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Editorial, 8/9: Ripples from oil spill continue
News Articles | Lincoln Journal Star | EDITORIAL | August 09, 2010
Read the full article on the originating site
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill apparently has finally come to an end. But the ripples from the worst environmental disaster in the U.S. history will affect attitudes, policy and practices for years.
The changes have ramifications for Nebraska’s parochial interests:
- The public will support tighter regulation of the oil industry in order to prevent the sort of economic and environmental damage wreaked by the millions of barrels of oil that poured into Gulf waters.
This change was illustrated by the new concern shown in Nebraska about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline route through the Sandhills. TransCanada wants to bury the pipeline in the porous sand above the Ogallala Aquifer, Nebraska’s precious underground reservoir of pure fresh water.
The public is no longer as trusting of oil industry promises as it was before oil started pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, week after week, month after month.
- The spill made renewable forms of energy — including wind and biofuels — more attractive.
Obviously a prime advantage of renewable forms of energy such as ethanol is that they don’t come with the risk of environmental damage that is inherent in offshore drilling.
The spill also has exposed the rising cost of fossil fuels. Increasingly, the industry has been forced to go after oil reserves that are more difficult to bring to market. That pushes expenses up. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, more precautions will be required for deep-water drilling, at additional cost.
Similar rising costs will be seen as the industry tries other risky techniques such as “fracking” — pumping water and chemicals to fracture underground rock — to bring oil to the surface.
These rising costs for oil will make renewable forms of energy more economically competitive.
- One plus from the Gulf oil spill is that the industry gained a tremendous amount of know-how in dealing with deep-water oil spills. Furthermore, ExxonMobil, Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips and Shell Oil are pooling $1 billion to establish Marine Well Containment Co., which will respond to spills in deep water.
It was obvious this spring and summer that BP was resorting to trial-and-error in its efforts to plug the leak, even though it previously assured regulators and the public that it was fully prepared to respond quickly and effectively to a blowout.
In contrast, the new joint effort will test new techniques and equipment ahead of time to make sure they will work in deep water.
The plugging of the Deepwater Horizon well last week marked the end of ongoing contamination. But in many ways, the status quo that existed before the spill will never return.
Tagged with: keystone xl, nebraska, gulf spill, regulations
