Byron Dorgan’s Doublespeak On Offshore Drilling
“The one thing that unites all of us . . . is we don’t know very much about the details of this.” – Senator Byron Dorgan, at a hearing on the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling disaster a week and a half ago.
Seven months ago, at another hearing about the environmental impact of offshore drilling, Senator Dorgan made a very different sort of statement. Back then, Senator Dorgan didn’t express much uncertainty about the safety of offshore drilling for oil. Speaking of the information he had about offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Dorgan said, “It suggests, and I think clearly suggests, that technology has advanced in a very significant way, and as a result of that I offered the amendment that would open up the eastern Gulf.”
In the present, when asked to ascribe responsibility for and solutions to an offshore drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Senator Dorgan says that no one knows enough to take action. Just a half a year ago, however, Dorgan was eager to make the choice to expand offshore drilling in the Gulf, and suggested that he had all the information he needed.
At the hearing half a year ago, Dorgan had the opportunity to ensure that he had all the information the government would need about how to deal with a catastrophic oil spill from offshore drilling. Instead, Dorgan chose to assert simply that offshore drilling is safe, and that technology will prevent any serious problems.
We see now that even the most up to date offshore drilling technology has been impotent. The best technology in the industry did not prevent a blowout from taking place. It could not extinguish the fire on the Deepwater Horizon or prevent the oil rig from sinking to the sea floor. It could not contain the oil spill. It could not burn it away or disperse its toxicity. The most up to date technology from oil industry has been working for 40 days now to try to bring the oil spill under control, and has, day after day, failed.
The certain knowledge that Senator Byron Dorgan, and other defenders of the oil industry, pretended to have before the Deepwater Horizon crisis began was an illusion. If, even after a month and a half of an uncontrolled oil spill, no one knows how to stop the spill or to contain its impact, how can plans to expand offshore drilling be justified? An energy policy that includes expanded offshore drilling rests upon a foundation of ignorance.
The time has come for the House and Senate to restore the moratorium on new offshore drilling along the coasts of the USA.
[...] answers about how the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could have happened were, just a few months ago, pushing to expand offshore drilling all along America’s [...]