A ‘clean energy' disaster looms off our coasts

Photos of oil-covered seals and birds from California’s 1969 Santa Barbara blowout helped launch the environmental and stop-oil movements. More recently, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon drillship disaster killed 11 workers and blasted 3-4 million barrels of oil and enormous amounts of natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico.

These accidents spurred industry to implement better blowout-prevention technologies and procedures.

Such industry actions, of course, never placated environmentalists who wanted them banned forever.