Will The Oil Industry Ever Learn?

  America’s oil industry is furious at the Obama administration for not allowing them to do exploratory drilling off the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Coast. The article states:

“Given the disastrous oil spill in the central gulf, and industry’s inability to clean it up, one might have expected a little self-knowledge. Not from this crowd, which continues to lobby for more risky drilling instead of focusing all its energy on improving its capacity to prevent and respond to future blowouts.”

Because of BP’s inability to prevent blowouts, as well as the inability to contain and clean when blowouts occur, Obama made the overall right decision to deny new exploratory drilling. The oil industry argues that for a nation that consumes a quarter of the world’s oil, but only controls 3 percent of the oil reserves, “delaying drilling will increase America’s dependence on foreign oil.” The government has taken everything into consideration but the delay still stands. The government also takes accountability for part of the BP disaster due to there lack of oversight. It is said that, “one of the main reasons for putting the March drilling plan on hold is to give the government time to upgrade its staff and focus on creating a more stringent regulatory regime.”