Thursday, May 27, 2010

Ixtoc Oil Leak 1979


RACHEL MADDOW SHOW, Wednesday, May 26th 2010

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED TV NEWS ANCHOR: Airplanes are to be used to drop chemicals on the oil .... And the workers are also putting up a mile-long boom. They‘re putting it into place, trying to contain the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. (June 1979)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL MADDOW: "The Ixtoc rig erupted in the middle of the night in 1979 in June, as it was drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The drilling was being done by a company called Sedco. It later became known as Transocean—the operator of the rig that blew up this year in the Gulf of Mexico. The reason the Ixtoc explosion turned into a massive uncontrolled leak 30 years ago is because the well‘s blowout preventer malfunctioned. Does it sound familiar? The blowout preventer failed to stop the Ixtoc leak and what followed was an environmental disaster the likes of which the country had never seen before."

2 comments:

Kay said...

This is so upsetting! So this BP disaster isn't the first time, hunh? And they still didn't have plans in place in case...
Greed

RONW said...

Kay- well, at least, Sedco, the rig operator contracted by BP, later known as Transocean, has repeated the 1979 disaster. BP, itself, started in Iraq. When Iran's democratically elected prime minister nationalized the Iran's oil, the CIA stepped in an overthrew the new gov't under the guise of a communist takeover. Later the US installed the Shah of Iran, and the rest is history. Nothing but trouble this BP for the US.