I knew of the risk of drilling for oil in the gulf. Of course the feds knew.
There are a lot of things we know. We know that if we buy a house that we want even though we can't afford it, we might get ourselves into financial trouble. We know that if we keep driving cars that run on gasoline, we're going to destroy the planet.
American style is instant gratification over long term consequences. Of course the Minerals Management Service was cozy with big oil. We have an entire political party dedicated to big oil companies. We have a country that demands more oil. We have a country that doesn't consider conservation part of the solution.
A decade ago, U.S. government regulators warned that a major deepwater oil spill could start with a fire on a drilling rig, prove hard to stop and cause extensive damage to fish eggs and wetlands because there were few good ways to capture oil underwater.
The disaster scenario — contained in a May 2000 offshore drilling plan for the Shell oil company that McClatchy has obtained — is now a grim reality in the Gulf of Mexico. Less predictably, perhaps, the author of the document was the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, the regulatory agency that's come under withering criticism in the wake of the BP spill for being too cozy with industries it was supposed to be regulating. Read more at McClatchy
