Find out how Cooch took $55,000 from the disgraced "U.S. Navy Veterans Association," in apparent exchange for his promise to get the Virginia Office of Consumer Affairs (which had "notified Thompson's group that it no longer qualified for an exemption from state registration requirements") off the group's back. Can we say "pay-to-play?" Find out more.
With Cuba set to begin oil drilling, Anya Landau French blogs for the Christian Science Monitor that a Cuban oil spill could deliver disaster far beyond the Gulf of Mexico:
Now, after several delays, with a Chinese-built Italian oil rig, the Scarabeo 9, on its way to Cuba, drilling of the first of five exploratory wells in Cuban deep water is set to commence this December.
A spill from this first, easternmost exploratory well to be drilled by the Repsol consortium could be particularly damaging due to its location where the Gulf Stream exits the Gulf of Mexico for the Atlantic. Whereas the BP disaster was somewhat "contained" in the northern Gulf, Piñón tells me to "imagine a fan-shaped spill with the well as the axis." If something were to go wrong on Scarabeo 9, we could see and feel the effects of a major oil spill in Cuban deep water not just in Florida, but far up the Atlantic coast.
And as Fareed Zakaria writes, "the nearest and best experts on safety procedures and dealing with oil spills are all American, but we are forbidden by our laws from being involved in any way with Cuba." What could go wrong?
For someone so anxious to drill for oil just miles from Virginia Beach, Bob McDonnell is awfully terrified to say the word "drill." In his op-ed today in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Gov. McDonnell never uses the words "drill" or "drilling" - not even once.
And with good reason! You might remember the image at right, produced in the very early days of the Deepwater Horizon disaster to show what the slick - just a fraction of the size it would eventually become - would look like if it happened off the Virginia coast. And as much as Gov. McDonnell would like us to forget about those thousands of dead birds, hundreds of dead endangered sea turtles, and more than a hundred dead dolphins, he's wrong dismiss the Gulf oil disaster as an "accident." The Gulf oil disaster was no random twist of fate - the bipartisan commission that investigated the blowout said it was the result of a series of bad decisions by the people doing the oil drilling, called the disaster "avoidable," and warned that without significant reform (which we're still waiting on), it could happen again.
We can't drill our way out of our energy problems. The only way we can reduce our oil costs over the long term is to use less oil - fuel-efficient cars in the short-term, renewable energy-powered electric cars in the long term, and building more transit options & more walkable communities over the really long haul so our lives aren't tethered to the gas pump.
But hey, Bob McDonnell didn't get $33,150 from Exxon Mobil by pushing for hybrid school buses! He got it by promising to open up Virginia's coastline to drilling & leaving it to some future governor to worry about apologizing for how no one could possibly have predicted an oil disaster here.
Powerful video courtesy of the Natural Resources Defense Council, where I start working on Monday. Oil disaster courtesy of BP ("Beyond Pathetic") and its CEO ("Covering Everything in Oil") Tony "I'd like my life back" Hayward.
It's now Day #52 of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster, and we've learned a great deal. First and foremost, we've learned that all those oil industry apologists, including several who used to post comments here, were absolutely, completely, and horribly wrong when they claimed that offshore oil drilling was "safe." Most of us here at Blue Virginia always knew that this argument was an outright lie, or at best "truthy," but now it's deader than the Gulf of Mexico's fishing industry that BP's arrogance and irresponsibility has killed. :(
Second, we've learned that gutting the government, slashing oversight and regulation, and letting the industry - in this case, Big Oil - run amok, is a catastrophe waiting to happen. For more on this topic, see this article in today's Washington Post. In short, the horrors we're experiencing right now in the Gulf of Mexico - pelicans covered in oil, turtles floating dead in pools of black goo, an entire way of life threatened, billions of dollars in tourism revenue down the tubes, etc. - is the inevitable result of Club for Growth-style "conservative" "thinking." Never let anyone fool you again or claim to represent a "compassionate" strain of this nihilistic ideology. If they try to tell you that, just remind them what happened to the Gulf of Mexico after years of their "let industry get away with murder" policies.
Finally, we've learned what many of us already knew, that Sarah Palin's crazed chants of "drill, baby, drill" were as mindless and toxic as everything else that comes out of her mouth (or read off her hand). Check out these poll results, which finds that just 25% of Americans now support increased drilling in U.S. coastal waters, compared to 31% who say it should be decreased and 41% who say it should be kept the same. In contrast, 87% of Americans say we should develop more solar and wind power (correct answer!). In addition, majorities of Americans blame "weak federal regulations on offshore oil drilling," as well as "Inadequate enforcement of existing regulations" and "Unnecessary risks taken by BP and its drilling partners" for this debacle. Once again, correct answers!
In sum, after 52 days (and counting) of horror in the Gulf of Mexico -- all courtesy of the worldview espoused by people like Sarah Palin and Ken Kook-inelli -- any politician who continues to align himself or herself with Palin should be automatically disqualified from serious consideration for public office. That includes Palin endorsees Carly Fiorina in California, Rand Paul in Kentucky, and Nikki Haley in South Carolina, none of whom should be allowed anywhere close to the seats of power. Unless, that is, you like seeing pictures of dead, oil-soaked dolphins and pelicans, and people whose way of life has been utterly devastated.
It's not often you read an editorial that so perfectly encapsulates the complete fraud that is offshore drilling advocacy. Time for a quick fisking. Take it away, Staunton News Leader editorial board!
Of the three reactions concerning drilling for oil off the Virginia coast, we agree with the military's.
OK, well, the military didn't really have a reaction so much as it issued a report on the facts, that offshore drilling off most of Virginia's shores would conflict with military operations & training. But yes, we get the gist. So far, so good.
The others, of course, are Gov. Bob McDonnell continuing his drive to begin drilling off Virginia's shore as soon as possible ...
Right, Bob McDonnell's clearly extreme position to, against the military's advice, let Big Oil drill right off Virginia's shores in even deeper waters than the Deepwater Horizon -- waters in which Big Oil just proved it can't stop a gusher.
... and President Barack Obama's outright cancellation of those plans.
And Barack Obama's apparently equally extremist ... cooling-off period delaying drilling until safety concerns can be addressed. STOP THE INSANITY!
As I reluctantly predicted last week, BP's "top kill" effort to stop the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico didn't work. The inescapable conclusion is that offshore oil drilling technology is far more advanced than offshore oil spill stopping technology.
But wait! BP has a new plan to keep us from seeing this spill as an inevitable overdose of our ongoing addiction to oil! Put down that clean energy & climate bill and check this out:
[BP Managing Director] Bob Dudley said there was a greater chance of success with this operation than with the "top kill" procedure that was tried last week.
"This is a better chance, definitely better. We're not working with those high pressures and pumping that we weren't sure we were able to even connect up. The guys that are running the robots, this is something that they know how to do. The cutting is probably the critical piece. We may have to try a couple of blades to do it. But from an engineering sense, this is much more straightforward.
If this plan was really so much better than the "top kill" scheme, wouldn't BP have done this a lot sooner? Of course. Because this plan has one major drawback -- it inherently has to make the gusher a lot worse before it has any chance at all of making it better:
UPDATE #2: CCAN (Chesapeake Climate Action Network) has issued a statement on President Obama's cancellation of Lease Sale 220.
The Chesapeake Climate Action Network applauds President Obama for taking the much-needed and prudent step of canceling Lease Sale 220, proposed for 50 miles off Virginia's coast. Canceling the lease sale is an important first step towards what Virginia ultimately needs: a permanent ban on offshore oil drilling along Virginia's coasts and a sharpened focus on promoting offshore wind and other forms of clean, safe energy.
Now is the time to develop Virginia's clean offshore energy resource: Wind power. The commonwealth could easily get 10 percent of its electricity from offshore windmills, creating up to 10,000 jobs and enough power to run 3.6 million electric cars, with no threat of environmental or economic devastation.
Oil drilling can never be made entirely safe, and the consequences - as we now vividly see - can be catastrophic. The Hampton Roads area is home to the world's largest Naval Station and relies heavily on tourism. An oil spill off of Virginia's coast would be devastating not only to the environment but also to the economy. Industry and government estimates say there is untapped oil off the Virginia coast equal to just 6 to 24 days' worth of national demand. The risks of drilling are far too great for a potential reward that is far too small.
Governor Bob McDonnell wants to make Virginia the energy capital of the East Coast. We agree. Instead of recklessly drilling for oil, Virginia should lead the nation in offshore wind power. Virginians want windmills, not oil spills.
Even before the Defense Department made known its objections to offshore drilling in Virginia, Bob McDonnell raised eyebrows with a letter he sent to the Interior Department in December.
The letter cites a 5-year-old study that predicts offshore natural gas production alone would generate 2,578 jobs in 10 years. That the then governor-elect would quote the study surprised its author, former Old Dominion University President James Koch, who called the document a "flyover from 30,000 feet."
"I've told them they shouldn't make too much of something done over the weekend," Koch said. "I don't even put that on my [curriculum] vitae."
So how many jobs would offshore drilling create in Virginia?
It's good news (at least, we all hope!) that "BP succeeded on Sunday in its second attempt at inserting a new tube into its damaged oil pipe that has been gushing oil from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico for three and a half weeks." Still, even if this latest "fix" actually works for more than a few minutes/hours/days, this situation remains a complete, unmitigated disaster for Gulf of Mexico, as well as for everyone who lives and works along the Gulf coast. In addition, it is important to point out that, even when BP manages to stop this oil gusher, the effects will linger, most likely for years to come. For more on that, see "Oil spill imperils an unseen world at the bottom of the gulf", "Huge oil plumes found under Gulf as BP struggles", and "Natural Gas Leak 3000 Times Worse Than Oil".
I strongly recommend that Bob McDonnell and others in the "drill baby drill" crowd read this material with an open mind (if that's possible with these lunkheads) and reconsider their uncritical, reckless, whole-hog, mindless support for drilling off Virginia's coast. At the minimum, the Gulf of Mexico disaster should make McDonnell et al. think long and hard about the potential costs (huge) and benefits (minimal) of drilling a few miles from Virginia Beach, particularly in relation to other options like energy efficiency and offshore wind power. It should make them think long and hard, but knowing these people, it probably won't, unfortunately.
So, McDonnell and Obama should ask themselves, "What's it going to be for Virginia?" Obama says there will be no new offshore drilling until a thorough study is made of Deepwater Horizon. That's cold comfort.
As for McDonnell, he might want to knock off the idiotic "plane crash" excuse and consider that Big Oil with its Big Money would not be the only industry along Virginia's coast that he's sworn to protect. Consider the fishing, tourism and commercial shipping sectors, not to mention the U.S. Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard which use offshore Virginia waters and pump in billions to the state's economy. That's right here, right now. Not sometime off in 2020.
So true. Unfortunately, the chances of Bob McDonnell having the interest or the brain cells to comprehend Peter Galuszka's article are minimal.
P.S. Also, see Miles Grant's Twitter feed for updates from the Gulf Coast, where he is covering the oil spill for the National Wildlife Federation.
Since the beginning of the debate about offshore drilling, it has been clear that the promises are as concrete as petroleum fumes across the Gulf of Mexico. Inland lawmakers are lining up to prevent coastal states from getting any royalty money from offshore drilling. They outnumber Virginia's advocates.
[...]
But the most important assurance to residents of Virginia's coast was the one about the environment. Oil drilling, we were assured repeatedly by its advocates, is really safe these days. It won't damage the beaches, or the air, or our marshes. It certainly won't affect the wildlife.
Tell that to the people who live along the coast in Mississippi and Louisiana.
I think Bill Maher speaks for most of us today when he says, "Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill Baby Drill' should have to report to the Gulf Coast today for cleanup duty."
Oh, and let me just add: f*** you Sarah Palin!
Finally, just remember, if "drill baby drill" (or should we call it "spill baby spill?") afficionados like Bob McDonnell gets his way, the following photos could be coming to the Virginia coastline sometime in coming years. Let's all tell him, "no thank you!"
UPDATE: According to Reuters, "White House says no offshore drilling will be allowed in new areas until review of oil spill off La. coast." Great, but how about offshore drilling in current areas using similar types of drilling equipment and techniques, such as failing to use acoustic valves as part of blowout preventers, as is done in other parts of the world? Oh, and how about we make getting off of oil our #1 priority? Until we do, disasters like this will happen again and again. Needless to say, that is completely unacceptable.
Expanded offshore drilling means more risk of spills. And just as the economy begins to recover, families are losing more of their disposable income to rising gas prices. But hey, not everyone's complaining!
Exxon Mobil said Thursday its quarterly profit increased 38 percent as oil prices rose in the first three months of the year.
The company reported a profit of $6.3 billion, or $1.33 a share, in the first three months of the year. [...]
Exxon's profit relied heavily on its exploration and production operation. Oil prices surged over the last 12 months, jumping from a low of $33 a barrel in the first quarter of 2009 to more than $80 a barrel this year.
It's about time Exxon Mobil's profits got back on track. After all, it's been a whole 16 months since it posted the biggest profit of the history of the planet. Good to see them back on their feet!
Thanks to the magic of Photoshop, we can cut the Gulf Coast spill & paste it, scaled to size, off the Virginia coast in the area where drilling is planned. Via Twitter's Brad Johnson, here's what it looks like proportionately.
Obviously this is not exactly what a Virginia oil spill would look like. There are many variables -- wind direction & speed, water current patterns. This is not a forecast, it simply shows relative sizes.
What would all that oil do? Would it head out to sea? Towards the Chesapeake Bay & Virginia Beach? Up to Ocean City? Who knows.
But hey, at least oil spills come with a darkly comic side. Sen. Mark Warner, a relentless cheerleader for oil & gas drilling off Virginia's shores, is now being listed among coastal-state senators who've "expressed concerns about the safety & environmental impacts of offshore drilling." Who says you can't have it both ways?
In a groundbreaking decision that some say will usher in a new era of clean energy, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said today he was approving the nation's first offshore wind farm today, the controversial Cape Wind project off of Cape Cod.
"This will be the first of many projects up and down the Atlantic coast," Salazar said at a joint State House news conference with Governor Deval Patrick. The decision comes after nine years of battles over the proposal.
Last I checked, wind power doesn't cause environmental catastrophes like offshore oil drilling does.
As Not Larry Sabato points out, this is what the McDonnell/Bolling/Cuccinelli administration is working so hard to bring to Virginia:
Survivors of a thunderous blast aboard an oil platform off the Louisiana coast were being reunited with their families at a suburban New Orleans hotel early Thursday as the search for 11 missing workers continued.
But there's more! Via The Deadrise, if some senators get their way, Virginians would get no more of the revenue from drilling off our shores than would go to Iowans:
Three key Senate Democrats are urging their colleagues to reject a proposal in the emerging climate bill that would give a cut of oil and gas production royalties to states that allow offshore drilling.
Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia called "revenue sharing" an ill-advised "giveaway" of money that belongs to all U.S. citizens.
All the risk, only a fraction of the rewards. I bet you didn't realize that when Bob McDonnell promised drilling revenue would fund transportation, he was referring to an expanded Route 20 to Sioux City, did you?
UPDATE: Brian at Too Conservative says it's outrageous that we keep using the deaths of workers to suggest maybe we stop doing things that kill workers.
UPDATE #2: Officials had been saying the explosion didn't pose much of an environmental risk. That was before the platform sunk:
The well could be spilling up to 8,000 barrels of crude oil a day, McNamara said, and the rig carried 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel. She didn't know whether the crude oil was spilling into the Gulf.
UPDATE #3: We could be looking at an oil spill washing up on Gulf Coast beaches.
The purpose of Blue Virginia is to cover Virginia politics from a progressive and Democratic perspective. This is a group blog and a community blog. We invite everyone to comment here, but please be aware that profanity, personal attacks, bigotry, insults, rudeness, frequent unsupported or off-point statements, and "trolling" (NOTE: that includes outright lies, whether about climate science, or what other people said, or whatever) are not permitted and, if continued, will lead to banning. For more on trolling, see the Daily Kos FAQs. Also note that diaries may be deleted if they do not contain at least 2 solid paragraphs of original text; if not, please use the comments section of a relevant diary. For more on writing diaries, click here. Thanks, and enjoy!
It's now Day #52 of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster, and we've learned a great deal. First and foremost, we've learned that all those oil industry apologists, including several who used to post comments here, were absolutely, completely, and horribly wrong when they claimed that offshore oil drilling was "safe." Most of us here at Blue Virginia always knew that this argument was an outright lie, or at best "truthy," but now it's deader than the Gulf of Mexico's fishing industry that BP's arrogance and irresponsibility has killed. :(
