Just think, Blow Baby Blow could be our alternative chant.
BREAKING: Large Air Spill at Wind Farm. No threats reported. Some claim to enjoy the breeze. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Canadian legislators want to get it right before BP is allowed to drill in the Arctic. Anne Drinkwater (President of BP Canada)is testifying on the safety of drilling in the Arctic before a hearing by the Canadian Parliament's Standing Committee on Natural Resources. She has offered few answers and no assurances that they would be able to clean up any oil spill off the Arctic coast. In fact her comment was:
"I'm not an expert in oil-spill techniques in an Arctic environment, so I would have to defer to other experts on that," said Drinkwater, when asked by Liberal MP Larry Bagnell if she agreed with the view of some scientists that oil trapped under the Arctic ice would be impossible to clean up.
Drinkwater, who has also run BP operations in Indonesia, Angola and Norway, declined to answer technical questions and said she had not compared Canadian and U.S. drilling regulations, straining the credulity of some on the committee.
The legislators are not amused:
"You'd think coming to a hearing like this that British Petroleum would have as many answers as possible to assure the Canadian public. We got nothing today from them," said Nathan Cullen of the left-leaning New Democrats.
"I was very disappointed. I think British Petroleum is going to have to do a lot better job if they want to drill in Canadian waters," Cullen told reporters afterward.
Larry Bagnell of the Liberals, after asking Drinkwater to compare regulations in Canada and the United States, said: "I thought she didn't have answers to a lot of questions ... I was asking for a very simple answer."
Ice, severe weather, remoteness would make a blowout in the Arctic catastrophic. BP has paid C$1.2 billion ($1.8 billion) for rights to explore three parcels in Canada's Beaufort Sea, north of the Arctic Circle. BP has requested that Canadian regulators forgo the requirement that states oil companies working in the Arctic must drill relief wells within the same season as they drill the primary wells. Oil company say they want to forgo the expense of drilling relife wells within the seasonal time limit because it was too expensive in the Arctic. And yet:
"It's not a question of cost," said Drinkwater.
"Your submission does say it's a question of cost. ... You cite money because you're concerned about money," retorted Cullen, reading from a BP document filed with the NEB, then listing recent disasters BP had been involved in.
Drinkwater -- who said BP was not rejecting the option of a relief well -- declined to answer reporters' questions following the hearing.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
20 years after Exxon spill:
Update - just posted at Crooks & Liars
Bill to ban offshore drilling on the west coast introduced
http://crooksandliars.com/
Our coastlines are our first non-renewable resource, not oil.
Canada has blown it with the tar sands and their environmental impact. The world is watching because the decision of the Canadian legislators will have global repercussions. Let's hope they get it right in the Arctic.