Question of the Week: Readers Respond to Money Morning's Oil Spill Query

these are cycles, now there will be difficulty in permits to drill offshore the atlantic coast, but lobbysts will do their job, and we will be back drilling ina few years. you need to have the most advance technics to control blow outs, not relaxe them, this is also cyclic. there are lots of wells in the gulf of mexico and anything could go wrong anywhere anytime. so i am for no drilling in the offshore atlantic. foreing governments may hate usa, but not their people. in the mean time you need to change rules for electing senators because they all have too much money, over 300 million dollars each to think as the poorer americans do, therefore, they are very slow at anything, they have so much money that time is not important to them….chao,

Did the United States stop the space program when Appollo 1 caught fire on the launch pad or when the space shuttles blew up. No, we learned from our mistakes, took the appropriate corrective actions and continued.

Oil drilling will continue. But the industry needs to reassure everyone that this incident, and the seemingly clumsy initial response,never happen again. This was far from the worse case scenario of a spill over 100,000 barrels a day from a 30,000 foot deep high pressure reservoir that might take more than 6 months to kill.

At least five different barriers to flow were breached here (cement, 2 sets of BOPs, a seal, and a fail-safe valve), each with a high probabilty of working (most 99+% effective in the past), but still a statistically nearly impossible disaster still happened. I would like to see contingency planning to deal with anything that might occur. That means equipment already designed and available to deal with a variety of possible scenarios (heavy oil to dry gas at different flow rates). This continual flow of oil to the surface several weeks after the incident is unacceptable going forward.

A "tool box" of different methods of stopping the flow, containing the oil/gas, collecting the oil or burning the gas before it affects large areas (what if this had been full of H2S gas?), and remediation plans for a range of scenarios are all necesary to be in place before the public will trust the industry again.

One thing that is clear from the hearings in Washington about the Gulf spill is that each of the major corporations involved (BP, Transocean, and Schlumberger) are vigorously pointing the finger at each other as to blame. Reform of regulations must include making every contractor responsible for the total cleanup cost as a percentage of what they earned on the well's cost, then maybe they would be more motivated to work together to improve the overall risk management strategy rather than just their own actions.

Our vehicle purchasing decisions drive the need for oil and affect our use of military intervention in foreign oil fields to protect our supply. Since the electrical power industry is the only realistic alternative that is actually in the process of replacing some fossil fuels with renewable, domestically produced (=USA jobs) energy sources, my next vehicle will be electric.

I heard the BP chairman use the same 'defense' as 'Joe' above; what he conveniently excludes [along with the "airplanes go down but we do not discontinue flight" is the economic impact to
the U.S. and our new dependency on Chinese seafood that uses anti-biotics to fight the effects of their polluted fisheries and our massive 'dead zones' of economic destruction wrought by BOTH
pollution and oil spills [same thing] that devastate zones as big as Massachusetts in the Gulf [prior to the recent 'spill' and the size of Delaware outside of Peugeot Sound. The Cheapeasake Bay has virtually no fishing, crabbing, or shrimp left after 25 years of abuse [with no rebound in sight]. This is a serious economical and ecological issue. Energy Security and oil production are important, the estuaries and fishing as a food source is important. The economic loss and dependency on foreign lands for our food sources is important [food security]. But you cannot have one destroy the other or the overall systemic weakness in the infrastructure will cost you more in the ‘long haul’ than the money saved on safety and regulation administration in the short hall. [short term gain = long term $pain]

its so simple it hurts….we need to switch our entire transportation fleet to electric cars and plug them into our underutilized electric grid (our greatest infrastructure asset) All of our vehicles can then be nucleor powered, solar, coal etc….

Outlawthe internal combustion engine in 15 years and we will have completely transitioned from oil to electric,,,,let our military keep the oil and our construction industry work on diesel its so simple it hurts the brains of politicians……

For the last 60 years I have been constantly amazed how quickly many people are so ready to condem systems and structures they have little knowledge of. Several months ago a major bridge and national highway in Minnesota collapsed into the river it was engineered to cross. The finger pointing began almost immediately by media and public with little knowledge of engineering. A commission was formed as to how this could have happened and been prevented. A major Washington state floating bridge is setting on the bottom of the lake after a new bridge had been built and installed. Human error? Which part was human error? The financing of the bridges, the building of the bridges, or the toll booth that collects the fare? BP (the financial recipient of any profits and the one that eats the loses if there is a "dry hole"), won the lottery to drill in the awarded sector, was supervised by Mineral Management Service, a U S government agency charged with enforcing the pertinent regulations, Trans Ocean, the owner of the Deep Water Horizon, and the company that does the actual drilling, and Halliburton the company, a sub contractor that was to "mud the casing" and convert the well from exploratory well to a production well. Each of these companies have considerable experience in their niche of the processes. All collaborate with one another as profit is the unifying feature of this arrangement. No one, including the other companies that offer supporting functions to the stated mission, wants, needs an accident of any type or size. The media failed first and foremost and has in every pseudo disaster that I can remember. Where were they when observing the US government taking inventory of the Miles of booms and Sea Curtain they never ordered, received or had ready for a situation of this type? Where were the bureaucrats responsible for oversight functions. Google the data covering at sea accidents with drilling platforms which are certified by ABS and Coast Guard and under continuous scrutiny. The "Chief Finger Pointer" needs to glance or better still take a hard look at the image in his mirror. The Finger in Chief hasn't convinced this observer that he has experience at any occupation, appreciates what it takes to develop any structure or even a Taco Bell restaurant, much less develop healthcare, manage the banking mess, create shovel ready jobs other than work in a cemetary! The tragedy is, this man in charge was born 100 years to late, as he could have plied his talents in community organizing a Soviet Gulag. This is an opportunity to develop better systems of exploration, mitigation procedures for these types of situations and enjoy the benefits of our own oil as opposed to purchasing from those that have raped us for years past and have every desire to continue this dependency. The Chinese have 3 oil companies that have drilling operations on land and at sea and contracts with Cuba, Venezuela, and others around the earth. For those with a greed streak, please register with those governments to sue, when they have a "blow out" at sea or on land, so the litigation procedures are already in place when an event occurs.