Redstate

By Vladimir Posted in Energy | Environment | NIMBY — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Didya ever notice that every oil spill of consequence in the last 35 years has involved either a boat or a barge? Or in this case, both?

SKorean Oil Spill Washes Onto Coast: Witnesses

We need to move large volumes of oil around in boats because we are afraid to explore and develop domestic resources, where the production could be much more safely moved in pipelines. Pipelines are fixed in place and are less prone to human error than boats; if a pipeline leak does occur, it is controlled automatically, and the spilled volume is limited.

The last two domestic oil spills of consequence that came from oil industry structures (drilling rigs, platforms, or pipelines) were the Santa Barbara spill off California in 1969, and the Bay Marchand spill off Louisiana in 1972, IIRC. Both involved failures of well operations. Since then, every single oil spill you can name, from the Amoco Cadiz to the Exxon Valdez to the spill in San Francisco Bay just weeks ago, involved a boat, barge or tanker (and, usually, a large measure of human error).

Since the '70's, industry has worked cooperatively with regulators from the Minerals Management Service and other agencies to develop equipment and processes that protect the environment in the event of emergency. The result is a dense producing infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico that survived the unprecedented one-two punch delivered by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 with negligible spills, despite the catastrophic failure of dozens of platforms and hundreds of wells.

Such is the idiocy of the NIMBY mentality: by refusing to deal with a limited and manageable risk, we expose ourselves to a risk that is unlimited and unmanageable.