Note: You might want to start at the page
about offshore drilling in general, especially
if you arrived here by using a search engine.
As you might imagine, there is a great deal of discussion about the recent oil spill in the Gulf of
Mexico. In particular, the event is being used for political leverage, by the people who oppose
oil production anywhere, as "proof" that offshore oil drilling will inevitably result in massive
spills.
If that's true, would it not be better to drill on land? Of course, but liberal Democrats
and environmentalists
oppose every practical source of energy, especially
oil, and as a result, millions of acres of "wilderness" areas in the western U.S. have been placed
off limits for oil exploration and production. The same political "protection" has been granted
to the area of frozen-over dirt known as ANWR.
Limousine Liberals love their cars, but cars run on gasoline, and the production of gasoline is sometimes
quite messy.
The really suspicious thing about the Deepwater Horizon incident was the astonishing sluggishness
exhibited by the Obama administration in response to this
emergency. Incompetence is
one thing, but in this case it was as if President Obama wanted the mess to be as big as
possible, in order to score political points. After all, in the weeks before this spill
occurred, President Obama was already making it clear that he opposes offshore oil drilling -- or
any other kind of oil drilling.
In addition, Mr. Obama had already demonstrated that he had no great affection for Great Britain, so it
was certainly fortunate (from his perspective) that the culprit in this case was British Petroleum.
One fascinating aspect of this spill is the amount of oil that has gushed out of the ocean floor, with
no pumping required. The earth is teeming with oil, in certain places, and the oil just can't
wait to get out of the ground.
Note:
This page is presented in chronological order. The newest information is at the bottom of the page.
Overview and recap: Top 10 Iconic
Events Of The Last Decade. [#10] The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: It was a terrifying start to our
decade — but one made all that much worse by just how many chances they had to prevent it. No alarm sounded
to warn the 126 men on board about what was going to happen — because they had turned it off. They'd been
frustrated with a malfunctioning safety system that would freeze up and set off false alarms and, instead of fixing it, just
shut the whole alarm system down. It had been off for more than a year by the time the explosion happened, but it was
hardly the only failsafe they had. They had another device that should have shut down the drill as soon as gas levels
became dangerous — but that one had been shut off for 5 years. Nobody knew, though, because the crew had
been putting in fake data to cover up their work. And so, ironically, on the day it exploded, BP executives visited the
rig to celebrate 7 years without a single safety incident.
Putin
Isn't the One Who Banned U.S. Offshore Oil Drilling. One calamity Greenies often trumpet in support of Biden's
Green New Deal is the BP oil spill off the Louisiana coast in April, 2010. For those who only remember the hysterical
headlines of the time, perhaps some follow-up clarifications are in order: "There's just no data to suggest this is an
environmental disaster," said marine scientist and former Louisiana State University professor Ivor van Heerden, who also
worked as a BP spill-response contractor. "I have no interest in making BP look good - I think they lied about the size
of the spill - but we're not seeing catastrophic impacts. There's a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it."
These observations came on the very heels of the spill — a mere three months afterward, making them all the more
blasphemous at the time. Within one short year they'd been completely vindicated.
Appeals
court orders sale of Gulf oil, gas leases to proceed over environmentalists' objections.
A federal appeals court Tuesday ordered the federal sale of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico
to be held within 37 days, rejecting environmentalists' arguments the project endangering a rare
whale species. The Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club and others had hoped to block
6vmillion acres from being offered in Lease Sale 261 over concerns it could further endanger the
mammal. A lower court had issued an injunction against excluding the acreage from the sale.
During oral arguments Monday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had questioned if the environmental
groups had demonstrated the whales would be harmed as a result of the lower court's decision.
US
Appeals Court Orders Biden Admin to Conduct Gulf Oil, Gas Auction Within 37 Days. A
federal appeals court in New Orleans gave the Biden administration 37 days to move forward with the
sale of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, dismissing challenges from environmental groups
in a ruling on Tuesday. The decision comes after a series of legal battles, primarily citing
concerns over endangered whale species. The three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals rejected the attempts by environmental groups to block the leases, which had been delayed
due to legal challenges related to whale protections. The pending sale, initially announced
in March, faced delays from its original date on Sept. 27, extending to Nov. 8 amid ongoing legal
disputes. In late October, the appeals court further postponed the sale pending arguments
specifically addressing endangered whale species, scheduled for Nov. 13.
Oil
spills into the environment are normal and may even be beneficial. I don't understand the commotion over oil
spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from drilling operations after Hurricane Ida. Oil has always oozed out of the ground to
foul land, lakes, and oceans. That's how people first discovered the stuff. In nature, some oil on the surface
evaporates off as naphtha (probably the basis of the ancient Greek fire). Other oil is digested by bacteria, converting it
into simple organic compounds that other organisms feast on, leading to localized exuberant biodiversity. The heavier
components of oil remain as lumps called bitumen or asphalt. The Dead Sea was called Lake Asphaltites because of the
gooey pebbles that floated onto the surface from underwater seeps. This asphalt was used on Egyptian mummies. Oil
found floating on lakes or in puddles was used by Indians to caulk canoes and as medicines. In California's
úber-environmentalist Santa Barbara County, an estimated 11 to 160 barrels of oil seep into the ocean daily and
have for countless centuries.
Political
Incompetence and Questionable Science. When BP's drilling platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010,
scientists immediately declared an environmental disaster. Scientists stated that the size of the oil spill could "wipe
out marine life deep at sea near the leak and elsewhere in the Gulf" as well as "along hundreds of miles of coastline."
At least, such were the results of a computer simulation. Vast amounts of money were allocated to fight the consequences
of the "ecological catastrophe," but the effects of the oil spill disappeared on their own. It turned out that in the Gulf
of Mexico, due to a large number of drilling platforms, a unique ecosystem of bacteria had long been formed that, in the process
of evolution, learned to feed on pure oil. These bacteria cleared the entire water area in a very short time.
Trump's
Interior Secretary Proposes Selling Offshore Drilling Leases Starting in 2019. President Trump's Interior
Secretary Ryan Zinke was very careful in announcing his agency's next step in expanding energy development to include the
United States' offshore reserves. He knew that environmentalists and far-left politicians would attack his plan and did
what he could to placate them in advance. [...] But anti-fossil fuel environmentalists and politicians on the Left weren't
buying any of it. Most of the noise came from California, which hasn't allowed off-shore drilling on its coastline
since 1969.
Trump's Energy Success.
In April, the president signed an executive order reversing Obama's ban on new offshore drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic. Current estimates
show that almost 90 billion barrels of oil and 327 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie under the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf.
Those estimates have a way of being revised upward, especially for regions such as these that have not been explored with modern technology due to
past restrictions. Offshore drilling has the potential to produce ten times the number of jobs and government revenue projected for ANWR.
At the high end, that would be 1,300,000 high paying jobs and $4.4 trillion in state and federal revenue.
U.S. Beefing Up Environmental Reviews of Deepwater Oil
Drilling. The government said Monday it is toughening environmental reviews for all new deepwater
oil drilling, ending an easy path to oil riches that allowed BP to drill its blown-out well in the Gulf of
Mexico with little federal scrutiny.
Bias alert:
The AP writer apparently considers offshore oil drilling to be "an easy path to oil riches." I dare
say the author of that insinuation hasn't tried making "easy" money in the oil business, offshore or otherwise.
Oil
Rig Accident Could Impact Future Oil Exploration. The White House says the current situation in
the Gulf of Mexico could affect the president's efforts to expand off-shore oil drilling. President
Obama announced late last month that his administration would lift a decades-long moratorium on exploration
and drilling on the Atlantic seaboard. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Thursday [4/29/2010]
that the president could reassess his plans if investigators determined the cause of the oil rig spill off
Louisiana's coast.
The timing is suspicious. What caused the
offshore oil platform to explode? [D]espite the media's tremendous outpouring of concern
regarding this potentially disastrous environmental event, this writer has not heard or read a single
newsperson address the issue of causation. Not one. This is odd. When is the last time the
MSM did not rush to assign blame/responsibility/causation for sensational issues? Especially those
issues at the forefront of political debate....
Convenient Disasters. I am the
last person to subscribe to conspiracy theories, but I do find it incredibly convenient for the opponents of
offshore (and domestic) drilling for oil that the BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico had an explosion and the
subsequent leak. ... Frankly, I do not ever recall an account of an oil rig "exploding." These giant
rigs are technological wonders, filled with all manner of safety devices. ... If anything, the BP disaster
will be used as "further proof" that all offshore drilling should be stopped.
Oil
Spill May Kill Climate Bill's Chances. As the spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico oozes it [sic]
way toward Louisiana, Democrats are rapidly backing away from their prior support for new off-shore drilling
as part of a compromise clean energy bill. Both the White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,
D-Nev., said Friday [4/30/2010] they were re-examining the need for such drilling, citing the April 20
explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 and began spilling crude oil into the waters
as a reason.
Axelrod: No new
drilling until answers on accident. A top adviser to President Barack Obama says no new oil
drilling will be authorized until authorities learn what caused the explosion of the rig Deepwater Horizon.
Oil
spill could sink Obama's offshore drilling plan. Fish, birds and other sea life won't be the only
victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill — President Obama's plan to expand offshore oil drilling
could also go down.
Democrats: New drilling 'dead on
arrival'. A group of Democratic senators said Tuesday [5/4/2010] that the massive oil spill
in the Gulf of Mexico has rendered plans for new offshore drilling "dead on arrival."
Taking Advantage of an
Oil Crisis. Days after being elected in November 2008, President-Elect Barack Obama's Chief of
Staff, Rahm Emanuel, spoke to a Wall Street Journal gathering of business leaders and stated that the economic
crisis facing the United States is "an opportunity to do things you could not do before." "You never want
a serious crisis to go to waste," Emanuel said. And why should we think this administration isn't letting
the Gulf of Mexico oil crisis go to waste? Don't be fooled for a moment. History proves that the Gulf
leak is a messy dream come true for hardcore environmentalists — many of whom surround Mr. Obama.
Gibbs gives it to Fox
reporter. Outraged, [Robert] Gibbs singled out the network for airing an unsubstantiated conspiracy
theory spun by President Bush's FEMA director, Mike "Brownie" Brown. On Monday night, Brown — the former
horse association director blamed for the White House's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina — claimed the
Obama administration let the Gulf oil leak get worse so they could retract its own promise to expand
exploratory offshore drilling.
President Hamlet's
Energy Policy. Now, some are calling this "Obama's Katrina," comparing Obama's inaction now to
Bush's alleged inaction to Hurricane Katrina. But this comparison is unfair — to Bush.
First, while during and immediately after the Katrina flooding there was a hurricane blowing through the region,
there was no bad weather in Obama's case to stop him from flying down immediately. Second, the primary
responsibility for dealing with the New Orleans disaster lay with its fatuous mayor, Ray "Chocolate City"
Nagin, who was too busy arranging for his own family to move to Houston to bother using the city's numerous
school buses to get people out (despite Bush's urging immediate evacuation). Also impeding the Feds was
the air-headed governor of Louisiana at the time, Kathleen Blanco. But the BP oil rig disaster took place
over fifty miles out at sea, well beyond the jurisdiction of any affected state. It was from the outset
solely a federal matter.
U.S. exempted
BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling from environmental impact study. The Interior Department exempted
BP's calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year,
according to government documents, after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was
unlikely.
The Editor says...
I want to know the names of the people who will lose their overpaid government jobs as a result.
Obama biggest recipient of BP cash.
While the BP oil geyser pumps millions of gallons of petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama
and members of Congress may have to answer for the millions in campaign contributions they've taken from the
oil and gas giant over the years. BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal
candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics.
Oil rig survivors
recall a hiss before the blast. Minutes before the Deepwater Horizon exploded in fire, workers
on the deck heard a thump, then a hissing sound. Gas alarms sounded and the rig shook. Seawater
and mud containing gas from the well spewed up through the crown of the derrick and rained down on the
drilling floor; fumes reportedly moved into the "safe zones" where the electric generators are located.
The generators raced out of control as they sucked gas into the air intakes.
The Editor says...
What happened to the fuses and circuit breakers? Any competent design should have included
overload and overspeed protection for the generators and overvoltage protection for the
computers and other electrical appliances. I would never operate a computer without
a UPS, even though the electric power quality here (hundreds of miles from the Gulf) is
pretty good.
Gulf well
'shouted' warnings for hours before BP rig explosion. The crew of the Deepwater Horizon had
a number of warning signs extending over five hours that conditions were worsening deep underwater before
the oilrig exploded in the Gulf on April 20, BP's own investigators told a House inquiry into the
cause of the deadly accident.
Obama's 'Katrina' in the
Gulf. The BP oil rig explosion will be President Obama's 'Katrina' — in fact, it will
potentially be much worse in terms of long term effect. While President Bush took a matter of a few days
to mobilize federal assistance to flooded New Orleans, Obama has demonstrated near-complete incompetence and
inaction over a month and counting. Still, there is no leadership or clear-cut solution to answer one of
the worst environmental disasters in modern time. Eleven people are dead, fisheries and scores of
fragile ecosystems dying day-by-day. President Obama finds himself deservedly being attacked from the
left and the right.
Gulf oil spill
spreads into U.S. politics. The oil spill is reaching far beyond the Gulf Coast and deep into
American politics in an important election year. It's calling into question President Barack Obama's
proposal to open new offshore areas to oil drilling.
Crist,
Florida Dems Consider Constitutional Ban on Offshore Oil Production. Democrats in the Florida
state legislature are proposing a constitutional amendment to forbid offshore oil and natural gas production in
state waters. Supporters of the proposed constitutional amendment are hoping public backlash in response
to the Gulf oil spill will enable them to permanently end prospects for oil and natural gas production in
waters near the state's shore.
The Editor asks...
Natural gas, too? When has there ever been a beach polluted by offshore natural gas production?
Political
problems from oil spill may stick to Obama. Facing pressure to better manage the still-gushing
BP oil disaster, the White House is demanding the oil giant better account for how much is spilling and what
the environmental effect will be. Lawmakers and environmentalists have claimed BP is low-balling how
much oil is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, and some are beginning to suggest the federal government is
complicit.
Coast Guard officials told of
potential oil spill response problems years ago. U.S. Coast Guard officials have apparently
known for years that there could be significant problems in the federal and industry response to a major oil
spill. The report that followed a 2004 "Spill of National Significance" training exercise concluded,
"Oil spill response personnel did not appear to have even a basic knowledge of the equipment required to
support salvage or spill clean up operations."
Lessons From the
Gulf Blowout: [Scroll down] Can we afford to shut down our domestic oil and gas
industry — economically, ecologically and ethically — and import more, as we export
risks to other countries, and shift risks from drilling accidents to tanker accidents? Can we
afford to replace dozens of offshore rigs with thousands of towering, unreliable offshore wind turbines,
creating obstacle courses for ships laden with bunker fuel or crude oil?
The Buck Stops Nowhere.
According to best estimates, the collapsed Deepwater Horizon oil rig is pumping about 210,000 gallons of
oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day. But don't worry, President Barack Obama has appointed an "independent"
commission to investigate the spill. Our federal government will post an estimated $1.5 trillion
budget deficit this year, and our debt is projected to equal 140 percent of gross domestic product within
two decades. But don't worry, President Obama has appointed a debt commission to solve the problem.
Our nation's southern border has degenerated into a violent, lawless and lethal zone. But don't worry,
Congress wants to empower a new commission to control the problem.
Senate
bill calls for 17% emissions cut by 2020, compromise on drilling. The Senate climate change bill
will call for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut by 17 percent by 2020 and seeks to find a workable
compromise between opponents and supporters of offshore drilling in light of the ongoing spill in the Gulf
of Mexico.
The Editor asks...
Why is there a "climate change bill" at all? Haven't they heard? The "climate
change" panic isahoax!
Drilling Oil Execs For Answers.
Tuesday [5/11/2010] on Capitol Hill, oil executives were subjected to the Senate's latest show trial. Senators did not
say the accident in federal waters was a federal responsibility or that nature spills more oil every day.
DSCC capitalizes on
oil spill. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee emailed to ask supporters today [5/4/2010]
to sign a petition to "stand with President Obama to hold BP accountable." Petitioning the White House to
keep doing what it's doing is a bit of an odd stance, but the world of political email is always a bit detached
from reality, and petitions are a great way both of harvesting email addresses and of bringing supporters
smoothly onto the contribution page, which is where a petition signature takes you.
While
Oil Spill Spread, Interior Chief Rafted in Grand Canyon. Though his agency was charged with
coordinating the federal response to the major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Department of the Interior
chief of staff Tom Strickland was in the Grand Canyon with his wife last week participating in activities that
included white-water rafting, ABC News has learned.
Despite disaster,
U.S. has little choice but to drill offshore. If the oil spill off the Louisiana coast leads to
a federal ban on ultra-deepwater drilling and production it could cripple an increasingly important source of
America's domestic oil supply.
Yes, Keep Drilling.
Oil remains the most cost-effective source of transportation fuel we have; as long as our economy is thriving,
we will need to produce or import a lot of it. Global-warming alarmists and zealous proponents of
alternative energy have already made the BP spill the new Exhibit A in their case against fossil fuels.
In evaluating their claims, we should be mindful of the economic and environmental costs of the spill relative
to those associated with their preferred alternatives.
58%
Still Support Offshore Oil Drilling. Most U.S. voters still favor offshore oil drilling, but
support has fallen dramatically following the oil rig explosion and major oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 58% of voters believe offshore oil drilling should
be allowed. But that's down 14 points from 72% just after President Obama's announcement at the end
of March that he was lifting the ban on offshore drilling for the first time in years.
Drill, Baby, Still.
After BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, federal and state governments moved quickly to shelve plans to drill
off the U.S. coast. But a new poll taken after the spill suggests Americans still support drilling.
Methane
bubble led to rig blast. The deadly blowout of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was triggered by
a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst
through several seals and barriers before exploding, according to interviews with rig workers conducted during
BP's internal investigation.
Oil
Explosion Shows Need for New Technology. Weeks after the Apr. 22 explosion and sinking
of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, BP is facing oil-slicked coastal swamps, dead fish, grieving
families and howling environmentalists. "This is a gift to the environmentalists," says Theodore Harper,
portfolio manager at Frost Investment Advisors in Houston. It's also a gift to engineers working on
subsea machinery. They are going to get jobs designing better equipment than what BP was using.
Despite plan, not a single fire
boom on hand on Gulf Coast at time of oil spill. The "In-Situ Burn" plan produced by federal
agencies in 1994 calls for responding to a major oil spill in the Gulf with the immediate use of fire booms.
But in order to conduct a successful test burn eight days after the Deepwater Horizon well began releasing massive
amounts of oil into the Gulf, officials had to purchase one from a company in Illinois.
Another Fine
Mess. The Obama Administration has tirelessly pushed the line that it has employed every
available tool to fight the Gulf oil spill from "Day One." Well, it's certainly true that every media
resource is being deployed to squelch comparisons with the slow-footed 2005 Bush administration response to
Hurricane Katrina. But as for having actual oil-spill fighting technology on hand before the crisis,
as the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 requires, the administration was clearly caught unprepared.
Federal
Regulator Repeatedly Failed to Inspect Deepwater Horizon. Though federal regulations require
offshore drilling locations to be inspected by the Department of the Interior's Minerals Mining Service every
30 days, those inspections have repeatedly not happened since the Deepwater Horizon site was permitted by
MMS in 2001 — including one out of every four months since President Obama's inauguration.
Cardin wants new drilling 'off the table' in Senate's energy bill.
Senators working on an energy and climate bill should take off the table provisions that expand offshore drilling,
one Democratic senator suggested Monday. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a member of the Senate Environment and
Public Works Committee, said that the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico should force lawmakers to
reconsider plans for expanded offshore exploration.
Former NOAA oil spill cleanup boss says Obama waited too long in Gulf
disaster. Why didn't federal officials implement an oil spill clean up plan they've had on the
books since 1994 as soon as possible after crude began pumping into the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion
and sinking of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform 53 miles south of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico?
Oil Spill a Catastrophe of Monumental
Proportions: Is It Sabotage? [Scroll down] Sabotage is not outside the realm of
possibility when trillions of dollars are at stake. The question to ask is: With "climate-gate"
throwing a wrench in the works of Cap and Trade, and the (potentially) extremely lucrative carbon-credit
market about to go down the drain, were drastic measures taken?
'Everything Will Be Examined' in
Gulf Oil Spill, Officials Say. Federal officials say they plan to investigate every possible
cause of last week's massive explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico —
including the possibility of criminal acts or negligence.
Louisiana Spill: Big Oil's
Chernobyl? The administration has banned new offshore drilling until the Gulf oil spill is investigated.
Was its heart in it anyway? It seems environmental concerns apply only to certain forms of energy. No one
pays much attention to the aquatic "dead zones" that have appeared off our shores at the mouths of our rivers due to
agricultural runoff created by mandates for corn-based ethanol. Ethanol is green energy, good energy —
never mind that such biofuels drive up food prices, increase hunger around the world and damage the environment in their own
way.
The Alternative, Non-Truther Reading of Rush's
Oil-Rig Rant. [Scroll down] In this paragraph, Limbaugh is not saying SWAT teams are proof that the
Obama administration is blowing things up, but proof that the Obama administration thinks there's a possibility that the
explosion could have been eco-terrorism, and is guarding against it on other rigs. This is not a totally outlandish
thought, as the FBI deemed eco-terrorism the nation's biggest domestic threat as recently as 2008.
Gulf spill draws flock of lawyers.
Teams of lawyers from around the nation are mobilizing for a gargantuan legal battle over the massive Gulf Coast oil
spill, filing multiple lawsuits in recent days that together could dwarf the half-billion dollars awarded in the
Exxon Valdez disaster two decades ago.
Drill, Barry, Drill. The
Energy Information Administration has determined that offshore drilling within the USA's Exclusive Economic
Zone has a 99.999 percent safety rate, meaning that only .0001 percent of extracted oil has been spilled.
In fact, natural seepage leaks far more oil into the oceans than man-made spills do, according to a joint study
by NASA and the Smithsonian Institution. The study found that natural underground leaks put an average of
62 million gallons of oil a year into the world's oceans. Offshore drilling? Just 15 million
gallons a year. Tanker spills leak 37 million gallons a year. Just as importantly, major
spills seem to produce terrifying visuals at the time, but little if any lasting ecological damage.
Lessons From the
Gulf Blowout: [Scroll down] It will take weeks to years of uncontrolled leakage, before
this spill comes close to previous highs, such as...
• Santa Barbara Channel oil platform blowout (1969): 90,000 barrels off the California coast;
• Mega Borg tanker (1990): 121,400 barrels in the Gulf of Mexico off Galveston, TX;
• Exxon Valdez tanker (1989): 250,000 barrels along 1,300 miles of untouched Alaska shoreline;
• Ixtoc 1 oil platform blowout (1979): 3,500,000 barrels in Mexico's Campeche Bay;
• Saddam Hussein oil field sabotage (1991): 857,000,000 barrels in Kuwait;
• Natural seeps in US waters: 1,119,000 barrels every year from natural cracks in the seafloor.
Can One Spill Shut Down Gulf
Drilling? Never letting a crisis go to waste, liberals have advanced the idea that all drilling
in the ocean should be stopped and no new drilling allowed.
Boat
captain: Thunderous hiss before Deepwater Horizon blew. First a geyser of mud and gas
erupted on the Deepwater Horizon with a thunderous hiss, followed about two minutes later by a "green flash"
and deafening concussion, the captain of a boat parked beside the rig said Tuesday [5/11/2010].
Undersea blowout fail-safe devices
not 100%. The mechanism designed as a fail-safe protection against undersea blowouts can't
always shut off modern deep-water wells and tests to ensure it will work are unreliable, according to
government records and drilling experts.
Avoiding the slick spots. The
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is a perplexing beast. While the agency remains hellbent on
regulating colorless, odorless and likely harmless greenhouse gas emissions, it has been utterly incapable of
living up to its name with respect to the Gulf oil spill. Not only was the EPA caught entirely
unprepared for the oil spill, but also last week it actually tried to interfere with BP's efforts to use a
chemical called Corexit to speed up dispersal of the oil. When the EPA told BP that it should use a less
toxic chemical, BP rightly ignored the order because it's the oil, not the dispersant (stupid) that is the
real threat to the environment, and there is no better option than the detergentlike Corexit.
The Editor says...
How does the EPA presume to have the authority to tell BP what to do in international waters?
Obama plugging the wrong holes in BP Disaster?
[Scroll down] President Barack Obama's take on the ongoing environmental disaster is "Plug the d---
hole!" His order to the minions who were briefing him on the latest Deep Water Horizon horrors.
Plugging the d--- hole could be a Freudian slip for Obama, who has, figuratively speaking, at least may be
plugging other big holes in the BP story: The largest shareholder (institutional of BP stock in the
USA at least is Vanguard Mutual Funds). The Barack Obama family has Vanguard funds as their
top — in fact — only investment in funds. It was Michelle Obama's favorite
mutual fund, too.
Tinkering With the
Truth. President Obama used about an hour of his press conference yesterday [5/27/2010] trying to explain
how — in spite of his handlers' having spent the past month trotting out the Secretary of the
Interior, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Commandant of the Coast Guard to be the faces of the
Gulf of Ocean oil spill — that he, Barack Obama, had been personally on top of this situation from
the moment the drilling rig exploded until that very moment.
BP's
a Selfish Company, Working With a Do Nothing Administration. There are many things we just do not
know concerning the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon 45 miles off the coast of Louisiana. We do not
know just how much oil has really been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Some estimates of the flow of oil
exploding from the sea floor put the volume equal to the Exxon Valdez spill — every four days.
Obama's Criminal Negligence of
Louisiana: There is no excuse, none at all, for this administration to have sat so long on Gov.
Bobby Jindal's request for permission, or waiver of permitting requirements, to build sand berms/sand islands
to block the oil from Louisiana's coast. The lack of response borders on criminal negligence.
Louisiana's
Jindal: Where's Obama? As frustration with the federal response grows, Louisiana's
governor lashes out at the feds for doing little except blame BP for the Gulf oil spill. Meanwhile,
Congress sees a chance to raise your gas taxes.
Obama's
listless federal government. When a national calamity strikes like the Deepwater oil disaster,
it's natural to look to the commander in chief for answers. But President Obama has felt the heat even
more than past Presidents because, to his core, he's pushed the idea of government as the go-to for help.
Now, the gaping hole in the Gulf of Mexico has revealed that government doesn't know best. In fact, it
doesn't even know at all. And because of that fact, the vaunted federal government has been missing
in action.
Obama to Suspend Arctic Drilling.
President Obama will announce on Thursday [5/27/2010] a suspension of all applications for offshore oil
drilling in the Arctic through the remainder of the year, an Alaska senator said late Wednesday. The
decision essentially extends an informal moratorium that Mr. Obama had set shortly after the BP accident on
April 20 that led to the spewing of millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
The
Drill Is Gone. An administration never enthusiastic about offshore drilling is using the Gulf
oil spill as an excuse to suspend Arctic exploration. Who could've seen that coming? Now we'll
be more dependent on foreign oil.
Obama's oily Katrina.
Back in 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama critiqued the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.
"There is not a sense of urgency out of this White House and this administration," he declared, two years
after the disaster struck. Now, more than a month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank,
with a massive oil spill making landfall on the Gulf coast, Louisiana's Gov. Bobby Jindal is the one calling
for "more urgency." The only rush in Washington is over where to shift the blame.
Who
Is Really To Blame For This Blowout? Here's my question: Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet
of water in the first place? Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has
driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet
and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in
rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama's
tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.)
Environmentalists with
Oil on Their Hands. BP now drills in 5,000 feet of ocean because these better alternatives
have been foreclosed to the oil industry. Environmental groups have effectively stymied this safe and
relatively easy production of oil in the name of some higher but more nebulous good. Where they once
rationalized their campaign against oil companies based upon the threat of environmental degradation, environmental
groups now use the increasingly dubious claims of global warming to justify their obstruction.
Yes, the Gulf Spill
Is Obama's Katrina. As President Obama prepares to return to the Gulf Coast Friday, he is receiving
increasing criticism for his handling of the oil spill. For good reason: Since the Deepwater Horizon
rig blew up on April 20, a lethargic Team Obama has delayed or blown off key decisions requested by state
and local governments and left British Petroleum in charge of developing a plan to cap the massive leak.
BP's Hypocritical Green Image is Covered With
Oil. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a disaster and everyone understands accidents happen.
What they expect is quick acceptance of blame and then responsibility. British Petroleum handling of the event
is a public relations nightmare and evidence of technological incompetence. Instead of taking full and
complete blame they tried to blame subcontractors; they made lame excuses about the amount of oil and water
volume; split hairs when they said they would pay all 'legitimate' claims...
Obama
defends handling of gulf oil spill. As BP continued its effort to gain control of its untamed
deep-sea well, President Obama announced more restrictions on offshore oil drilling Thursday [5/27/2010]
and insisted his administration is firmly in charge of the response to the spill, now believed to be the
largest in U.S. history.
Obama:
Fed Gov't in Charge of Efforts to Contain Oil Spill, Not BP. In his most extensive remarks about
the Gulf oil spill, President Obama pushed back today [5/27/2010] against critics who say his administration has
been less than fully engaged in efforts to contain the damage and stressed that the federal government is
in charge.
Where
Was Obama's Plan A for the Spill? Do something, baby, do something: That's the cry from Obama
supporters and opponents alike as the oil keeps gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. The political firestorm
kept growing yesterday [5/26/2010], with supporter James Carville ranting that the administration has been
"lackadaisical" and "naive" in its response to the disaster. He urged it to rapidly "move to Plan B."
But that suggests there was ever a Plan A.
Obama Revises History.
[Scroll down] In fact, the federal government had a plan to combat major spills in the Gulf that
relied on fire booms to carry out in situ burns. But when the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred,
the government realized that it did not actually possess any fire booms. It obtained one from a
company in Illinois and tried to borrow others from foreign governments. Meanwhile, the oil spread.
Owning
the spill. If President Obama's press conference yesterday was designed to calm grow ing public
concerns over his administration's mishandling of the Gulf oil spill, it didn't work. BP's deep-water
oil rig exploded and oil began gushing into the Gulf on April 20. ... 38 days later, the spill
has become the worst in US history — and ham-handed administration incompetence has now reached
such levels that the "Obama's Katrina" trope has begun to resonate.
Obama
cancels Gulf drilling projects. Just weeks after he opened up new areas to offshore drilling,
President Obama reversed course Thursday [5/27/2010] and suspended or canceled drilling projects in the
Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic and the Arctic, as promising signs emerged from BP's latest effort to plug
a gushing oil leak off the coast of Louisiana.
Big Spat
on Rig Preceded Explosion. More details emerged Wednesday [5/26/2010] about a disagreement
between employees of rig operator Transocean Ltd. and oil giant BP PLC over how to begin shutting down
the well just hours before it exploded in the Gulf of Mexico last month.
CNN's
Henry Sees Obama Moment that Would've Driven Media Mockery of Bush. Shortly before 2 PM
CDT, CNN"s Ed Henry cited a dismissive remark President Barack Obama made during his visit to Louisiana
which could undermine his "I feel your pain" message, "but," Henry observed live from a beach in Grand
Isle: ["]If George W. Bush had made a comment like that along the beach after Katrina, you
can imagine the kind of criticism he might get.["]
A GOP
Oil Trap. Oil slick or no, our energy needs remain the same. Americans get that, which
is why even amid 24/7 slick coverage a CNN poll found a majority still supports offshore drilling.
That number will rise with gas prices. The left is already using this to impose the restrictions
it has long desired. President Obama yesterday [5/27/2010] said he'd continue a deep water
moratorium and announced a suspension in new Arctic drilling. That's surely just a start.
Slick,
Real Slick. Democrats have finally gotten around to blaming the Bush administration for the
Gulf oil disaster. We wonder when this administration will take responsibility for anything.
Drowning
in the spill. If the top kill doesn't work, BP will have to drill relief wells, which
will take months. When he's irked over that, presumably Obama's advice will be "to drill
faster." Of course, BP already has all the incentive it needs to staunch the flow. It's
liable for the cleanup costs and has already lost about 30 percent of its market capitalization.
CNN Report: Is
BP Hiding Dead Wildlife From Media Coverage? Volunteers and environmental experts are working
tirelessly in the Gulf Coast to clean up the effects of the BP oil spill, including saving wildlife covered
by the leaked crude oil. But how many animals thus far have died due to the environmental disaster?
Enemy of the States.
The federal government appears to be becoming more a parasite than a protector to the several states that organized
its creation. The state of Louisiana has two enemies at present: One is an immense oil slick, and the
other is a federal government doing its utmost to make matters worse. While the oil slick is lifeless (as
well as life-choking) and is moved by wind and wave with no course of its own, the federal enemy is willfully
obstructionist, uncaringly incompetent, and hopelessly uncoordinated.
Pelosi
blames Bush administration for BP oil spill. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., blamed
the Bush administration for any lack of oversight leading up to the Gulf oil spill. The Obama administration,
on the other hand, is blameless.
Barack Obama's credibility hits rock bottom after oil spill and
Sestak scandal. George W Bush's unpopularity and perceived incompetence was encapsulated by the
way he dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Candidate Obama branded it "unconscionable incompetence".
Central to Obama's appeal was his promise to be truly different. His failure to achieve that is now at the core
of the deep disappointment Americans feel about him.
BP admits 'top kill' has
failed. BP failed again on Saturday [5/20/2010] to plug a runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico with
heavy drilling mud and cement, marking another setback in its efforts to stop the worst oil spill in American
history. After pumping mud into the damaged well shaft for three days, the London-based oil giant conceded
that the procedure, known as the top kill, was unlikely to work in the mile-deep waters off the Louisiana coast.
Obama: I'm
responsible (for zilch). It was yet another performance of the "full responsibility" flimflam. In a
rare appearance before his adoring fans in the press corps yesterday [5/27/2010], President Obama repeatedly took "full
responsibility" for the blundering efforts to clog up the geyser of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico
coating everything in sight.
W.H. lacks slick spokesperson.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano visits the Gulf. But sometimes "energy czar" Carol Browner
is the one making the rounds of TV news shows. Energy Secretary Steven Chu is often mentioned, but rarely
seen.
Hurricanes
and the BP Disaster: NOAA has put out a fact sheet on what they think will happen if a hurricane
hits the in the area of the spill. Short answer, we really don't know.
The Agitator-in-Chief.
On Friday, May 28, the president finally managed to make his second trip to the oil-plagued area nearly
forty days after the disaster occurred. The president spent only about three hours on site. Three
hours! Where were the meetings with the families of those who were killed when the oil rig exploded?
Could not a precious hour or two have been spent with those grieving and those who were angry over the explosion?
Gulf
Oil Crisis: Questions for Spike Lee and Kanye West. I wonder when Spike Lee is going to
make a film about the oil spill like the one he did about Katrina, with the underlying theme being that New
Orleans was abandoned by the essentially racist federal government led by President Bush. I also wonder
when we'll hear from Kanye West, who raged on national television that "George Bush doesn't care about black
people."
Department of Justice investigating
spill. Calling the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico the "greatest environmental disaster of its
kind," President Barack Obama on Tuesday [6/1/2010] vowed to prosecute those responsible. "If our laws
were broken, leading to this death and destruction, my solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible
to justice," Obama said. The president delivered those words as Attorney General Eric Holder announced
a federal investigation into whether criminal or civil laws were violated in connection with the spill.
Mr. Holder certainly is dragging his feet
about investigating other
stuff.
Eric Holder's oily
mission. As with terrorism, so with an unprecedented ecological disaster: The Obama
administration's most definitive response is to send in the lawyers. ... Mr. Holder and President Obama
both made a big show of wanting to "bring those responsible to justice." That's fine, but how about
saving the marshes and beaches before worrying about affixing legal blame?
'Owning' the oil
spill, White House tries to run away. I think we can take this information as proof positive
that the administration is scared witless about the BP oil spill and its potential to destroy Barack Obama.
They are panicking and seeking desperately to get out from under any blame associated with this environmental
catastrophe.
Obama Plays the Credit Card.
[Scroll down] Ronald Reagan, self-consciously playing off Truman, put a conspicuous plaque on his desk
as well. It said: "There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the
credit." Judging by Barack Obama's press conference remarks about the Louisiana oil spill, he has
fashioned the obverse slogan: "There is no limit to the credit you can get if you don't care who did
the accomplishing."
Team Obama's 'Real
Time' Bureaucracy. Contrary to [Carol] Browner's insistence, the government players involved
in the Gulf oil crisis have no track record of making real-time decisions, have been thoroughly taken to
task for not being on the case since day one, and have been mired in mind-numbing bureaucracy. This
is because the White House and its West Wing are packed to the rafters with lawyers, politicians, and
academics. These are the type of people associated with paper-shuffling, assembling blue-ribbon
committees, holding hearings, and filing lawsuits — not getting things done in "real time."
Obama's Leadership
by Litigation: [Scroll down] Working backwards, rather than demonstrate action on the
gulf oil spill, i.e. approving Bobby Jindal's request to form barrier islands or to approve the Saudi
mid-ocean cleanup method, Obama is stalling on those suggestions and many more — but he is
willing to file a lawsuit against BP.
Obama doesn't
have a clue. Conservatives are so enraged at Obama's socialism and radicalism that they are
increasingly surprised to learn that he is incompetent as well. The sight of his blithering and blustering
while the most massive oil spill in history moves closer to America's beaches not only reminds one of Bush's
terrible performance during Katrina, but calls to mind Jimmy Carter's incompetence in the face of the hostage
crisis. America is watching the president alternate between wringing his hands in helplessness and
pointing his finger in blame when he should be solving the most pressing environmental problem America
has faced in the past 50 years.
Liberals Say Gulf Oil Spill Will Help Them in
November. I turned on the TV Sunday morning [5/30/2010] just in time to hear TIME Magazine's
Joe Klein on the "Chris Matthews Show" claim that Obama's approval ratings won't be affected negatively by
the Gulf oil spill. He is "incredibly lucky in his opposition — the oil spill is a great
example," said Klein. "The Republicans look worse on that than the Democrats do."
Don't be fooled
by Obama's 'incompetence'. It is a tremendous mistake to think that the disaster in the Gulf of
Mexico will help convince Americans of Barack Obama's incompetence. Obama's true agenda is so insidious
that even his inability to handle a crisis serves his greater strategy. And that strategy has a name:
it is the Cloward-Piven Strategy. ... If the oil spill in the Gulf manages to destroy the fishing and tourist
industries in that region, shut down oil drilling, raise the price of oil and of food all over the country, and
bring more and more Americans to a financial breaking point and thus dependent on food stamps and other government
programs, Obama and Co. will smile and nod at one another as the Cloward-Piven strategy hums merrily along.
Is there a political
reason behind the Obama Administration's foot-dragging? [Scroll down] Did the administration
early on make a conscious effort to stone-wall the clean up efforts in an attempt to use scenes of dirty birds and
blobs of oil to sway public opinion in favor of its green, cap-and-trade agenda that's looked all but dead in
congress? Could much of the environmental and economic destruction been averted by an aggressive clean-up
and containment effort?
With DoJ threatening prosecution, Obama slams BP for 'lawyering up'.
On his trip to the Gulf today [6/4/2010], President Obama criticized BP for spending millions of dollars on a new public
relations campaign addressing the Gulf oil crisis, and also for planning to pay $10 billion in dividends
to investors. "They've got a moral and legal obligation to the Gulf," Obama said, according to a White
House pool report.
Obama to
Pacific Rim: drop dead. [Scroll down] Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the past month President
Obama has been in the country, making many, many pronouncements about the oil leak. You know what effect that
has had on the spill? Absolutely zero.
Report:
Obama knew from the beginning that oil leak would likely last months. The real disgrace here is
why, if he really did know right away that this was the oil equivalent of an asteroid strike, he didn't scramble
some sort of all-hands-on-deck emergency operation to protect the coastline. Remember, Jindal reportedly
requested five million feet of hard boom back on May 2, long after Obama (according to Wolffe) knew about
the magnitude of the disaster. By May 24, not even 800,000 feet had arrived. What happened?
Arrogance in the Executive.
[Scroll down slowly] The blowout in the Gulf occurred in "ultra deep water." Drilling for oil at a
depth of a mile or so below the surface became economically feasible about a decade ago, when the price of oil
shot up above $20 a barrel. Still, it was a considerable technical challenge to go from deepwater drilling
(depths of about 1,000 feet) to ultra deep (5,000 feet). Until the explosion on April 20 that
destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig, oil companies had experienced only one significant spill in drilling hundreds
of wells in the Gulf over a period of more than 60 years, including many in ultra deep water. It has
taken just one disaster to call an exceptionally good safety record into question. After the eventual
postmortem, we may decide that wisdom dictates a long moratorium on ultra deep water drilling.
Or not. It may be possible to learn quickly from whatever mistakes were made in this
instance and move on.
Coast Guard Logs Show Administration Knew the
Extent of the Oil Spill within 24 Hours. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), top Republican on the
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released documents Thursday night showing the Coast Guard
recorded on April 21 — less than 24 hours after the Deepwater Horizon explosion — the
magnitude of the oil leak disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Obama Fails the Test
of Office. It has been six weeks since the Deepwater Horizon blowout. And what has the
Obama administration accomplished in a time period fourteen times longer than that granted to Bush [after
Hurricane Katrina struck]? Well, we've seen Obama frowning. Obama sticking his fingers into the
sand. Obama saying he's frustrated. Obama telling us a heartwarming story about his daughter. ... That's
it. That's the sum total of accomplishment by Barack Obama, his administration, his party, and his
bureaucracy, in facing his first major domestic crisis.
Obama to use Oil Spill Disaster to renew push
for Cap & Trade. Almost as if it had been created for him, it seems that the BP oil spill couldn't
have come at a better time for Obama. Just when The Obama was cogitating over how to reintroduce the Energy
Cap & Tax bill — which will skyrocket energy rates so that many of us will not be able to
afford basic electricity — the BP oil spill occurred. This was most convenient for Obama and
his plans to continue gutting the USA and its citizens.
Lighten
up on the BP hatefest. The lesson of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is not that we need to stop
offshore drilling. We can't. ... Besides, even if the U.S. banned offshore drilling, or deepwater
drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, other nations likely would not. Any hope of achieving energy
independence would go down the drain.
Obama
brings Nixonian twist to oil spill. Nothing more fully reveals the essential character of a person
or group than a crisis. Thus, the ecological and political catastrophe of the Gulf oil spill has exposed
a breathtaking level of incompetence, political opportunism and mendacity at the heart of the Obama
administration. ... Despite [many] warnings, over the next two months Obama attended Democratic fundraisers,
played golf, hosted basketball and football teams at the White House and delivered commencement speeches.
Two weeks passed before he could be bothered to go to Louisiana.
Obama
and the Gulf: Two Toxic Gushers. While most Americans' attention is focused on the
oil-spill tragedy unfolding off the shores of Louisiana, back in Washington, Team Obama is pressing forward,
determined not to waste this crisis and use it to instill fear in Americans and loathing for all oil drilling
and energy independence. Their goal is to scare Americans into support for 2000+ pages of flawed, and
openly corrupt, Waxman-Markey energy legislation.
Apollo 13, the Gulf Oil Spill,
and BP. Nothing in the government's response to the blowout explosion on the Deepwater Horizon
and its aftermath bears any resemblance to the response to the Apollo 13 situation by NASA and its mission
control team at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.
Obama's
drilling plans hurt more than help. President Obama's recent announcement ordering the suspension
of work on 33 exploratory wells currently being drilled in the Gulf of Mexico was no surprise. The moratorium
on new permits for deepwater wells was expected, as was the cancellation of a lease sale in the western Gulf of
Mexico. Even the revocation of a proposed lease sale off the coast of Virginia and the halt to planned
exploration off the coast of Alaska weren't unexpected in the wake of the disaster.
Butt
Stops Here. Scapegoating has become a hallmark of this administration. Certainly BP was
responsible for the safe operation and maintenance of Deepwater Horizon. But after an accident in
federal waters the federal government, which has a plan to save the entire planet from greenhouse gases, had
no plan to save the Gulf from a single gushing well, with the possible exception of finger-pointing. In
this administration, "BP" stands for "buck-passing."
Barack Obama's Day Off.
[Scroll down] Take more recently the Gulf oil spill. As the gooey stuff belched to the ocean surface,
as it spread in ever-widening reddish-brown circles, as it threatened coastlines and bayous, Mr. Obama showed no
sense of urgency. We're left scratching our heads over how Mr. Obama could be shooting hoops and golfing
and flitting about when plenty of ground time in Louisiana and along the Gulf Coast was called for. ... Mr.
Obama's detachment is curious, given that he was one of the chorus who castigated George W. Bush for his
alleged inaction in the aftermath of Katrina.
The Editor says...
The most obvious explanation for the lethargic response is that President Obama wants the
oil spill to be as bad as possible, in order to advance his anti-capitalist anti-oil agenda.
Obama
saw smoke but didn't buy a fire truck. While fault for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
clearly belongs to private entities, chief among them BP and Transocean, responsibility for the resulting
damage is shared by an incompetent government. More than one presidential administration deserves
blame, but the lion's share goes to President Barack Obama's.
Are
BP Subcontractors Really Working? [WKRG-TV] watched a clean-up crew hired by BP to pick up tar balls
in Orange Beach and found out the men only worked about an hour within a four-hour time-frame. We put our
cameras up on a hotel balcony and watched the men gawk at sunbathers, talk on cell phones and joke around more
than actually working.
Who
Does President Obama Really Hate? [Scroll down] Every president has to draw a line in the
sand. Every president has to determine just how far he's willing to be pushed around. Every
president has to decide who his enemies are, and then face them down. President Obama has decided that
his real enemies aren't Iranian genocidal dictators, anti-Semitic reporters or Muslim terrorists. His
real enemies are conservatives and corporations. How can we tell? From his rhetoric.
Obama's Gulf
Fix: As oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, what the region needs most is the
nation's best experts to plug the well and clean up the mess. It doesn't need Justice Department
prosecutors threatening criminal charges. Yet that's exactly what it's getting.
Hey,
Mr. President, Pick Up the Phone! Since [the Gulf oil spill] began in April, President Obama has
had plenty of time to do a great number of things. Just last night, for example, he attended his second
"music party" in less than a week. He was at the Ford's Theatre's "Spirit of America" celebration in
Washington. — The gala event will be broadcast ABC on July 2. He also hosted Paul
McCartney on Wednesday. The former Beatle serenaded the president's "Michelle" after receiving the
Gershwin Prize from the Library of Congress on Wednesday. Yet just this past weekend BP's CEO Tony
Hayward told the BBC that the two men haven't spoken directly since the rig exploded on April 20.
President Obama Is Making a Fool Of Himself.
The truth is that Obama's performance with regard to the spill, and that of the federal government generally,
has been terrible. They had a plan for dealing with Gulf spills, but didn't follow it. They were
slow to recognize the severity of the spill; it took nine days before the feds even offered assistance to
British Petroleum. A dozen federal agencies are involved in the response, which reportedly has led
to confusion and delay.
Is
Obama at a Tipping Point? Presidencies rise and fall far more by their response to great events
than to the event itself.
The "Say Anything" Power Grab.
As Utah Sen. Robert Bennett said, "It was very clear there were not the votes in the Senate to do a cap-and-trade
bill and that the whole process was going to die. Then we got the oil spill, and all of a sudden,
somehow there is some connection between the EPA and the oil spill."
Should the
Obamas vacation on the Gulf Coast this year? Last August, President Barack Obama, his wife
Michelle, and daughters Sasha and Malia, enjoyed Martha's Vineyard, a Massachusetts island favored by the
Clintons and the Kennedys and legendary for attracting members of the liberal elite. Now however, with
the BP oil spill threatening beaches from Louisiana to Florida, Obama has been making day trips to the Gulf
show his concern, and he recently took a cue from Gulf state governors and implored Americans to travel there.
Obama Meets Toto.
Two historic events happened in the Gulf of Mexico this spring: Unimaginable amounts of accidental oil rose
from a hole one mile below the water's surface. Bigger than that, the federal government was exposed as the
Wizard of Oz, unable to do anything about it.
The
biggest spill may not be the biggest disaster. [Scroll down] The impact of Deepwater
Horizon will be difficult to predict because there never has been a sustained spill at such a depth. The
good news is that the oil has to rise through 1500 metres of water, and is exposed to the elements for days
or weeks before hitting the shore. The most toxic components — benzene, toluene, ethyl
benzene and xylenes — are likely to dissolve in the water column and become greatly diluted, or
evaporate at the surface.
CNN's
Sanchez Highlights 'Big Oil' Cash to Republicans, Omits Obama. On Wednesday's Rick's List,
CNN's Rick Sanchez twice highlighted how "several Republicans want to keep the cap on what oil companies
pay for spills at $75 million" and how apparently that's about "how much they [oil companies] spend on
campaign contributions to politicians each year," but omitted that President Obama was the top recipient of
money from BP during the 2008 election cycle.
McConnell: 'Major Part' of Democrats' Cap-Trade
Bill 'Essentially Written by BP'. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that BP,
the energy company responsible for the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, helped craft the bill proposed
by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) that would tax businesses for carbon emissions and
raise the cost of fuel for American consumers.
Bachmann:
Obama is the Worst President in United States History. It's an infantile response for the
president to point blame at BP when the president has given over full authority to BP to deal with and
manage the cleanup. If the president wanted to, he could intervene and he clearly hasn't.
Obama and the Trouble
With Voting 'Present'. Barack Obama may now be president, but at times he appears to be merely
present. That has been the case with his response to the environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf
of Mexico. The president was late recognizing the disaster's magnitude, late in visiting the region, late
in approving requests by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and late in feigning outrage. He has never offered an
independent plan to stop the leak. Mr. Obama also seems disinterested in hearing from experts about
the spill.
Here's
The Real Reason America Refused International Help On The Oil Spill. According to Foreign
Policy, thirteen entities that had offered the U.S. oil spill assistance within about two weeks of the
Horizon rig explosion. They were the governments of Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland,
Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and
the United Nations. The U.S. response — Thank you, but no thank you, we've got it.
A Leak in the Presidency.
[Scroll down] A president who was not a narcissist might have taken a very different tack on the Deepwater
Horizon spill: Rather than risking his political capital and popularity by taking responsibility for the
clean-up, he would emphasize that government's capacities in the situation were limited but that government was
doing what it could. He would inform Gulf Coast residents whose lives and businesses have been disrupted
what federal resources are available to help them rather than looking for people to fire or asses to kick.
In short, a wise and non-narcissistic president would not have made the issue about himself.
Skimmer Boats
Available. No Interest. With millions of gallons of oil needing to be cleaned up —
and with more being added to the mix every day — oil skimming boats are one of the top priorities.
Four hundred are working now and they're barely making a dent. Officials from four Gulf states are begging
for more skimmer boats to protect beaches and delicate inlets. So, you might think BP and the Coast Guard
would be interested in a proposal from a Dallas businessman to bring as many 25 oil clean up boats to the Gulf.
But Fred McCallister says he all he's hearing is "radio silence."
Are
unions impeding oil cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico? President Obama is impeding clean-up
efforts in the Gulf by kowtowing to unions and members of the American maritime industry, critics have charged
in recent days. At issue is the president's refusal to waive the Jones Act, a century-old law that
effectively bars foreign-owned ships from moving between U.S. ports, a necessary component of participating
in the cleanup effort.
First things first. President
attended fundraiser during Gulf memorial service. According his official schedule,
President Obama did not attend the May 25 memorial service in Jackson, Mississippi for the
workers who died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion because he was en route to a fundraiser for
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, in San Francisco.
Environmentalists give Barack Obama
a pass on oil spill. Some say there's little doubt that if a spill like the one in the
Gulf took place on former President George W. Bush's watch, environmental groups would have unleashed
an unsparing fury on the Republican in the White House. For their liberal ally, Obama, they seem
willing to hold their tongues.
O's true
Gulf goof: No one has ever suggested grounding the entire airline industry after an airplane crash.
The US economy needs a robust energy sector if it is to recover. And that won't be had through
political posturing.
Problem-Solvers and
Butt-Kickers. [Scroll down] From the first gushings of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig
disaster, we have seen our president continuing to celebrate the presidential perks, gushing himself over
the musical talents of Paul McCartney and the basketball talents of the Duke championship team. Yet
it took President Obama twelve days to travel to Louisiana to view the hemorrhaging oil along the gulf coast.
Why
Isn't That Maine Boom Being Deployed to the Gulf? As the oil spill crisis has worsened,
members of the public and media have seized upon various ways the government could be doing more to either
plug the hole or alleviate the environmental damage. One such story has described boom manufactured
by an Auburn, Maine, packaging company called Packgen that's been sitting in storage waiting to be delivered
to the Gulf. Four weeks ago, in four days, Packgen manufactured 80,000 feet of boom, though neither the
government nor BP had placed any orders for boom with his company.
Obama's
Jimmy Carter moment tonight. When that oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico on
April 20 — killing 11 and flooding the ocean with millions of gallons of
crude — many proclaimed the crisis had the potential to be President Obama's Jimmy Carter
moment. The 444-day Iranian hostage crisis eluded resolution for Carter and made his administration
look powerless.
The Editor says...
Really? Name three people who made such a proclamation as early as April 20. The
Carter / Iran hostages comparisons didn't start until Obama had dragged his feet for six weeks.
Spill
Response Not About Oil, But Snake Oil. Either the government knows how to stop the oil spill or
they don't. If they know how to stop it, then why have they let thousands of barrels of oil per day
keep gushing out, for weeks on end? All they have to do is tell BP to step aside, while the government
comes in to do it right. If they don't know, then what is all this political grandstanding about
keeping their boot on the neck of BP, the attorney general of the United States going down to the Gulf to
threaten lawsuits — on what charges was unspecified — and President Obama showing up in
his shirt sleeves?
The
Last Straw. 'Even though I'm president of the United States, my power is not limitless," the
president told Grand Isle, La., locals in a video released Friday [6/11/2010]. "So I can't dive down
there and plug the hole. I can't suck it up with a straw. All I can do is make sure that I put
honest, hardworking, smart people in place ... to implement this thing." If only that were true.
We have the secretary of the interior caught in a lie about experts endorsing a six-moth moratorium on
offshore drilling that will do more damage to the Gulf economy than the Deepwater spill itself. Has
anyone seen the FEMA director in the Gulf or on the side of a milk carton? Where is Energy Secretary
Chu? Off polishing a solar panel somewhere perhaps?
That
Stench of Rotting Bull is Just Obama's Oval Office Speech. Putting aside for a second the fact
that this speech was given about 50 days late, last night's oval office speech proved that the President
is not ready to be honest with the American people. For the first 30 days of this crisis, President
Obama was ignoring the fact that the crisis existed, and now when he uses the oval office to give the people
confidence that he is on top of the problem he spends more time trying to sell cap and trade than discussing
capping the well. Essentially, he is still ignoring the crisis.
Crude
grab for power never ends. Once again, President Obama channels Oscar Wilde, who famously said
the only thing he couldn't resist was temptation. So it is with Obama's attempt to turn the Gulf oil
debacle into a reason why America should embrace his cap-and-tax energy policy. No matter the crisis,
Obama can't resist the temptation to exploit it in his quest to grow the government.
Obamas' Long Nose. I
read President Obama's Oval Office speech at an airport gate rather than seeing it on television, so I might
have misjudged its impact. But it struck me as uninspiring at best. Obama has been behind the
curve ever since the Deepwater Horizon exploded, and over the last week or two he has transparently tried to
stop the political bleeding with a series of symbolic acts. The problem is that these gestures won't do
anything to contain the oil that is already swirling around the Gulf...
Presiding
over disaster. Whatever he said, Mr. Obama confronted an insuperable difficulty. It's hard
for a President to speak effectively when there's nothing that he can do effectively. Mr. Obama's
earlier likening of the Gulf disaster to the attacks of 9/11 only heightened this dilemma. When George
Bush appeared at Ground Zero on 9/14 the attacks were over and retaliation was imminent. ... In the Gulf of
Mexico, by contrast, the oil continues to gush, and there's nothing the President can do about it.
Is Obama really
doing everything in his power to fight the spill? In his nationwide address last night on the
Gulf crisis, President Obama declared: "We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long
it takes." But at least one congressman isn't convinced, complaining that Mr. Obama won't pursue
promising solutions if it means bucking his union allies.
Obama's Tragic Union. My
colleague Hans Bader has [a] post up on the incomprehensible inanity of Obama's stunt of refusing foreign-flagged
help, as the Gulf Coast flounders ever deeper in oil that Team Obama could have stopped from reaching their shores
but did not for reasons of ideological rigidity.
International
Assistance Blocked by Regulations Obama Had The Authority To Waive. Crucial offers to
help clean up BP's oil spill "have come from Belgian, Dutch, and Norwegian firms that ... possess
some of the world's most advanced oil skimming ships." But the Obama Administration wouldn't
accept the help, because doing so would require it to do something past presidents have routinely
done: waive rules imposed by the Jones Act, a law backed by unions.
Louisiana cleanup crews
trampled pelican nests, official says. Crews cleaning up the oil in one Louisiana parish have
trampled the nests and eggs of birds including the brown pelican, which came off the endangered species list
last year, the head of the parish said Wednesday [6/16/2010].
Obama's
disastrous Gulf disaster team. [Scroll down] Politico's Mike Allen channels West
Wing thought this way: The Gulf gusher is a battle we can't win. So we had to make this
tragedy about something bigger than the liveshot of spewing oil. So having surrendered on the
challenge of stopping the oil, Obama tried to redirect the public's attention away from the spill and
onto the political debate over a cap-and-trade bill.
Barack Obama, Esq.
President Obama's crisis leadership is like that of trial lawyer. The Obama approach towards the
oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has the same storyline as television commercials which describe some sad
and poignant medical problems which plague many Americans and which then offer hope... sort of.
These sponsors do not offer any new cure or better treatment for heartrending diseases. Instead,
they say: We can sue someone for you.
Stuck
on Stupid: Obama's Czar Fetish. Here is the Obama Disaster Management Theory: In
times of crisis, you can never have enough unelected, un-vetted political appointees hanging around.
Nearly two months after the BP oil spill, the White House will now name an oil spill restoration point
person to oversee recovery efforts in the Gulf of Mexico. Too many czars have already spoiled this
administration's credibility. Might as well pile on another.
Louisianans say Bush did a better job on Katrina.
Louisianans believe that President George W. Bush did a better job handling the crisis in the state
than President Obama, 50 to 35. But most Louisianans think the oil spill is far more
critical than Hurricane Katrina.
Cap-And-Trick:
President Obama says the oil disaster proves the need to get off fossil fuels. ... With an abundance of hand
gestures, the president didn't really say in his speech Tuesday night. He did say fossil fuels were bad
and green energy is good, but the people of the Gulf states don't need wind turbines right now. Contrary
to Obama's assertions, our "addiction" to foreign oil no more caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill than any
addiction to nuclear energy caused the reactor accident at Three Mile Island.
Seizing
Justice. [Scroll down] The funds are to be distributed by a third party who supposedly
will be nonbiased. That party is Kenneth Feinberg, last seen serving as the administration's pay czar.
And that smell in the Gulf? It isn't the sulfurous odor of spilled crude. Just the rancid stench of
politics. Setting up the office of a pay czar, officially known as "special master for compensation,"
was another of this administration's many violations of the private sector.
Against
Gov. Jindal's Wishes, Crude-Sucking Barges Stopped by Coast Guard. Eight days ago, Louisiana
Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state's oil-soaked waters.
Today, against the governor's wishes, those barges sat idle, even as more oil flowed toward the Louisiana
shore.
Is the Oil Spill an Act of War?
How did the oil spill start? The mundane, if unlikely answer, is greed and human stupidity caused it.
I say "unlikely" for two reasons: The number of "fail-safe" protocols, techniques, and equipment that all
failed at the same time, and the all-too-convenient timing of the "accident." Before the Deepwater Horizon
fiasco, the Lieberman-Kerry "Cap-and-Trade" bill was stalled in Congress. With the loss of trillions of
dollars at stake, with the likely collapse of the CCX (Chicago Climate eXchange), and the "redistribution of
wealth" scenario coming apart, what to do, what to do?
Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill and Weather
Implications. [Scroll down] It is hard to believe stopping the oil is so difficult. Options
and ideas have come in from all over the world and they have either been ignored or ruled out. Why?
There is the obvious political gain of letting the spill get worse as leverage for cap and trade. But
what is BP doing? Why didn't Obama speak to BP CEO Tony Hayward immediately? Is it because BP
wants to capitalize on its alternate energies business?
Plumes, Pressure, and Cracks in the Sea
Floor. I don't wish to cause unnecessary alarm, so please keep in mind that what I'm about
to say is only my belief about what is transpiring in the Gulf of Mexico. These are undocumented
opinions; not proven facts. [However...] The Deepwater Horizon well erupted, not only at the
wellhead, but also along the drill-pipe, well below the seabed. The amount of oil and gas escaping
into the Gulf is much, much, higher than we've been told. The escaping oil and gas pressures involved
are incredible.
Another Trust Fund to Rob? In
1986 Congress created the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for events exactly like the Deepwater Horizon and
the Exxon Valdez oil spills. Since that law's enactment, we have been paying into that fund with each
gallon of gasoline, kerosene, Diesel oil and home heating oil we purchase. Why wasn't that fund tapped
on "Day One" of this spill? Where is it?
Heads Should Roll. The
only person who has been fired in the midst of the oil spill fiasco has been the former head of the
Minerals Management Service of the Department of the Interior. According to a June 17 editorial
in The Wall Street Journal, it is now clear that both the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, and the
White House energy "czar", Carol Browner, both lied to the nation regarding the recommendations by drilling
experts, alleging that they had agreed to a moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf. Browner, citing
the falsified recommendation to impose a moratorium, inserted after the memorandum had been received, said,
"No one's been deceived or misrepresented." She lied.
Mr. President, Focus on Capping,
Containing and Cleaning Up the Oil — Not Politics. In response to President Obama's
address to the nation, Thomas J. Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research issued the
following statement: "There is not one thing in the President's stated plans from the address
this evening that will cap, contain or expedite the cleanup of oil along the Gulf Coast.
Unfortunately, this President and his allies on Capitol Hill are using a rare and tragic accident as a
means to advance their political and anti-energy agenda on behalf of their special interest friends.
Video Indicates U.S. Government Aware of
Much Greater Volume of Gulf Gusher. Some of the truth has been hiding in plain sight since
May Day, at AL.com. Visit the government at work, specifically the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce (NOAA) meeting in "Warroom 1." They are intently
collecting data on what is apparently the 22nd, 23rd, or 24th of April. They are scientists for a
United States government which refused massive clean-up help from foreign sources then, and refuses such
help now — a U.S. government which seems to have lied to us, all this time.
While
the Gulf Burns, NeroObama Golfs. The Republican National Committee (RNC) announced a
new web video today in response to the President's decision to finally meet with BP executives after
58 days of delay.
Obama's Gulf War III.
What to do? Where to turn? Whom to blame? Who unfairly established this strange post-Katrina precedent
that the president of all people — not the mayor, not the governor, not private enterprise — is
ultimately responsible? We can all question that unfair premise, and did so in 2005, but critics like Obama
himself made the federal response to Katrina a campaign issue. And so here we are with him hoisted with his
own petard.
Has the President Lost His
Bearings? [Scroll down] The affair? Another in-poor-taste White House gala, which ought to, by now,
be billed by the press as tawdry let-them-eat-cake displays of President Obama's royal-laden, out-of-touch
disposition towards all things real-life. The president's Hey Jude moment occurred on June 3,
day 44 of the man-caused catastrophe in the Gulf. ... What was he thinking? This seems too mild a
question for the enormity of the statement Barack Obama made about his own transparently disordered
character. Any president who fails to see the vulgar implications of partying hearty while millions
of American citizens are seeing their already-imperiled livelihoods go completely kaput with every day of
gushing crude has lost touch with reality.
No
Leadership, No Solutions, No Clue. Obama didn't personally visit the Gulf until May 2,
more than 10 days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the catastrophic mile-deep oil gusher.
Original estimates on the extent of the oil spill drastically underestimated the enormity of the damage:
in late April the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) put the estimate at 5,000 barrels a
day, a number which originated with British Petroleum scientists. Within short order, government officials were
scrambling for more accurate assessments, and this week's estimate places the damage at 60,000 barrels
a day (2.5 million gallons).
Coast Guard Head Was Informed of Maine Oil Boom on 5/21. Auburn,
Maine, company Packgen has miles of oil spill containment boom on hand and has the capacity to produce upwards
of 100,000 additional feet of boom a day. That inventory and that capacity has been available to help the
Gulf Coast states for nearly a month. ... The curious case of the lack of interest in Packgen's boom gets
curiouser and curiouser.
Keeping
Up with the Jones Act. As a self-proclaimed "citizen of the world," Pres. Barack Obama should
have welcomed rather than spurned international assistance to prevent BP's underwater oil geyser from wrecking
the Gulf Coast. But spurn he did. Obama's failure to waive the Jones Act still maintains a sea
wall that blocks potentially helpful foreign ships from this tear-inducing mess.
A
Disaster for the Gulf Coast, A Disaster for Obama. The oil spill is an environmental catastrophe
for the Gulf Coast and a political disaster for Barack Obama. It is doing significant, and possibly
irreparable, damage to his presidency.
Leaks and Lies. For two months,
the Obama administration has been skirting the truth about its inept response to the April 20 BP Deepwater
Horizon drilling rig explosion and the resulting fire and oil spill. The O-Team claims it has been
"on top" of this problem since "day one." Reality shows that both the leaks and the lies
continue.
Feds refuse to provide spill
response plans for top oil companies drilling in Gulf. A month ago, as BP struggled to contain
an oil spill that it estimated at 200,000 gallons a day, the Press-Register reported that the company's federal
permit documents stated that it could handle a spill of 12.6 million gallons a day. BP's documents
also said that it could skim 17 million gallons of oil a day; thus far it has skimmed just 2 million
gallons in seven weeks.
About Those Relief Wells.
[Scroll down] The whole purpose of the relief well is to create an imbalance in the flow rates in the
relief well while drilling mud flows out of it and into the original well. While mud is rising in the
old well, it will be leaking out of the relief well at an immeasurable rate. Whoever is the drilling engineer
on the day they break through into the old well will really earn his money that day. Why don't we
know who he is?
How Do You Spell
Response? [Scroll down] Until now, President Obama has managed to evade taking personal responsibility
for any failure. The economy is all Bush's fault. The health care bill was written in Congress.
The housing crisis and stubbornly high unemployment are due to bankers and Wall Street firms. And the
mother of all scapegoats: The Gulf oil spill is 100% BP's problem. It's true that the president
did not personally cause the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig. ... What is inarguable, however, is
that the president got it 100% wrong as far as his own response to the disaster.
Many foreign offers to help with
oil spill still hanging. Some 28 foreign countries and international organizations have offered
help in responding to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but the bulk of those overtures remain "under consideration,"
according to a tally posted on the U.S. State Department's website. On May 10, for example, the
United Arab Emirates offered to send oil skimmers, dispersant and containment boom, along with human and
technical support, the website says. As of Friday [6/18/2010], no decision had been made on any of
those propositions, the site indicates.
Could the Obama Administration be Blocking Gulf Clean-up Efforts
Intentionally? At first blush this sounds like an outlandish question with a conspiratorial
twist. The corollary question goes like this: Is the Obama administration intentionally scaling
back clean-up efforts in the Gulf in an attempt to maximize the damage so Democrats in Congress will have
an excuse to take effective control over yet another major sector of our economy and impose crippling and
draconian new taxes on the American people?
Giuliani:
If This Was Bush, He Would Have Been Impeached By Now. "I know exactly what I would have done.
The first thing I would have done is to bring in outside experts who knew as much or more about this than BP
because I wouldn't trust just BP to run it for me. ... He hasn't called any of these people. Not a
single one. Go ask them. He has not talked to them, he doesn't like them, he doesn't trust
them. He's gone to academics because that's what he trusts."
Fallout From the Spill:
Our new Louisiana poll has a lot of data points to show how unhappy voters in the state are with Barack Obama's
handling of the oil spill but one perhaps sums it up better than anything else — a majority of voters there
think George W. Bush did a better job with Katrina than Obama's done dealing with the spill. 50% of
voters in the state, even including 31% of Democrats, give Bush higher marks on that question compared to
35% who pick Obama.
Capitalizing
on the Latest Crisis. The tragic Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been incompetently handled by a
White House, EPA and Corps of Engineers unable even to make timely decisions about constructing sand berms to
keep oil out of fragile estuaries. But the crisis is being exploited brilliantly to justify policy
initiatives like cap-tax-and-trade, EPA's "endangerment" decree, more bans on drilling, and mandatory fuel
switching to higher priced options, most notably wind and solar power.
[Emphasis added.]
Crude Stereotypes.
[Scroll down] The government's bumbling over the spill is obvious. Virtually no action was taken
the first two weeks, which earned Obama criticism even from the New York Times. Early on in the
crisis, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal requested 5 million feet of boom line from the federal government
to protect his state's coastline. To this day, he's only received 800,000 feet. The feds' primary
contribution to solving the crisis so far has been to dispatch bureaucrats in windbreakers to the Gulf Coast
to stand around peering at the oil through binoculars.
Is
the U.S. Now on a Slippery Slope to Tyranny? American democracy is being dismantled, piece by
piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned
about it. ... Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority
to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems
worthy of compensation? Nowhere. And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion
fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Where's FEMA? The
actual name of FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It is an agency within the Department
of Homeland Security the head of which is Secretary Janet Napolitano. If ever there was a Federal
Emergency in need of Management, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill sponsored by BP would be it, and you might
think that FEMA would be involved.
Most Experts Consulted Were Not Informed of Moratorium.
Eight of the 15 experts consulted by the Interior Department for a report about oil drilling safety on the
Outer Continental Shelf that was commissioned by President Barack Obama said they disagreed with the report's
call for a six-month halt on current deepwater offshore drilling operations — that was added to
the text of the report without their knowledge only after they had reviewed the text.
Each day,
another way to define worst-case for oil spill. [Scroll down] The estimated flow rate
keeps rising. The well is like something deranged, stronger than anyone anticipated. BP executives
last month said they had a 60 to 70 percent chance of killing it with mud, but the well spit the
mud out and kept blowing. The net effect is that nothing about this well seems crazy anymore.
A Short-Running Magic Show.
[Scroll down] "Even though I'm president of the United States, my power is not limitless," he stated.
"So I can't dive down there and plug the hole. I can't suck it up with a straw. All I can do is
make sure that I put honest, hard-working smart people in place to implement this thing." That's exactly
what he hasn't done. More than a month into the catastrophic spill, the Obama administration was still
asserting that BP was fully up to the job.
Obama Can't Outsource His Incompetence.
Following the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Congress enacted the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. The OPA amended the
Clean Water Act (CWA) §311, including changes to spill response authorities. The language is clear
and unambiguous: the President is mandated to take action to clean up the spill and mitigate or
prevent damage to the environment.
The Elephant and the
Obama Question. President Obama has famously asked what he could have done personally about
the oil spill. He said he could not swim down there and suck up the oil with a straw, and he's right.
But when Norway and the Netherlands offered to send the world's best oil skimming ships to the Gulf to help,
Mr. Obama turned them down flat. He did this entirely to protect his pals in the maritime shipping
unions.
Why haven't we already accepted other nations' offers of skimmers,
boom? Last Thursday morning, I wrote on the question of why the Obama administration had been
so slow to accept foreign aid on the oil spill. As it turns out, I was wrong to believe that it had
accepted much of the aid offered. Our State Department released [a] document, which contains a rundown of
what each country has offered, and whether or not we have accepted the aid. In most cases, the aid is
merely "under consideration."
No Less Than Treason. The BP
oil spill makes no sense in regards to lack of action in stopping it (where's the Navy) and the restrictions
on drilling. With offshore drilling shutdown what will happen to the drill rigs? They will go
elsewhere, they are too expensive to sit idle while they try to cope with changing rules of operation.
The jobs are gone along with the domestic oil supplies.
Resign...
or Change, Mr. President. While defending his own policies President Obama has routinely been
rude and sarcastic to his predecessor, George W. Bush. Yet Obama appears to be making the resident
of the previous White House look like a genius compared to his own serious missteps in office. Case in
point — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's performance and the communication of priorities on the
issue of oil rig safety in the Gulf of Mexico.
Government
Aggravated Tragedy. The Gulf of Mexico disaster has been made worse because of Washington acts
similar to Great Britain's tyrannical acts that caused our founders to rise up in rebellion in 1776. ... Foreign
companies, with extensive successful experience in oil spill cleanups, have offered their services but have
been refused by Washington. Why?
Federal Gov't Halts Sand Berm Dredging.
The federal government has shut down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf
of Mexico. The berms are meant to protect the Louisiana coastline from oil. But the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Department has concerns about where the dredging is being done.
The Editor says...
It is fairly obvious by now that the White House is doing everything possible to make the situation worse.
Big
Government is dying in the Gulf oil spill. It's not just millions of gallons of black gold spilling
into the Gulf of Mexico that are being lost. Also disappearing into watery despair are the last shreds
of credibility for progressive Big Government. It's Day 65 of the Deepwater Horizon spill and the only
hope of stopping the flow of thick, gooey crude remains the relief well being drilled by the private sector.
Governor Jindal:
Taking matters into our own hands. We are fighting a war. There is no doubt that the ongoing
BP oil spill is a full frontal assault on our Louisiana way of life. From the beginning of this disaster
more than 50 days ago, there have been many sorrowful sights of devastation in our wetlands and wildlife
habitats. But there also have been true heroes emerging in the battles to protect our coast.
What the
Gulf Oil Leak Tells Us. Throughout the 2008 campaign Barack Obama was portrayed as the
consummate intellect. No problem was too difficult for him to solve, and he could do anything
without breaking a sweat. Then came the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform incident and suddenly we
see a disaster that the "great intellect" can't deal with to save his life. Along with that have
appeared rumors that he has been throwing temper tantrums off camera, chain smoking, and otherwise behaving
in a manner to be expected from a spoiled child rather than a world leader.
An American Chernobyl?
The calamity in the Gulf has the markings of the disaster that led to the demise of the Soviet Union.
Our federal government led by our god-like president, an omnipotent structure in the starry eyes of many,
shows itself to be an incompetent, uncoordinated monster, capable only of interfering with productive efforts
to salvage our coastlines and livelihoods. The once-Olympian Obama is reduced to a sniveling nebbish
bemoaning his inability to suck it all up with a straw.
Obama
bureaucracy soils the Gulf. The Obama administration's red tape continues to tie the
hands of individuals seeking to mitigate the effects of the disastrous oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
It's a sign of how out-of-touch the O Force's priorities have become. Last week, the Department of
the Interior and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers teamed up to thwart efforts to build sand berms to protect
the fragile Louisiana coastline. The excuse given for federal intervention was that the state was about
to dredge sand too close to the Chandeleur Islands and that a bird habitat might also be affected. State
officials reacted with outrage, suggesting the federal claims were bogus.
Obama's
"Regime Change" of Socialist Control. With all the solutions available from the private sector
and from around the world since day one, to deal with the oil spill, President Obama has stalled on allowing
any of these going forward for the following reasons: [#1] To increase the power of government over
the private sector. To allow the private sector to solve the problem would defeat and undermine Obama's
assertion that only government and government-owned companies, bureaucracies and labor unions can provide the
solution. Obama sees the private sector as inherently evil, as reflected in the fact that he refused to meet
with BP to establish a working relationship with the company to cut through all the bureaucratic red tape.
The Gulf
needs engineers, not lawyers. Where are the engineering societies when we need them?
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar (a lawyer) asked engineers for advice on the Gulf oil spill and then
proceeded to ignore that advice. Now the administration has set up a commission to investigate the
event. This seven-person commission includes a majority of four lawyers, a biological oceanographer, a
professional environmentalist and a single engineer (who is actually a physicist). Although some have
experience with the aftermath of oil spills, none has any obvious or advertised experience with petroleum
engineering or engineering-failure investigations.
GOP:
Obama's Panel is Biased. The presidential commission investigating offshore drilling safety
and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill came under fresh fire Thursday [6/25/2010] with Republicans accusing
President Barack Obama of stacking it with environmental activists. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.,
charged the Obama administration with keeping oil and gas drilling experts off its seven-member commission
in favor of people who philosophically oppose offshore exploration.
How do you spell incompetence?
[Scroll down] Obama's incompetence is most graphically revealed by his handling of the tragedy in the
gulf. Eager to appear to be in control, nine days after the accident (April 29), he mentioned the
oil leak for the first time, saying he had ordered Secretary Salazar to complete a report within 30 days.
His first visit to the area was May 2, when he tried to convince the nation that he had been in charge
of the entire operation since day one.
The Oilers vs. The
Stealers. Barack Obama's soulful strolls along the stained beaches of Louisiana in recent days
have looked about as authentic as the photographs of Richard Nixon walking San Clemente Beach in dress shoes.
Ostensibly crouching down to investigate tar balls, Obama was more likely reviewing in his mind the shards of
his presidency. Even his tense apologists at MSNBC appear to be losing heart, comparing him to
Jimmy Carter.
Deepwater Horizon: A
Tragedy Four Decades in the Making. The incessant media and political chatter about the oil
spill overlook the broader context and a key culprit: the government. Federal policy of the last
40 years has increasingly denied access to domestic oil resources. BP is drilling for oil one mile
beneath the surface of the Gulf and 50 miles from the coast of Louisiana not because the U.S. has run
out of more easily recoverable oil, but because the federal government has erected off-limits signs across
energy-rich areas in western states, Alaska, and nearer to shore.
Day 68: Why
isn't the A-Whale in the Gulf yet? The A-Whale bills itself as the largest open-water oil skimmer in the world, and it's at least very
impressive. Originally an oil and ore tanker, the ship's owners recently refitted the ship to do exactly
the kind of work that the US so desperately needs in the Gulf of Mexico, and to do it on a vastly larger scale
than current operations can handle. According to the ship's project manager, the entire American effort
in 66 days has skimmed off 600,000 barrels of oil. The ship's owners claim that A-Whale
can skim 500,000 barrels a day.
System failures in offshore drilling processes.
There's a fairly scary history of past near-miss events on US offshore oil drilling facilities
[here]. One of the points here is that the
"Blow Out Preventer", the thing that apparently failed in April on the Deep Horizon's drilling facility, is
the absolute last line of defence -- things should not get that bad. Yet on a number of previous
occasions they did, implying that what happened this year was just statistics catching up: if you spend
too much time living on the edge, eventually you fall off.
Dictator Obama reaches Day 70 of his Gulf
Destruction. Through his actions involving apparent criminal mischief leading to the destruction
of entire ecosystems and their attendant wildlife — including but, not limited to human life and
livelihoods — Obama has placed himself firmly in the position of the most destructive and vicious
leader of the USA that America has ever witnessed.
Oil Messed Up. The most
breathtaking irony in the whole sorry oil spill saga is that the Obama administration has selected
BP — which it continues to demonize as reckless, greedy, and incompetent — as the
principal entity to contain and clean up this vast and dangerous mess. The millions affected by the
ongoing fiasco watch in dismay and outrage as they weigh the possibility that their way of life may be
changed for a long time, if not forever.
Red
tape keeps prized oil-fighting skimmers from Gulf, coastline. Just weeks after the oil spill
crisis began to unfold in the Gulf of Mexico, the French foreign minister volunteered a fleet of oil skimming
boats from a French company, Ecoceane. A month later, in early June, Ecoceane Chief Executive Eric Vial
met with BP and Coast Guard officials to present the idea.
Ecological
Disaster Is No Excuse for Creating an Economic Disaster. Americans are horrified by the damage
being done to the Gulf Coast region's environment and local economies by the oil spill. Clearly, every
measure needs to be taken to mitigate that damage and figure out what went wrong so that such accidents can be
prevented in the future. Yet the disaster in the Gulf shouldn't be an excuse to create a new economic
disaster, by raising energy prices for millions of Americans and by ceasing responsible exploration for oil
and natural gas.
Delayed
Response. Washington is finally accepting international help for dealing with the crude spill
in the Gulf. It took only 70 days of gushing for the White House to agree to the aid. The
delay is inexcusable.
The
"A Whale" must be deemed 'effective' before it's allowed to help with oil clean-up. The largest
skimming ship in the world — known as an "A Whale" — is expected to arrive in the Gulf
of Mexico on Wednesday [6/30/2010], but will be prevented from contracting with BP to help clean up the oil
spill until the federal government decides that the vessel is "effective." The Coast Guard will not
clear the Taiwan-owned ship — which is reportedly the length of 3 football fields and 10 stories
high — to join the clean-up until it undergoes a test.
Obama's big
oil spill bungle. It's one thing to say that Obama's administration showed ineptitude and
mismanagement in its handling of the Gulf oil spill. It is quite another to grasp the situation up
close, as I did during a recent visit to Alabama.
O's tardy
response. Is 70 the Gulf Coast's lucky number? That's how many days since the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill that it took President Obama to accept foreign help in cleaning up the Gulf mess. Finally,
on Tuesday [6/29/2010], the State Department said it will accept assistance from some of the 27 countries
and six international organizations that have offered to combat the spill.
Issa's
report on oil spill response. The Democratic congressional majority has had little stomach for its
duty of overseeing the Obama administration. Unfortunately, this has resulted in strictly partisan oversight
as Republicans on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee step into the vacuum. But at least
there's someone keeping an eye on this administration, because the press hasn't always been so hot on it.
BP and the Unmitigated
Disaster. The Gulf of Mexico could turn into a giant dead zone if some means cannot be found to
staunch the flow of oil and toxic gases emerging from the damaged well beneath the Deepwater Horizon.
Industry insiders who understand the engineering of wells are beginning to speak openly among themselves of
an unmitigated disaster.
Solve
the immediate problem first: Gushing oil into the ocean. Yesterday, President Obama
invited a group of senators down to the White House to talk about the kind of energy bill he'd like Congress
to pass sometime this summer. The first thing we heard about this meeting is that the president said it
was not a meeting about the oil spill. Let me say that again -- the president said the purpose of this
meeting was not to discuss the ongoing crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, where up to 60,000 barrels of oil are
spewing into the Gulf waters each and every day, and which have been for 72 days now.
Why Is the Gulf
Cleanup So Slow? As the oil spill continues and the cleanup lags, we must begin to ask difficult
and uncomfortable questions. There does not seem to be much that anyone can do to stop the spill except
dig a relief well, not due until August. But the cleanup is a different story. The press and
Internet are full of straightforward suggestions for easy ways of improving the cleanup, but the federal
government is resisting these remedies.
Don't
expect objectivity from this Obama oil spill commission appointee. Francis Beinecke is president
of the Natural Resources Defense Council and for several decades has been among the most active environmental
legal activists in using court suits and the threat thereof to stop the fossil fuel energy development required
to keep the American economy — aka as "the people" — moving. She was also just
appointed by President Obama as a member of his special commission tasked with investigating the Gulf Oil
Spill.
Hopes ride on
giant oil skimmer in Gulf of Mexico. The latest hopes are riding on a massive new skimmer to
clean oil from near the spewing well in the Gulf of Mexico, while a local Louisiana parish's plan to block
the slick has been rejected by federal officials.
World's
Largest Oil Skimmer Heads to Gulf Spill. With hurricane-whipped waves pushing more oil
onto the Gulf of Mexico's once-white beaches, the government pinned its latest cleanup hopes Wednesday [6/30/2010]
on a huge new piece of equipment the world's largest oil-skimming vessel.
The emperor's new oil.
[Obama] has done a horrible job of handling the situation in the Gulf and I can understand why he may have taken so
long to respond. President Obama was the biggest recipient of BP PAC money during his campaign, so I'm
sure he was torn about laying the smack down on a company that donated so much to get him elected.
Time for a Little
Perspective on Oil Spills. The Deepwater Horizon disaster killed eleven men, and a large
amount of oil has been released into the Gulf of Mexico, some of the most important fishing grounds in
the U.S. But to claim that it spells the end of a way of life to many Gulf residents is questionable
at best. Surely, the Gulf coast economic outlook is not good for the near future, especially with
the current recession. But oil spill disasters of equal or greater magnitude have occurred over the
past century with little or no long-term consequences.
Obama
Making Carter Years look Like Paradise. Massive amounts of oil continue to gush at a rate far
greater than was first admitted. We've all read and heard about oil-skimmers and other ships unavailable
for clean-up duty because of government red tape and concessions to American labor unions. State
governments' requests for early help defending their coastlines were all but ignored.
First
Lady to Waste Millions 'Visiting' The Gulf Oil Spill. When times were flush, I guess it didn't
seem so outrageous for the First Lady of the White House to fly about the country "visiting" places as if she
were an important part of our national government. ... And now? Why, now Michelle-My-Bell is making
plans to "visit the Gulf Coast oil spill region" as if she is some sort of potentate touring her outlying
tracts of land. Yes, the angriest First Lady of them all is going to pack her royal bags, wing off to
the coast, and wave to the masses from the royal coach as she inspects her subjects woes due to her husband's
continuing impotency there.
The White House
Gets Drilled. How ideologically stacked is President Obama's offshore drilling commission?
So much that even many of his fellow Democrats can't support it.
Is the Oil Spill Staged?
Good old avarice is one of the main reasons why the oil spill may have been staged. "Big people"
stand poised to make trillions off of the collapse of our oil-driven culture. Another reason for a
staged oil spill is population control — i.e. culling "the small people."
Obama aborted the
recovery. [Scroll down] Now, with the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Mr. Obama has
moved smartly and unlawfully to kill thousands of additional jobs. His inaction in the face of an
environmental catastrophe has left the economy of the Gulf Coast region reeling. And he has compounded
the economic damage by imposing a drilling ban not only considered unnecessary and excessive by a panel of
experts asked to review the decision, but also held to be "arbitrary and capricious" by a federal court.
Despite promises to 'not rest,' President
Obama to take third vacation since Gulf Coast oil spill began. President Obama promised on
May 14 that he would let nothing distract him from finding a solution to the devastating Gulf Coast
oil spill, which has now continued for over eighty days and caused incalculable economic damage to the
region. "I'm not going to rest or be satisfied until the leak is stopped at the source, the oil in
the Gulf is contained and cleaned up, and the people in the Gulf are able to go back to their lives and
their livelihoods," he said.
The Worst Ecological Disaster
Ever? David Axelrod on Fox News Sunday this morning [7/11/2010] said that the Gulf oil spill is
the "worst ecological disaster ever" — or words to that effect (the transcript is not yet
available). This, of course, is historical nonsense. Except in terms of the volume of oil released
into the environment, it is not even the worst oil spill in American history.
First rig sails away over drilling ban.
Diamond Offshore announced Friday that its Ocean Endeavor drilling rig will leave the Gulf of Mexico and move
to Egyptian waters immediately — making it the first to abandon the United States in the wake of
the BP oil spill and a ban on deep-water drilling.
Obama
Team Blocks Media from Oil Spill. [Scroll down] To this day, the media continue to have
unnecessarily limited and prohibitive access to the disaster area, including reporters being hassled on public
streets. NPR reported yesterday [7/11/2010] on a reporter who was asked to reveal the images on his camera,
and his social security number by members of the local police, FBI and BP. But there is a second story.
The second story is that while national reporters are fighting the Obama administration's lack of transparency,
they're not reporting the Obama administration's lack of competence.
Suppressing the
Political Impact of the Gulf Oil Crisis. No one in the current administration is interested
in getting answers about causes of the Gulf oil spill or the tardiness of federal response to it.
Neither the Harry Reid Senate nor the Nancy Pelosi House is curious. Otherwise, they'd already be
holding hearings. Assuming a Republican takeover of either chamber in November, the new Republican
committee chairmen should be clear: responsible federal officials will be subpoenaed. Those
who caused or compounded this disaster deserve to tell their stories under oath. Remember in
November.
You're a Liberal/Progressive if You Believe...
the Bush administration "dropped the ball" with respect to Hurricane Katrina, but the Obama
administration was on the BP oil spill "from day one."
The ocean
is self-cleaning, but how long will it take? Will the Gulf's washing-machine-like nature
be enough to counteract the BP leak? The Gulf is warm, filled with salty water and oil-eating
bacteria and is being sloshed around by tides and winds. So, it basically cleans itself.
But just how fast it'll be able to get rid of all the oil and dispersants from BP's spill and restore
order to the Gulf remains to be seen.
The Oil Has Stopped For the
Moment. The people and wildlife of the Gulf are getting a respite, at least for the moment,
from the millions of gallons of oil that have been flowing into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20.
Obama's BP Bluster.
The Obama administration paddled BP into establishing a $20-billion escrow fund, out of which the oil giant
and White House friend would pay for damages to individuals and businesses harmed by the oil spill. BP
plans to put $5 billion per year into the fund over the next four years. Under current tax law,
however, BP would get to write-off the entire $20 billion this year. BP needs to show the IRS only
that this $20-billion fund is a necessary business expense — and clearly, it is. Though BP
is not legally obligated to compensate victims of the oil spill, the money it spends repairing its
reputation in this manner is certainly deductible.
Despite
Gulf cleanup efforts, nature will have to do most of it. Now that BP has shut off oil flowing
into the Gulf of Mexico from its broken well for the first time in 12 weeks, the company faces a
Herculean task of cleaning up the region's oily mess. While BP has hired thousands of people to
boom, skim and burn large amounts of crude, the bulk of an estimated 200 million gallons of oil
that spewed into the water is actually beyond human reach. As a result, the ultimate cleanup
will be left to nature and to colonies of oil-chomping microbes.
Barack Obama's Endless Crises:
[Scroll down] There are two executives who own the crisis in the Gulf: Tony Hayward of BP and Barack Obama
from Washington, D.C. Hayward was relieved of all operational Gulf rescue duties and will probably be fired when
the discharge is contained. Obama, because of a quirk of constitutional government, remains in charge
of the unending polluting crisis. His government awarded BP kudos for safety, accepted the highest
level of funding from the firm's PAC, and forced BP to accept a terribly flawed flow model to calculate the
probability of oil reaching shore after a major underwater breach. Obama is at least as culpable for
the deaths of pelicans, sea turtles, and marshlands, and for the loss of fishing and tourist revenue,
as is Hayward.
Obama:
It's All About the Perks. As the rest of the country suffers through a real unemployment rate
of about 20 percent according to certain estimates, President Obama takes jaunts to Maine with his
family — and he makes sure to fly his dog, Bo, into town on a separate jet. ... According to
press reports, President Obama has played 41 rounds of golf since his accession to office. He's
played seven of those rounds since April 20, when the Gulf oil spill occurred.
The Anti-Drilling
Commission. The commission appointed by President Obama to investigate the Gulf oil spill
(the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling) does not include a
single member with specialized knowledge of petroleum engineering. This is akin to performing a heart
transplant with a surgical team that has never set foot in an operating room. Of the seven members
appointed to the commission, not one is a petroleum engineer, and all have long-standing ties to the
environmental movement.
Time
Mag Shocker: Rush Might Have Been Right About Oil Spill. Time magazine reported
Thursday [7/29/2010] that Rush Limbaugh might have been right about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico not
being the environmental disaster that everyone warned.
Nil, Baby, Nil.
"Where is the outrage? Where are the millions marching in the streets, where is the round-the-clock roadblock
coverage tracking every moment of the crisis?" Such were the questions asked by the Huffington Post's Peter
Daou in late May. And the declarations were no less bracing. "We are at an inflection point, one
that will likely determine the fate of our species," he informed readers. The "planetary emergency" to
which he was referring was not, as one may be forgiven for thinking, the appearance of alien spacecraft above
civilization's greatest structural landmarks. Daou's concerns were grounded in earthly developments.
Or, rather, a single earthly development: a pipe broke.
BP's
evaporating oil slick leaves America without a villain. So, the oil in the Gulf of Mexico is
disappearing much more quickly than expected. Nature is taking its course, aided by a naval-size
flotilla of skimming boats and some powerful chemical dispersants. The sea's warm surface and
oil-munching bacteria have dissipated the slick to such an extent that a planeload of journalists had to
fly for an hour before their pilot could find a patch of oil.
Oil-Spill
Update: The Crisis Is Over. The well no longer gushes: It is capped, top-killed,
and cemented, and within a few weeks it will be finished off with the coup de grace of bottom kill, at which
point we can expect the administration to declare victory. At least three-quarters of the leaked oil is
already gone. While some has been burned or captured, most — per the predictions of former BP
CEO Tony Hayward — has been devoured and rendered harmless by the Gulf's uniquely ravenous bacterial
ecosystem, which has been digesting natural oil seeps for millennia. This isn't administration spin; it's
reality.
Mississippi leaders:
Spill's environmental impact overhyped. The best-case scenario for Mississippi and the region is
that once BP's busted well is plugged, the warm waters and bacteria of the Gulf will dispose of the oil quickly,
breaking it into its main components of carbon and water, and normal life and commerce on the Coast can resume.
Oil
flow has stopped, but not political damage to Obama. President Obama basked Monday [8/9/2010]
in what seems to be the end of the Gulf oil spill. ... A USA Today/Gallup poll last week found 51 percent
disapprove of Obama's handling of the spill, and improving conditions in the Gulf of Mexico have not demonstrably
improved his standing in recent months.
Cleanup
workers on Gulf Coast doubt oil 'disappeared'. BP announced that 74 percent of the oil
spilled from the Deepwater Horizon rig's Macondo well has been evaporated, skimmed, burned or dispersed,
something that the Gulf Coast's cleanup workers find hard to believe.
Oversight Report Slams Obama 'Failure' on Oil Spill.
A new oversight report from Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the senior Republican on the Senate Environment and
Public Works Committee, details what many analysts see as the failures of the Obama administration during the
Gulf oil spill.
NOAA Scientist: Release of Oil Spill
Report done by White House, Not NOAA. A NOAA scientist, Dr. Bill Lehr, yesterday told a group
of Congressional staff investigators on a conference call that a controversial National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) report claiming that nearly three-quarters of the oil from the Gulf oil spill has already
been addressed was released by White House officials and not scientists at NOAA.
IER: Administration's Assault on Energy
Continues. In response to the U.S. Interior Department's announcement that it will add even more
red tape to the already lengthy permitting process for deepwater oil and gas production, Daniel Kish, Institute
for Energy Research senior vice president for policy, released the following statement: "The Administration
continues its assault on US energy production, this time trying to convince us that a shortage of paperwork
led to the Gulf spill. No amount of Government Green Tape would have stopped the spill, and in fact,
Americans saw that it actually made cleanup harder."
New
Microbe Discovered Eating Gulf Oil Spill. A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe is
suddenly flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the
underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf following the explosion of BP's
Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
Gulf Ecology Recovering from Oil
Spill. A veritable army of federal, state, and local response teams, assisted by numerous
private organizations, converged on the Gulf to clean up the mess. Beaches were combed for tar balls,
booms were placed in the water, dispersant was dropped from aircraft, and 4,000 skimmer boats were sent out
to soak up as much oil as could be found. As impressive as the work was — once it was finally
coordinated — the human effort paled in comparison with the restorative powers of nature. By far
the biggest cleansing agents at work in the Gulf are microbes that feasted on the oil. The Gulf's
warm water makes an ideal habitat for fungi and bacteria, and they made astonishingly quick work of the
light, sweet, and easily degradable crude oil that gushed up from the Gulf's floor. Evaporation,
helped along by the warm summer sun, did its part, as did massive flows of fresh water from the Mississippi
River, which kept most of the oil away from the coast.
Slippery
Oil, Slipshod Coverage. So who's responsible for the Great Oil Spill Panic of 2010? Surprise,
surprise: Scientists are starting to complain about the media's alarmist interpretation of their preliminary
public assessments.
Blown-Out Gulf Oil Well Set
for Permanent Plug. After five long months, the broken well that spewed millions of gallons of
oil into the Gulf of Mexico is on the verge of being plugged once and for all.
Spilled oil dwindling, feds say.
The concentration of oil in the Gulf of Mexico from BP's 4.9 million-barrel Macondo well spill has continued
to diminish significantly since the well was capped in July, despite recent reports of more undersea oil plumes,
an official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday [9/21/2010].
Fossil Fuel is Nuclear Waste.
While Earths Hydrocarbon production does not appear finite in the near term, there is one thing that is
FINITE. The Earth only has a finite storage capacity for this daily petroleum production. This is
a double blow to the Eco-wackos. Oil is a renewable resource and man's harvesting of this resource, may
be of actual benefit to the eco-system. As horrible as the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster was, the total
spill has been estimated at only four times the annual 'seepage' rate. The naturally occurring bacteria
that are disposing of BP's mess have been dealing with this natural outflow of Hydrocarbons for millions of
years.
A Fresh Theory On
Blast's Cause. A new theory about the origin of the blowout of a BP PLC oil well emerged on
Sunday [9/26/2010] when an outside investigator said the problem could potentially be traced to cracks that
formed in an underwater formation.
Why Barack Obama Hates America.
Addressing the nation on the [Gulf oil] spill on June 15, 2010, Obama stressed that Americans "consume
more than 20 percent of the world's oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world's resources." ... But
ask yourself, what does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the oil spill have been less of a
problem if America consumed a mere 10 percent of the world's resources? Of course not. The
point is that for Obama the energy and environmental issues reduce to a simple proposition: America is a
neocolonial giant eating up more than its share of the world's resources, and in doing so America is exploiting
the scarce fuel of the globe; consequently, this gluttonous consumption must be stopped. This is the
heart of Obama's energy and environmental agenda: not cleaning up the Gulf or saving the environment in
general, but redressing the inequitable system where the neocolonial West — and neocolonial
companies like BP — dominates the use of global energy resources.
U.S. Imposes Offshore Drilling Moratorium, but
Other Countries Fail to Follow. The Gulf Coast oil spill of April 20, 2010 caused the Obama
administration to take some drastic measures, ... [including] a 6-month moratorium on offshore drilling (set to
end November 30, 2010), a panel of "experts" to determine the cause of the spill, and new rules from the
Department of Interior to minimize the harm of a future oil spill. But how are other countries responding
to the U.S. disaster?
Report Slams Administration for Underestimating
Gulf Spill. The Obama administration failed to act upon or fully inform the public of its own worst-case
estimates of the amount of oil gushing from the blown-out BP well, slowing response efforts and keeping the
American people in the dark for weeks about the size of the disaster, according to preliminary reports from
the presidential commission investigating the accident. The government repeatedly underestimated how
much oil was flowing into the Gulf of Mexico and how much was left after the well was capped in July...
Investigators
Say The Obama Administration Was Either Lying or Incompetent. In mid-July, fifty days after oil began
to leak out of the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, President Obama tried to divert weeks of criticism
by speaking to the American people, trying to convince the country that he had been doing a great job at managing
the disaster ... But today [10/7/2010] the staff of the special commission investigating the disaster issued four
papers that fault the administration's handling of the oil spill.
Commission
Report Slams Government's Oil Spill Response. A presidential commission's reports on the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill criticize the Obama administration for "underestimating" the amount of crude
flowing into the Gulf, which in turn "undermined public confidence in the federal government's response."
The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, formed just weeks after the
April oil rig explosion, released a series of four papers Monday [10/4/2010], each deeply critical of the federal
government's handling of the disaster.
No Evidence Gulf Oil
Spill Killed Fish, Says NOAA. There is no evidence the Deep Water Horizon oil spill killed any
fish, according to federal and state officials overseeing the oil cleanup, while captured commercial fish
passed testing by multiple government agencies. But even with plenty of fish in the sea, the fishing
industry in the Gulf of Mexico is still suffering from a big perception problem.
The Katrina people again? Oil Spill
Compensation Czar: 110,000 Claims Have 'Zero Documentation'. Nearly two-thirds of the
outstanding compensation claims from the BP oil spill have no documentation to back up their losses, according
to the administrator in charge of distributing compensation money to victims. At least 50 claims
are considered "very suspicious" and could be referred to the U.S. Department of Justice.
BP Horizon Spill Still a Nightmare for Gulf
Residents. To small companies like mine that rely heavily on oil and gas industry demand to
fill work orders, which allows job growth here in Louisiana, there are only two relevant periods of business:
pre-moratorium and post-moratorium. Pre-moratorium represents a period of growth, potential, and optimism.
Post-moratorium is a much darker period of lay-offs, stress, and sleepless nights for my wife and me.
BP Horizon Spill Still a Nightmare for Gulf
Residents. In national publications like The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post,
Politico, and my local Louisiana paper, I continue to read about the thousands of jobs and billions in
economic activity bleeding from the Gulf region. The recently lifted 'official' moratorium and the
continued stoppage in offshore oil and gas production — the result of a permitting process that is
purposefully restrictive — seems to have a broad effect. But these numbers are so
incomprehensibly large and arbitrary that they have lost most of their meaning.
Investigator Finds No Evidence That BP Took Shortcuts
to Save Money. Fred H. Bartlit Jr., a prominent trial lawyer hired to lead the panel's inquiry,
disputed the findings of other investigators, including plaintiffs' lawyers and members of Congress, who have
charged that BP and its main partners, Transocean and Halliburton, had cut corners to speed completion of the
well, which cost $1.5 million a day to drill.
Researchers
find more evidence that microbes ate BP oil in Gulf. A new study by scientists with Alabama's
Dauphin Island Sea Lab provides more evidence that the 200 million gallons of oil released from the
massive BP oil spill was quickly turned into food by bacteria in the Gulf of Mexico.
Job-Killing Environmentalists.
What's happened is that Obama has given the environmental extremists the power to make some of their wish list come true.
Modern measurement techniques allow scientists to measure tiny parts per million; much of the technology did not exist when the
Clean Air Act was first legislated in 1990. Using these new techniques environmentalists are able to impose their
fantasies upon American business and labor. For industry, removing the last parts per million is prohibitively costly.
For instance, technology which could have removed the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was prohibited by the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) because the discharged ocean water would still contain more than 15 parts per million of oil.
Govt's handling of science on oil spill
questioned. The oil spill that damaged the Gulf of Mexico's reefs and wetlands is also threatening
to stain the Obama administration's reputation for relying on science to guide policy. Academics,
environmentalists and federal investigators have accused the administration since the April spill of downplaying
scientific findings, misrepresenting data and most recently misconstruing the opinions of experts it solicited.
Governor
Jindal Slams Obama for His Slow Response to Oil Spill. Bobby Jindal, on Monday's [11/15/2010] Today show, slammed
the Obama administration for its slow response to the BP oil spill off the coast of Lousiana, charging that: "It seemed
like the federal government was disconnected from the facts on the ground." However Today co-anchor offered excuses for the
President as he queried the Louisiana Republican Governor.
Sea Life Flourishes
in the Gulf. The catastrophists were wrong (again) about the Deep Water Horizon oil spill. There
have been no major fish die-offs. On the contrary, a comprehensive new study says that in some of the most
heavily fished areas of the Gulf of Mexico, various forms of sea life, from shrimp to sharks, have seen their
populations triple since before the spill. Some species, including shrimp and croaker, did even better.
Gangster
government and the Gulf oil spill. In his new book, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal claims President Obama
was more concerned about his standing in the polls than Gulf Coast residents' welfare. ... When Jindal later expressed
worries that a White House-imposed moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would drive up joblessness
in his state, Jindal claims Obama was more concerned about standing in the polls.
All The News That Is
Unfit to Print. [Example #3] The Gulf Oil Hysteria: We were told that aquatic life in
the Gulf of Mexico would be ruined for generations. Offshore drilling in general was now to become obsolete
and synonymous with environmental catastrophe. Drilling was stopped in the gulf. Prophets of doom
assured us of the scary Exxon Valdez comparisons. And yet life returned to normal, without much discussion
of the absence of permanent damage or why the horror stories proved not so horrific.
Offshore Drilling Curbed
Again. The Obama administration reversed course Wednesday [12/1/2010] and said it wouldn't allow
drilling off the Atlantic coast and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico near Florida, citing safety concerns after the
worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
U.S.
sues BP, 8 others for roles in devastating oil spill in Gulf. The Obama administration on
Wednesday [12/15/2010] sued BP PLC and eight other firms for their roles in the Gulf oil disaster, saying
they violated federal environmental laws in a bid to recoup billions of dollars in cleanup costs and damages
after the worst oil spill in the nation's history. The civil filing marks the federal government's
first spill-related lawsuit.
Deepwater Horizon's Final Hours.
The worst of the explosions gutted the Deepwater Horizon stem to stern. Crew members were cut down by
shrapnel, hurled across rooms and buried under smoking wreckage. Some were swallowed by fireballs that
raced through the oil rig's shattered interior. Dazed and battered survivors, half-naked and dripping in
highly combustible gas, crawled inch by inch in pitch darkness, willing themselves to the lifeboat deck.
It was no better there.
Top Ten
Examples of Media Bias in 2010. [#8] Skimmers, what skimmers? The press said virtually
nothing about the EPA's utter lack of preparedness for the BP oil spill. Journalists also took very
little interest in the fact that several nations offered many forms of tangible aid to help the federal
government contain and clean up the spill, and were either turned down flat or severely delayed. One
Associated Press item whined that many nations wishing to provide help expected to be (gasp!) reimbursed
for their costs.
Fate
of oil in Gulf may never be known. The amount of oil left in the Gulf of Mexico from last year's massive
spill may never be known, according to a congressional report made public Monday [1/3/2011]. "It is debatable
whether the fate of the remaining oil will ever be established conclusively," the report by the Congressional Research
Service (CRS) says.
Where did BP's methane clouds end up?
As black, murky oil fulminated from the Gulf of Mexico sea floor last summer some scientists were more concerned
about large amounts of unseen hydrocarbons gushing forth. They worried this methane, as much as half the flow
from the wellhead, would spread in large clouds that would eventually leave sizable areas of the Gulf hypoxic,
starving marine life of oxygen. ... Yet only about 120 days after the initial well blowout, the levels of
methane surveyed across wide areas of the Gulf were actually a tad lower than what scientists characterize as
"normal" levels.
Spill report could delay Arctic drilling.
The presidential commission that probed the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico also delivered a setback to Shell Oil Co. and
others that hope to drill in Arctic waters near Alaska. The seven-member panel, which issued a report Tuesday [1/11/2011]
on government and industry deficiencies it said led to the Gulf spill, also identified too many "serious concerns" about
cleaning up and containing oil spills in the remote Arctic to green-light those projects now.
BP Oil
Spill Panel's Dry Hole. The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and
Offshore Drilling cites the "incredible incompetence" of British Petroleum and its upper management in at
least nine specific decisions. Then it unjustifiably extrapolates BP's errors to the entire oil
industry, whose safety record is ignored. It mattered not that between 1969 and 2009 oil companies
drilled more than 50,000 offshore wells without a serious mishap.
Spill report could delay Arctic
drilling. The presidential commission that probed the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico also
delivered a setback to Shell Oil Co. and others that hope to drill in Arctic waters near Alaska. The
seven-member panel, which issued a report Tuesday [1/11/2011] on government and industry deficiencies it said
led to the Gulf spill, also identified too many "serious concerns" about cleaning up and containing oil
spills in the remote Arctic to green-light those projects now.
Top 10 Obama Administration Investigation
Targets: [#7] Oil spill response: So many questions over the Obama Administration's
response to the Gulf oil spill last April: Why was the response tardy, and did the administration slow
local efforts through unnecessary red-tape? Was science politicized with the administration's rosy
estimates over how much oil was left? Were there legitimate concerns or did politics come into play
with the decision to impose an offshore oil drilling moratorium?
Most
Significant Global Warming Tipping Point Theory Bites the Dust. A scientific study on the
results of the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill has yielded some surprising results that appear to disprove fears
of methane release as a global warming "tipping point" to catastrophic warming. The theory as currently
incorporated by most climate models requires "tipping points" to go from mild anthropogenic warming to catastrophic
global warming. The most plausible and significant of these potential tipping points has always been the
release of methane triggered by warmer temperatures.
Oil Spill Commission Failed to Examine Key
Evidence. President Obama's oil spill commission spent six months examining the "root
causes" of the Gulf disaster, yet never inspected the failed blowout preventer — the part
of the well that could have, as its name suggests, prevented the explosion. At a House Natural
Resources Committee hearing this week, the co-chairman of the National Oil Spill Commission faced a
barrage of questions from Republicans and Democrats about why their final report is long on regulatory
recommendations but short on engineering explanations.
National
Commission Spill Report: Too Anti-Drilling Instead of Anti-Spilling. The BP Deepwater Horizon
Spill Commission report is out and its recommendations would spell bad news both for energy industry jobs and
the future price at the pump. The administration-selected panel, dominated by anti-drilling activists
but devoid of anyone with actual experience producing energy, proposes to pile new layers of red tape onto a
process that already leaves much domestic energy off-limits and creates years of delays for rest. It
even includes measures that would virtually shut down new oil drilling in Alaska, though the spill occurred
thousands of miles away and under very different conditions in the Gulf of Mexico.
New
Containment System Shreds Last Excuse for Permitorium. No more excuses, Mr. President.
Let the drilling resume. A consortium of oil companies, led by Exxon, today unveiled a dedicated
underwater containment system, including the vessels needed to deploy it, for runaway oil wells in the Gulf.
The system borrows heavily from the innovative method BP used to cap the Deepwater well before pessimists
said it would be possible via the standard "bottom kill." Since it is all ready to go, this new device
could stop a blowout in weeks, rather than the 85 days it took BP to design, build, and emplace a
similar structure.
The Oil Spill Crisis
That Didn't Go To Waste. The extent of the Obama Administration's political opportunism in the
Gulf oil spill is being revealed as the investigation into the Deepwater Horizon accident continues to plod
along. A spate of new developments on the political front highlights the bending of facts to fit a
political agenda.
The Tyranny Of The
Green. [Scroll down] Awards are merely paybacks for political campaign contributions.
British Petroleum was awarded a safety award for its Deep Water Horizon rig a year before the Gulf Coast
disaster. A Politico article by Erika Lovley cited: "During his time in the Senate and while
running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC
and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records."
Obama Unions a Microcosm of Liberalism:
Parasites Devouring Their Host. [Scroll down] Barack's mantle of prophethood started to
unravel when he dithered on the Gulf oil spill. His meandering response makes more sense when we
realize his refusal to accept foreign aid occurred because he did not want to anger American unions was
made public. Writes one journalist, ["]The BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by
the Jones Act requiring all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed...
For Obama, politics always comes first.["]
Regulating Extraordinary
Disasters into Existence. The President's Oil Spill Commission concluded that a failed negative
pressure test started the chain of events that resulted in the Macondo well blowout. The key element that
confused the operators was a false pressure reading due to clogging of the kill line by lost circulation material
contained in the spacer fluid used in the well. BP pumped that material into the well to comply with a
federal regulation.
Obama Immune to Louisiana's Oil Moratorium Misery.
Since the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last April, the oil industry in Louisiana has been
decimated. The Obama administration instituted a moratorium on any new deepwater drilling projects and
a de facto moratorium on shallow-water prospects. In response, thousands of Louisiana jobs were
lost, and valuable rigs were sent overseas. After months of intense criticism, the official moratorium was
lifted, but the de facto moratorium remained. For almost one year, the industry has been in a
tailspin in coastal Louisiana, as thousands of families have sought food stamps or temporary jobs with
the BP cleanup effort.
Gas Prices
Are High Because the Liberals Want It that Way. [Scroll down] President Obama overreacted
to the British Petroleum Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year by issuing a crippling moratorium
on offshore deepwater drilling. The spill was a result of a lack of sufficient oversight during the
transition of the rig from exploration to commercial production, a particularly low-probability event.
The moratorium did nothing to address the root cause of the accident. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals
agreed with this line of reasoning, yet White House officials falsely represented to the public last year and
more recently to a court that scientists had approved the blanket drilling moratorium. The administration
then defied a federal court by replacing its original moratorium, which had been struck down, with a substantively
identical second moratorium — for no good reason.
"The
Worst Environmental Disaster in U.S. History!" (One Year Later). "There's just no data to suggest
this is an environmental disaster, "said Marine Scientist and former LSU professor Ivor Van Heerden who also works
as a BP spill-response contractor. "I have no interest in making BP look good — I think they lied about
the size of the spill — but we're not seeing catastrophic impacts. There's a lot of hype, but no evidence
to justify it." In fact these observations came — not a year after the Deepwater Horizon blew-up — but
a mere three months afterwards, making them all the more blasphemous at the time. By now they've been amply
vindicated, making the Obama team's "moratorium" and more recent stonewalling on Gulf of Mexico drilling permits
all the more preposterous.
Witnesses say Gulf drilling ban was a
harsh blow. The Obama administration's reactions to last year's BP oil spill did more damage
than the crude itself, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Gulf Coast employers told a House committee
Thursday [6/2/2011]. Barbour said little oil reached Mississippi's shores, but the administration's
May 2010 decision to impose a five-month ban on most deep-water drilling has left a lasting impact.
Some
Jobs To Save. A Gulf Coast governor tells Congress that the administration's inept response to
the Deepwater Horizon explosion has done more damage to the local and national economy than the crude itself.
Deepwater
Horizon Update: Transocean's Investigation. More than 14 months after the blowout and
explosion aboard Transocean's Deepwater Horizon drill rig, the company has come forth with their public
investigative report. ... Have you seen anyone from the Unified Incident Command or the President's Oil
Spill Commission publicly announce that the blind shear ram (BSR) in the BOP did indeed sever the drill
pipe before the rig sank on April 22, 2010? I thought not.
Remember
the flap over foreign ships and the Deepwater Horizon cleanup? Millions of barrels of raw crude
was gushing into the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico was not nearly enough of a national emergency to
justify waiving the Jones Act compared to the extreme urgency of getting those gas prices down so voters
won't take it out on Obama at polls in November 2012. Now there's a real national emergency!
Top 10 Examples Proving Obama Wants High Energy Prices.
The BP oil spill prompted the President to impose a drilling moratorium in the Gulf making deepwater drilling
permits impossible to obtain. So when oil companies moved their rigs to areas off the coast of Brazil
where they were welcomed, Obama offered billions in U.S. taxpayer money to aid the venture, creating new jobs
in South America. By refusing to allow U.S. energy sources to be developed, the President is ensuring
increased reliance on expensive and volatile foreign oil.
Obama's Mickey
Mouse Administration. The most awkward of the outstanding questions about the BP spill is the
issue of the "missing oil." ... The "missing oil" is not missing; it is an overestimate of the flow rate by
a government intent on maximizing the punitive fines it seeks to impose on BOP by using a measured flow late
in the time line and backdating it to when the BOP was not so eroded. The government estimates do not
take into account this erosion. The concerns of citizens (particularly children) worried about a million
barrels of "missing oil" returning to haunt them like the bogeyman hiding under their bed is merely an
"inconvenient truth" to this administration.
At
CPAC, Jindal revives attack on Obama administration over oil spill recovery. Speaking before an
audience of Republican activists Saturday [2/11/2012], Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal blasted the Obama administration
over its response to the 2010 BP oil spill in the gulf, saying Obama officials "wasted precious time while that
oil was coming in to our coast."
The Deepwater
Horizon Two Years Later. On the two year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon accident, a lot of
progress has been made to restore, as closely as humanly possible, the status of the Gulf Coast to where things
stood before the accident. A lot of effort has gone into trying to help the people affected to "get their
lives back," including Tony Hayward. BP and the lawyers of the Plaintiff's Committee are putting the
finishing touches on a settlement that will pay "all legitimate claims," just as Tony Hayward promised to do.
The fishermen are out fishing, the beaches are open, the drillers are slowly getting back to drilling, and the
Gulf Coast economy is ahead of where it was before the accident.
Gulf of Mexico seafood still safe and
delicious. Much has been reported about the Gulf of Mexico's physical and economic health since the Deepwater Horizon spill two years ago.
Last week, a report from the news network Al Jazeera English dredged up a raft of questions about deformities of Gulf seafood. Unfortunately, the story
has taken flight and has been picked up by various other news outlets around the country.
Gulf oil spill moratorium inquiries
rebuffed, investigator says. A senior federal investigator says he was denied access to a White House official and full email
records as he tried to determine whether a BP oil spill report was intentionally edited to erroneously suggest outside experts supported the
Obama administration's deepwater drilling moratorium. The experts, in fact, did not endorse the moratorium the administration
ordered after the 2010 spill. The White House and Department of Interior later said the mistake was inadvertent, a result of an
early-morning edit that moved some material from the body of the report to the executive summary.
Obstructionist White House. A U.S. Interior Department investigator says the White
House "hindered" an investigation into the BP oil spill, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
White House Lied, Jobs Died. New
internal e-mails disclosed by the House Natural Resources Committee this week show that a supposedly exculpatory report on the administration's
doctored drilling moratorium analysis — issued by the Department of Interior's Inspector General's office — was itself
incomplete, misleading and unsubstantiated. Even more damning, the documents reveal that the White House actively blocked investigators
and refuses to comply with subpoenas.
Mutants No Danger to Gulf
Shrimping. Reports of mutant shrimp spawned recent news stories linking Gulf of Mexico shrimping closures to the
British Petroleum oil leak of 2010. It turns out the closures are regularly scheduled seasonal occurrences that allow small
shrimp to grow to a marketable size. [...] Yet media reports still point a finger of blame at BP.
Top 10 misguided energy policies. [#5] Bungling in the Gulf: The
gulf oil spill prompted the Obama adminstration to declare a mortatorium on deepwater drilling, and when oil rigs relocated to Brazil, the president
helped to fund that nation's oil production. Meanwhile, communities near the gulf are still suffering from a loss of jobs resulting from
Obama's actions.
Did Steven Chu
Sabotage BP's Top Kill Effort Just as It Was Succeeding? The White House loves to try to slime others, but it is remarkably
resistant to providing documents to the two other branches of the government, even under legal compulsion to do so. In fact, the
administration has even refused to provide documents to senior investigator Richard Larabee, in a Department of the Interior (DoI) investigation,
even though he is an employee of the executive branch. They are stonewalling investigations by all three branches of government.
What are they trying to hide?
US seeks to keep internal emails
from BP in spill case. The Obama administration is seeking to keep an array of internal emails out of BP's hands in the court battle
over the massive 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Energy Department General Counsel Gregory Woods, in a June 6 filing with a Louisiana
federal judge, asserts the "deliberative process privilege" to cover 28 documents including exchanges between senior White House, Interior
and Energy Department officials.
Only 43.7 Percent of Gulf 'Oil Spill' Was
Actually Oil. The federal government has based its claims for per-barrel pollution fines against BP largely on the WHOI data. And one
obstacle to the government collecting huge fines under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA) is any challenge to its estimates as to how much oil
actually got into the Gulf of Mexico.
Is Salazar the New Holder? The Interior Department has become synonymous
with evading congressional requests in the investigation of how the Obama administration bent scientific reports to support its drilling moratorium in
the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill. The department's inspector general who was supposed to ensure oversight of that process is even being
investigated herself on allegations that she tampered with a probe of the moratorium.
Emails: BP knew of flare issues.
With the world focused on a BP rig explosion in the spring of 2010 that caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history, a massive release of pollutants
from the company's Texas City refinery went largely unnoticed. The April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico
came two weeks after the BP refinery began releasing pollutants into the air through a 300-foot flare that is designed to burn them away.
BP reported at least 538,000 pounds of gases, including 17,371 pounds of cancer-causing benzene, spewed from the flare over 40 days.
Stop Obama From Cheating Gulf States. After Congress passed
the RESTORE Act to direct any monies from a federal lawsuit against BP (related to the oil rig blowout) to the affected Gulf States according to a
formula set in the act, the Obama administration, as is its wont, is trying to make an end run against a law the president himself signed, by reaching a
legal settlement with BP that directs the money elsewhere so the feds have control of it.
Coast Guard: Gulf oil slick comes from device
used in 2010 spill. An undersea camera confirms that an oil slick discovered in the Gulf of Mexico came from a 100-ton device on the seafloor
that BP had used several weeks after the 2010 oil spill in a failed attempt to cap its runaway Macondo well, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday [10/18/2012].
The oil is not coming from the Macondo itself, which was sealed in a relief well operation months after the 2010 blowout. Less than 100 gallons of oil
per day is leaking from the containment device, the Coast Guard said.
Did President Obama Restore Science
to Its Rightful Place? [Scroll down] A panel of outside experts reviewed drilling safety recommendations put together by the
Department of the Interior. After the scientists approved the draft, the White House altered the contents of the document to include a moratorium
on offshore oil drilling — thereby giving the false impression that the panel also approved the moratorium. Essentially, when things
got tough, the Obama administration did what many other politicians and bureaucrats do: withheld and manipulated information. Obama did
everything except "restore science to its rightful place."
Feds charge
BP workers with manslaughter for Gulf blast. Two men who worked for BP during the 2010 Gulf oil spill disaster have
been charged with manslaughter and a third with lying to federal investigators, according to indictments made public Thursday [11/15/2012,
hours after BP announced it was paying $4.5 billion in a settlement with the U.S. government over the disaster.
Deepwater Horizon: Who's Lying to
Congress? Now that the Justice Department has charged a BP executive, David Rainey, with lying to Congress regarding the
flow rate from the BP Macondo 252 well, it makes sense to examine the quality and veracity of the government's own witnesses whom
we might expect to be called to testify against him. If the government is to convict Rainey, they will have to prove he was wrong.
Deepwater Horizon: the
Government on Trial? [Scroll down] So the government's fixation on forcing BP to drill a second relief well
diverted limited resources from the prime purpose of the intervention effort, to "plug the d--- hole" in President Obama's own
words. If BP had been allowed to do its work unimpeded, is it possible that it could have stopped the flow of oil even before
the top kill operation was aborted by Steven Chu in late May? Keep in mind that oil did not reach the mainland until May 19,
2010.
S.A. Democratic stalwart
eyed. Seven months after hosting a private $35,800-a-plate fundraiser for President Barack Obama at his home in The
Dominion, nationally recognized plaintiff's lawyer and Democratic Party stalwart Mikal C. Watts finds himself under federal
investigation over the legitimacy of his client list in a case stemming from the 2010 BP oil spill.
Who Had Foreknowledge of the
Gulf Oil Spill? Between March 22nd and 24th of 2010, the Department of Homeland Security and the US Coast Guard conducted drills
that they called "Oil Spills of National Significance". What an amazing stroke of luck that DHS and our Coast Guard was so well prepared
in proximity to the April 20, 2010 BP oil spill event. It kind of reminds one of the drill simulating 9/11 when we prepared for
terrorists who might fly planes into tall buildings while effecting a communications blackout during the drill which prevented a shoot down
of the four planes hijacked on 9/11. This oil spill drill also reminds one of the London subway bombers drill scheduled for the same
day as the alleged "terrorist event."
The Mother of All Conspiracies.
Although this article is controversial, and I might not actually believe it myself except that every fact in this article is true. This
article is structured in such a way that if the reader takes the time to follow the evidence trail, there can only be one conclusion that makes
any sense. [...] The Obama administration and many others (individual billionaires, select politicians, BP, Exxon, Nalco, GM, GE, Goldman
Sachs, University of Chicago, and many others including the Department of Defense are all deeply invested in bio-fuels. These billionaire
psychopaths will willingly sacrifice the Gulf and all of its residents for this multi Trillion Dollar industry representing a new era of energy
applications.
Administrator Opens Probe of Spill Claims Lawyer.
For months, BP has complained that a Louisiana attorney who is administering its settlement with tens of thousands of Gulf Coast businesses and residents has made
decisions that expose the company to what could be billions of dollars in fictitious claims arising from the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP oil
spill: Louisiana makes a dash for the cash. This week, BP week revealed that its bill for clean-up, compensation and fines for the world's
worst oil spill is set to rise well above $42.4 billion, with just $300 million left of funds currently set aside for payouts. Most
strikingly, it raised the estimated bill for a new settlement agreement struck last year with plaintiffs' lawyers from the original $7.8 billion
to at least $9.6 billion, even as it pursues a court appeal and public relations campaign to staunch the flow.
BP Says Spill Fund Is Running on Fumes.
BP said Tuesday [7/30/2013] it has allocated nearly all of a $20 billion compensation fund for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, raising
fears that the still-mounting costs of the spill may take a bigger-than-expected bite out of future profits. BP set up the fund in the
immediate aftermath of the disaster, before the process of compensating victims began in earnest.
BP's Robert Dudley on the Gulf Oil Spill's Legal
Aftermath. After the April 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP (BP) said it wanted to clean up the mess, pay what it owed, and get on with business.
Three years later, you're at war with plaintiffs' lawyers. What happened?
Obama repeatedly defied federal
court with Gulf oil policies. Jacking up oil prices by ending energy production on federal lands has long been a top priority for liberal
Democrats and their Big Green environmental movement backers. So when the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling rig exploded on April 20,
2010, President Obama wasted little time before shutting down all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. On April 30, 2010, Obama ordered a temporary
ban on all new oil and gas leases in the region and asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to produce a report with further recommendations.
Appeals Court Gives BP a Win in Settlement
Dispute. A federal judge on Thursday ordered the administrator of a multibillion-dollar settlement over BP's 2010 Gulf oil spill to
immediately suspend making settlement offers and payments to some businesses that claim the company's 2010 oil spill cost them money.
BP files fraud suit to cut oil spill seafood fund payout. BP filed a fraud lawsuit in U.S. court on
Tuesday to halt some of the $2.3 billion it set aside to compensate commercial fishermen for losses claimed after the British oil company's 2010 offshore oil
spill, the biggest in U.S. history. The latest court action by BP seeking to reduce payments from the spill alleges that part of a group of fishermen hurt
by the spill, clients of lawyer Mikal C. Watts, did not exist.
BP not entitled to see documents in
claims probe. BP is not entitled to see confidential documents used by a court-appointed investigator who has alleged that some
attorneys acted improperly in the claims process arising from the 2010 Gulf oil spill, a federal judge ruled Friday [2/28/2014].
Deepwater Horizon oil left tuna, other species with heart defects
likely to prove fatal. The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill struck at the very heart of fish, a
new study says. Exposed to millions of gallons of crude, young tuna and amberjack, some of the speediest
predators in the ocean, developed heart defects that are likely to limit their ability to catch food. The
findings of the study, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have grim implications for
the future of yellowfin and bluefin tuna, as well as amberjack, that were embryos, larvae or juveniles when
the spill occurred during tuna-spawning season in the northern Gulf of Mexico in April 2010.
The Editor says...
Even if this is true, as long as those heart defects are not hereditary, this problem should fix itself
in a few years.
BP cries foul over
$500M in compensation awards. BP claims that $500 million of the money it set aside to
compensate victims of its 2010 oil spill has been awarded to businesses that don't deserve it. Among the
unwarranted claims, says BP, were an escort service in Florida, a surgical practice 300 miles from the spill
and a wireless phone company that burned to the ground before the spill occurred.
Obama
will propose vast expansion of Pacific Ocean marine sanctuary. President Obama on
Tuesday will announce his intent to make a broad swath of the central Pacific Ocean off-limits to
fishing, energy exploration and other activities, according to senior White House officials. The
proposal, slated to go into effect later this year after a comment period, could create the world's
largest marine sanctuary and double the area of ocean globally that is fully protected.
The Editor says...
I suspect this has little or nothing to do with fishing. It is all about choking off the production
of offshore oil. And to the extent that it really is about fishing, it is an assault on capitalism.
Kerry
Wants 10% of World's Oceans Off-Limits to Human Activity. With all that's happening in the world, Secretary
of State John Kerry spent part of Monday addressing "the threats facing the ocean." "Today less than 2 percent of
our ocean is considered a marine-protected area where there are some restrictions on human activity in order to prevent
contaminating the ecosystem," Kerry told a conference at the State Department. "There isn't anybody here who doesn't
believe we can't do better than that. So let's start by finding a way to perhaps bring that number up to 10 percent
or more as soon as possible."
The Editor says...
Fishing does not "contaminate the ecosystem." Nor does offshore oil drilling, except for the occasional freak accident.
In fact, nobody goes out to sea to pollute the ocean. If you make a living as a fisherman, it's in your interest to keep the
ocean clean.
Recap and overview:
Obama's
War on Louisiana. [C]onsider the litany of Obama's abusive treatment of Louisiana; the
Bayou State is surely the jurisdiction most victimized by the Obamite combination of wrath and
pettiness. It began early, after Jindal's (poorly received) 2009 State of the Union response, which
represented the first major high-profile critique of Obama's gauzy new administration. Clearly,
Jindal got under Obama's skin. Just two months later, the Obama team was notoriously slow to
respond to the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Among a host of mistakes documented by a
national commission on the disaster were clearly politicized decisions on numerous fronts, including
on the allocation of oil-containing booms. Worse (and despite some media fact-check reports to the
contrary), the Obama bureaucracy kept obstacles in place that blocked specialized foreign skimmers
from helping to contain the spill — in part, it seems, to placate American unions.
Obama
repeatedly defied federal court with Gulf oil policies. Jacking up oil prices by
ending energy production on federal lands has long been a top priority for liberal Democrats and
their Big Green environmental movement backers. So when the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil
drilling rig exploded on April 20, 2010, President Obama wasted little time before shutting down
all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. On April 30, 2010, Obama ordered a temporary ban on all
new oil and gas leases in the region and asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to produce a report with
further recommendations.
50
Things Barack Obama Has Done Wrong: [#8] After BP had a huge oil spill in the Gulf, Obama not only
bungled the clean-up process, he slowed oil production from other companies that had done nothing wrong which led to higher
oil prices. [#9] Obama has helped drive up the cost of gas by blocking the Keystone Pipeline.
Rare
victory for BP in Gulf of Mexico legal battles. BP has won a rare victory in its legal
battles over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, after the US Supreme Court said a group of Louisiana
parishes would not be able to sue the company for damaging wildlife. The oil giant has already
paid more than $27bn (£17bn) to clean up after the 2010 disaster and compensate local
businesses for the damage caused. It is also fighting a civil suit under America's Clean Water Act,
which could see BP fined up to $18bn.
The Good News
About Offshore Oil Rigs. A new study led by researchers at Occidental College and the
University of California at Santa Barbara has found that the oil platforms dotting the California
coast are fantastic for sea life. In a 15-year study, researchers found that the ecosystems that
build up around artificial rigs host 1,000 percent more fish and other sea life than natural
habitats such as reefs and estuaries. The California rigs outstripped even famously rich
ecosystems such as the coral reefs of French Polynesia.
Can
Someone 'Win' a Lawsuit without Suffering Injury? From the "Nice Work If You Can Get
It" Department: Being paid $100,000-plus for damages from an accident, even if neither you nor
anything you own was actually damaged. Such absurdities will be at issue soon at the Supreme
Court, which as early as this coming Monday (November 17) is expected to decide whether to grant
certiorari in a tremendously important challenge to one of the class-action awards involving the
2010 BP oil spill. The high court ought to take the case.
The
BP oil spill and the rule of law (or the rule of lawyers). A major development is
coming in the legal battle surrounding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The U.S. Supreme Court will
soon decide whether to review issues presented by BP's class-action case. What's at stake here is
important not just for BP, but for all of us; namely, whether the rule of law or the rule of lawyers
will prevail. The BP petition presents a narrow issue: whether a class was properly certified
consistent with Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Procedure and Article III of the U.S. Constitution.
In plain terms, it is whether a class action can be brought if substantial numbers of the class have not
suffered any injury caused by the defendant.
BP shutters
biofuel plant in Jennings, lays off workers. BP will lay off 56 Louisiana workers over the next
two months as it shuts down a biofuels demonstration plant in Jennings. The closure comes as the British
oil giant trims its global footprint amid rising costs from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and low oil
prices. In a closure notice filed Monday (May 4 [2015]) with Louisiana state government, BP said it would
move forward with plans announced last year to close the plant at 11107 Campbell Road. The company
formally notified workers about the layoffs Monday.
Shell
to resume Arctic drilling off Alaska as green groups warn of disaster. The US government has given
Shell approval to restart drilling in the Arctic despite repeated warnings from environmentalists that it could
lead to an ecological disaster. The Obama administration on Monday [5/11/2015] approved Shell's plan to
resume drilling for oil and gas in the treacherous and fragile waters off the coast of Alaska, three years after
the Anglo-Dutch oil giant was forced to suspend operations following a series of potentially dangerous blunders.
Gulf
states reach $18.7B settlement with BP over oil spill. Officials in four Gulf Coast
states on Thursday [7/2/2015] announced a $19 billion settlement with BP to resolve claims in
connection with the devastating 2010 oil spill, ending years of litigation. Leaders of Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana said the settlement holds BP "accountable" for the Deepwater
Horizon spill. The $18.7 billion is meant in part to compensate for economic losses
and natural resource damages.
Obama
fundraiser, Julian Castro patron indicted on fraud charges. Multimillion-dollar Democratic donor and Obama fundraiser
Mikal Watts was indicted on fraud charges this week. Federal prosecutors say his class-action suit against BP after the oil
spill was built in part on phony clients. Watts' attorney said the charges "are related to allegations that Watts committed
fraud or forgery when he claimed to represent 44,000 clients in litigation against BP PLC," as the Associated Press puts it.
Major
Democratic Donor Claimed Dog, Dead People as Clients in BP Oil Spill Fraud Case, Court Documents Say. Mikal
Watts is regarded as a Democratic kingmaker and wealthy Texas trial lawyer who even hosted a private $35,000-a-plate
fundraiser for President Obama at his home. He is now under federal indictment for allegedly fraudulently representing
thousands of clients — including a handful of dead people and a dog — in litigation against BP after
the 2010 Deep Water Horizon oil spill. Watts appeared in federal court Thursday in Mississippi along with his brother,
David[,] who is also charged. Both men, along with five others, allegedly used stolen and false identities of people
to sign up as plaintiffs in their case against BP, eventually claiming to represent more than 40,000 individuals making claims
against BP valued in excess of $2 billion.
Shell
Finds Profitable Deep Water Oil Field in Gulf. Royal Dutch Shell found 100 million barrels of oil equivalent buried at its Kaikias
field in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. At current oil prices, the field would not be worth developing under normal circumstances,
however, it is close to three of Shell's massive production facilities and a network of subsea pipes, making the working the field worth the
effort. Current low oil prices, make most deepwater oil production unprofitable. As a result, most companies, including Shell have
sharply curtailed deep water exploration and production.
Former Rig BP Supervisor Found Not
Guilty. A jury has found former BP rig supervisor Robert Kaluza not guilty of a misdemeanor pollution charge arising from the 2010
Gulf of Mexico rig explosion and oil spill.
US
judge OKs $20B settlement from 2010 BP oil spill. A federal judge in New Orleans granted final approval Monday [4/4/2016]
to an estimated $20 billion settlement over the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, resolving years of litigation over the worst
offshore spill in the nation's history.
New
Rules Expected to Curtail Gulf Oil Production. The Obama administration finalized new rules it says will
improve drilling safety in the Gulf of Mexico, but some experts are saying the regulations will undermine safety. The
Interior Department, which is responsible for licensing and regulating oil and gas production on the U.S. outer-continental
shelf, unveiled the sweeping new regulations on April 14, 2016. The centerpiece of the new regulations is a plan to
monitor the safety of offshore wells. Under the regulations, monitoring of well safety would shift from being located
on-site — at the offshore drilling platform — to being stationed at onshore electronic observation centers.
New
Rules Expected to Curtail Gulf Oil Production. The Obama administration finalized new rules it says will
improve drilling safety in the Gulf of Mexico, but some experts are saying the regulations will reduce production while
undermining safety. The Interior Department, which is responsible for licensing and regulating oil and gas production
on the U.S. outer-continental shelf, unveiled the sweeping new regulations on April 14. The centerpiece of the new
regulations is a plan to monitor the safety of offshore wells. Under the regulations, monitoring of well safety would
shift from being located on-site — at the offshore drilling platform — to being stationed at onshore
electronic observation centers. The regulations also strictly control the types and amounts of fluids pumped into
wells, require redundant safety devices, increase the frequency of inspections of critical emergency equipment —
known as blowout preventers — and require offshore operators to take steps to center pipes inside wells when
pumping cement into them.
Billionaire
Tom Steyer calls on Obama to block offshore drilling. Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer is calling on
President Obama to permanently ban offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic using his executive authority. [...] The
other part of this story that is interesting is that Steyer seems to be revealing the White House was quietly considering
doing this anyway. That Obama would intentionally try to make a change like this, one he hopes Trump can't undo, after
this election would be a slap in the face to the president-elect and the voters who put him in office. It would also be
at odds with the conciliatory message Obama has been spreading since last Tuesday.
Obama's
Last-Minute Offshore Drilling Ban Could Be Illegal. Outgoing President Barack Obama used his executive authority to
"permanently" ban oil drilling in parts of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, but this move may be illegal, according to an industry
group. Obama's administration used a legal strategy crafted by environmental activists to remove sections of the Arctic and
Atlantic oceans from future offshore drilling lease sales, which they claim will be "permanent." "It is pretty clear that
this is a hollow 11th hour action," Christopher Guith, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told The Daily Caller
News Foundation. "In spite of the narrative that extreme interest groups who pushed the White House to do this, there's nothing
about this that's permanent. The White House itself didn't use the phrase permanent, they said it was 'indefinite.'"
President
Obama Bans Offshore Drilling in North Atlantic and Arctic. Obama's action bans drilling in almost all American waters in the Chukchi and Beaufort
seas, as well as in federal waters stretching from New England to Virginia. The December 20, 2016 Washington Times reports, President Obama's
action clearly targeted the Trump administration, trying to limit Trump's ability to undo Obama's environmental legacy. In a conference call Obama
administration officials claimed President-elect Trump would be unable to overturn the ban, saying while the 1953 law gives a president authority to ban
drilling in areas, it contains no specific provisions giving a president power to reopen them.
Scientists
find dozens of new species in Gulf of Mexico after Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It may have been one of the
world's largest oil spill disasters but the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico
appears to have had little effect on the ecosystem as dozens of new species of animals are living in the body of water.
A group of oceanographers from the research project the Deepend Consortium have been looking into the effects of the 2010 oil
spill that leaked 3.19 million barrels of oil over the course of three months. What they discovered is that sea life
is actually flourishing in the Gulf according to Quartz.com.
Companies
claim largest US onshore oil discovery in 30 years. Spanish energy company Repsol says an oil reserve of 1.2 billion barrels
has been identified in Alaska's North Slope, which the company says is the largest onshore discovery in the United States in three decades.
Bacteria
Are Eating Most Of The 2010 BP Oil Spill. Oil-eating microbes ate most of the oil BP spilled into the Gulf of
Mexico in 2010, according to new research by scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The study
discovered and sequenced the DNA of a new type of natural oil-eating bacteria. Knowing how oil-eating bacteria behave
will help prevent future oil spills from doing as much damage to the environmental as the BP spill. "Our study
demonstrated the importance of using dispersants in producing neutrally buoyant, tiny oil droplets, which kept much of the
oil from reaching the ocean surface," Dr. Hary Andersen, a microbial ecologist at Berkley Lab, said in a press
statement. "Naturally occurring microbes at this depth are highly specialized in growing by using specific components
of the oil for their food source. So the oil droplets provided a large surface area for the microbes to chew up the oil."
North
Carolina Governor Opposes Offshore Drilling. Putting himself at odds with President Donald Trump, North
Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper announced he does not want the federal government to allow oil and gas exploration or
production off the state's coast. Cooper's position marks a reversal of policy from his predecessor, Gov. Pat
McCrory, who favored oil and gas exploration off North Carolina's portion of the Outer Continental Shelf. "I can sum it
up in four words: not off our coast," Cooper said at a July 20 Atlantic Beach, North Carolina press conference.
"It is simply not worth the risk."
Trump
Removes Offshore Drilling Restrictions. President Donald Trump issued an executive order reversing restrictions
on offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans imposed by former President Barack Obama shortly before he left
office. Trump says the Obama restrictions unnecessarily closed access to important domestic energy resources.
Trump's order also instructs federal officials to assess the potential for energy exploration in recently declared or
expanded marine sanctuaries in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Why
gas prices are so high — and what Americans may have to risk to make them lower. Five-buck-a-gallon
gasoline in the city — and $3 gas in the burbs. And going higher. That's the news motorists are facing
this Memorial Day weekend. And pretty soon, those rising prices will put Americans' appetite for offshore oil drilling
to the test. The Trump administration has already proposed drilling off virtually the entire US coast —
except Florida, where, perhaps coincidentally, President Trump owns some real estate. Some states, including New
Jersey, are asking not to have off-shore derricks, saying its beaches are too precious to risk the possibility of a spill.
Somewhat related: Company
sues to block order to contain 14-year-old oil leak. The company that has failed to end a 14-year-old oil leak
in the Gulf of Mexico is suing to challenge a Coast Guard official's order to design and install a new containment system to
capture and remove the crude before it forms slicks that often stretch for miles. A federal lawsuit that Taylor Energy
Co. filed Thursday [12/20/2018] in New Orleans asks the court to throw out Coast Guard Capt. Kristi Luttrell's
Oct. 23 administrative order.
Dems
introduce bills to block offshore drilling. A group of House Democrats introduced a suite of eight bills
Tuesday aimed at blocking President Trump's proposal to expand offshore oil and natural gas drilling around the
country. Taken together, the bills would ban or put a 10-year moratorium on offshore drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific
and Arctic oceans, as well as the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The bills came as the Interior Department is expected soon to
move forward on its plan released in January 2018 to open the offshore areas of the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic and Gulf coasts
to offshore oil and natural gas drilling. That plan has met stiff opposition from political leaders and coastal
communities that neighbor nearly all of the areas.
Obama-Appointed
Judge Halts Trump's Effort to Advance Domestic Energy Production During Shutdown. Judge Richard Gergel, U.S.
District Court in South Carolina, has halted the Trump administration's effort to continue processing permits to allow
seismic testing off the Atlantic coast during the partial government shutdown. Gergel, appointed by President Barack
Obama, ruled last week in a case left-wing environmental groups, some coastal cities, and businesses brought against the
Department of Interior "opposed to the administration's efforts to expand U.S. offshore drilling," Offshore Engineer Digital
reported.
Caving
on Offshore Drilling: America Last. A liberal judge just blocked one of President Trump's most important
reforms — one designed to create hundreds of thousands of jobs and keep our pump prices low. Soon after
taking office, President Trump opened America's offshore territories to oil and gas exploration. And despite the
current shutdown, the Interior Department has continued to issue permits for seismic surveying, the first step in locating
those deep-sea energy reserves. But on Friday [1/25/2019], Richard Gergel, a U.S. District Court Judge in South
Carolina, issued a nationwide injunction to prevent the administration from issuing any new survey permits during the shutdown.
Biden
admin further delays offshore drilling leases. Any hopes you may have had that Joe
Biden has seen the light on the energy crisis were doused earlier this week when the White House
appeared poised to basically kill off the Willow project in Alaska. Fresh on the heels of
that announcement, more bad news arrived. The federal government's congressionally mandated
offshore oil and gas leasing program expired last year. Despite federal laws requiring the
White House to institute the next phase of the program, the best the Biden administration has
managed thus far is a dubious draft plan that was published last July. But now we're being
told that they are still not ready to issue a new schedule and they will need at least the rest of
the year to complete the work.
[The]
Biden Administration [is being] Forced To Expand Gulf Drilling. The Biden
administration was forced to offer up 2,600 square miles of federal oil and gas leases in the Gulf
of Mexico this week, following a deal made by West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D) in exchange
for his support of the left's climate legislation last summer. Major oil companies have
offered bids on more than 2,600 square miles of federal oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico in
a sale mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Wednesday's auction was the first in
over a year and was expected to draw interest from major companies, such as ExxonMobil and Chevron.
Gulf
of Mexico Drilling Operations Produce More Than Double the Amount of Methane Emissions as Reported
by EPA. Offshore oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico are releasing far
higher quantities of a potent greenhouse gas than regulators have estimated, according to a new
study published Monday. The analysis reveals that the climate change impact of these
activities is more than double what official estimates suggest. The study, published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that 2021 calculations by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency — using data from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management (BOEM) — correctly estimated carbon dioxide emissions but underestimated
methane emissions.
Biden:
I Wanted 'to Stop All Drilling' on the Coasts and Gulf, Got Blocked by Courts. During
an interview with The Weather Channel that is set to air on Wednesday, a portion of which aired on
Tuesday, President Joe Biden said that he "wanted to stop all drilling on the East Coast and the
West Coast and in the Gulf" but was blocked by the courts from doing so. Weather Channel
Meteorologist Stephanie Abrams asked, "Let's talk Gen Z, because they're going to play a big role
in the next presidential election, and many of them are angry about the 7,000 oil and gas permits
you approved since you've been in office. You promised no new drilling on federal land or
offshore. Can you tell Gen Z that you haven't broken your promise?" Biden responded,
"Yes, because the courts overruled me. The courts said I couldn't do it. I wanted to
stop all drilling on the East Coast and the West Coast and in the Gulf. But I lost in court."
The Editor says...
If he really was blocked by the courts, there would be some record of it.
Federal
Judge Delivers Blow To Biden Admin's Efforts To Restrict Offshore Oil And Gas
Drilling. A federal judge on Thursday issued a setback to the Biden administration's
efforts to crack down on oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. District Judge
James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction against the
Department of the Interior's (DOI) move to reduce the area of an offshore oil lease in the Gulf by
about 6 million acres and essentially impose restrictive protections for the Rice's whale in the
region. The injunction asserts that DOI and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)
implemented the challenged actions in a way that was procedurally invalid, and that DOI's decision
to do so was both arbitrary and capricious.
Federal
Judge Smacks Down Biden's Attempt to Restrict Oil, Gas Drilling in Gulf of Mexico. In
a significant ruling late Thursday, Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana sided
with American energy advocates, striking down the Biden administration's eleventh-hour restrictions
on a pending offshore oil and gas lease sale. The injunction, favoring the plaintiffs —
the State of Louisiana, the American Petroleum Institute (API), and energy giants Chevron and
Shell — puts a halt on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's (BOEM) restrictive measures
concerning Lease Sale 261. This crucial sale, encompassing vast expanses in the Gulf of Mexico,
was scheduled for the following week.
Biden
Admin Releases Most Restrictive Offshore Oil And Gas Drilling Plan In US History. The
Biden administration on Friday unveiled the most restrictive offshore oil and gas five-year leasing
program in history. The Department of the Interior (DOI) announced the plan, which allows for
three offshore oil and gas lease sales through 2029, with sales in 2025, 2027 and 2029. That
schedule represents the lowest number of sales that the administration could have pursued while
maintaining its ability to push offshore wind development under provisions in the Inflation
Reduction Act (IRA), and it is the "smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in history,"
according to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. "The Biden-Harris administration is committed to
building a clean energy future that ensures America's energy independence," Haaland said of the
schedule's release.
Putting
oil spills into perspective. No one should take this blog as saying that oil spills
don't cause damage, but green pushers use every spill to justify shutting down products that have
greatly improved our quality and length of life. Therefore, oil spills should be put in
perspective. [...] The people who are concerned about this relatively small oil spill don't seem as
concerned about wind depots, no matter how many whales or other species they kill. Now
putting a 1.1 million-gallon oil spill into perspective: The Gulf of Mexico is the largest
gulf in the world, covering 617,800 square miles, and averaging over one mile deep. There is
an estimated 643 quadrillion gallons constantly churning in the Gulf. A spill of one or four
million barrels is minuscule and immeasurable; fish and animal species that live in the Gulf are
smart enough to survive and by and large, will stay far away from the toxic spill. Here are
some interesting things about oil spills: Oil leaks from the bottom of the seas or Gulf of
Mexico naturally all the time, and marine bacteria clean up these oil leaks every day. Isn't
that amazing?
Biden
admin finalizes most restrictive offshore oil drilling plan in US history. The Biden
administration on Friday finalized a plan to dramatically curb the number of offshore oil and gas
lease sales over the next five years as it continues to aggressively push green energy
development. The Department of the Interior's (DOI) five-year offshore oil and gas leasing
program schedules just three Gulf of Mexico lease sales through 2029, marking the fewest number of
sales ever included in such a plan, which the agency is mandated to issue periodically.
According to the DOI, holding the sales will enable future offshore wind leases under an Inflation
Reduction Act (IRA) provision that tethers the two. "President Biden's approach to severely
limit leasing significantly curtails access to a critical national asset," Erik Milito, the
president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents both traditional and
renewable offshore energy producers, said in a statement Friday. "The White House simply ignores
energy realities by once again limiting U.S. energy production opportunities."
Oil spill timeline: Disaster in the
Gulf. The Obama administration claims it has been on top
of the Gulf oil spill disaster since "day one." Here's a look at what the president and
administration have been doing every day since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded
April 20, triggering the massive spill.
