In the greatest of ironies, it appears the BP oil drilling spill may kill the chances for the Kerry-Lieberman sans Graham (pick one:climate, energy, jobs, flavor of the minute) bill they say they will unveil on May 12th.
Excerpt from the New York Times:
Graham Says Energy Legislation ‘Impossible’ for Now
WASHINGTON — Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the chief sponsors of a nascent plan to address energy and climate change in the Senate, said Friday that the proposal had no chance of passage in the near term and called for a “pause” in consideration of the issue.
Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had heightened concern about expanded offshore drilling, which he considers a central component of any energy legislation. Mr. Graham also said that Democratic insistence on taking up immigration policy before energy had chilled his enthusiasm for any global warming measure.
Mr. Graham said it had become politically “impossible” to consider such a difficult subject in the current environment.
Without the support of Mr. Graham and at least a handful of Republicans, the measure is most likely dead for the year. But two other sponsors, Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, vowed to press forward and said they planned to unveil some version of their climate change and energy plan next week.
Mr. Graham said he would not be part of it.
…
Excerpt from the Associated Press report:
To win over Republicans, the bill calls for expansion of offshore drilling, which some Democrats have said they now oppose because of the Gulf spill.
“Some believe the oil spill has enhanced the chances energy legislation will succeed. I do not share their view,” Graham said. While he respects the positions of Democrats who don’t want to see more offshore drilling, he said he still believes that it’s needed for the country to become energy independent.
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My mind, it boggles at the irony.
If Graham has anything to do with it, then it needs to be torpedoed.
Drilling still matters, though it makes sense to mandate better valving and that the operator keep containment equipment on hand.
Hey buddies! Who among you said the oil was about to be exhausted?, just go to the gulf and tell the people about it!
A trillion SUVS needed to burn all that damned oil!
As David Rockefeller stated on Sept. 23, 1994 – “This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long… We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis, and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
My take: “Keep passing the open windows”
Regardless of which way this goes, both sides will blame the other for either being too radical or too cautious. Politics is, as usual, predictable.
..my forcast for next year – Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Erik : Funny, perphaps that “window of opportunity”, that gap in the developing octave of world events, has opened but for the contrary.
♫♫♫ Spinning wheel…gotta go round…♫♫♫
The other irony here is that by killing the bill & this acreage, the Gulf spill could provide a net economic benefit to the country. Why? Because what was being offered up in terms of offshore lease has a really small reserve potential & virtually no net present value (NPV) to the economy. I believe the MMS quotes the reserve potential at several billion barrels of oil equivalent (certainly less than 5 billion). So, lets size this up – at $60 net/bbl (after taxes & investment expenses), that would be a maximum of $300 billion in net revenue (using 5 billion in reserves) – distributed over the next 30 years or so, with no revenue for probably 10 years minimum. Do a NPV calculation on that – it would be lucky to be $100 billion to the economy, depending on assumptions. Compare that to the cost of a cap & trade bill to the economy – it would be multiples of this by anyone’s account. So, if the Gulf spill kills this bill & removes this offshore acreage from the equation, it is probably a net economic benefit to the country.
FWIW, I have been talking more with engineers that have got pretty good info on the sequence of events that led to the blowout & what is becoming clear is that no amount of regulations would have prevented this tragedy. This was a one chance in a million sequence of events & appears that it will fall into the category of “things that people make will break from time to time, no matter how well you design them”. It falls into the category of there is no such thing as “fail proof” and that everything we do in life has risk, whether you perceive it or not. Any new legislation that comes out to prevent future failures (although they will be exceedingly rare, regardless) will be do nothing to prevent this type of event but only punished the industry for a legislative problem in perception – the perception that oil & gas production should be without risk (which it never will be). It also says that abandoning the current energy legislation is nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction – an emotional reaction, which may have a positive net effect, but for all the wrong reasons.
As I told in the other post today: Politicians have an hiper developed sensitivity for sensing the “environment”, they will be the first ones to change, leaving all “climate scientists” hanging up in the air, like its beloved CO2. Hope them, as CO2, will lose their heat up above the clouds.
“Mr. Graham said it had become politically “impossible” to consider such a difficult subject in the current environment.”
Now we just need to elect people who are smart enough to never allow consideration of such criminal enterprises as any of the recent “climate” bills.
BTW: You americans have a lot of oil ! however no news about Big Oil. Some generous grants would be welcomed.
The “climate change” bill was going to have provisions for expanded off-shore drilling? Really? Does Graham have any idea what is alleged to be causing climate change and if so, why would he want to increase the supply of oil?
Makes you think controlling climate change wasn’t really the purpose of the bill, doesn’t it?
“Enneagram says:
May 7, 2010 at 12:35 pm
As I told in the other post today: Politicians have a hyper developed sensitivity for sensing the “environment”, they will be the first ones to change, leaving all “climate scientists” hanging up in the air […].”
Thank you for a serious ray of hope.
After seeing with desperation politicians and scientists cynically jump on the Gore-powered money train, I now find myself happy at the thought that with the same cynicism they will jump off as soon as they see profit in that.
Kind of happy, not broad-smile-happy.
All the hand waving is creating heat. How about that heavy snow for Minnesota today?
Goldman Sachs needs Money. They have their carbon trading schemes ready to launch. The carbon trading in Europa seems to be a little stale.
My forecast: There won’t be any windmills, but rest assured that you will have a beautiful 20% VAT and a sexy 50% oil tax (plus VAT). This is the “model” applied in every other country and, best of all: You’ll accept them as they are the only way out from bankruptcy, the only other choice would be to suffer what the argentinians suffered several years ago: Wages to a fitfth of its value in just 24 hours. These are the only two solutions economists have for this “scenarios”, as they used to call them.
There are natural underwater oil and natural gas seeps.
Worldwide these seeps are probably vast, many times what humans spill – it seems that little is known about them. They continue day after day, as they have done for millions of years.
Obviously microorganisms have developed the capacity to eat this resource of energy – which is what microorganisms do.
http://convergence.ucsb.edu/article/goo-and-gas
In this article about the ‘Coal Oil Point Seep Field’ in the Santa Barbara Channel, Bruce Luyendyk, a professor of marine geophysics says: “More hydrocarbons have leaked out of the earth than are in the earth. It’s happening all over the planet. It’s not a trivial phenomenon.”
http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=65071012489
In this article researchers tell that most of the oil that seeps out into the Santa Barbara Channel disappears, only a little bit sinks down to the bottom of the ocean:
“The oil that remained in the sediments represents what was not removed by “weathering” — dissolving into the water, evaporating into the air, or being degraded by microbes. Next steps for this research team involve investigating why microbes consume most, but not all, of the compounds in the oil.”
Oil spills are a natural, everyday phenomenon.
Hey, it’s annoying if you are a sea otter and you suddenly find yourself swimming in oil – sadly, even deadly. Of course I love sea otters – how can you not love those funny, lively, playful creatures -, but the sea itself cleans the oil spill efficiently and speedily.
Here is a well-researched, pre-global warming hysteria example of an oil spill: the Shetland Islands spill of 1993, then the 12th largest spill in history.
A year later, in 1994 I read in a Dutch newspaper that divers hadn’t been able to see any damage anymore.
Here is a report from the Trade and Environment Database (TED) of the American University in Washington DC from 1994.
http://www1.american.edu/ted/SHETLAND.HTM
“A year after the incident occurred there is no glaring sign that the oil spill even happened. Except for shellfish in a very limited area, all official restrictions on seafood originating from the Shetlands have been removed.”
I particularly love this comment:
“”The official death tolls – the number of carcasses recovered – included 1,542 seabirds, several thousand pounds of commercially farmed salmon, 10 gray seals, and 4 otters. Two of the otters were run over by a camera crew covering the spill, however, and the other two probably died of old age” (Ibid.).”
Doesn’t this sound pre-global warming hysteria?
Not even a call for more research.
I think the Senator just read the poll returns from his state .. And found out that “he ain’t winnin’ the race” by supporting democrat/socialist politics.
When algore said the temps are a couple million degrees a couple kilometers down, this well was below that. If drill depth was 18,000 feet, that is 4 kilometers down. Couple million degrees. He was wrong again. From the engineering side, it seems we learned a lot about the unique problems an malfunctions from this incident. There is less to lrn from routine drilling without such an incident.
Best headline since “Big Boned in Berlin” by http://www.thelocal.de
John Galt says: The “climate change” bill was going to have provisions for expanded off-shore drilling? Really? Does Graham have any idea what is alleged to be causing climate change and if so, why would he want to increase the supply of oil? Makes you think controlling climate change wasn’t really the purpose of the bill, doesn’t it?
Newt Gingrich (April 2009):
“Green coal and carbon sequestration is the most important single breakthrough we can make… Enhanced oil recovery – as a component of carbon sequestration – could lead to up to a 100 billion barrels of additional oil coming out of existing fields.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_oil_recovery
I do not trust my Senator. He still thinks CO2 is pollution.
A 2000 article from NASA described over 600 oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico leaking an estimated 22 million gallons a year. Yes the Horizon accident is a big mess, but life in the Gulf of Mexico and around it has learned how to clean it up and live with it. Relevant URLs are listed below. Obama’s delay in dealing with the accident and cleanup are intended to make this mess as bad as possible so that congress and the greens have yet another reason to shut off oil and natural gas exploration offshore (and everywhere else, for that matter). Cheers –
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=20863
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/01/000127082228.htm
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36873
Love the rhyming headline! It would be fantastic if some good emerged from this accident.
Is it my imagination, or has more stuff happened this year than is normal? – just generally, what with numerous earthquakes, volcanoes erupting, Greek economic meltdown, Gulf oil well explosions, hung Parliament in UK, etc. Or is it the way we respond to things and the way that they are reported that makes it seem this way?
I am VERY unsettled when I hear that any of Obama’s pet bills are “dead,” or “impossible.” Remember when the health care reform bill was “dead” after Scott Brown was elected in Massachusetts? Then, suddenly it was on the front burner and passed. I’m not sure the administration doesn’t float these rumors of the demise of unpopular bills just to keep us off balance. Remain vigilant!
Lindsey Graham gets what criticism or comeuppance he deserves for even trusting Democrats of any stripe on this issue. I hope it is not too late for him to learn that climate/energy bills of the sort he was working on are nothing but a bill of goods for the American economy.