So much for the glopped pelicans and the tar-balled beaches, the devastated, small-business driven seafood industry and all the outrage and legal actions hurled at BP in the wake of the disastrous 2010 Gulf oil spill: Deepwater oil drilling throughout the Gulf is set to accelerate past pre-spill barrel-a-day production levels. Remember when the Deepwater Horizon platform exploded, killing 11 workers and pissing nearly 5 million gallons of crude oil over the region? Neither do I.Poking around in deepwater natural gas fields is dangerous because the temperatures and pressures at 6,000+ feet below the seabed are so great. Accidents happen all the time, notably off the Chinese and Brazilian coasts last year. But no matter – these sorts of drill-baby-drill engineering feats are about to be expanded far beyond most U.S. controls, deep into Mexican and Cuban waters, even as any future accidents would absolutely re-tar American shorelines. But the threat stretches far beyond our coasts, as oil companies are creeping into fresh fields in the eastern Mediterranean and off the coast of East Africa.Nevertheless, the domestic kicker: Twenty-five deepwater rigs were sucking up dinosaur juice throughout the Gulf around this time last year. Today, 40 rigs drill away indefatigably. BP oversees five of these platforms, the same number as before the Horizon accident.Read the rest at Motherboard.
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