Thursday, July 08, 2010

BP Still Has Clout

After turning the northern Gulf of Mexico in a toxic waste dump, the giant supra-national oil company is still calling the shots in Alaska's Beaufort Sea, and the administration is playing the toady--again. BP got an exception to the moratorium on offshore drilling by building a 31 acre gravel drilling pad that extends three miles into the sea. The company is preparing to drill horizontally up to eight miles in the search for oil. So-called "whipstocking" is prone to dangerous methane gas buildups like the one that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon The company was allowed to write it's own environmental assessment and emergency response plan for the "Liberty Project". This kind of government capitulation to profiteers simply cannot go on, if our planet is to remain inhabitable. Please contact Interior Secretary Salazar (Anchorage office: 907-271-5485; fax: 907-271-4102) and tell him that the "Liberty Project" needs to be included in the moratorium not given a pass on a technicality. BP has a horrendous environmental record {21.6.10}. Conditions in the Arctic make a major oil spill clean up almost impossible, even if enough modern equipment were readily available--NOT!