Since the explosion of the
Deepwater Horizon rig April 20 killed 11 oil rig workers, the
BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to claim the lives of wildlife, like
birds and
sea turtles, compromise the fishing and tourism industries, and threaten the culture of the Gulf coast. That, and it's spawned an awful lot of misconceptions.
Here's a look at a few
Gulf oil spill myths that The Daily Green has been watching:
© AP
President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a moratorium on new oil deepwater drilling permits, and shut down 33 exploratory deepwater wells on May 6. (A similar moratorium on new shallow water drilling lifted three weeks later. "Shallow" in this context means up to 499 feet deep.) Both orders, however, were vague and left 3,600 existing offshore oil wells active in Gulf waters. Since the spill, 17 new offshore oil drilling projects have been permitted. Even the six-month deepwater moratorium was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge June 22, leaving it void if not overturned on appeal or reinstated on different legal grounds. (
Nevermind that the judge has invested in Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded, Halliburton, which handled the faulty cementing of the well, and about a dozen other companies involved in offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.) And Obama has always been a supporter of offshore oil, though some of his environmentalist supporters seem to have forgotten that; he made good on a campaign promise shortly before the BP oil spill started and proposed opening additional offshore waters to oil and gas exploration - in the Gulf of Mexico, along the Atlantic coast and off Alaska. (Permits to start drilling in those new waters have been suspended temporarily.)
Comment: It seems the line between "vaccine" and "pesticide" is no longer black and white.