Republicans Pour Trouble on Oiled Waters

The Republicans, who made it a campaign issue during the 2008 elections to call for more drilling of offshore oil, are now sitting-back and enjoying the agonizing difficulty President Obama is having with the catastrophic Gulf oil spill. Despite the fact that the President is in no way responsible for this disaster, and has gone to extraordinary lengths to resolve the problem, Republicans have made it a political issue. If there is any political blame to be handed out for the oil spill, it must go to the Republicans.

As reported on the MSNBC Rachel Maddow show on June 14, 2010, there was an earlier oil explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that poured millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf. On June 3, 1979, Ixtoc, an exploratory oil well being drilled in the Gulf of Mexico by the Mexican Government, suffered a blowout resulting in the third largest oil spill in history. The well was not capped for over 10 months, by which time over 140 million gallons of oil had had been spilled and had impacted over 162 miles of U.S. beaches. As a result, the U.S. Congress enacted a moratorium on offshore drilling.

Another ban on offshore oil drilling was issued by President George H.W. Bush following the Exxon/Valdes disaster in March, 1989. Because of the opposition of congressional Democrats to offshore drilling, that ban stayed in place until July 14, 2008, when, under pressure from the oil industry and congressional Republicans, President George W. Bush, whose background was that of an oil man, lifted his father’s ban. In his public announcement removing the ban, President Bush criticized the Democrats for their opposition to offshore drilling: Bush said: “For years, my administration has been calling on Congress to expand domestic oil production. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal.” Bush called-on Congress to remove the ban issued by it following the Ixtoc disaster. He assured the American people that “Advances in technology have made it possible to conduct oil exploration in the OCS (Outer Continental Shelf) that is out of sight, protects coral reefs and habitats, and protects against oil spills.”

In September 2009, following President Bush’s lifting of the ban on offshore drilling, at the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, BP drilled the deepest offshore oil well in history at a vertical depth of 35,050 feet. This was over a mile below the surface, and at so remote a spot that unless there was a sound plan for dealing with any spill, an explosion of the rig would be catastrophic. But why worry? After all, President Bush, the Republicans in Congress, and the oil companies had assured us that deepwater drilling for oil was now safe thanks to “new technologies.” The problem was, there were no such technologies.

As we all now know, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers, injuring 17 others, and setting off the worst oil spill in history. Documents obtained from BP reveal that the explosion could have been foreseen and prevented. Before the explosion, engineers of the company described the rig as a “nightmare” well with multiple problems. Higher-ups cut many corners in order to avoid spending the necessary funds to make the well safe.

As shown by the fumbling efforts of BP in the past few months, there was no plan on what to do in the event of an explosion. In their zeal to open-up further offshore drilling, and their greed for more oil profits, the oil companies, supported by their Republican allies in Congress, charged ahead with dangerous offshore drilling that has now fouled the Gulf Coast environment, destroyed the economy of Gulf Coast cities, ruined the lives of thousands of Gulf Coast residents, and damaged our nation’s economy.

Instead of being dismayed by these developments, the Republicans are jubilant. They see this harm to our nation and its citizens as an opportunity to gain a political advantage. And they criticize the President for showing a calm demeanor during the crisis instead of collapsing into open emotional turmoil.

This crisis is not the fault of President Obama or of the Democrats. It is the fault of the oil companies and of the Republicans in Congress who set-aside the welfare of our nation and encouraged the drilling for offshore oil without a solid plan for handling deepwater oil spills.