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PRESIDENT Obama’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill panel came up with a sensible list of precautions Tuesday in its final report on the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., vowed to introduce legislation incorporating many of the panel’s recommendations, including a provision to raise the $75 million cap on liability in offshore spills.
The Gulf contains more seeps where oil leaks naturally into the ocean than any other body of water in or touching North America. The result is a healthy population of oil-eating bacteria – a population that soared as the Deepwater Horizon spill intensified and their food source expanded. This, combined with the extensive human cleanup effort, means most of the 207 million gallons of leaked oil is now gone. So did Obama and other Democrats overreact? For the sake of the gulf, we hope so.
A clearer lesson from the disaster is that assurances by the industry that technological improvements had made spills a thing of the past were bunk, and that greater regulatory oversight is needed to prevent future blowouts.