blog Assignment 8: Editorial

www.bp.com/gulfofmexicoresponse

The Gulf Coast has been dramatically affected from the oil spill due to deep sea drilling. Although there is no way the American culture can give up gasoline cold turkey, I would say to keep drilling but with better safety precautions. Due to an explosion off the coast in one of British Petroleum’s refineries, oil has begun to leak, about 205,000 gallons per day. Although this is a sad sight to see, the ecological and biological havoc that is being wreaked is unprofessional. I want to persuade to other companies involve with deep sea drilling to improve and constantly practice safety measures of containment.
The practice of containment is not unknown but it has been a constantly lied about and under hyped. Deep sea oil companies need to begin to be more responsible by drilling in location that they know are not as effected by natural disasters, which would increase the chances of an oil spill. In addition, the refineries need to be inspected and operated by competent humans that know what they are doing. In addition to these counter measures, oil companies should invest heavily on being able to contain oil spills on a large scale basis. For example, the most current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP “assumed” that they are able to contain an oil spill that was about 300,000 gallons of oil but it turns out that the oil spill leaked 205,000 gallons per day. There is no way BP would be able to contain that if they even wanted to. I guess oil companies should begin living with the motto of hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
After viewing the rhetorical situation, I believe that my call to write was necessary due to the fact that this oil spill does indeed have a lasting impact if oil companies to evolve and provide better safety measures. The timing of this topic is extremely current and has already seen actions by other people. The context that I wrote is relevant to the situation because it lets the people know what is going on out there at sea and how what should be done to correct the oil spill. My audience would be the general public that is affected by this spill as well as nature conversationalists, which my editorial is already directed towards and my intention of this editorial is to inform and persuade people to begin pressuring BP, as well as other companies, to increase funding for counter measures for containment of possible oil spills.