We’ve all seen the horrifying footage of the oil leaking, leaking and still leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. And we’ve watched as BP’s CEO Tony Hayward has made such ludicrous statements as the Gulf is a big place, there really isn’t that much oil if you compare it to all that water. What’s more, we’ve read that BP repeatedly told Minerals Management Service (MMS), the federal agency charged with overseeing offshore drilling in our nation’s waters, that their proposed plans for the Deepwater Horizon rig posed minimal risk to the environment so there really was no reason to prepare for a disaster. And, MMS took them at their word.
Fast forward 43 days and we could be watching the same story unfold in one of our nation’s last pristine, untouched places — Alaska’s Arctic Ocean.
Right now, Shell Oil is moving forward with plans for exploratory drilling, the very same type that Deepwater Horizon was doing in the Gulf, in the Arctic’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. As they await the final permits from MMS, Shell has submitted their final assurances on the soundness of their plans — a letter sent on Frida... Read more
