Conservative confusion over oil spills and hurricanes

July 15, 2008

For a while, Republicans were defending their call for coastal drilling by claiming that the Chinese were drilling in Cuban waters. This proved to be false (though many on the right repeat the claim anyway).

So, conservatives have moved onto a new talking point: coastal drilling is safe for the environment, because recent hurricanes didn’t lead to oil spills. It leads to rhetoric like this from Nancy Pfotenhauer, John McCain’s senior energy adviser, who appeared on MSNBC yesterday.

“We withstood Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and didn’t spill a drop,” Pfotenhauer said.

John McCain made the same claim a month ago: “As for offshore drilling, it’s safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) said the same thing over the weekend: “I think people are reassured that not a drop of oil was spilled during Katrina or Rita. Those rigs in the Gulf, there was not a single incident of spillage that anyone reported.”

Bill O’Reilly is sticking to the Republican script, telling his radio audience the other day, “Remember when Katrina hit, none of the oil rigs spilled in Louisiana.”

Even Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), who presumably would know better, told Fox News a couple of weeks ago, “[T]hat’s one of the great unwritten success stories, after Katrina and Rita, these awful storms, no major spills.”

George Will, Dick Morris, Robert Samuelson, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page have all repeated the claim.

And they’re all wrong.

Brad Johnson recently explained:

In fact, the clear satellite evidence of major spills was borne out by final reports. In May 2006, the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) published their offshore damage assessment: “113 platforms totally destroyed, and 457 pipelines damaged, 101 of those major lines with 10″ or larger diameter.” […]

Unsurprisingly, this devastation caused significant spillage, according to the official report prepared for the MMS by a Norwegian firm. […]

In addition, the hurricanes caused disastrous spills onshore throughout southeast Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf Coast as tanks, pipelines, refineries and other industrial facilities were destroyed, for a total of 595 different oil spills. The 9 million gallons reported spilled were comparable with the Exxon Valdez’s 10.8 million gallons, but unlike the Exxon Valdez, were distributed throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, and other Gulf Coast states, many in residential areas.

It was, by one account, “among the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.”

And yet, just three years later, the Republican presidential nominee and his allies want Americans to pretend these events simply never occurred.

If conservatives want a debate over coastal drilling, great, let’s discuss it. But it’s interesting that all of their principal talking points — on “immediate” relief at the pump, spills, and foreign drilling — have been debunked before the debate has even begun in earnest.

Waiting for Jeff to show up and explain why you’re a liar and/or dense.

  • Conservatives aren’t interested in winning a debate and it doesn’t matter if their talking points are false. Say it enough times and in enough places and it will stick in the public perception. I have relatives that will believe this because of who they hear it from or where they hear it.

    I don’t know why Democrats can’t come up with effective counters to these sorts of campaigns. We deride their lack of any factual basis, yet the GOP keeps rolling out the talking points. Perhaps, because they work?

    In contrast, we offer rational fact based arguments that struggle to make it through the media filter. Why not boil it down to a couple of bullet points that can be easily absorbed by some one half-listening while fixing dinner or negotiating the daily commute, then repeat ad-nauseum. It sells mouthwash, why not progressive politics?

  • If something is repeated often enough, it becomes true.

    A few weeks there was a Reuters wire feed that had McCain — I think at some fundraiser in CA — saying that there was no spillage after Katrina. I wrote to them & tried to get them to insert a graf into their article to, you know, point out that McCain was full of it (well, “mistaken” I think was my word choice). They didn’t do it.

    And you know, you can go back to the ramp-up for the Iraq war and spend months risking your sanity by looking at all the examples of Republican talking points being inserted into mainstream news items and presented as facts. It’s not an oversight. It’s deliberate. And it makes the media look ridiculous to anybody paying the least attention. But the people who do pay attention are a very small minority.

  • Silly Steve,

    Didn’t you know that oil spills clean themselves? And that it also helps prolong life as well as reduce greenhouse gases and cancer?

    How do I know all this? The majikal hand of Exxon, Chevron, BP et al told me so.

  • Gee, I wonder why more and more people don’t get most of their news from the corporate media anymore?

    zhak is right, all you need to do is look at the sheer number of lies in the Iraq runup, and then at the people who did the lying who are now telling us we have to attack Iran. The rightwing morons keep regurgitating those lies until they “become truth”, and the media actively promotes the new “truth” with their attitude that their job is not to dispel misinformation.

    The media is badly broken, and we’re going to pay for it again and again until it’s fixed.

  • I don’t know why Democrats can’t come up with effective counters to these sorts of campaigns.

    If they do, no major media is going to let them on TV or print the truth. The large conservative corporations that own all the major media outlets do not want the truth to be printed. They only want to print what helps their business model.

  • Lying has BECOME A VIRTUE for the evil corporate pigs called the GOP. A virtue. And that’s because these corporate pigs are defined by the END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS .. thus all lies are a virtue to that end. So we have, of course, the CORPORATE MEDIA lying to the American people because their bottom line are , of course, profits. The corporate media in American is an evil farce conducted by corporate pimps like Chris Matthews, Brian Williams, Charles Gibson, Katie Couric, CNN, MSNBC, FOX , etc, etc, etc. The corporate media really is a mafia, a corporate mafia whose sole goal is to manipulate public perception , to lie to the Amercian people in order to the make the rich richer, for the corporations to generate yet more profits at the expense of the ‘little people’. Thus McBush shows up at the ASSOCIATE PRESS , i.e. ASSOCIATED PROPAGANDISTS, for his ‘interview’ and not only receives a standing ovations, but of course is ‘served’ his fucking donuts with sprinkles on them by these pigs. Obama shows up and is greeted with stone silence and no donuts. The CORPORATE MEDIA / MAFIA are actually criminals committing FRAUD against the American people themselves. They should all be charged, tried, and convicted for this fraud and frogged marched out of the protection of their corporate studios and right into jail and turned into bitches for the enjoyment of the inmates.

  • “And they’re all wrong.”

    They aren’t wrong, CB. They’re lying sacks of crap. Honk if you’re surprised.

  • And yet, just three years later, the Republican presidential nominee and his allies want Americans to pretend these events simply never occurred.

    They don’t know anything about these spills because Faux News didn’t report it. You know they only watch Faux… and if it wasn’t on there, well it just didn’t happen.

  • if it isn’t reported by the MSM does it really happen?

    if those pesky media types would just quit reporting about environmental problems, well, the environment just wouldn’t be so bad!

  • I am starting to sound like a Republican oil executive but ….. facts are facts.

    http://www.mms.gov/ooc/press/2006/press0501.htm this is the link that supposedly supports this comment “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused Six Offshore Spills Of 42,000 Gallons Or Greater. The largest of these was 152,250 gallons, well over the 100,000 gallon threshhold considered a “major spill.” [MMS, 5/1/06] “

    Which came from this link: http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/06/19/mccain-katrina-spills/

    This is where CB linked to the above link “Brad Johnson recently explained:”

    Another link from Brad Johnson said “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused 124 Offshore Spills For A Total Of 743,700 Gallons. 554,400 gallons were crude oil and condensate from platforms, rigs and pipelines, and 189,000 gallons were refined products from platforms and rigs. [MMS, 1/22/07]”
    It links to a 106 page PDF. I didn’t bother to read the whole thing. I did a search for 554 and found a single instance of that number. “As of late October, 2005, 554,000 barrels per day were still closed.”

    ########
    So, I didn’t do that thorough a search of the links but I tried to find out more about the information. I am assuming that a .gov is a slightly less partisan link than something from Exxon but that might not be an accurate assumption.

    The first link which CB cited for the 152,259 gallon leak mentioned this “MMS also is releasing the following tally of hurricane-related oil/condensate/chemical spills in Federal offshore OCS waters as reported to MMS and the National Response Center. Six spills of 1,000 barrels or greater were reported; the largest of these was 3,625 barrels of condensate reported by the Gulf South Pipeline Company in the Eugene Island Block 51 area. A total of 146 spills of 1 barrel or greater have been reported in the Federal OCS waters; 37 of these were 50 barrels or greater. No shoreline or wildlife impacts were noted from these spills. “

    I don’t know about you but 152,259 GALLONS sounds so much more impressive than 3,625 barrels although they are the same amount.

    But if you do a little math, 6 spills of greater than 1000 barrels but smaller than 3,625 barrels gets you at most 21,750 barrels or 913,500 gallons. This assumes that all 6 leaks were all 3,625 barrels which is almost certainly incorrect.

    It seems very difficult to get from an inflated number of 913,000 gallons to 9 million.

    None of this is to say that the right wing idiots are correct in saying that NO oil spilled. I am just pointing out that it appears that the oil spills were no were near as bad as CB and Johnson are claiming.

  • A picture is worth more than a thousand words. Surely there is video somewhere of these oil spills. It’s always fun watching the idiots eat their words when they are faced with video.

    Video footage seems to be the best way to break away from the he said/she said dynamic that these controversies always fall into.

  • Someone could also point out that Hurricanes are not “accidents” everyone knows they are coming, and the oil companies shut down operations and evacuate their employees. This represents the best case scenario for preventing spills, not the worst case. Worst case is that something breaks on accident, and there is no way to prepare for these things in advance.

    Another thing to point out is that what would happen if congress lifted their ban is that oil companies would be able to drill a test well, not a production well. This is R&D only.

    Another thing that would help is if someone would show where these supposed currently unused leases exist, the ones the oil companies are not using.

    Finally a little logic on if new oil discoveries would actually reduce the price for oil and gasoline. . Why doesn’t congress just get the oil executives in front of a committee and ask a few questions: would your Board of Directors let you pursue a strategy that is sure to reduce your profits? Would your BoD let you build a refinery in the US if it was projected to reduce your profits? How much are you spending to pursue building new oil to gasoline refineries located in United States?

  • There is very little spending on refineries now — the oil companies have allowed them (& the rest of the infrastructure) to fall into disrepair because they know it’s more profitable to limit supplies.

    The Katrina thing — the refineries that were damaged & such — I don’t think they were repaired at all. (I could be wrong.)

  • On July 15th, 2008 at 10:59 am, neil wilson said:
    I am starting to sound like a Republican

    You mean you’re not a Republican?

    Coulda fooled me.

  • I understand that George Will agrees with a conservative viewpoint, that’s fine. But what I don’t understand is how somebody, with his standing, just swallow false talking points and repeat them verbatim. I guess “credibility” really means how many readers a columnist has – not accuracy and fairness.

  • Neil Wilson,
    The 9 million includes the spills on land, which were at facilities that are related to the offshore operations. The Wonk Room articles makes this pretty clear.

  • neil

    Here’s the MMS Report itself which you mention. Many of the numbers given are in charts and graphs, and a search would not find them since they’re embedded in a graphic format.

    I can see why you didn’t read the whole thing. Like most scientific reports, it’s pretty tedious for those of us not familiar with acronyms or how the factors interact, further complicated by combining much of the data on Katrina and Rita, though individual figures and analyses are given, too.

    What’s clear is that there was terrible damage relating to oil spills caused by both storms, and those claiming that these hurricanes resulted in no oil spills are clearly wrong about their claims. A lot of the damage was to oil storage and processing facilities onshore as well as the offshore rigs and underwater pipelines that were bent, broken, or ended up with holes in them. There \was also significant damage to the platforms themselves, in some cases completely destroying the structures above the water lines.

  • I have to lean a bit with Neil Wilson on this one, because the overwhelming damage was caused by spills at land installations, but to say as many conservatives have that there were no offshore is false. And the onshore spills did indeed cause tremendous damage.

    Bruno posed an interesting approach for Dems yesterday: “Instead of stalling on this, they should propose a new energy policy with a lot of strict rules and then see the Republicans vote against it because they don’t like the reasonable restrictions…”

    IF one used Katrina as a lab, what steps might be taken to prevent what happened on land, and what would it take to reduce offshore spillage to zero? Seems to me like something worth exploring. If the oil companies say it’s too expensive, then no drilling. If they say the can do it and it ends up not working, the liabilities would be set in the regs and astronomical.

  • We need to figure out if the reasonable costs to drill and the reasonable precautions to protect the environment make it reasonable to get the oil at a reasonable profit.

    Obviously people will disagree with what is reasonable but if you have a bunch of jerks who say “drill, Drill, DRILL!!!!” and a bunch of jerks who say “no, No, NO!!!!” then we will never end up with a reasonable result.

    One extreme or the other will win and the country and the world will lose.

  • Except a reasonable result is no drilling without safety first. And that will never happen, neil.

    So until then, the answer is just ‘no’.

  • It is really sad when neither side can trust anything the other side says.

    The end result is that we swing from one extreme to the other and the losing side gets mad and waits for its chance to get back in power.

  • And the proof was satellite photos of oil spills. I take it nobody ever considered oil seeps.

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/01/000127082228.htm

    “Using a technique they developed in the early 1990s to help explore for oil in the deep ocean, Earth Satellite Corporation scientists found that there are over 600 different areas where oil oozes from rocks underlying the Gulf of Mexico. The oil bubbles up from a cracks in ocean bottom sediments and spreads out with the wind to an to an area covering about 4 square miles”

    The truth is more oil leaks from seeps then is spilled in the Gulf.

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