Posts Tagged ‘Gulf oil spill’

There can be no doubt the response from Washington to the Gulf oil well tragedy has been nothing but “blame Bush” from the Democrats. Instead of this Administration seeking to do the right things, it instead has to find someone or something to blame for this disastrous accident that is happening in the Gulf. Somehow if they can find the right person or entity to blame, their lack of responsibility will simply go away. That is an unacceptable response from Washington.

Accidents happen. I have born witness to that more times than I care to think about. Humans make mistakes and have since time was first recorded. Equipment fails and the operators of that equipment often times get too comfortable in its operation and they fail to head every safety warning ever given about its operation. Those are human responses.

Instead of “putting the boot” to BP’s throat as this Administration has claimed it is doing, it should instead be concentrating on 2 efforts- making sure BP has every asset it needs to stop the flow of oil from this well and secondly, to make sure every asset is utilized to recover and clean up from the oil spill.

So what has this Administrations response been? Blame Bush and form a Commission to study what happened. The last time I checked, at noon on January 20th, 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as President and he made Cabinet level appointments for every single agency under his Administration. Forming Commissions is the response this Administration has to everything- U.S. Debt Commission, Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, Guantanamo Closure Commission, along with others I am sure of. The end result- we taxpayers spend millions to “study” the problems and end up with the same, tired, worn out, non-working solutions.

Even Rep. Corrine Brown has voiced her own reaction- Ban all Offshore Drilling for Oil and Gas in the form of a Bill introduced to do so. None of my opponents in this race have weighed in on this either. Either they are going to offer the same “politically correct” rhetoric, or their silence is simply an indication that they, too, offer the same Washington reactions as always offered from politicians.

My position and answer has been summed up in previous writings:

1. Stop the flow of oil and use every private and government asset to assure that happens quickly.
2. Assure that every possible effort to clean up the resulting spill in the Gulf is placed into action.
3. Determine the cause of this accident in order to minimize or eliminate this occurrence from happening again.

Drilling for oil and gas in the hostility of 5,000 feet of ocean is without a doubt going to filled with risk. To continue to “blame” and “point fingers” does nothing to improve the technology or safety needed to drill at those depths. Stop the calls for banning this exploration and start looking for ways to improve it. We as a nation will need to have methods to assure a cost-effective energy supply for decades to come and having the right technology to drill and extract that deep water energy will be vital to assuring that happens. The real culprit in this is humanity and our inability to stop blaming people when accidents happen.

Could it be that is the result of too much government trying to be all things to all people?

Today, Rep. Corrine Brown introduced legislation that would ban all off-shore drilling and exploration for oil. Her ban would:

“permanently prohibit the conduct of offshore drilling on the outer Continental Shelf of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.”

Mike would like to remind Rep. Brown that the Department of Energy was created for the sole purpose of “Eliminating the Dependence of Foreign Oil” in the United States. In spite of the fact that is its purpose, it has obviously FAILED miserably in its objective.

Yes, we have a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but to have this type of knee-jerk reaction to this disaster is far from what is needed to achieve the goals of the Department of Energy.

Mike believes in 3 basic goals that must be achieved and drilling resumed:

1. Determine the cause of this disaster and make sure that proper safeguards and controls are in place to assure that it will not happen again.
2. Clean up this disaster using all available private and public resources to do so.
3. Open other areas of this nation like the Bakken Reserves in N. Dakota and Montana for drilling.

Rep. Brown seems to forget that until there is available alternative energy sources that can fully meet the demands of this nations energy needs, oil will remain a needed resource for our nations survival. Even her “precious” rail transportation system she wishes to spend even MORE of taxpayers dollars on and continue to subsidize with even MORE taxpayers dollars, requires DIESEL FUEL to operate. Rep. Brown, THAT is an “oil based” product and to restrict the supply of DOMESTIC oil is going to be even MORE costly for Americans.

Instead of more legislation that will cost the people of this District even more in energy dollars, Rep. Brown would be better off working to create JOBS for the people and bring OPPORTUNITY to this District. Taking train rides to Miami to bring even more “high speed rail” to areas OUTSIDE this District is not making “Corrine Delivers” a truthful statement.