The Dead Zone (or, BP and the Oil Well That Keeps on Giving)

[HoreTore]

And as one option you suggested to buy a second car to counter the argument that an e-car would not be suitable for long distances - certainly not a very good choice from an environmental/sustainability perspective (as you yourself noted in the second quote I gave and which I now responded to).

Most people who have bought an electric car have been in a position where they already own two cars, and they swap one of them with an electric one. That's the situation I've tried to describe. But in a country where people scrap their cars before they reach 10 years, having a second car may not be all that bad, if you buy one about to get scrapped....

I appreciate any attempt to move to more sustainable solutions in e.g, transportation which is why I like to use public transportation wherever possible (with the additional benefit of being able to read something while commuting), I just have the feeling that flippant remarks about access to hydropower and the feasibility to buy a second car to make your average fuel footprint greener help a lot to promote the switch to laternative energy sources.

[drone]

So random, and the mental imagery is tremendous.
http://www.xkcd.com/748/

Please note that the cite linked has a warning for strong language etc. (on occasion at least).

[PanzerJaeger]

Uh oh...

BP Oil Spill Response Rated Worse than Katrina

[Idaho]

Haven't read the thread, so no doubt many astute orgahs have already pointed this out. But aren't you glad it is happening near the US? That way something will actually get done about it. If something like this happened in Nigeria, for example, it could theoretically* be left to leak for months oir even years.




*Niger Delta Oil Spills

[Husar]

Uh oh...

BP Oil Spill Response Rated Worse than Katrina

Some guy on the BBC said a leak off the mexican coast was spilling for 11 months before they managed to close it, the BP leak is about half that magnitude in terms of oil leaked so far IIRC. I didn't know you guys hated corporations that much in the US, just imagine how bad the response had been, had the government tried to fix it.

Haven't read the thread, so no doubt many astute orgahs have already pointed this out. But aren't you glad it is happening near the US? That way something will actually get done about it. If something like this happened in Nigeria, for example, it could theoretically* be left to leak for months oir even years.




*Niger Delta Oil Spills

Oh, I hadn't noticed*




*I've actually posted this at least once in this thread already, but your link could well be more informative so I applaud the effort.

[Vladimir]

Who does this guy sound like? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl2451

[PanzerJaeger]

Who does this guy sound like? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl2451

What a cowboy. Next he'll want BP execs drug in for prosecution, dead or alive.

[Vladimir]

What a cowboy. Next he'll want BP execs drug in for prosecution, dead or alive.

You're either with us or you're with BP. I support the President on his boot-wearing, ass-kicking crusade.

[PanzerJaeger]

As far as I'm concerned, BP can bring it on. We're ready for their virtual corporate insurgency.

In other news, it is looking like it will take more than cowboy rhetoric to keep this thing from turning on Obama, and turning fast.

Spill Reveals Obama's Lack of Executive Experience

In mid-February 2008, fresh from winning a bunch of Super Tuesday primaries, Barack Obama granted an interview to "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Croft. "When you sit down and you look at [your] resume," Croft said to Obama, "there's no executive experience, and in fact, correct if I'm wrong, the only thing that you've actually run was the Harvard Law Review."

"Well, I've run my Senate office, and I've run this campaign," Obama said.

Seven months later, after receiving the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama talked with CNN's Anderson Cooper. At the time, the news was dominated by Hurricane Gustav, which was headed toward New Orleans and threatening to become a Katrina-like disaster. "Some of your Republican critics have said you don't have the experience to handle a situation like this," Cooper said to Obama. "They in fact have said that Governor Palin has more executive experience. ..."

"Governor Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees," Obama answered. "We have got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So, I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute, I think, has been made clear over the last couple of years."

Obama ignored Palin's experience as governor of Alaska, which was considerably bigger than the Obama campaign. But his point was clear: If you're worried about my lack of my executive experience, look at my campaign. Running a first-rate campaign, Obama and his supporters argued, showed that Obama could run the federal government, even at its most testing moments. He could set goals, demand accountability, and, perhaps most importantly, bend the sprawling federal bureaucracy to his will.

Fast forward to 2010. The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is gushing out of control. The Obama administration is at first slow to see the seriousness of the accident. Then, as the crisis becomes clear, the federal bureaucracy becomes entangled in itself trying to deal with the problem. "At least a dozen federal agencies have taken part in the spill response," the New York Times reports, "making decision-making slow, conflicted and confused, as they sought to apply numerous federal statutes."

For example, it took the Department of Homeland Security more than a week to classify the spill as an event calling for the highest level of federal action. And when state officials in Louisiana tried over and over to win federal permission to build sand barriers to protect fragile coastal wetlands from the oil, they got nowhere. "For three weeks, as the giant slick crept closer to shore," the Times reports, "officials from the White House, Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Environmental Protection Agency debated the best approach."

The bureaucracy wasn't bending to anyone's will. The direction from the top was not clear. And accountability? So far, the only head that has rolled during the Gulf crisis has been that of Minerals Management Service chief Elizabeth Birnbaum. But during a May 27 news conference, Obama admitted he didn't even know whether she had resigned or been fired. "I found out about it this morning, so I don't yet know the circumstances," the president said. "And [Interior Secretary] Ken Salazar's been in testimony on the Hill." Obama's answer revealed that he hadn't fired Birnbaum, and he couldn't reach a member of his Cabinet who was a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Given all that, perhaps candidates in future presidential races will think twice before arguing that running their campaign counts as executive experience.

A few days before Obama won the White House, Bill Clinton joined him for a late-night rally in Kissimmee, Fla. Clinton, who became president after 12 years as a governor, told the crowd not to worry about Obama's lack of executive background. Given the brilliance of Obama's campaign, Clinton said -- and here the former president uncharacteristically mangled his words a bit -- a President Obama would be "the chief executor of good intentions as president."

Chief executor of good intentions? Perhaps that's what Obama is now. But with oil gushing into the Gulf, that's just not good enough.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

What a cowboy. Next he'll want BP execs drug in for prosecution, dead or alive.

Congress certainly wants to have a "chat" with them....

[Lemur]

More bad news for BP:

[A witness] who Buzbee refuses to name for fear of costing him his job, was on the ship's bridge when Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell, a top employee of rig owner Transocean, was speaking with someone in Houston via satellite phone. Buzbee told Mother Jones that, according to this witness account, Harrell was screaming, "Are you ******* happy? Are you ******* happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen."

Whoever was on the other end of the line was apparently trying to calm Harrell down. "I am ******* calm," he went on, according to Buzbee. "You realize the rig is burning?"

At that point, the boat's captain asked Harrell to leave the bridge. It wasn't clear whether Harrell had been talking to Transocean, BP, or someone else. [...]

During hearings held late last month by the Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service, Harrell denied any conflicts with his BP or Transocean bosses. He said that he did not feel pressured to rush the completion of the well, even though the rig had fallen behind schedule.

Yet Buzbee's claims add weight to other statements that contradict Harrell's version of events. Testifying before the Coast Guard and MMS panel last month, Douglas Brown, the chief mechanic on the Deepwater Horizon, said that on the morning of the day that the rig exploded Harrell had a "skirmish" over drilling procedures during a meeting with BP's "company man," well site leader Robert Kaluza. "I remember the company man saying this is how it's going to be," Brown told the panel. As Harrell was leaving the meeting, according to Brown, "He pretty much grumbled, 'I guess that's what we have those pincers for,'" referring to the blowout preventer on the sea floor that is supposed to be the last resort to prevent a leak in the event of an emergency.

[Beskar]

In some ways, I am glad the British government under Thatcher sold off BP, so we aren't blamed.

In othernews, don't trust private companies as they are greedy profit mongers.

[Vladimir]

In some ways, I am glad the British government under Thatcher sold off BP, so we aren't blamed.

In othernews, don't trust private companies as they are greedy profit mongers.

Place your trust solely in government. They're the ones who don't care about profit.

[Ser Clegane]

Place your trust solely in government. They're the ones who don't care about profit.

Yep (I am aware you are not serious but I could not resist)

NB: Enichem is/was part of the Italian oil major ENI which is still 30% state owned

[Beskar]

Place your trust solely in government. They're the ones who don't care about profit.

Companies with government stakes in them have far greater accountability and have to serve a mandate. This is also further enforced by public will, as those in a democratic society will force the government to take actions.

Compared to private interest who only care about money and nothing else, they attempt to cover-up, cheat, backhanded deallings and don't face any real accountability for their actions.

Which would you trust more? The answer is pretty obvious.

[Furunculus]

Which would you trust more? The answer is pretty obvious.

which would i trust more to generate a profit that both allows tax revenue and dividends to pension funds?

the private one of course.

[Lemur]

Honestly, I think blanket faith in public or private institutions is a form of derangement. All have the same weakness: people. Best to set up overlapping fields of supervision, as America's founders did with the tripartite government. You need watchmen to watch the watchmen, and some watchmen to watch them. Yay for the circular firing squad.

Unsupervised private industry leads to horrible abuses. Overweening government leads to horrible abuses. All things in moderation, eh?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Companies with government stakes in them have far greater accountability and have to serve a mandate. This is also further enforced by public will, as those in a democratic society will force the government to take actions.

Compared to private interest who only care about money and nothing else, they attempt to cover-up, cheat, backhanded deallings and don't face any real accountability for their actions.

Which would you trust more? The answer is pretty obvious.

Say Hi to Societ Russia for me, then say Hi to Cadbury's on your way back.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Companies with government stakes in them have far greater accountability and have to serve a mandate. This is also further enforced by public will, as those in a democratic society will force the government to take actions.

Compared to private interest who only care about money and nothing else, they attempt to cover-up, cheat, backhanded deallings and don't face any real accountability for their actions.

Which would you trust more? The answer is pretty obvious.

Oh man, that's great.

In the US, the government sponsored enterprises of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, who bought packages of mortgages from banks, got much less accountability than the private banking firms before the crash - because they were affiliated with the government, which meant many in the government favored them.

Even now, after the crash, while regulations have been put on the banking and hedge fund firms, with the Democrats in charge there's been no new regulations on Fanny and Freddie.

Firms affiliated with the government get it much easier in terms of accountability than private firms. In short, the facts support the exact opposite of what you claim.

As for BP, they've been a supporter of government regulation:

As BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig was sinking on April 22, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was on the phone with allies in his push for climate legislation, telling them he would soon roll out the Senate climate bill with the support of the utility industry and three oil companies — including BP, according to the Washington Post.

Kerry never got to have his photo op with BP chief executive Tony Hayward and other regulation-friendly corporate chieftains. Within days, Republican co-sponsor Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., repudiated the bill following a spat about immigration, and Democrats went back to the drawing board.

But the Kerry-BP alliance for an energy bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in the media — that BP’s lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader, but instead a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company’s bottom line.

While BP has resisted some government interventions, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.

Now that BP’s oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market.
...
There’s a problem: BP was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobby dedicated to passing a cap-and-trade bill. As the nation’s largest producer of natural gas, BP saw many ways to profit from climate legislation, notably by persuading Congress to provide subsidies to coal-fired power plants that switched to gas.

In February, BP quit USCAP without giving much of a reason beyond saying the company could lobby more effectively on its own than in a coalition that is increasingly dominated by power companies. Theymade out particularly well in the House’s climate bill, while natural gas producers suffered.

But two months later, BP signed off on Kerry’s Senate climate bill, which was hardly a capitalist concoction. One provision BP explicitly backed, according to Congressional Quarterly and other media reports: a higher gas tax. The money would be earmarked for building more highways, thus inducing more driving and more gasoline consumption.

Elsewhere in the green arena, BP has lobbied for and profited from subsidies for biofuels and solar energy, two products that cannot break even without government support. Lobbying records show the company backing solar subsidies including federal funding for solar research. The U.S. Export-Import Bank, a federal agency, is currently financing a BP solar energy project in Argentina.

CR

[Lemur]

Well, not to distract from the statist/Randoid dichotomy that's providing so much comedy material back here, but can we all agree on a simple proposal?

Don't open any holes you can't close

Of all the lessons we can learn from the BP fiasco, the simplest, and the first we should apply to offshore-drilling laws, is this: Don't open any holes you can't close. If the well site is too deep for humans to reach, drill a simultaneous relief well so you can plug a blowout promptly. If a relief well is too expensive, don't drill at all. Or you can keep robots on hand to shut down leaks. But they'll have to be better robots than the ones we're now watching.

Today's laws don't come anywhere near this standard.

[Xiahou]

Of all the lessons we can learn from the BP fiasco, the simplest, and the first we should apply to offshore-drilling laws, is this: Don't open any holes you can't close.

You'd think that would be common sense.
I think most anyone would support a government policy that requires firms to submit plans on how they would cap the well in case of a blowout before they are issued a drilling permit. Unfortunately, Congress will never produce anything so simple and straightforward. Instead, we'll probably get a new maze of unnavigable regulations that create a near defacto ban on offshore drilling- thus increasing our dependence on imported oil.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Well, not to distract from the statist/Randoid dichotomy that's providing so much comedy material back here, but can we all agree on a simple proposal?

Don't open any holes you can't close

Of all the lessons we can learn from the BP fiasco, the simplest, and the first we should apply to offshore-drilling laws, is this: Don't open any holes you can't close. If the well site is too deep for humans to reach, drill a simultaneous relief well so you can plug a blowout promptly. If a relief well is too expensive, don't drill at all. Or you can keep robots on hand to shut down leaks. But they'll have to be better robots than the ones we're now watching.

Today's laws don't come anywhere near this standard.

This would make things significantly more expensive and perhaps zero out any profit. Nevertheless, I think that's a better idea. A pre-drilled relief well 100 feet or so from completion would be able to minimize problems rapidly. This is a good point.

[Crazed Rabbit]

So how far should BP's liability extend? Having them pay for environmental cleanup and compensation to fishermen and the like, etc., seems reasonable.

But now the government wants them to pay the salaries of workers laid off on other oil rigs because the government declared a halt to oil rig exploratory drilling.

So, should BP have to pay workers hurting because of government decisions? I think that goes to far, and such a pronouncement is the government trying to have its cake and eat it to, in terms of stopping drilling but not hurting workers.

Really, they should just halt BP rigs - it's BP's fault, again, but the whole industry pays the price.

CR

[Furunculus]

Well, not to distract from the statist/Randoid dichotomy that's providing so much comedy material back here, but can we all agree on a simple proposal?

Don't open any holes you can't close

Of all the lessons we can learn from the BP fiasco, the simplest, and the first we should apply to offshore-drilling laws, is this: Don't open any holes you can't close. If the well site is too deep for humans to reach, drill a simultaneous relief well so you can plug a blowout promptly. If a relief well is too expensive, don't drill at all. Or you can keep robots on hand to shut down leaks. But they'll have to be better robots than the ones we're now watching.

Today's laws don't come anywhere near this standard.

don't include me in your self-drawn conclusions, because they aren't relevant.

i never argued in favour of a laissez-faire free-market, ergo i am not advocating a regulation free business environment.

[Lemur]

don't include me in your self-drawn conclusions, because they aren't relevant.

i never argued in favour of a laissez-faire free-market, ergo i am not advocating a regulation free business environment.

Sorry, Furunculus, I'm having difficulty relating what you say here to what I wrote earlier. Could you re-phrase and help a lemur understand?

[Furunculus]

Honestly, I think blanket faith in public or private institutions is a form of derangement. All have the same weakness: people. Best to set up overlapping fields of supervision, as America's founders did with the tripartite government. You need watchmen to watch the watchmen, and some watchmen to watch them. Yay for the circular firing squad.

Unsupervised private industry leads to horrible abuses. Overweening government leads to horrible abuses. All things in moderation, eh?

came right after my comment and was pertinent to it, which would not normally necessitate a response, but given that your next post consisted of:

Well, not to distract from the statist/Randoid dichotomy that's providing so much comedy material back here, but can we all agree on a simple proposal?

i thought i'd clarify the matter...........

[Lemur]

came right after my comment and was pertinent to it, which would not normally necessitate a response, but given that your next post consisted of:

Ah, unfortunate timing on my part. I did not intend to specifically comment on your posts, or ascribe a position to you. Rather, I was reacting more to the Beskar-v-world dialogue that was developing, and trying to be lighthearted about it. No offense meant.

[Vladimir]

Shows you how perceptions can differ. I was upset at "simple proposal" but thought it could be lighthearted as well.

[Furunculus]

Ah, unfortunate timing on my part. I did not intend to specifically comment on your posts, or ascribe a position to you. Rather, I was reacting more to the Beskar-v-world dialogue that was developing, and trying to be lighthearted about it. No offense meant.

np.

[Lemur]

Big, long article over at Rolling Stone about this. Summary: "The inside story of how Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world's most dangerous oil company get away with murder." Haven't had a chance to read it yet, but figured I'd supply the link anyway.