MadeInTaiwan: While I get your point about calling foul, I was simply trying to nail Brian down regarding facts and parsing words/information. A good example would be his retort, “Sure, the cementing MIGHT have caused the explosion”. No, it DID cause the explosion; no MIGHT involved.
As far as addressing the balance of your post: I work predominantly on engineering defensive/protective designs for structures against what is called VCE (vapor cloud explosions), like the one that hit BP Texas City in 2005.
What I’m about to say is NOT a defense of Big Oil, but rather a statement of fact about oil/gas facilities in the US and Canada. Let’s use the refineries of the Los Angeles River Basin as an example. Most of these refineries were originally built by Standard Oil during the 1920s and 1930s, and have seen substantial retrofitting and upgrading over the years, but its been done on something of a haphazard basis. The name of the game in refining is production and capacity and everything else takes a back seat to that, including, sometimes, safety.
Your point about regulations being relaxed under Bush/Cheney is certainly valid, but, in truth, these facilities and Chem/Petrochem, have enjoyed prefential treatment for decades, and largely because of our need for their products.
This takes me back to my focal point about a national energy program. Yeah, we can point a finger at Bush/Cheney and with some validity. But, let’s also be honest about Obama, too. We’re not seeing anything approaching a national energy program, and I can say this because I also work on protective design, largely for Force Protection, in the private nuke sector, and I hear the complaints regarding the difficulties in permitting, approvals and loan guarantees. The US government could be doing a lot more in this sector, including offering more support to companies like Westinghouse, and offering streamlined permitting/approval processes and a better loan guarantee program (like the French have). Same goes with natural gas, which is an excellent alternative product, but has languished for decades and mainly due to the fact that it doesn’t enjoy the clout or lobbying power of Big Oil.
Obama has a clear-cut opportunity here to do something sweeping, but I don’t see it happening. I don’t say this pessimistically, or because I don’t care for Obama; I say this because the status quo ante is deeply entrenched in not only US industry, but in what is considered an American birthright: Cheap Oil.
There’s a running joke in the oil business about ExxonMobil being a bank that happens to drill for oil. Except that’s it not really a joke at all. These companies wield tremendous power and influence and have had their way for over a century. It was abundantly clear as WWII drew to a close that the US was going to need huge amounts of oil and refined products going forward and we positioned ourselves to win the necessary “wars of extraction”. Better alternatives now exist, but the real question is if we, as Americans, have the will to make the change.
