Is BP allowing the leak to continue to protect profits?

What do former President Bill Clinton and Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Georgia) have in common?

Both Clinton and Gingrey are now on record as suggesting that the navy should take over the operation from BP and blow up the well.

The basic idea seems to be that they could drill one or more shafts parallel to the well shaft and about ten feet away and then fill them with high explosive which when detonated would collapse the actual well shaft inward, sealing itself. These parallel shafts would be only about ten feet deep (in contrast to the 10,000 feet that the relief well is being drilled into the rock as we speak.)

I HOPE the reason this was not done is because whatever Clinton and Gingrey may have said, there are technical problems that make it as daunting or as risky as the methods that have been tried (which is possible, because politicians sometimes have been known to make suggestions about things they really don't understand very well.)

However, a disturbing couple of lines pops up if you read today's article (the one on Clinton endorsing the plan.)

There has been some pressure for BP to simply blow up the well, with critics suggesting the company is forgoing that option out of a desire to get as much oil as possible from the rig.

"If we demolish the well using explosives, the investment's gone," former nuclear submarine officer and a visiting scholar on nuclear policy at Columbia University Christopher Brownfield said in a Fox News interview in May. "They lose hundreds of millions of dollars from the drilling of the well, plus no lawmaker in his right mind would allow BP to drill again in that same spot. So basically, it's an all-or-nothing thing with BP: They either keep the well alive, or they lose their whole investment and all the oil that they could potentially get from that well."

IF that is the reason why this has not been done but in fact explosives could have sealed this well much earlier then we should all be disturbed. Disturbed and outraged. I've assumed that the reason BP hasn't yet stopped the leak is because they tried and failed. But if they could have stopped it and instead failed to do so intentionally purely for the purpose of protecting their 'investment' (at whatever cost to those onshore) then that decision would qualify as a crime and they should be made to pay for it.

As we move away from oil, let's return to land-based production as far as we still need any oil

The fifth or sixth (I've lost count) attempt to stop or control the oil gusher a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico has officially been abandoned today.

With the trend towards renewable energy continuing (people may debate about the rate, but nobody is suggesting that we stop moving in that direction) it becomes a legitimate question to ask how much oil we will still need and where to get it from. The assumption that people were operating under even as recently as five years ago (before we had $4 a gallon oil and foreign policy setbacks made it clear that international oil consumption was enabling dictators like Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) that mankind would sooner or later drain all the oil on the planet before switching to something that was supposed to cost more is no longer even a remotely valid point of view.

Germany (hardly the land of sunshine) already derives as much as 20% of its electricity from solar power. And anyone who lives here in Navajo County can attest to the fact that wind energy would be a plentiful resource here (there is already a wind farm near Snowflake and more are being proposed.)

Certainly even if we plunged full bore into the development and replacement of the fleet of cars now clogging our fuel pumps with hybrid and electric vehicles we would still need oil in the short term. But a finite amount.

And if a finite amount then it becomes fair to ask what the best source is. And the answer is pretty plain:

Oil taken from dry land on the North American continent. While there are certainly issues around, for example, the development of oil sands in Alberta, the fact is that oil that is produced and can be pumped over dry land is far less hazardous to the environment than anything in the water (forget the current spill, just remember past episodes like the 1979 Mexican spill or the Exxon Valdez, where oil in the water just could not be cleaned up or contained until it slimed and smeared miles of beaches.)

Bet you didn't know that just last week there was a major oil spill from the Alaska pipeline, did you? But there was. And certainly it did cause some local damage to the environment. But that's the key-- local damage. It was contained and the pipeline will be restarted precisely because the damage is local. There is no current to carry it hundreds of miles away like there is in the sea. And British Petroleum-- which ironically also is the main owner of the pipeline right now, is waiting for the green light to reopen it.

Here is a key paragraph from the linked article:

The pipeline is technically ready to begin pumping oil again, but is awaiting a review of the repair process by the Department of Transportation, Alyeska spokeswoman Michelle Egan said. Alyeska had hoped to begin operations at noon local time (4 p.m. EDT). Egan said she didn't know how long it would take for regulators to finish their review.

Egan said the amount of time before Alyeska would have to ask producers to cut their pumping rate further below 8% is "measured in hours, not days," and that the company is hopeful it will get regulatory approval to restart operations before then.

In other words it's under far better control than the Gulf oil spill. Even if you have a worst-case scenario-- a blowout-- on land, you call Red Adair and he comes and caps it off quickly.

Oil shipped between continents may be drilled on land but there is always the possibility of a tanker spill like the Exxon Valdez. That is why I believe that we may need to build pipelines on land-- just keep it away from the water.

The first step is indeed to commit to moving away from oil. Once we do that, we have the luxury of deciding which oil we will continue to use during the transition, and it is clear that it should be land-based oil

Rand Paul calls criticism of BP "un-American."

Rand Paul, the new Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat from Kentucky is a hero of the Tea Party.

Some hero. For starters, he said that he believes businesses should have the right to refuse seating to minority customers. Welcome to the Kentucky of 1955.

And now he's out there saying that President Obama and his administration are anti-business and "un-American" for criticizing oil giant BP (officially British Petroleum) over their handling of the oil spill.

I guess "American values" now includes having no clue how to stop the gusher, and it's perfectly OK (pro-business) if you kill off miles of coastline for at least a generation. Hey, it's 'business,' right?

One almost has to feel for minority leader Mitch McConnell. He and Senate political architect John Cornyn (R-TX) pushed his state's other Republican Senator, the gaffe-prone Jim Bunning, into retirement so he could put his hand-picked candidate, Trey Grayson up against the Democrats in the general. But then Paul beat Grayson Tuesday, and by a large margin. And then the past reached out and grabbed him. Don't blame Democrats for that either. Paul's past statements are public record; if Grayson was too dumb to look them up, well maybe he should have. Paul said it, didn't he? And it was Paul, and Paul alone, who contended that not only is it wrong to criticize an oil company for an oil spill, but in fact that to do so is 'un-American.' Presumably that's his favorite adjective, one we can expect to hear pop out of Paul's mouth frequently if he ever gets to the U.S. Senate. Joe McCarthy, anyone?

This has all backfired so exquisitely on McConnell, that Bunning, who was known to resent McConnell for pushing him out of the Senate, can hardly be blamed if he is having a secret but hearty laugh about this somewhere.

Kentucky Republicans have made their choice. Now they have to live with him, at least until November.