"Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?"

ziggy wrote:

Stephanie wrote:Ziggy,

Why is the only option MORE regulation? Why not enforce the regulations already on the books?

What regulations are not being enforced? Part of the problem is that in the past 10 years most of the former regulations re: oil drilling have been rendered useless.

Summary of Industry Giveaways in the 2005 Energy Bill:

OIL & GAS REGULATORY ROLLBACKS

Section 323
Provides an exemption for oil and gas companies from the Federal Water Pollution Control Act for their construction activities surrounding oil and gas drilling.

Section 390
Increases the ability to exclude a broad range of oil and gas exploration and drilling activities from public involvement and impact analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Section 381
Limits the ability of states to protect their coastlines from oil and gas exploration by limiting their appeals process under the Coastal Zone Management Act.

Section 322
Exempts from the Safe Drinking Water Act a coalbed methane drilling technique called “hydraulic fracturing,” a potential polluter of underground drinking water. One of the largest companies employing this technique is Halliburton, for which Vice President Richard Cheney acted as chief executive officer in the 1990s. This exemption would kill lawsuits by Western ranchers who say that drilling for methane gas pollutes groundwater by injecting contaminated fluids underground. Only 16 companies stand to significantly benefit from this exemption from clean water laws: Anadarko, BP, Burlington Resources, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, Devon Energy, Dominion Resources, EOG Resources, Evergreen Resources, Halliburton, Marathon Oil, Oxbow (Gunnison Energy), Tom Brown, Western Gas Resources, Williams Cos and XTO. These companies gave nearly $15 million to federal candidates—with more than three-quarters of that total going to Republicans. Moreover, the 16 companies spent more than $70 million lobbying Congress.

http://www.citizen.org/cmep/article_redirect.cfm?ID=13980

Aaron wrote:

ziggy wrote:

Stephanie wrote:Ziggy,

Why is the only option MORE regulation? Why not enforce the regulations already on the books?

What regulations are not being enforced? Part of the problem is that in the past 10 years most of the former regulations re: oil drilling have been rendered useless.

Summary of Industry Giveaways in the 2005 Energy Bill:

OIL & GAS REGULATORY ROLLBACKS

Section 323
Provides an exemption for oil and gas companies from the Federal Water Pollution Control Act for their construction activities surrounding oil and gas drilling.

Section 390
Increases the ability to exclude a broad range of oil and gas exploration and drilling activities from public involvement and impact analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Section 381
Limits the ability of states to protect their coastlines from oil and gas exploration by limiting their appeals process under the Coastal Zone Management Act.

Section 322
Exempts from the Safe Drinking Water Act a coalbed methane drilling technique called “hydraulic fracturing,” a potential polluter of underground drinking water. One of the largest companies employing this technique is Halliburton, for which Vice President Richard Cheney acted as chief executive officer in the 1990s. This exemption would kill lawsuits by Western ranchers who say that drilling for methane gas pollutes groundwater by injecting contaminated fluids underground. Only 16 companies stand to significantly benefit from this exemption from clean water laws: Anadarko, BP, Burlington Resources, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, Devon Energy, Dominion Resources, EOG Resources, Evergreen Resources, Halliburton, Marathon Oil, Oxbow (Gunnison Energy), Tom Brown, Western Gas Resources, Williams Cos and XTO. These companies gave nearly $15 million to federal candidates—with more than three-quarters of that total going to Republicans. Moreover, the 16 companies spent more than $70 million lobbying Congress.

http://www.citizen.org/cmep/article_redirect.cfm?ID=13980

I realize getting you to state an opinion is like pinning Jell-O to a wall Ziggy but I'm going to try here. Are you saying that had these rollbacks not occurred that government regulators could have done more to prevent this explosion?

Stephanie wrote:OMG, I give up. His mind is closed. More unenforced regulations would be far superior to enforcing existing regulations.

I'm so bad.

You're not blaming Bush but you are saying that if the Bush administrations had not rolled back regulations then there could have been laws to enforce yet you find no fault with the current administration for not revoking those rollbacks.

What you're really saying is that Cheney is responsible for this.

Aaron wrote:I realize getting you to state an opinion is like pinning Jell-O to a wall Ziggy

ziggy wrote:The "Bush administration" did not rollback the regulations,

ziggy wrote:But now that you mention it, it was Cheney who organized and held all those secret energy task force meetings that brought about the Federal Energy Act of 2005

In 2009, the EPA cited the BP Whiting refinery with emitting cancer-causing benzene at its wastewater treatment plant without proper air pollution control equipment.

November last year, 46,000 gallons of oil and water gushed from an over-pressurized BP pipeline on the North Slope, prompting the EPA and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to open another criminal investigation of BP. An EPA investigator declined to comment on the investigation's status.

According to documents obtained by The New York Times, OSHA issued 271 notifications to BP for failing to correct hazards at the Texas City refinery over the four-year period since the explosion. As a result, OSHA, which is part of the Labor Department, is issuing fines of $56.7 million. In addition, OSHA also identified 439 “willful and egregious” violations of industry-accepted safety controls at the refinery. Those violations will lead to $30.7 million in additional fines.

Under intense media scrutiny, at least a dozen federal agencies have taken part in the spill response, making decision-making slow, conflicted and confused, as they sought to apply numerous federal statutes.

In one stark example of government disputes, internal e-mail messages from the minerals agency obtained by The Times reveal a heated debate over whether to ignore some federal environmental laws about gas emissions in an effort to speed the drilling of relief wells.

One agency official, Michael Tolbert, warned colleagues on April 24 that emissions of nitrous oxide from the well were “pretty far over the exemption level,” an issue that his colleague Tommy Broussard said could result in “BP wasting time” on environmental safeguards in a way that would be “completely stupid.”

But a third colleague, Elizabeth Peuler, intervened to demand that the agency take “no shortcuts.”

“Not even for this one,” she said. “Perhaps even especially for this one.”

Stephanie wrote:Here are a couple:

In 2009, the EPA cited the BP Whiting refinery with emitting cancer-causing benzene at its wastewater treatment plant without proper air pollution control equipment.

November last year, 46,000 gallons of oil and water gushed from an over-pressurized BP pipeline on the North Slope, prompting the EPA and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to open another criminal investigation of BP. An EPA investigator declined to comment on the investigation's status.

Published: October 30, 2009

According to documents obtained by The New York Times, OSHA issued 271 notifications to BP for failing to correct hazards at the Texas City refinery over the four-year period since the explosion. As a result, OSHA, which is part of the Labor Department, is issuing fines of $56.7 million. In addition, OSHA also identified 439 “willful and egregious” violations of industry-accepted safety controls at the refinery. Those violations will lead to $30.7 million in additional fines.

Stephanie wrote:You call it enforcement that the government accepts money in exchange for not prosecuting the most serious offenses and allowing them to continue and expand operations. I do not.

You can put the people calling the shots in prison.