With the current BP crisis in the Gulf of Mexico becoming more catastrophic day by day, shouldn’t we, as Australians, be asking what safety precautions have the Departments, that control mining, insisted on, both in mainland Australia and offshore Australia.

This video mentions the recent Montara Oil Spill in the Timor Sea and alleges some quite worrying safety concerns that may or may not affect our environmental safeguards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkkMm4ZCTrk

In fact the American media are getting quite irate and asking some very pertinent questions.

These videos are also worth watching although they are quite disturbing. How can humans allow this to happen to wildlife and coastal communities?

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2010/06/03/tsr.cooper.oil.on.birds.bpr.cnn

A Satellite view

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/oil-spill-video.html

So these videos beg some questions

What Department(s) are policing our miners?

Do their staff get wined and dined or taken to football games etc. that might give rise to a conflict of interest? Who is policing the law enforcers?

Do our oil wells have mandatory Accoustic Switches that allegedly would prevent a similar disaster to that in the Gulf of Mexico? If not, why not?

Can we trust any of the World’s Politicians, yes, even our own, to tell us the real truth, or, are they slaves to big oil's and mining's money?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBoBoJwLqBE&feature=related

More on the Montara spill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montara_oil_spill

Isn’t it time we started asking some very serious questions…because the National Interest is not just the oil and gas, but the environment, animals and birds that a mistake like this can destroy forever?

Can we trust miners/shipping to get anywhere near our Great Barrier Reef?

What was the outcome here now that this story has departed the pages of our Newspapers?

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/coal-ship-at-risk-of-breaking-apart-20100405-rlwl.html

Was this too great a risk to take?

Opinionated2,
If you're after iron clad guarantee this doesn't happened here then you'll have to lobby 22 million Australians to forfeit all commodities made from oil

Individual....TY for your thoughts.

I'm certainly not after an iron clad guarantee as that is impossible. However, a disaster like this, which can never be totally repaired, surely should initiate an independent review to see that our checks an balances are in place.

Do we have a similar culture of, as this snapshot calls it, "ethical failure"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB9tx_wHZgM

And is it possible that the allegations made here are happening in Australia?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/sex-lies-and-oil-spills_b_564163.html

Do our rigs have accoustic switches and if not who is responsible for insisting they are installed? If they don't who allowed the oil companies to get away with not installing them, and why?

Surely, if we are "the clever country", a laughable name some seem to apply to us, we should learn from the mistakes made in other countries and make sure they don't happen here.

I would just like to point out the similarity of the platitudes and worthless assurances given by the oil industry to the platitudes and worthless assurances thrown at us by the far more dangerous nuclear industry. These greed driven miscreants cannot be trusted with our environment and wellbeing.

*These greed driven miscreants cannot be trusted with our environment and wellbeing.*

Ah, so lets just trust Govts to get things right, like install
pink batts without killing people. Your faith in Govt, is rather
foolish, Mikk.

Opinionated 2, indeed the Gulf of Mexico story is a tragedy, but
its more about human nature then anything else. It is nearly
impossible to legislate against all events caused by poor human
judgement and its usually poor human judgement that is responsible
for these debacles.

Its not a lack of resources that is the problem, the oil industry
throws near unlimited amounts of money at things. The investigation
will be interesting to see what is revealed, but in my experience,
when things go ok for too long, humans become complacent, start to
take stupid risks, until inevitably, disaster strikes and we learn
the hard way.

So I'll await the final outcome to make a judgement, but clearly
if the oil drillers want to keep going in deep water oil exploration,
they will have to have thought things through. Which BP clearly had
not. The financial community reckon it could cost them 40 billion
in lawsuits and damages, perhaps even bankrupt the company. So we'll
wait and see.

I didnt mention governments did I?
At least "we the people" are "supposed" to have some control over governments. Unlike these filthy rich corporations who are a law unto themselves and accountable to no one, until it is too late.

It is not a matter of governments "doing it better" it is a matter of "not doing it at all". As we have seen time and again from Bhopal to Chernyobl to now The Gulf there are some things that are just too dangerous and risky to do at all let alone let some greed driven scumbag of a company like BP do.