Another Oil-Related Explosion in the Gulf: Offshore Drilling Can't Be Accident-Free

(MoneyWatch)  The U.S., still recovering from its BP oil spill hangover, was jolted Thursday by an explosion on an oil and gas production platform owned by Mariner Energy (ME) in the Gulf of Mexico. Had this explosion occurred a year ago none of us would be any the wiser. Last year alone, there were 133 fires and explosions on structures in the Gulf of Mexico, according to records from Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, BOEM. Granted, most of these fires were categorized as incidental, meaning they caused less than $25,000 of damage, and there were no fatalities. None of these came anywhere close to the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion April 20 and the subsequent spewing of 4.9 million barrels oil into the Gulf.

Certainly these pre-BP spill incidents wouldn't have produced the same reaction from lawmakers, environmentalists and Wall Street traders as yesterday's Mariner Energy accident. Within hours of the explosion, shares of Mariner Energy dropped 5 percent; calls to continue the deepwater drilling ban were renewed; and Reps. Henry Waxman, Bart Stupak and Edward Markey had already sent a letter to Mariner Energy requesting a briefing on the incident and its possible causes by Sept. 10.

Let's set aside some of the political maneuvering and ask a basic question: Is it possible to make offshore drilling completely accident free? Of course not. It's impossible to completely guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen, ever again on an oil rig or production platform in the Gulf. There may be ways to reduce the risk, but no way to eliminate it completely. Even all offshore drilling and production were stopped tomorrow, we'd have to deal with the risk of safely shutting down the 50,000 wells in the Gulf, not to mention the thousands of platforms and rigs there.

So, then, it comes down to risk versus value. Is the oil and gas in the Gulf worth the risk? With the era of easy-to-access oil behind us, exploration in the Gulf of Mexico will continue. The current six-month moratorium on deep water exploration wells will end and drillers will eventually return because the public and political appetite to end offshore drilling simply isn't there.

It's insanely naive to think that more regulation will put an end to accidents in the Gulf. The BP oil spill happened not just because of a lack of regulation. It happened in large part because the company blatantly disregarded the regulations that were in place and because the government agencies in charge of oversight were too busy trading links to Internet porn and accepting gifts from the oil industry to do their job.

Photo from Flickr user Retinafunk, CC 2.0
For complete coverage, see All Things BNET on BP's Gulf of Mexico Spill
Related:

• Lessons from the Gulf Oil Spill: One Smoking Gun Revealed
• Arctic Oil: BP May Be Out of Greenland, But It's Not Giving Up Yet