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| Photo by Charlie Bean via Facebook |
The latest fire happened around 9 a.m. Thursday just south of Vermilion Bay on the Mariner Production Platform, owned by Mariner Energy, which is based in Texas but also has offices in Lafayette. Several investigations are still ongoing and there have been varied reports on the exact amount of oil leaked into the Gulf. Officials were looking for an oil sheen as late as last night and most accounts indicated minimal pollutants. There were no fatalities and 13 survivors.
Though dramatically different in scale, the two rig explosions were nonetheless linked continually throughout the day in public official’s comments, beginning with Jindal’s homeland security press conference in Baton Rouge. About halfway through his presentation, the governor differentiated the 5,000 miles of water the BP rig was in from the smaller scale rig operated by Mariner. “I also want to point out that the platform is in 340 feet of water, making it a shallow water well,” Jindal said.
The original moratorium from President Barack Obama, issued in response to the BP incident, applied only to rigs in 500 feet of water or more.
While the most recent explosion did little to sway crude prices in the markets Thursday, it did draw a rigid statement from U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who met with coastal residents last month during a congressional hearing on Gulf seafood safety. “This explosion highlights the significant risks associated with offshore drilling, and that much is left to be done to keep America’s workers and waters safe from those risks,” Markey said.
Officials closer to home wanted more answers about this week’s incident before the Mariner and BP rigs are lumped together. “Once the disaster is under control, we must thoroughly investigate the cause of the accident and take whatever steps are necessary to prevent future incidents,” said U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, who represents portions of Acadiana.
Even in Washington, D.C., the Obama administration voiced the same kind of concern. “I don’t want to marry those two up,” White House Spokesperson Robert Gibbs told reporters during a press briefing Thursday.
Still, that didn’t stop special interests from doing just that in the wake of the Mariner explosion. The Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a statewide environmental advocacy group, circulated a statement shortly before Jindal’s press conference. “This news is sadly not surprising — this industry has a problem,” said Anne Rolfes, founding director of the LBB. “Refineries on shore, platforms, pipelines and rigs offshore have a clear, established pattern of accidents. We need enforcement of regulations so that this dynamic will change.”
For now, Jindal said supplies are on the standby should there be further need or another incident occurs. Equipment last used in the BP spill is on the ready as well. “As we learned during hurricanes and the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion,” Jindal said, “we must prepare for the worst and continue to hope for the best in these types of incidents.”
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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Thats Jindal and his tea partier right wingnuts solution to everthing that is damaging to our society.
What they should be saying is that: WE ARE WORKING DAY AND NIGHT TO DEVELOP WIND POWER, BATTERY POWER AND NATURAL GAS TO POWER OUR LIVES:
Instead, all you hear is: PREPARE FOR THE WORST AND HOPE FOR THE BEST.