Oil spill politics
President Barack Obama was to hold his first meeting Tuesday with the co-chairmen of an independent commission he's forming to investigate the catastrophic Gulf oil spill -- former Florida Gov. and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, and former EPA chief William K. Reilly.
Mr. Obama still must name five members of the commission, which is set to inquire into the causes of the spill, the safety of offshore oil drilling in general, and the functioning of government agencies that oversee drilling.
Such a commission was politically inevitable. It may do some eventual good -- though environmentalists who hope such a body will issue a clear call to end all offshore drilling have been eating too many "special" brownies.
Yes, between 20 million and 43 million gallons of crude oil have poured into the Gulf of Mexico since BP's Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and rupturing the underwater pipe.
It's a mess and an economic disaster.
But such deepwater fields currently represent about 70 percent of all Gulf oil production. Despite being blocked off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, offshore oil already provides almost a third of total U.S. oil production of 5.5 million barrels per day.
Some of this is thanks to the political pressure from those same aforementioned greens to block easier, safer dry-land drilling in places like Alaska and Utah. But the International Energy Agency projects that by 2020, deepwater will provide 40 percent of all oil extracted, worldwide.
Windmills aren't going to make up the difference soon.
The real problem with Mr. Obama's commission is the way it demonstrates this administration's cart-before-the-horse approach, which is more about covering its own butt and seeking political scapegoats than stopping the leak.
Mr. Obama has skipped a step. Where on earth is the top-level group of petroleum and deepwater engineers, called together to see if their expertise can help BP get a handle on this mess? Surely figuring out who to blame can wait until the spill is controlled.
