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Today, a juxtaposition of two very related, but conflicting “strategies” regarding our attempts to extract oil from under the ocean.

Of course, if you’ve been paying attention to the news, you’ll know that an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded on April 20th, killing 11 people before sinking into the ocean.  Now, the damaged rig is leaking 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, of oil into the open water every day.

Favorable winds and weather patterns have kept the slick offshore for a week, but today that will change when the oil is slated to reach land.  And there is no end in sight:

At that rate, the spill could eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history – the 11 million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989 – in the three months it could take to drill a relief well and plug the gushing well 5,000 feet underwater on the sea floor. Ultimately, the spill could grow much larger than the Valdez because Gulf of Mexico wells tap deposits that hold many times more oil than a single tanker.

Did you see that line?  It said three months.

Cleanup strategies range from containment (corralling the slick with boats as shown in the first image) to burning it from the surface of the water, none of which seem very effective for an ever expanding layer of sludge.

Contrast these cleanup “strategies” with the now ironic plans of the Obama administration to further offshore oil and gas exploration outlined in this map:

Is it just me, or are these two strategies painfully at odds?  Can offshore drilling really be done with absolute assurance that we will avoid this type of failure and environmental catastrophe?  Do the benefits outweigh the costs?

And since when did “drill, baby, drill” become part of our national anthem?

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5. The Political Chemistry of Oil