"The Simple Answer" to the Oil Spills, from a Socialist...

[ClayTrainor]

I'm just having a conversation with a friend on another forum about oil spills and regulations. He appears to be fond of Bernie Sanders and he's claiming that de-regulation of the Bush years was the cause of it all... Here's his latest comment to me, and I'm just curious to gather some thoughts on it here.

This is the type of state regulation he is advocating.



the simple answer is, they shouldnt be allowed to deep water drill Xmiles to shore period, unless relief wells are already there and they can stop the fucker if a blowout happens. period.

What are the pros and cons of such a state regulation?

It sounds fairly reasonable to me, but I don't know enough. My main problem with his argument is that he wants the state to be the end-all be all solution. As I understand it state regulations are why BP was forced to drill so deep, which has made the leak much more difficult to solve.

I feel like I'm missing something, i'm not that well-read on the BP issue. Looking for some friendly insight. What's the best way to approach this topic? :)

[nate895]

There already were plenty of safety things there. They just didn't function. It's one of those one-in-a-gazillion events where there is a failure in a little bolt somewhere, and all the stuff that's supposed to prevent failure from becoming total and complete disaster of Biblical proportions just stops working.

[tangent4ronpaul]

well, a logic fallacy first - by definition, you can't drill relief wells first - the first one in is the main one and those that follow are relief wells. I suppose you could partially drill them, just in case - but with operation costs to drill of half a million a day, that's not practical.

and yes - regulation limited how close they could drill so contributed to drilling so deep. However, oil companies will drill where they find oil and can get at it. Closer, shallower, cheaper - great if you can find it!

-t

[angelatc]

the simple answer is, they shouldnt be allowed to deep water drill Xmiles to shore period, unless relief wells are already there and they can stop the fucker if a blowout happens. period.

That makes no sense to me. I thought a relief well was just another tap into the same vein. So, what happens if the relief well blows out when they're drilling it, before they start the mainline?

[Teaser Rate]

The problem with such a proposal is that it shifts the burden of risk assessment from the private to the public sector.

In order for the government to mandate safety standards effectively, bureaucrats would need to gain a superior knowledge of the technical and economic specifications of an industry than of those who work in it; and would require them to be insusceptible to bribery and corruption.

Nothing is ever going to be 100% safe, firms are always going to set certain safety precautions which are in their interests, the right amount is regulated best through the market.

The government has an incentive to always err on the side of caution because the adverse effects of over-regulation are not seen.

The FDA is a good example of this, when a few people die of side-effects from bad drug everyone is quick to blame them for allowing an unsafe drug on the market; when a lot of people die of a disease because a drug isn't approved for 10 years due to government regulations, no one blames them. (well, almost)

The same thing would happen if the oil industry would become more heavily regulated; people would have to pay more for oil and would ultimately suffer in a greater, albeit less visible way.

It's also worth noting that a lot of government interventions such as liability caps and bailouts shift the equilibrium amount of safety precautions firms use towards a less safe point than where an unrestrained market would have set them.

[Epic]

Ignoring the whole oil spills thing, the "deregulation" in the Bush Admin is such a canard.

1. Bush was the biggest regulator since LBJ, both in terms of pages added to regulatory code and increase in budgets for regulatory agencies.

2. Secondly, if there were some drilling regulation that Bush changed, the media would be ALL over it.

The bottom line is that property owners have the right to issue regulations on their own land. If government owns the property, it isn't necessarily unlibertarian for regulations to be issued. It may, however, be unlibertarian for government to own the land - or water - in the first place.

[Anti Federalist]

That makes no sense to me. I thought a relief well was just another tap into the same vein. So, what happens if the relief well blows out when they're drilling it, before they start the mainline?

Bingo.

Very perceptive, you're absolutely right.

Then it becomes "drill the relief well for the relief well".

[ClayTrainor]

Thanks for all of your input. Great points. :)

I responded to him based on many of the things brought up here, and He didn't answer any of my questions... This is the response I got...


i believe quite simply that deep water drilling does far more harm than benefit on a global scale.

look at it this way, Why has the fishing industry off the coast of newfoundland been fucked for 40 years?

answer- because left to regulate themselves, private industry is in greed overdrive, and doesn't give 2 flying fucks about the long term.

the same can be said with Big Oil and teh Enviromental destruction.