According to the Coast Guard, last week's oil spill in the Mississippi River (you know... the one that caused John McBush to about face and runaway from his planned visit to an area offshore oil rig) "remains a major threat to the area's fragile delta ecosystem now stretches from New Orleans to the mouth of the Mississippi River -- a distance of 100 miles."
The above picture by Eliot Kamenitz / The Times-Picayune, depicts workers along the Mississippi River trying to contain the hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel oil from a spill that forced the Coast Guard to close an over 39 mile area of the river where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico and shut down the hugely busy commercial waterway.
"Meanwhile, river traffic continues to pile up", said Petty Officer Jaclyn Young.
There are 25 deep-draft vessels stalled north of the Harvey Locks; 35 south of Southwest Pass; 21 at the Algiers Lock; and nine at the Industrial Canal, Young said. The river could be closed for days or weeks as workers try to remove the oil from the river.The port loses about $100,000 in revenue each day the river is closed. That does not include the losses to terminal operators, stevedores, tug boat operators and other private businesses.
The catastrophic spill occurred early Wednesday after an outbound 600-foot Liberian-flagged tanker named The Tintomara collided with a barge being pulled by a tugboat near the Harvey Locks. The barge -- which was carrying 400,000 gallons of thick, tar-like No. 6 fuel oil -- was split in half, sending its contents into the river.The oil is too thick to evaporate from the river's surface and could sink. Authorities are hoping to remove the oil before that happens.
I'll say it again... where there's drilling, there is spilling. Should Frank Wagner and Thelma Drake get their way, there is nothing preventing the exact same damn "accident" from happening in the Chesapeake Bay.
And for what do we risk so much? I'll say this again and again too! The U.S. has 3% of the world's oil reserves yet we consume 25% of the world's oil. Any amount very expensively removed from offshore Virginia is nothing more than a drop in the bucket, yet the whole operation risks so much not only to our environment, but also our tourist economy and our national security as the Navy maintains adamant opposition to siting rigs in the Virginia CAPES. Stupid is as stupid does!
The military does not want drilling operations in that sensitive area. They are on record as saying that. Yet, John McSame doesn't care what they want. And, the corporate press doesn't have the time or inclination to look at any issue in depth.
Why the big push for off-shore drilling? Money...campaign contributions. McCain alone picked up over $1 million from the oily boys in June - after he flip-flopped on drilling. Probably there are plenty of Virginia politicians in favor of drilling who are also lusting after those oily bucks.
Thankfully, Brian Moran and Creigh Deeds took stands against offshore drilling in the transportation special session.
Webb is hot to get his oil speculation bill through which makes him dangerously susceptible to caving in on Repug amendments to add in the lifting of the moratorium. Webb will hopefully follow Sen. Harry Reid's orders and not do that. But ay yi yi!!!
Also, according to that article, the issue was tug boat operator who should not have been operating in the river. That sounds like a failure of government to enforce regulation.
The other point here is that offshore rigs do not use barges to transport production. Offshore rigs move their production by pipeline to some onshore facility. If it were here in VA and oil, it would probably be to a pipeline interconnect to move it to a Delaware or New Jersey refinery. If it were natural gas, it would also join a pipeline interconnect and service one or many of the Local Distributions Companies (LDC) in the Northeast. In both cases, you would have some processing facility before the production joined with the interstate pipelines.
And to the points above, I don't think Mark Warner is on the wrong side of this. We need a bipartisan solution on energy and if the sacrificial lamb needs to be lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling, then so be it. But I wouldn't worry anyhow, Congress will do absolutely nothing on this.