putting around some ideas

From the Niger Delta to the Gulf of Mexico to Michigan's Kalamazoo River, all represent oil spills that occurred this year. When will we wake up and realize the real price that drilling for oil today costs? We are paying for the obvious environmental impacts that have come from these disasters – such as oil spill clean-up efforts, animal clean-up, rehabilitation or loss of sensitive shoreline ecosystems, prevention of further contamination, problems that arise from dead or decaying plant and animal life, etc. Furthermore there are economic impacts that have hit the affected regions – things like tourism rate declines, businesses affected by spills (i.e. fishing, boat tours, etc.), lost crude revenue from spilled oil, and the costs of rebuilding a company's reputation after a spill has occurred. Another impact is the human impact – clean water is necessary to sustain life (if oil spills occur in fresh water regions that use the water for a drinking water source, then there is a serious problem), if fishing is the major source of food in a region (i.e. the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska devastated both local commercial and non-commercial fishing) regions can go hungry, and toxic fumes from oil spills and oil fires can create uninhabitable living conditions.

The implications of lost oil from a global perspective go beyond what we see at the pump. Oil or petroleum is obtained primarily through drilling practices, and goes into a large number of consumer products, from gasoline and kerosene to asphalt and chemical reagents used to make plastics and pharmaceuticals. To resolve the problems that arise from oil spills we must also factor in the problems of oil in general – the fact that it's a limited resource and that it's becoming more difficult to gather the oil that exists today due to the uniquely difficult and or sensitive locations of the oil deposits. The world needs to rely less on oil and all the products that come downstream from oil. Unless people have in some way experienced the negative impacts at a personal level, it might be difficult to convince people of the urgency of this issue. From the perspective of the average oil-using state, these are all problems that seem to be out of sight and out of mind.

The "Big Oil" business has an immediate link to global oil related issues. Their impacts range from tax cuts given in favor of these companies (often hurts the community with lost revenue) to, record profits (this is good for the share holders) and the use of questionable new drilling practices (to secure hard to reach oil deposits). The Oil industry needs more regulation. Oil is a limited resource that belongs to the sovereign it resides within. Any oil-state should be the main benefactor of the sale of its own oil. "Big Oil" can still be a contractor through these oil-states to provide drilling and refining services but globally we need to be accountable for the global oil supply and reserves. This is something that clearly will take more time because it requires diplomacy and negotiations between states regarding international policy and law. The main problem with international legal issues is that jurisdiction doesn't allow for there to be an unbiased tribunal that is globally recognized by all state players.