Gulf spill will "forever" change drilling-BP exec

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Should plans by President Obama to expand oil drilling off the eastern coast be scrubbed?

    BOSTON | Thu May 6, 2010 1:35pm EDT

    BOSTON May 6 (Reuters) - The explosion and sinking of a BP Plc (BP.L) oil rig and subsequent massive oil spill will "forever" change the offshore drilling industry, a top executive with the London-based oil giant said on Thursday.

    "There is no doubt that this event will change the offshore industry forever, around the globe," said Robert Dudley, executive vice president for the Americas and Asia at BP.

    After the current leak -- which is one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history -- BP will "consider the trade-offs" of new offshore exploration, Dudley told the Boston College Chief Executives Club.

    The leak, still weeks or months away from being stopped, threatens Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and could eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, the worst U.S. oil spill. [ID:nSPILL]

    (Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

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    Comments (13)
    Leeinsc wrote:
    It is inexcusable that the Federal Government cancelled the requirement that safety valves must be installed on all wells. If this had been done, this well could have been shut down immediately.

    May 06, 2010 2:14pm EDT  --  Report as abuse
    ONTIME wrote:
    This is incredible, all this fuss about a problem we know how to solve with present technology, yet the politics are just simply making hay out of the whole matter.

    How many know that twice as much oil that was spilled in the EXXON Valdez incident leaks out into the Gulf of Mexico from natural ground leakage yearly. Oil producing areas have natural leakeage all over the world but you don’t hear the environmental whackos yelling about this fact..this is just nuts and there is way to much lying going on.

    May 06, 2010 2:30pm EDT  --  Report as abuse
    zarrott wrote:
    Leeinsc – a subsea safety valve would not have been possible with the operations that were taking place on this rig. The report I reviewed said they had just set production casing and just finished cementing. There is some speculation that part if not all of the leak is coming from the annulus between the 7″ production casing and the intermediate casing (where a packoff assembly was actually set if the report I have seen is correct). Subsea safety valves are primarily for wells set up for production.

    May 06, 2010 2:38pm EDT  --  Report as abuse
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