Foxes regulating the Hen House
June 8th, 2010 by Jon GreenLast week the Connecticut Commission investigating the Kleen Energy plant explosion released its initial findings. Their recommendation (pdf) included establishing regulations on the “gas blow” procedure, in which high-pressure natural gas is blown through pipes to clean them.
Meanwhile, attention in Washington has been understandably fixated on the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency responsible for regulating off-shore oil drilling. As the New York Times reported a month ago: “Federal regulators warned offshore rig operators more than a decade ago that they needed to install backup systems to control the giant undersea valves known as blowout preventers, used to cut off the flow of oil from a well in an emergency.”
Let’s not forget that just before the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico dominated headlines, the talk in Washington was about new regulations on Wall Street, which witnessed its own explosion of sorts a couple of years ago.