffirmed his belief that offshore drilling should remain in the country's energy portfolio in his weekly address Saturday.

BP plans to try a so-called "top kill" early this week, in which it will shoot heavy drilling liquid into the hole to choke off the flow of oil and natural gas. In case that fails, the company is also drilling two relief wells, though experts warn those may take until August to complete. If you believe BP's estimates, more than 7 million gallons of oil have already hemorrhaged into the Gulf; if you believe the most alarming outside estimates, the figure is likely closer to 136 million. Then there's the more than 785,000 gallons of toxic dispersant that BP has already added to Gulf waters. One thing is clear: Failure to act decisively now will only add to the magnitude of the problem.

The Obama administration appears to be calculating that assuming full control of the effort in the Gulf could lead to the disaster being branded "Obama's Katrina." But not taking every possible step to minimize the damage may ultimately lead to the same result.