From the Dept. of Things You Might Not Know.

Did you know that nearly half of the oil produced from the Gulf Coast states ... is shipped over seas? That's right.

In fact, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration databases (you can see more on this report here - http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/gulf_oil_exports.html), between 2003 and 2008 (while we were at war in Iraq to secure their oil for our consumption) U.S. oil exports nearly doubled.

Yep, all of that wailing and gnashing of teeth about the need to "drill baby drill" because we sooooo desperately need that oil here in the U.S. ...
... only apparently we don't need that oil as much as Mexico, Canada, and the Netherlands, or perhaps we're not willing to pay as much.

So "we the people" shoulder all the risk (and now the nightmarish cost) of drilling offshore while other countries get the oil and a handful of corporations pocket the cash.

Ain't it cool ?


... AND SOME MORE ... (added 5/11/10)
Here is a bit more to ponder over.
News stories yesterday touted the fact that BP had spent $350 million so far in it's oil spill damage control efforts.
Before anyone gets all teary-eyed about this though, they should know that last year BP's NET profit (that is how much "mad money" they had left over after they paid all their bills) was 20.09 BILLION dollars. That means that at the end of EVERY day of the year, when they went to empty their pockets, they had another 55 MILLION dollars to throw into their spare change jar.

So, it will only take BP 6 days to make back all the money they just spent on this mess. Of course, that is not taking into account the fact that BP (and every Corporation for that mater) was insured against damaged caused by such accidents.

Somewhere, BP had a group of engineers and accountants do a cost benifit study that showed it was much more profitable to opperate their rigs with the minimal safety standards they could get by with and then pay for clean-up in the statistically low chance they had an catastrophe.

When you look at the numbers it is clear that BP could aford to opperate at the maximum safety level and to maintain a quick response force to prevent what is now happening. They (and ever other oil company) could clearly do this and still make a NET profit. They just wouldn't be making as much of a profit.

THIS is where a corporation's priority is. NOT in the publics best interest or even in the National interest. It is first and foremost in the interest of their stockholders.

This holds true for the Corporations that run the Nuclear Power industry as well. They're only interested in as much safety as they can get by with and their plan for dealing with catastrophic failure is to count on it's statistical likely-hood of not happening.

Ask the business owners along the Gulf Coast what they think about statistically low probabilities.