The Oil Spill is the story of the summer which seems like it is never going to end. It is an important story, and vastly complicated. There are many stories regarding the Oil Spill from different points of view ranging from people working on the Oil Rig to President. The news is lacking the view point of the engineers who designed the rig. The Oil Spill is actually an engineering failure. As a former chemical engineer, most of design is done by mechanical and chemical engineers. The current problem is most chemical engineers are not in universities how to deal with Oil Rigs, they solve other problems that relate to smaller scales and other devices. Even though there is much blame on BP and the President of United States, some blame has to put on the Engineers since there was a design failure. Engineers are not perfect, there have been mistakes before ranging from the Apollo Space Ship Shuttle accident to collapsing bridges. The live video stream showing the leaking oil is a sign that this is truly an engineering failure.
Another point that the media is avoiding is the discussion of alternate energy. Just a year or two ago, the price of oil was sky rocket high. People were talking about using biodeisel, and fuel cells. There were small companies that would take used cooking oil and would recycle it into biodiesel. The topic of alternate energy has been avoided greatly during the media coverage. Is it the oil companies are influencing the media not to cover the new technologies? The oil spill is due to our dependence on crude oil, if Americans were using natural gas, or biodiesel to power our cars, there would be less need to have oil rigs in the ocean. There has been the discussion of cost of alternative energy is expensive than crude oil, but now consider the cost and expense of the oil spill. It is thousand times greater than the cost of using alternative energies, and most of damage at this point may not be repairable. My suggestion is to stop playing the blame game on the CEO of BP, and the President of the United States, but to move forward to clean up the oil spill, stop it from leaking, and become less dependent on oil, by using alternative energies.
