Tomgram: Bill McKibben, Can Obama Seize the Energy Moment?

How many times in recent weeks have you read a headline like this: “Oil Nears Florida as Effort to Contain Well Hits Snag”?

Yet another "snag" in the Gulf of Mexico. Remember that 100-ton, four-story “containment box” which developed a nasty case of hydrates, or that snaggable “riser insertion tube,” which was supposed to siphon off so much of the escaping oil from the busted well, but didn’t? No? Little wonder, because we moved on so quickly to “top kill,” “junk shot,” and now “top hat” -- with both a snaggable diamond saw and shears that don't cut that cleanly. Strangely, while all of this represents a repetitive tale of failure 5,000 feet down, the headline narrative remains oddly hopeful. The next techno-fix, or the one after, will finally do the trick. (I suspect that oil industry insiders must be joking sardonically about rubes who will believe anything.)

The final hope lies, of course, in those “relief wells” now being drilled diagonally thousands of feet under the waters to intersect with the original well and cement it shut. As White House energy adviser Carol Browner said last Sunday, “I think what the American people need to know [is] that it is possible we will have oil leaking from this well until August when the relief wells will be finished." Mid-August may be a long time to wait, even if those wells are now declared “ahead of schedule,” but at least -- we are regularly assured -- they will do the trick. Think about it a moment, though: if a relief well is such a slam dunk, why is BP drilling two of them (one ordered by federal officials), and muttering about a third.

Here, then, is a tip of the old top hat to grim reality. On those relief wells, listen to David Rensink, president-elect of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and a veteran of oil industry offshore exploration: "If they get it on the first three or four shots, they'd be very lucky." That’s not exactly surprising given that the process has been “compared to hitting a target the size of a dinner plate with a drill more than two miles into the earth.” Rensink also suggests that the odds of a first-time success are about the same as winning the lottery. What, then, can be learned from the historical record? The last time such a well was drilled in the Timor Sea off Western Australia, it took five tries over 10 weeks to succeed (and in the process, the well’s rig went up in flames) -- and that was in only 250 feet of water.

As with the 1979 hostage crisis in Iran, Americans are already counting the days to “relief” in a drama implicitly titled, as then, “America held hostage.” “Disaster in the Gulf: Day XX,” as NBC News’ logo typically has it. Well, keep counting if you want, but don’t count on it. (There are even reports that a relief well could make the spill worse.) Whatever the solution, if any, to the gushing well, only one of 4,000 in the northern Gulf of Mexico, the problem is, of course, oil itself. We humans, like BP, are increasingly out of our depth when it comes to fossil fuels. AsTomDispatch regular Bill McKibben, author of the remarkable new book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (reviewed by Rebecca Solnit at this site) makes clear, this could be themoment to turn this country around on the subject of its energy future and begin real planning for life after both BP and deepwater drilling. If only. Tom

If There Was Ever a Moment to Seize

Will Obama Stand Up to Big Energy in Deeds as Well as Words?

By Bill McKibben Here's the president on March 31st, announcing his plan to lift a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling: "Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy."