SUVs, Oil Demand, and the Gulf Oil Spill

An article on the Gulf oil spill that appeared a couple weeks ago said that it's hypocritical of people to criticize the oil spill or bemoan all the harm done—as long as they themselves are driving their thirsty SUVs that create the oil demand that in turn necessitates drilling in the Gulf.

I have a friend who is very enthusiastic about electric vehicles—should I say "coming electric vehicles"? He forwarded to me an article that mentioned an estimate of how much oil would be saved when we are driving electric cars. Quoting Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the article says,

Our goal should be to electrify half our cars and trucks within 20 years, which would reduce our dependence on oil by about a third. . . .

That sounds good. But I'd be very curious to know how that would compare with the percentage of oil that would be saved if we could move people out of their SUVs and into reasonably fuel-efficient vehicles.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

The Oil Spill (Again)

I should edit my previous posts on that subject because it now appears that the oil-drilling platform had a device called a "blowout preventer" that has redundancies built in and supposedly is fail-safe; yet somehow it failed anyway, which supposedly is unprecedented.

However, what I said about the acoustical valve, which would have prevented the accident when and if the blowout preventer failed, was correct. This valve would have cost $500,000; and here (as in other cases now documented by the revelation of BP internal memos), BP opted to cut costs or save money. See the following article, which also suggests that BP could be using supertankers to help contain the oil spill and again, for cost reasons, is not doing so:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-25/shocking-bp-memo-and-the-oil-spill-in-the-gulf/full/

It's coming to light that there is lots of blame to go around. Supposedly some of the crew on the rig saw warning signs of impending problems, and the warnings were ignored. I don't have details on that.

More on Oil Spill from Gulf of Mexico Drilling Rig

Today the news said that Mr. Obama is halting any new offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Of course I regard that as good news.

Unfortunately, that won't do anything to solve the current very serious oil-spill problem, which is beginning to look very tragic. If you follow the news, you already know that the spilled oil is going to ruin the industries for fishing for shrimp, oysters, crabs, and so forth, and seriously impact the livelihood of the fishermen, not to mention Americans' dinner tables--plus it is going to be deadly for shore birds in the Louisiana wetlands.

What is maybe even more tragic is that the oil spill probably could have been prevented. Oil-drilling platforms can be equipped with a type of shut-off valve called an acoustic valve. Had the oil rig in question been equipped with this device, the flow of oil probably could have been stemmed before very much oil spilled into the water.

Some countries, such as Norway, require this device on all offshore oil-drilling rigs. The U.S. does not. Yet another instance where government non-interference with corporations has had disastrous consequences.

Note added: The oil rig did include an explosive device that was supposed to enable shutting down the flow of oil in an emergency. However, it did not function as intended. As of the last I heard, no one knew why, other than simply that it was faulty.

Here is a link to an interesting article. http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/bp-oil-crisis-and-massey-coal-disaster-bring-blame-home/19461901/

She blames our energy-hungriness as the ultimate cause of not only the oil rig accident and subsequent oil spill; but also the mining disaster that occurred a short while before. I agree with her but, in the main. But she says we should drive less and I say, stop driving those big SUVs. Of course some drivers--probably less than 10%--who want to cause less energy consumption and less creation of greenhouse gasses from their driving have purchased hybrid cars or very small cars. The rest don't give a damn. (True confession time: I don't have a hybrid, nor a very tiny vehicle, but my car still is probably more economical than most, and I drive very little.)

Copyright (c) 2010 by Richard Stein