Greets and saluts from the NYC metro area. Video from the Gulf appears to be somewhat better as the top kill looks like it may be working. They’re busy pumping mud into the damaged wellhead so as to choke off the flow and will continue doing so until they think that they’ve stemmed the flow - and will then replace the mud with concrete to cap the well. If this works, then it will stem the flow of new oil into the Gulf, but doesn’t do anything to deal with the ongoing mess from the millions of gallons that have already flowed into the Gulf.

In the years since the Exxon Valdez, you mean to tell me that scientists and researchers haven’t come up with better ways to deal with oil spills than containment booms and skimmers? Is there no better technologies that can clear the oil spills?

Out of disasters come the opportunity for new tech and techniques to deal with such messes. Let’s hope that the oil industry gets the lesson and that Congress does the right thing too (and on that I’m not hopeful).

Congress should do what it should have been doing all along in increasing the liability caps for years to account for inflation - and required that not only that skimmers and booms be present in the Gulf, but that BOPs and other shutoff technologies be better tested and required. Moreover, special consideration must be paid to deepwater drilling sites, where the pressures and technologies must be much more robust than surface or near surface sites.