Last week, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), introduced a bill that would "provide for the establishment of a program to support the development, demonstration, and commercialization of innovative technologies to prevent, stop, or capture large-scale accidental discharges of oil or other hydrocarbons from offshore oil and gas drilling operations, including deepwater and ultra-deepwater operations, and for other purposes."
The so-called SOS Act (download here) would not increase costs to taxpayers, but redirect $50 million a year to clean up R&D from monies acquired through oil and gas royalty payments normally used to subsidize development of deepwater drilling.
Fifty million dollars a year sounds like chump change compared to the $33.8 billion Shell Oil, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron Corp. and BP America spent in the last three years looking for new oil and gas, according to this article from the Associated Press.
But it also sounds like a good start when compared with the cost of cleanup, using technology that hasn't changed much at all since the 70s. Check out these numbers from Fortune:
- 1978 Amoco Cadiz: $85.2 million ($3.5 billion inflation-adjusted)
- 1979 PEMEX Ixtoc: $42 million ($1.3 billion inflation-adjusted)
- 1989 Exxon Valdez: $3.5 billion ($6.3 billion inflation-adjusted)
- 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon: $2.35 billion (estimated to run upwards of $10 billion)
Photo: iStockphoto
Tags: Disaster Recovery, Oil Spill
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