Weekly Mulch: Vermilion 380 Explosion Reignites Drilling Fears

Filmmaker and undersea expert James Cameron, who has twice now offered his assistance to BP, also convoked an impressive set of experts for the US government to listen to about how to attack the Gulf wellhead catastrophe. It seems like BP is treating Cameron like a lightweight, without regard for his serious undersea expertise.

BP’s middle-of-the-night made-up claim about how much their wellhead is spilling, and the Coast Guard’s and NOAA’s repetition of that number without insisting on independent verification by outside experts and instruments, makes these federal agencies look incompetent. BP, through its duplicity and incompetence, has infected the exact agencies Americans, and especially American scientists want to work with and help: the Coast Guard & NOAA.

These agencies must free themselves from the corporate self-dealing and self-protection umbrella that BP has thrown over them.

I neither liveblogged nor recorded today’s NOAA teleconference, so these are my impressions and not a transcript. If a word’s in quotes, though, it was said. Hope you enjoy reading it more than I did listening.

The Obama Administration is putting together a presidential commission to investigate the Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster. It is expected to be similar to past presidential commissions like the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. Will it make recommendations and conclusions about this deadly form of energy that are necessary? Or will it seek to re-brand and legitimize an industry?

An independent scientific effort, funded by NOAA, has discovered “shocking” amounts of oil underwater, huge plumes that range up to three miles by ten miles wide, and about 300 feet deep, within many columns of the water in the Gulf of Mexico.

Blue Dog Caucus founder and former Oklahoma Congressman Bill Brewster’s firm Capitol Hill Consulting Group was hired to lobby lawmakers by Transocean, owner of the failed Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

In the first public opinion poll to entirely account for the ongoing BP Gulf of Mexico oil disaster since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, support for offshore drilling has “plummeted” per CBS News, who conducted the poll.

When the Obama Administration announced a moratorium on new offshore drilling until the cause of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster is known — not that that’s nearly enough of a halt, but still — didn’t you think it meant that there wouldn’t be any more drilling offshore? Or any further permitting for such drilling? Wrong.

Let’s open our eyes.