April 20, 2026 is the 16th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon blow-out disaster. In the post-mortem of how it happened, it was found that the “engineer” overseeing the operation decided to ignore the clear signals of pipe pressure irregularities for the sake of expediency. It was through this deliberate oversight that over 40 million barrels of crude oil and 2 million gallons of Corexit dispersant were set loose into the sea, causing a benthic dead zone the size of Oklahoma beneath the waves (out of sight, out of mind…).

 Because the disaster could be systematically pinned to lax regulation and oversight by the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Department (MMS), the Agency was broken up into three distinct agencies. This included Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), and the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR). This thwarted the Fossil Fuel Industry from treating MMS as a “One Stop Shop” for all of their regulatory, engineering safety, and royalty “needs.”

Of course the current Administration, having knocked the knees out from under each of these agencies, the Department of the Interior wants to consolidate them again into the “Marine Minerals Administration.”

 So now we have this other “unanticipated” energy emergency with dogfights over the control of the Straits of Hormuz. There is a provision in the Endangered Species Act (ESA) providing for regulatory flexibility on account of “National Security Concerns.” This pulls together the Secretaries of the Interior, Army, and Agriculture, along with Administrators of NOAA and Environmental Protection Agency – into a ‘council’ termed the “God Squad” to make the determination that due to a “National Security Emergency,” the Endangered Species Act can be ignored. And in this case, specifically ignored by the fossil fuel industry.

 This seems to have whetted the appetites of some in the Industry, who had previously been a bit reluctant to commit to developing new oil leases which would not be productive for another five to ten years, and would also foul up their calculated shell game..

 My inner cynic believes that all of these regulatory and policy aberrations are being driven by the current Administration’s strategy of governance through “emergency proclamations” (and subsequent litigations). Thoughtful.

 If you look at all of the global conflicts over the last century, they have been largely driven by fossil fuel. The first shots in WWI were in the bombing of the Berlin to Baghdad Railroad. The transformation of Persia into Iran tracks the Western interests in the region’s  oil. Even the Vietnam war was spawned by the understanding that the Gulf of Tonkin had shallow, easily accessible oil. (Once it was found to be crappy quality, the US came up with an excuse to depart.) The sabotage of the Nordstream II pipeline was a big driver in western oil’s need thwart Russia’s control of Ukraine. Conflicts in the Niger Delta, and the burning of the Kuwait oilfields at end of the “Desert Storm” were all expressions of the value of fossil fuel to this thing we call “The Global Economy.”

 This is really punctuated by the fact that most of the Western global economies that are anchored to the “G7” are not pinned to the US Dollar, rather they are pinned to the “Petrodollar” and fertilized with, and bathed in millions of gallons of human blood.

 So this geopolitical acknowledgment of the 16th anniversary of the Deepwater Thunderhorse Blowout” may be a bit “out of my lane” as a marine bioacoustician. But I can say that the Sun shines on the Strait of Hormuz; it does not flow through it.

 And solar energy is really quiet.