Just some comments on the government’s involvement in the oil spill clean up to give readers a better background:

After Exxon-Valdez, federal regulations were set that place the burden of responsibility on oil companies to take responsibility for the clean up of any oil spills, with the EPA or Coast Guard in a supervisor/advisor role depending on the location of the oil spill. In the case of the BP spill, the Coast Guard has jurisdiction for supervising BP in the clean up, explaining why you’ll find Adm. Thad Allen’s – the National Incident Commander for the BP spill – name and face in the media frequently. While Adm. Allen, along with Rear Adm. Mary Landry – the On-Scene Coordinator until being relieved this month to return to her post in New Orleans to prepare for hurricane season (Rear Adm. Landry’s relief was planned before the response got under way and is in no way a result of her efforts, which have been highly praised) – and now Rear Adm. James Watson advise BP on cleanup efforts and supervise these efforts, they do not have direct involvement in the actual cleanup.

The reason why the oil companies are in charge of cleanup and the government is in a supervisory/advisory role is fairly simple: the oil companies have the money and own the expensive equipment necessary to respond to oil spills. The US government does not own the equipment necessary to respond to such a spill, nor should they. I would bet that all these people calling for the government to take a larger, direct role in the cleanup would balk at the idea of their taxes being raised in order to pay for the ridiculously expensive equipment and machinery required to do just that.

Another misleading conception, due largely to a lack of information (most people don’t pay attention to things until something drastic happens), is the ridiculously successful performance of these offshore drills in the Gulf for the past 40+ years. If you look at the total volume of oil pumped out of the Gulf and compare the volume of this spill to the amount of oil that has been produced, and then take into consideration the hundreds of thousands of miles of pipelines operating in the Gulf, this spill is really just a small blip. Should Tony Hayward have made comments downplaying the spill? From a PR standpoint, no; but, in reality there is some truth behind his statements that this is a modest environmental impact. That said, people see oil covered animals and beaches and freak out (Please don’t read that to mean that I have no care for the environment and seeing animals covered in oil is no big deal; I’m from a family of environmental scientists and am an avid outdoorsman. My point is merely that people often lose sight of the bigger picture.)

As for Obama looking for whose @$$ to kick and the complaints that BP is making up their response plan as they go, the reality is that, basically, to test a response plan to a deep sea underwater well spill, you need to have a deep sea underwater well spill. The best thing that can be done planning wise is to have engineers run their calculations of the possible scenarios and base a response plan off of those calculated scenarios. So yes, BP is making things up as they go because there is no precedent and, as most people know, things don’t go as planned, as theory and reality often turn out to be two different things. But the fact is that both BP and the Coast Guard has done everything in their power since Day 1.

Is BP responsible for this spill? Yes. Are they responsible for cleaning up the spill and paying the cost of the environmental ramifications? Yes, and they will. Are people justified in expressing their anger and frustration? Certainly. Is there a case for ending offshore drilling? When you look at the historical success rate of oil drilling in the Gulf and factor in the number of jobs that stand to be lost if drilling is to stop, no way.