Some thoughts, feel free to refute them with proof, reasonable arguments, nunchucks, etc.

1) It takes six months for “the commission to determine how to prevent this from ever happening again?” Arbitrary duration and a poorly-stated goal. The way to prevent this from happening again is known. But it’s going to take a lot more than six months, given the pace at which the federal government moves, to measure and enforce real behavior change that should come from within a given company, set up a verifiable and analyzable flow of data between the company and the MMS, remove the conflicts of interest between energy companies and the MMS, and revamp the regulatory agency in any lasting fashion.

2) Not all oil companies are the same. Other players will already have increased safety measures in a hurry. Even if they have not, what is going to happen in six months to change standard operating procedure? What are we doing to address the smaller leakers? If the goal here is “to prevent this from happening again,” can we get a guarantee that this oil spill or even a smaller version of it will never happen again IN SIX MONTHS’ TIME?

3) I guarantee you that someone has done a tremendous amount of market research on behalf of the government that by the six-month mark, the public will have softened its stance on drilling enough for things to go back to business as usual. It’s a nice round we’ve-all-done-enough-penance number.

Yes, you heard me right earlier. The way to prevent this from happening again is known. There are folks opposed to and for offshore drilling who say that we can never prevent a recurrence and therefore we should stop drilling or continue to drill, respectively. An accident happens when you follow all the rules of the road and external, heretofore-unknown circumstances conspire against you. In this case, the driver didn’t have the seatbelt on, the tires were under-inflated, the brakes were non-operational but no one had bothered to check them, and the car was driven anyway even after passengers expressed concern and asked for the handover of keys. (Hey, if folks in the industry are going to liken this ongoing disaster to a car accident or plane crash, you can bet I will run miles with the metaphor.) So, this much was and still is absolutely preventable.

What about the rest? As commenter Blair, who incidentally is a rocket scientist, said in a comment to a previous post, “It costs to do fault tree analysis and establish contingency plans, but the cost of NOT planning is getting too high. I worry that governments are reactive in nature and will never get ahead of the situation. Government CAN require industry to have plans in place before they proceed with potentially risky activity.” You cannot prevent lightning from striking the collection ship thus halting oil recovery for a while. That is a legitimate accident. But to not anticipate and not plan for any critical component of the operation failing due to human oversight or act of god, even and especially in the recovery phase? It’s going to take a lot more than six months and a drilling moratorium to fix systemic breakdown.

Fire away.

Update: Oil gushing at spill site after vent damaged; cap removed after robotic sub hits vent

It could be worse. Could be raining oiled pelicans.This AM: Judge blocks Gulf offshore drilling moratorium; White House will appeal

I wondered, “There are judges in Louisiana and Texas who don’t have to recuse themselves from oil spill cases because of conflicts of interest?”

This PM: Judge who overturned drilling moratorium reported owning stock in drilling companies

I have to highlight Jeffrey’s reaction to this for posterity: “Seems like only one administration ago when the unitary executive was supposedly free to be a decider without having the shareholders meddlesome courts overrule the decidings.”

It ain’t New America if it doesn’t resemble Old India at least once a day.

I think of Gulf oysters now and start to fret and crave them more than ever before. For someone who would get nausea on mere mention of fish and shellfish as a child, raw oysters with hot sauce and fried oyster po’ boys are now a sublime delicacy and this is thanks to the sheer wholesome marvelousness of the Gulf oyster. I am heading to New Orleans in August for Rising Tide V and was hoping to hit Elizabeth’s for one of my favorite dishes: Eggs Florentine with fried oysters. In the immortal words of Bender Bending Rodriguez, “Me thinks we be boned.”

The Advertiser | BP oil spill may be demise of oyster industry

It’s not just food. It’s a way of life. Take pride in what you eat.

I will forever crave Elizabeth’s eggs florentine.