Political Quotes

“Madam President, we have a huge potential economic and environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that is occurring as we speak. It was on an exploratory rig. It is almost unbelievable how far they can now drill beneath the surface of the water. In this case it was 5,000 feet, and then, at the ocean bottom, they were able to drill another 13,000 feet down to find a pocket of oil, all of which caused this explosion because of the pressure of the oil and the gas, the natural gas, creating such an overpressure that it exploded at the wellhead at the sea bottom. A device, a so-called blowout preventer, that had three safety mechanisms in order to stop the flow of oil in the case of a blowout--none of those three safety mechanisms have worked. The first was a mechanism that would be activated by a switch 5,000 feet up from the sea bed on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico on the floating exploratory rig. There were actually two switches. One was flipped closer to the surface by workers on the rig, who unfortunately lost their lives and they have not been found. The second switch was at a higher level. I think they refer to it as the bridge. Those workers were rescued. They confirm that switch was flipped, which was to automatically cause the first safety device to go into activation, which was to drive metal plates like pistons together over the wellhead to cut off the flow of oil as it was gushing upwards from the pressure beneath. That activation mechanism did not work.…”