Obama: “Oil Rigs Today Generally Don’t Cause Spills”

On April 2, 2010, just 18 days before the BP offshore oil spill began and on the day when Obama reversed 27 years of government policy forbidding offshore drilling, Obama made this statement:

Barack Obama: "It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore."

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Not only does this quote look ridiculous in hindsight, it wasn’t true at the time, as Brad Johnson [http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/04/28/obama-katrina-spill/] points out:

Obama’s claim that oil rigs did not cause any spills during Hurricane Katrina is simply false, as the Wonk Room reported in June, 2008, when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other conservatives made the same false claim:

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused 124 Offshore Spills For A Total Of 743,700 Gallons. 554,400 gallons were crude oil and condensate from platforms, rigs and pipelines, and 189,000 gallons were refined products from platforms and rigs. [MMS, 1/22/07]

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused Six Offshore Spills Of 42,000 Gallons Or Greater. The largest of these was 152,250 gallons, well over the 100,000 gallon threshhold considered a “major spill.” [MMS, 5/1/06]

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