Drilling, Disaster, Denial

This column has a lot of opinions but very little facts. Prior to this incident the oil industry has drilled some 30,000 wells in the Gulf Coast over the last 30 years with an excellent safety record, and this production is now contributing some 30% of our domestic U.S. production. The oil industry in the U.S. is already one of the most heavily regulated and taxed industries around. We don't know yet what caused the recent disaster, so lets investigate it, identify the root cause of the problems, and develop steps to fix them, whether it means better equipment, procedures, regulations or all of the above. And by all means, lets continue to push to develop economically viable non-hydrocarbon sources of energy. But the reality is that oil and gas will be part of our energy mix for decades to come, and we will need to prudently continue to develop our offshore resources. I doubt Mr. Krugman would write a column after an airplane crash saying that we should ban all flying.

Trolls we have.