Liberty

As the New York Times reported , three miles off the coast of Alaska BP is moving forward with a project to drill two miles under the Arctic and then eight miles horizontally to reach what is believed to be a 100-million-barrel reservoir of oil under federal waters.

BP's drilling has been exempted from the federal government's moratorium on offshore drilling because it sits on an artificial island — a 31-acre pile of gravel in about 22 feet of water — built by BP.

You have to hand it to the Oil Company for naming its record-setting project "Liberty."

As BP becomes accountable, and people start to clamor that things have been broken, wrongs have been done, people have been hurt (maybe Ervin is all that, after all) stuff is coming to light. For example, rather than conducting their own independent analysis, federal regulators, in a break from usual practice, allowed BP in 2007 to write its own environmental review for the project as well as its own consultation documents relating to the Endangered Species Act, according to two scientists from the Alaska office of the federal Mineral Management Service that oversees drilling.

That sounds extremely cozy, and seems a bit like this.

This dude works on the North Slope, monitoring fish movement across the "Liberty" drill site.



Anyhoo, I could go on and on, but I won't. Read the Times article.

N.B. The Satriani / Grace Potter cover is pretty hot, and I am no fan of covers.