BP Gulf Oil Disaster: "We May Have to Blow Up Oil Well"

"Bill Clinton: We May Have to Blow Up Oil Well"

by Brian Montopoli

"Former President Bill Clinton said during a panel discussion in South Africa that it may become necessary to blow up the Deepwater Horizon well that continues to spew oil into the Gulf of Mexico. "Unless we send the Navy down deep to blow up the well and cover the leak with piles and piles and piles of rock and debris, which may become necessary - you don't have to use a nuclear weapon by the way, I've seen all that stuff, just blow it up - unless we're going to do that, we are dependent on the technical expertise of these people from BP," Clinton said.

There has been some pressure for BP to simply blow up the well, with critics suggesting the company is forgoing that option out of a desire to get as much oil as possible from the rig. "If we demolish the well using explosives, the investment's gone," former nuclear submarine officer and a visiting scholar on nuclear policy at Columbia University Christopher Brownfield said in a Fox News interview in May. "They lose hundreds of millions of dollars from the drilling of the well, plus no lawmaker in his right mind would allow BP to drill again in that same spot. So basically, it's an all-or-nothing thing with BP: They either keep the well alive, or they lose their whole investment and all the oil that they could potentially get from that well."

- http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20009084-503544.html
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Well, we can't have BP lose their investment in this project now, can we? God forbid they lose their access to all that potential profit, right? And all those poor shareholders missing out on those fat dividend payments, how tragic! That would just break my damned heart... - CP

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