国际英语新闻：U.S. experts want severe penalty, strict regulations to prevent future oil spill

Richard F. Ambrose, director of the Environmental Science and Engineering Program at the University of California , Los Angeles (UCLA) and a professor of environmental health sciences at the UCLA School of Public Health, told Xinhua in a recent interview that the oil spill is really serious and catastrophic to the environment.

Ambrose, an expert on the ecological impacts of oil spills, contaminants and other human activities in coastal and marine environments, said the impact will last for five to 10 years and because the oil kills the plants and when the plants die, many animals will also die.

He said it is extremely difficult to remove the oil spills at the wetland since wetland is hard to keep people and equipment, and there is also a need to worry about those under the water.

Asked about the lesions, Ambrose said: "One of the lessons we learned is that when we drill oil in deep sea, we do not have the technology and measures to prevent such accident to happen and to contain it."

He said the technology to prevent the accident is important, but the U.S. Government does not have enough money for the big catastrophe.

"We will have to rely on the industry, which is not ready to prevent this to happen. The lesson is we need to prevent this to happen, so the technology is important," he said.

Ambrose also held that there are laws and regulations, but those regulations are not strong enough to prevent such disaster, the reason is the procedures are not strictly followed and there is lack of control.

He said the United States will have more scrutiny in allowing companies to drill oil in the sea.

In his opinion, California has very strict scrutiny and that has made oil companies very difficult to drill oil there. He predicted that there will be more careful evaluation of proposals in the future.