April 30
Off Shore Drilling
Recently there has been an oil spill of the shore of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil has now reached the shore of Louisiana. This disaster occurred on April 20th. Obama has been informed and spoke about it Friday following the accident. Authorities still are unsure of what caused the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. When Obama spoke of the incident he is having someone look into why this spill happened and solutions to prevent it from happening in the future. Obama supports drilling but he wants the people to go a about drilling of oil and natural gas in a safe way. This way no one will get hurt, people or the environment. One of Obama’s advisers, David Axelrod, compared the response of this accident in the Gulf to the tragic disaster of Hurricane Katrina. He said the government responded much more quickly compared to the slow reaction after Hurricane Katrina. Obama has also made it possible for off shore drilling to continue, but for the time being with this accident occurring no one has been a loud or authorized to start drilling. No one will be able to drill off shore until this accident has been figured out and why it was caused. The government has been working with the Coast Guard to clean this mess up as quickly as possible, but they are unable to skim the oil off the top of the water and burn it because the weather hasn’t been decent enough. BP, the oil company that this accident occurred to, plans to compensate the people that the spill will affect. This is what the CEO, Tony Hayward, told Reuters “We are taking full responsibility for the spill and we will clean it up and where people can present legitimate claims for damages we will honor them. We are going to be very, very aggressive in all of that.” This accident has a possibility to cause so much damage not only to itself but to the fishing industry in Louisiana and also the tourist industry in Florida. For the fishing industry it could cost $2.5 billion dollars and in Florida it could be as much as $3 billion dollars. Not only does this accident cost so much money but there are many people that are losing jobs. The fishing industry is taking a horrible hit because of this oil spill. There are fishermen out trying to get everything they can, from oysters to shrimp, out of the water before it is ruined by the oil. This oil spill has also cause distrust with the people in the fishing industry. They no longer feel that they can believe what BP has to say. They feel as though they have been betrayed.
I think it is great that the government has taken action to fix what has happened. It is also good that they are taking precautions to prevent it in the future, but what I would like to know it what are they going to do about the damage that is done now. Yes, I understand that Obama has someone looking into what has happened and how to prevent it. The thing is though how many people are working on this project? Is he just going to forget about it? I would like to know what the plan is for the fishing industry. What exactly is going to happen to help them out? It seems to me (from my point of view) the fishing industry has taken a very hard hit from this accident. It’s not even their fault it happened either. My opinion is that not only should the government figure out what to do about the oil and how to prevent it from happening in the future but to figure out how they are going to help the fishermen in the fishing industry.
