Drill, baby, drill! GOP needs a new slogan in Florida ... by gimleteye

What if there were a God, and God chose to communicate with Floridians directly by blowing up an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that is fully insured for $560 million while Florida's beaches, wetlands, marshes, and mangrove coastline are insured for nothing?

The matter of God is not going to be settled on this blog. On the other hand it was exactly a year ago, that GOP leaders found themselves under the influence of offshore oil drillers and Florida Energy Associates. Mary Ellen Klas of The Miami Herald wrote on her religion-neutral blog: "... the list of lobbyists is growing for the mysterious Florida Energy Associates, the entity behind the late-session push for drilling off Florida's near shores. The latest entry: Claudia Diaz de la Portilla, the wife of Alex Diaz de la Portilla, the Senate's Republican leader. Claudia DLP was added to the list of 23 lobbyists Friday, April 24. Former Secretary of State Jim Smith was added April 23." That was on April 28, 2009. Exactly a year ago, numerologists.


Dear, dear, dear. What important contributions these legislators and lobbyists have made to the offshore oil debate. While waiting for the arrival of the first oil slick on Florida beaches, let the echo of "drill, baby, drill" summon the memory of another GOP plan that sunk under the waves of a titanic disaster.

It was 1998. Jeb Bush was gung-ho to get going on that governor thing for Florida's future.A company called Azurix tied back to some of the GOP's biggest campaign contributors wined and dined the Florida legislature to argue their case for turning over Florida's water future to private enterprise. They called their opening event, "Liquid Gold", a name as hubristic as Deepwater Horizon. The public was shut out of the prospectors' tent: the Council of 100. The pipeline was tapped with spigots for campaign contributions when there was, suddenly in 2002, an enormous blowout.

It was called Enron: the parent of Azurix, sinking below the waves like that big rig. Even as the Enron rig went down, taking the fortunes of ordinary savers and investors (Later disclosures proved that Enron had battered California's utility customers under the premise of the "free market") Gov. Bush invested more than $350 million in state pension funds in Enron to support his friend, Ken Lay, who is also gone.

42,000 gallons per day, apparently, are oozing their way to Gulf and Florida shores. I'm not sure where the Florida Energy Association or their surrogates are these days, or, the past supporters of "Liquid Gold" for Florida. They might be coated in oil and hung to dry like cormorants in the Gulf breeze.


Gulf oil spill could threaten Florida
By Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer
Published Monday, April 26, 2010

An oil spill from a rig that sank off the coast of Louisiana is threatening marshes and beaches across the Gulf Coast, and unless it's contained it could wind up tainting the Florida Keys and perhaps the state's Atlantic coast, oceanography experts said Monday.

As of Monday, the slick was about 48 miles by 39 miles, lying some 30 miles off the coast of Louisiana. So far high winds have kept the spill away from land. It's about 80 miles from the nearest Florida beaches in Pensacola.

But the owner of the rig has been unable to shut off the oil flowing from 5,000 feet below the surface, so the slick continues to grow.

The marshes of southern Louisiana and Mississippi appear to face the most immediate risk from the spill because they are closest to it, said George Crozier, director of the Dauphin Island Sea Laboratory in Mobile, Ala.

What happens after that depends on how quickly the owners of the rig can shut off the flow of oil. On Sunday they began using robot submarines to try to shut off a valve called a blowout preventer on a leaking pipe deep underwater. If that fails, then they will drill new wells on either side of the leak to relieve the pressure there — a process that could take months.

"If it goes on for four months, then yeah, we've got a problem," Crozier said. "But if they're able to shut it down after a day or two, then the risk is minimal."

"We can only hope that they can make that sucker stop very soon," said Wilton "Tony" Sturges, a retired Florida State University oceanographer. The winds that would push the spill toward Tampa Bay's beaches do not normally start until midsummer, he noted.

Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are predicting that by today the slick will be pushed more toward the east, away from the Panhandle but pointed more toward Florida's peninsula.

Robert Weisberg, a University of South Florida oceanographer who specializes in studying the gulf, said that while the Panhandle may be safe, he is concerned that if the winds push it far enough to the east, the oil slick could be caught in the gulf's powerful loop current. The loop current flows north from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula but then makes a clockwise turn and flows south.

If that happens, Weisberg warned, then the oil could be carried "toward the Keys and points up the east coast."

Florida Department of Environmental Protection officials are monitoring the spill, said DEP spokeswoman Dee Ann Miller, but "at this time there is not believed to be an immediate threat to Florida's waters."

Federal officials say they are doing their best to keep the growing oil slick from damaging any of the state's beaches or marshes. "Our goal is to continue to fight this spill as far offshore as possible,'' U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said at a news conference Monday.

One idea: Put a dome over the leaks to catch oil and route it to the surface, where it could be contained. That has worked before with shallow wells. No one knows if it would work 5,000 feet below the surface.

A pod of sperm whales was spotted near the slick on Sunday. At this point no one knows what effect the spill may have on them, although there is a risk of respiratory and eye irritation, or stomach and kidney problems if they ingest the oil, said Teri Rowles, coordinator of NOAA's marine mammal stranding program.

Planes that were dropping chemicals that break down the oil were told to steer clear of the whales. The chemicals, known as dispersants, can be as toxic to mammals as the oil itself, marine biologist Jackie Savitz told the New York Times. So far there are no reports of any dead or injured animals in or near the slick.

The oil, which has been leaking at a rate estimated at 42,000 gallons a day, is coming from the site of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded about 11 p.m. on April 20 and later sank. Eleven members of the 126-member crew remain missing and are presumed dead. The cause of the explosion at the rig, which was under contract to BP, remains under investigation.

Initially Coast Guard officials said there appeared to be no leak from the sunken rig. But on Sunday they discovered oil was in fact leaking from pipes deep beneath the surface.

The rig's owner, Transocean Inc., noted in a news release Monday that the rig — now on the sea floor about 1,500 feet northwest of the well center — was fully insured for $560 million. Transocean is the world's largest offshore drilling contractor.

Information from the New York Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune was used in this report.


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'Drill, baby, drill' is now 'Spill, baby, spill'

By Tom Lyons

Published: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 12:03 a.m.
Doug Holder, the real estate broker and state representative from Sarasota, still owes me a call back about oil drilling.


He's almost a year overdue.

The last time we discussed his vote in favor of exploratory oil drilling three to nine miles off Florida's Gulf coast, he said he didn't mean he was OK with drilling near Sarasota. No way.

Good, I said. But the bill didn't exclude Sarasota.

When I pressed further and asked if he thought drilling would be fine near Venice or Naples or the Everglades or the Florida Keys or off Sanibel Island or Cedar Key, Holder said no, no, no, no, no and no. He didn't want oil drilling near any touristy places or environmentally sensitive shores, you see.

I wasn't sure what that left in the way of Florida's Gulf coast. I asked him to name a few places he sees as acceptable for drilling.

"I haven't looked at a map to pinpoint" any exact spots, Holder replied. We agreed he'd have to get back to me on that.

That was in the spring of last year. No word yet, nor did he return my call on Monday, at least not before deadline.

But he did tell a reporter several months ago that he had been led to believe any drilling rigs used in Florida would be underwater and invisible from shore.

That would offer no protection from oil spills, of course. And it is also untrue. As a Herald-Tribune story revealed in November, that was baloney handed to lawmakers by pro-drilling lobbyists. The expensive underwater rigs exist, but are used only in much, much deeper water.

We'd get rigs that look like steel skeletons of mammoth buildings perpetually under construction.

And earlier this month, when a Herald-Tribune reporter talked to him in Tallahassee, Holder touted a report that lawmakers had just been given. It included some rosy statements.

"Construction and operations standards in oil and gas have improved dramatically" in recent decades, so there is less worry now about oil spills and other problems. That is so even during a hurricane, though that remains the most high-risk time, the report says.

True, 117 oil rigs were lost during hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But the report used a bar graph to stress that only 24 of those lost rigs were ones built after 1989.

Only 24? The alleged comfort in that number escapes me. And the fine print added that when there is a spill, "the closer to shore, the greater the emergency response capability required."

Imagine a massive oil spill a few miles from our beaches in the same week we are handling the damage and power outages ashore after after a hurricane strike. Some fun.

But, yes, drilling engineers have worked wonders. Look at the impressive Deepwater Horizon, a floating drill platform twice the size of a football field, and built just nine years ago. Could you find a finer example of oil industry engineering?

It now rests 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, on the Gulf bottom, probably with the remains of 11 crew members who did not escape the fiery explosion that wrecked it during perfectly fine weather.

The oil spill from that disaster seemed fairly modest at first, partly because much of the oil was going up in the huge cloud of black smoke as the fire raged for days. But now that the rig has sunk, there's a 45-mile long oil slick approaching the Gulf's north shore, and it's still growing rapidly.

I'm looking through the report our lawmakers got, but haven't found the part that explains why this would be no big deal if it happens five miles off Florida's coast.

If Holder finds it, I hope he'll call.

Tom Lyons can be contacted at tom.lyons@heraldtribune.com or (941) 361-4964.