The presidential oil spill commission disbanded after it finished its main report last year, but its seven members recently got together again to look back on whether their recommendations had been carried out. Many steps to prevent or sop up another oil blowout haven’t been taken.
“The risks will only increase as drilling moves into deeper waters with harsher, less familiar environmental conditions,” the report says. “Delays in taking the necessary precautions threaten new disasters, and their occurrence could, in turn, seriously threaten the nation’s energy security.”
The Gulf oil spill began with an explosion of a deepwater well on April 20, 2010, killing 11 men. Failure of its blowout preventer, a device meant to seal off the well in an emergency, resulted in the release of more than 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
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