The Oil Spill Has Caught Up with the White House

The explosion of British Petroleum’s oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico has forced the White House to reconsider many of the projects on which Barack Obama was betting during the presidential election campaign. Generally speaking, BP’s engineers’ inability to handle the accident (which is already being called the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history) in a short amount of time undermines the voters’ confidence in the Democratic Party.

On Thursday, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced a ban on oil exploration in Arctic waters. This “verdict” will be in effect until 2011. During this time, the experts have to determine whether, in the Arctic, they’d be able to deal with a situation similar to what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico.

Shell was going to drill three exploratory wells on the Arctic shelf this summer. Now, those plans have been shelved. This means that the U.S. government’s initiative to reduce dependence on “black gold” imports by increasing its own oil production will be postponed for at least another year.

The environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico gave an unexpected boost to U.S.-Cuban relations, and forced Washington and Havana to intensify their interaction. By the end of the year, Cuba will begin drilling its own wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Companies from Mexico, Brazil, Vietnam and Venezuela have signed contracts with Cuba for this development. The U.S. fears that this work will lead to new large-scale pollution of the bay. In order to prevent new oil spills, a group of American experts will go to Cuba.

Representatives from Washington are in contact with Havana’s officials to inform local authorities on the progress of the Gulf clean up. However, the situation remains critical. On Thursday, British Petroleum made another attempt to halt the oil leak. A special cement solution is being pumped into the damaged well. Engineers estimate the chance of success to be 60-70 percent. Similar work has been done on the surface, but this technology has never been used under water at such great depths.

If the operation is successful, then, after establishing a temporary plug, a concrete sarcophagus will be built on top of the well. It will stop the flow of oil for good.

Regardless of whether BP engineers will succeed, it’s already clear that the U.S. economy has suffered enormous damage. Besides Louisiana, the oil has gotten into the Gulf Stream that circles the Florida peninsula. This means that the contamination of not only the western, but also the southern coast of the state, is inevitable. This man-made catastrophe has already led to a drop in the Democratic Party’s ratings. A preliminary investigation has revealed that the U.S. government did not sufficiently monitor BP, and also allowed a number of violations in granting licenses to operate in the Gulf of Mexico.