Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8651333.stm
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100401/bs_afp/uspoliticsenergyoil_20100401033417

"There have been 509 fires, at least two fatalities and 12 serious injuries on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico since 2006." -BusinessWeek

What bad timing that under a month after Obama unveiled a plan to expand offshore oil drilling in the Eastern US and Gulf of Mexico, the BP disaster occurred (11 workers suspected dead, thousands of barrels pouring into the Gulf across a 600-mile-wide area, with the slick heading towards wildlife protected wetlands). Maybe it's a sign. Obama has already ticked off much of his liberal base over concessions to the GOP/Wall Street, dithering on gays in the military, the painful passage of watered-down Obamacare, and inaction on immigration reform. Now this move has angered environmentalists.

Parts of Florida may be on the table as well, but the plan faces protest. It's funny that the flip-flopping FL GOP governor and US Senate hopeful Charlie Crist (who tends to vote anti-gay but is suspected to be a closet homosexual, but that's another story: http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/10933/npr-spikes-outrage-review-that-named-names) was historically against offshore FL drilling, but when he was touted as a possible running mate to pro-drilling McCain in 2008, he suddenly changed his mind. But now that President Obama is calling for the exact same drilling plans, he's against it again.

BP has had a bad safety run in the last decade. In 2005, their refinery at Texas City exploded, causing 15 deaths. In 2006, a corroded pipeline caused 1,500 barrels worth of oil to leak in AK's North Slope, and the next year they had a 2,000 gallon methanol leak in Prudhoe Bay. The company has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines from these accidents. Who knows how much the Gulf disaster will cost, in terms of dollars and environmental harm?

All the easily-accessible oil has been tapped in North America, and most of the world. Expanded offshore drilling through harder rock in deeper water (also areas in hurricane zones) is more expensive, complex, and dangerous. Is it worth the environmental risk and infrastructure investment to do this, just to add a few million barrels per year (and the US consumes 22M barrels per day)? So it's a drop in the bucket gain. Yes oil accidents are rare overall, but when mistakes happen, they really cause problems. Would it make more sense to just keep buying more foreign oil (by foreign, I mean Canada and Mexico mostly), or even affordable Brazilian ethanol, instead? But then US energy and farming companies have a shit fit.