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I see there are some members here who know quite a bit about the process that was being used to drill this well. I know nothing. I live where there is natural gas drilling and that is no help in understanding this mess. I saw a news story where it was reported there was a heated argument the morning before this thing blew over replacing the heavy drilling mud with seawater. The guy in charge of the rig (I think) objected strenuously to replacing the drilling mud. The other guy pulled rank of some kind and ended the argument. Does anyone know if the drilling mud was actually replaced with the seawater and this was what the cause was? I thought it had to do with an equipment failure. Was it one or both? Just trying to make sense out of the bits and pieces...

In regards to Nuclear power plants as alternative energy; I hope we do not go that route. They are more expensive to build than natural gas powered plants. My brother is a senior nuclear engineer with many years in the industry. He has worked at Comanche Peak, Tennessee Valley, and overseas in Taiwan to name just a few places. He has overseen design and construction of such plants. He doesn't think we should have more unless they were built better and had better security. He sees a problem with making them truly safe from terrorists, and from the poor designs some want to use for the sake of cost savings. He feels Comanche Peak for example is poorly designed and poorly built. Chernobyl is still a wasteland of radioactive death even all these years later. I'm no expert, but he IS and he worries about it. There is no pressing reason to build nuclear plants when we have such huge natural gas reserves.

As someone posted, the oil companies are looking into alternative fuels too. For example, Exxon is supposedly buying XTO Energy who holds many if not most of the leases in the Barnett Shale, including ours. Now, I do wonder if this will turn out like it did when electric companies bought the gas companies. Cheap gas for heating your home instead of electricity disappeared. So the question is are they buying up leases in the Barnett only to control the price of natural gas to keep it from threatening our dependence on oil? One has to wonder.

I'm not interested in any flaming, but I do want to hear how you came to that viewpoint.
I had not heard our government forced BP to drill there. Why would any group in power enough in our government to control this thing to this degree want a natural disaster to stop drilling in the future? I can't see it being Democrats because the anger of the public will hit the current administration. I can't see it being Republicans who want drilling for the most part. Would it be for economic advantage of foreign oil interests or simply to bring America down? If so, and they have that much power, we are in really big trouble. Just interested in your logic, not flaming.

Marine biologists are saying the recovery from this will still be going on for the next 3-4 generations and there is no end to it yet. There is growing concern the much talked about relief wells are not going to be happening so quick either. I saw a story on CNN this morning saying the government actually knew in the first 24 hours that this was spewing far far more oil than was being reported and it refused to allow experts from other countries (some of whom have more experience with deep sea rigs) to come to our aid saying there was a law against foreign ships in our waters. I am guessing there was stuff they didn't want the international community to find out about. After all, this oil isn't going to just hang out in US waters. This was just one rig. What if terrorists decide to start blowing up these things for grins? It's time to get really serious about alternative fuels. Natural Gas, Hydrogen, Wind, Solar. They aren't perfect, but at least the billions of dollars they cost stays home and they don't have the potential to pollute the entire ocean and destroy the livelihoods of untold numbers of people who depend on it.