SeaScum: like pondscum, but bigger!
Today's award for the dumbest statements made on Oilpocalypse goes to publishers of smart people writing well researched, accurate articles on the culture of corruption at the Minerals Management Service. They're absolutely right that the MMS needs to be reformed. It's with some regret that they're getting the SeaScum of the Day award, and only because they're not -- yet -- seeing the bigger picture.
New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal: Congratulations. You win the SeaScum of the Day award.
Friday, the New York Times reported on page A12 that Regulator Deferred to Oil Industry on Safety:
Numerous Congressional and internal investigations have called the oversight agency badly mismanaged and at times corrupt. It has been rocked by regular scandals, including disclosures in 2008 that agency officials took bribes and engaged in drug use and sex with oil industry officials. And its own scientists have said that senior agency officials in recent years revised staff reports to eliminate environmental concerns that might have complicated oil-company drilling applications for offshore sites in waters near Alaska.
"Problems at M.M.S. did not originate in this administration or its predecessor," said Representative Darrell Issa of California, the senior Republican of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "There is a bureaucracy and dysfunctional culture that has to be held accountable."
The above story is worth reading in full because it portrays a federal agency in charge of both the regulation and the money (oil lease revenues are a far distant second to tax revenues as the federal government's money intake), ripe with conflicts. And any story about the MMS will dredge up juicy material -- let's face it, a cocaine-fueled bureaucracy with "MMS girls" makes for more colorful copy than most bureaucratic news. Yet a quick search of the New York Times won't turn up much news (not including opinion) on whether offshore drilling should be expanded or questioned.
This morning's lead story at the Los Angeles Times,
Federal Regulators Haven't Kept Up with Drilling Expansion, sounds the same note:
But documents and interviews suggest the Minerals Management Service, the branch of the Interior Department that oversees oil and gas drilling on federal land and offshore, has fallen behind in several of its fundamental regulatory duties, including enforcing environmental and safety rules, assessing the risks of energy exploration and calculating how much money the federal government is owed in oil and gas royalties.
At the same time, the management service has taken pains to help the energy industry move ahead with cutting-edge technologies to drain fossil fuels from increasingly remote locations. Its confidence in the industry appears entrenched, according to audit findings and interviews....
Privately, some federal officials predict the spill will force major changes in how the government regulates drilling and prepares for spills. And even the current system virtually guarantees officials will be more prepared next time: Government risk models based only on a precedent now have one.
Again, the story focuses on improving regulation to make offshore oil drilling safer. (Photo credit: LA Times) Hint: No drill, no spill!
The Wall Street Journal similarly pointed out that Oil Regulator Ceded Oversight to Drillers:
A Wall Street Journal examination of the MMS's track record found several instances of the agency identifying potential safety problems and then either not requiring follow-up or relying on the industry to craft a solution. In some cases, the industry didn't do its part.
The Journal also found that the safety record of U.S. offshore drilling compares unfavorably, in terms of deaths and serious accidents, to other major oil-producing countries.
Do you see a theme developing here? Fix the MMS and go back to the same fossil-fuelish ways, they're implying. The much smaller St. Petersburg Times, while waiting to see whether its white beaches would be tarred by Oilpocalypse, takes a broader view: After Oil Disasters, There is Outrage, Then Delay.
To its credit, the LA Times has asked What if an Oil Spill Happened at an Arctic Well?:
Shell Offshore Inc. has long planned to drill three exploration wells this summer up to 72 miles offshore in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, a region of turbulent waters, heavy fog and shifting ice hundreds of miles from deep-water ports. The nearest Coast Guard base is nearly 1,000 miles away....
Before the gulf disaster, the Obama administration had said the Shell exploratory drilling would be allowed to proceed to "help develop critical information about this frontier area."
Unlike the Gulf of Mexico, where offshore drilling is easily accessible to the massive oil industry infrastructure along the coast, the Arctic is a remote region where cleanup crews may be hampered by bone-chilling cold, 24-hour-a-day darkness, 20-foot waves, clouds too low to launch aircraft and waters too shallow to bring in large ships.
Gee, Shell, what could possibly go wrong with a little exploratory drilling?
Early this morning, DailyKos' Devilstower asks the question that the mainstream media should be asking: Our Energy System is Broken...What Are You Going to Do About It? Unlike the mainstream media, Devilstower linked prior fossil-fueled disasters, including the Upper Big Branch mine explosion, to indict not just one oil company or one federal agency, but our reliance on fossil fuels as a whole.
The mainstream media is right to expose problems at the Minerals Management Service. But the smart, talented writers at the NY Times, LA Times, and similar places need to not duck the bigger questions. For that, they get the SeaScum of the Day award.