"BP has paid $1.8 billion for drilling rights in Canada's sector of the Beaufort Sea"

http://ow.ly/20y7N

Off Canada's shores, at the bottom of the frigid Beaufort Sea, BP too has eyes to develop deep water wells. The company had the temerity recently to tell a Canadian parliamentary committee drilling at the bottom of the Beaufort would be no problem. They say the cold temperatures would actually mitigate the effects of any, highly unlikely, well blowout.

Veteran reporter Dave Lindorff at This Can't Be Happening is dubious of BP's claims. He wonders what would happen to the millions of barrels of oil seeping out of a blowout in the Beaufort when Winter's icy appearance would halt any reclamation operations. Lindorff says;

"BP has paid $1.8 billion for drilling rights in Canada’s sector of the Beaufort Sea, about 150 miles north of the Northwest Territories coastline, an area which global warming has freed of ice in summer months. And it wants to drill there as cheaply as possible. The problem is that a blowout like the one that struck the Deepwater Horizon, if it occurred near the middle or end of summer, would mean it would be impossible for the oil company to drill a relief well until the following summer, because the return of ice floes would make drilling impossible all winter. That would mean an undersea wild well would be left to spew its contents out under the ice for perhaps eight or nine months, where its ecological havoc would be incalculable."

Incalculable describes too the monumental lunacy of the moment; where serial crimes against the environment are not punished but permitted, as the offenders dictate the law to the offended.

And late in: a BP subsidiary has been given the go-ahead to destroy a pristine area of my province, British Columbia in search of coal-bed methane.

Madness.