Project Katrina

Think Progress, which put together the above compilation video has much more about this myth that this is unprecedented. It is well worth a read.

Rachel Maddow’s video references a similar oil rig, Ixtoc I which blew up and/or sunk in almost the exact same manner as the Deepwater Horizon one did in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979. The big difference was it was only in 60 of water, not 5,000. They tried all of the same procedures (containment dome, top kill, junk shot, etc.) to stop the oil as are being tried with Deepwater, and they all failed. Talking Points Memo has the details on Ixtoc I.

BP is currently fighting the EPA’s demands to change its use of the toxic dispersant Corexit.  Corexit has been banned in the UK since 2000, yet BP has used more than 700,000 gallons already in the Gulf of Mexico. The use of dispersants have created an invisible toxic cloud of unknown size below the surface, as the federal government lets BP block attempts to monitor the gusher, study the undersea plumes, or learn about the dispersants being used.

On Monday, Good Morning America correspondent Sam Champion and Philippe Cousteau Jr., the chief ocean correspondent for Planet Green and grandson of Jacques Cousteau, explored the toxic plumes of dispersed oil floating beneath the waves in the Gulf of Mexico:

This, critics say, is what BP does not want you to see: oil and chemical dispersants swirling together into a toxic soup, forming large plumes under the surface of the water as deep as twenty-five feet, perhaps deeper.

The small droplets of dispersed oil are “capable of passing right into the flesh of fish and birds.” “It’s absolutely disgusting,” Cousteau described. “I think this has got to be one of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen underwater.”

President Obama announced in this morning’s weekly address the formation of a new commission he created yesterday through executive order to investigate BP’s Deepwater Horizon catastrophe: the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. Bob Graham, the former two-term Democratic Senator from Florida (and former governor of the state), and Bill Reilly, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under George H.W. Bush, will serve as co-chairs of the panel.

The President said the commission will be tasked not only with finding solutions to the immediate crisis, but to address the “breakdown in responsibility” among the corporations involved and to find answers to “how this happened in the first place, and how we can make sure it never happens again.”