For capping productive wells, I can't speak about underwater oil, but the explosion in the natural gas exploration around here has caused me to learn more than I ever wanted to know. With natural gas they move equipment around to get the most out of it. If the current supply is being met and opening a new well requires new equipment then buying new equipment wastes money. Buying a new rig, then letting an older, functional rig sit once the well it's on runs dry is not as cost effective as waiting till the well runs dry and using the older rig until it falls to pieces. The costs to open a well are more or less fixed (not likely to differ significantly in the near future) and the equipment is slightly different, so they cap wells until the equipment is freed to utilize the well.

Hektore,

That makes sense, except for the fact that the rig was over this well. Does that mean they were preparing to move this rig to another well in the near future? Just trying to wrap my brain around all of this.

There are thousands of wells in the Gulf many of them deep water. Across the globe there are many deep water wells. Also national standards differ. The reason this is not interesting is because these companies can simply say they met or exceeded our US standards, and "we" don't have a legitimate response. We already know BP is responsible, we know what we think happened, we know what we think failed and there is no evidence that standards were not met. This is simply an exercise put on by people with no expertise with CEO's so far removed from what happened that they have nothing of value to say.

What would have been interesting would have been a hearing before the accident discussing the standards, or a hearing on preventing the next disaster.

I haven't seen anything laid out about the particular well/rig in question, so I cannot speak to this specific case. I only know that capped, unused wells are not uncommon.

My guess would be that moving the rig off the well is not likely the initial cause as it's something that happens quite often. As for who's fault it is right now, I'd say both Halliburton and Transocean are responsible as they both had equipment in the well which was supposed to be able to prevent this from happening independently of one another. Knowing what I do from the drilling I've done, I think a big important question right now is: What was the hold-up on taking the BOP out of the hole if the cap was finished?

The above is your absurdity, not mine.

I am willing to bet Obama will be seeking outside help soon from experts outside of BP and our "regulators".

What irony it would be if Russia was the only ones with the capability to do this. 20 years after the Cold War ended, and them trying to get nuclear bombs into Cuba a few hundred miles away, they would actually be able to help us by detonating one. The one thing I would worry about is if there are any other oil rigs nearby.

I think the big problem now is that BP still wants to get this oil and be able to sell it. They want to either put in more oil rigs to take the pressure off, or cap it and fill barges with it. I'm not sure if they would want to try and fuse it shut, since the damage to their image is done, I'm not sure if they care if they get it stopped tomorrow or a week from today.

I just wonder if there are anti-nuclear treaties that would prevent us from using a nuclear bomb in this way. And I would really start to worry about the election campaigns against a President that needs to use a nuclear weapon in US waters. But, having no plan on what to do to stop a major oil spill is a problem as well.

it's a funny kind of working.

We had a contingency plan for Louisiana spill, and it's working, BP chief tells angry senators | Environment | The Guardian


meanwhile...:

Video: Oil has reached Louisiana coast, says marine biologist | Environment | guardian.co.uk

and meanwhile again, this time back in congress, it appears that the results of some of the initial investigations into what happened with the deepwater horizon and why those things happened are starting to come out. this particular sequence of bad things concerns the famous...well read on:


washingtonpost.com


and in other bureaucratic infotainment, it appears that interior thinks that maybe, just maybe, it'd be a good idea to split minerals management into two mineral managements, one that actually does some regulating/control and the other that collects royalties. here the ny times is noticing that perhaps...maybe....JUST MAYBE...the relation between oil corporations and "regulators" has been a Problem. too "cozy" they're saying.

Obama Officials Seek Better Policing of Oil Industry - NYTimes.com

yeah.
go capitalism. go the state that is its administrative extension.
remember the marxist view of the state? it's not wrong...want proof? here it is.

There is a Marxist view of the state? What is it? Connect the Marxist view of the state to this accident and what it has to do with capitalism. Are you a Marxist? Your above comment simply raises a bunch of questions.

yes.

that is is an instrument of class warfare that acts in the interest of the dominant political arrangement.

you can manage it, ace. the dots are right in front of you. a general discussion of the marxian view of the state is not relevant to this thread though. if you're curious, start another.



gonna drop a dime on me with heimat security if i say yes?

suffice it to say that it's kinda hard to *be* a marxist in 2010.

Did Marx prefer anarchy? Seems like he created a paradox for himself. If the "state" can not be used to achieve his stated goals or even be used to prevent corporate abuse as what is alleged against BP, what is the point of Marxism?

ace, given that in the relatively limited frame of a thread about what is still perhaps the largest industrial accident ever at least in terms of petroleum spilled into water and potential for ecological damage, and given that among the things today has brought to the surface of public attention is that the famous blowout preventer had hydraulic system problems and a dead fucking battery reported in the days just prior to the explosion and nothing was done about it...one result of which was that the preventer didn't..um...prevent, it seems to me that there's ample stuff to think about here, stuff that's more interesting in general and in particular than the difficulty you seem to have formulating a logical question about marxism.



it was a passing remark, a comment on the incestuousness of the relation between "Regulator" and corporate interest in this area which is now so obvious that even the ny times, which in general has never seen a status quo it didn't support, has taken note.
if it causes less static for you to overlook it in your struggle to remain on topic, overlook it. you have my blessing.

The inference in your comment was that there was a failure in capitalism that would not have occurred under Marxism. My point of view has been clear - this was an accident and that we can not and should not make rash generalizations from it. Your position is not clear to me, and that is why I ask questions.

no, ace, that was in no way a conclusion that a normal reader would have derived from my remark. but to get that, you'd have to know what marxism is. which you clearly do not.

trust me, you want to move on to other things, ok?

Why are you being so cryptic?

A normal reader has no understanding of what you are presenting - even if you think they get it, how would you know? I simply ask questions and I admit what I don't get. I honestly don't get Marxism and I don't get why you brought it into this thread. I will move on, I have already come to some conclusions on the issue, even without understandable responses to my questions.

I respectfully disagree. If you do a wheelie on your crotch rocket at 100 MPH on a wet road in the middle of the night with no headlights on and no helmet and you wreck - that's not an accident. That's pretty much what we have here.

BP boss Tony Hayward admits job is on the line over Deepwater oil spill | Business | guardian.co.uk

you haven't even caught up with the head of bp, who is obviously preparing to fall on his sword over this.

here's a little clip of one of the leaks that you can look at.
there's alot of problems that watching this triggered in my brain. maybe you'll have them too.

Wasn't there some controversy over BP being reluctant to release this video footage?

I just saw a new, Dawn dish-washing detergent commercial, 'bout two minutes ago.

They were washing birds and other wildlife.

here's a summary of the materials presented to congress yesterday about equipment and other safety problems that were ignored by bp, transocean and halliburton:




Gulf oil spill: firms ignored warning signs before blast, inquiry hears | Environment | The Guardian

if this is the case, the claim that "this was just an accident...and they happen" heads out the window: not because it wasn't an accident. but because problems with the "fail-safe" systems that were supposed to prevent such massive problems were known and nothing done about them. that means it's not just an accident. that means it's negligence AND an accident.

Isn't it relative? For some the above risk as you describe it is very high based on a factor such as experience, for others the risk relative to that factor may be significantly less. Therefore, based on that one factor (experience) a crash may very well be an accident. There are some people who can do wheelies as well as they can walk across the street and their risk of injury may be the same. But if you take a young person unfamiliar with their bike, unfamiliar with the road, unfamiliar with the dynamics of wet traction, unfamiliar with traffic patterns on the road in question and inexperienced in doing wheelies, I would agree with you.

You may not understand the point and my use of hyperbole - but I have not seen anything that points to anyone purposefully taking on unnecessary risk related to the oil spill. The people in question drill for oil, that is what they do.

---------- Post added at 10:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:47 PM ----------

Again, after the fact it is easy to say whatever we want to say about an accident. But at some point isn't "fail-safe" a concept that boils down to a question of semantics. Is it even possible to have a true "fail-safe" system? I don't think it is, therefore all we have is what we think may be a "fail-safe" system, until it fails. In the case of this oil leak the term "fail-safe" was used but there was evidence that the systems could fail. I believe even the regulators knew this, and I think it is common sense. No one really believes we can drill for oil with a zero risk of an oil leak. We, as a society, accept the risk based on our desires for oil and our willingness to give companies like BP the rights to drill for it. Sure there will be a price BP pays, and it is a price they should pay - including punitive damages. This sends a message to everyone else in the market, but just because some now have the illusion, of a true "fail-safe" system does not directly mean there was negligence.

So now it comes out that the well is likely letting out 70,000 barrels a day instead of 5,000 as thought..... This is equivalent to the exon-valdez incident every four days. I honestly don't think the gulf of mexico will recover within the next 20 years from this.

ace, I don't understand why you're going out of your way to defend and/or downplay BP's role in this. Are you arguing for the sake of arguing? Is your 401k tied to BP stock? This doesn't seem to be a right vs. left debate, so why are you spending so much time trying to explain away what seems like a pretty simple case of negligence?

this is grand.

Calculations of Gulf Spill Volume Are Questioned - NYTimes.com

yeah, there's no reason to assume bp is operating in questionable faith here, now is there?
meanwhile transocean is trying to get the liability limits that are in place--you know, the cap on losses for those excellent petroleum corporate persons--applied to them.

meanwhile, i hope the estimates from the environmental groups are wrong.
an amount equal to that dumped by the exxon valdez every 4 days? what the fuck?

more on the minerals management service and its non-regulation of oil production:

U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits - NYTimes.com

this just keeps getting better, doesn't it?

Wait until the oil hits foreign shores and they (rightly so) demand the U.S. clean it up.

the political class of the gulf states seems to have been purchased by oil corporations.
how else to explain the call to continue drilling in the middle of the deepwater horizon fiasco?

washingtonpost.com

some other information from the center for responsive politics (cited above) on oil/gas corporations and campaign contributions/wheel greasing:

Oil & Gas: Long-Term Contribution Trends | OpenSecrets

Just out of curiosity, if we stop drilling for oil now, when we have no realistic substitute, then what so we do? Do those of us in the northern US just huddle around campfires in the winter trying to stay warm?

Granted, problems like this fiasco need to be fixed, but let's drill for oil and do it right.

What we don't need is Obama deciding he needs to add trillions to the federal debt subsidizing nonsense like methanol production.

well first thing is that i'm mostly in information gathering mode in this thread. it's become interesting to me assembling various fragments from different sources and putting them together in an effort to see something of what's happening around the deepwater horizon.

the regulatory system came up as problematic quite early on--in the thread via a post from mit press that referenced the author of a book on a spill that took 20-odd years to be cleaned up in california--i had little idea of how central that would become and how many problems with regulation would be revealed through this accident. if regulation we are to call it, really. that seems to me a basic, basic problem---that there's way way too much reliance on corporate reporting and way too much emphasis on cheerleading the extraction of oil at the expense of oversight and/or protection of even access to the resources not to speak of the surrounding environment. this system hasn't even caught up with the language of stakeholders so isn't even set up to take into consideration the interests of adjacent activities/industries that are directly affected by things going south on a rig (think fishing. shrimp for example. big big bidness. potentially fucked in a big big way)...you'd think that there'd be comprehensive regulation/oversight of the gulf (for example) as a commons from which lots of types of capital is extracted...this wouldn't be in the interest of any particular sector/industry though the protection of the resource/commons would be in the interest of all...allowing private sector domination of--or in the case of oil evacuation of--regulatory oversight in the interest of the narrowest imaginable bidness objective (shareholder profits) is simply not acceptable.

that's what the deepwater horizon has made really really obvious.

i'm not particular advocating yanking the plug on all offshore drilling...the only real conclusion i've come to so far based on the information i've been assembling and reading is that the regulatory frameworks that shape the activities already underway are seriously flawed. but everyone knows that now. so that would have to be addressed. and there are twitching moves in that direction--whether they're damage control or substantive in a bigger sense is impossible to say at this point, yes?

it would also seem to me that the assumption that things on the 400-odd rigs off lousiana are correct or even safe is now a Problem as well.

and this is the place at which it seems to me to make little sense to simply say "keep drilling"....the **only** interest that seems served by that are the profits of oil corporations.

it's too simple to say: yank the plug. and its too simple to say: keep drilling.

past that, i'm still putting together a view of what the regulatory set-up was, who the actors in this are and what happened, much like anyone else. and i've spent way way too much of my life around folk who work(ed) for oil companies to indulge rapid reactions to this. so i can only say where my thinking is heading.

what's your take on the regulatory system? what should be done at that level?
obviously this is not a panacea (fix the oversight, make it real, introduce accountability, stop giving hand jobs to oil interests, that kind of thing or a restatement of it) but it's the aspect of this that seems to jump out when i read this information...

RB, I think this may be one of those situations were you and I should put our heads together and see if we don't come up with something.

I personally, of course, am not a fan of the Government regulating things. But as this incident (among many others) has shown, it's not usually a good idea to leave the fox guarding the metaphorical hen-house.

My thinking on this specific situation (and others like it) is basically this.

A: The only reason BP/Transocean/Halliburton are able to get away with this kind of laxity is because no effective method of sanction is in play. Part of the reason for this that, as "Corporate citizens," such entities are a very lucrative source of funds for our cash-strapped Government: the US has the second-highest corporate taxation rate in the world (.5 of one percentage point behind Japan), and this makes "don't bite the hand that pays you" a serious dynamic in all such cases. If the Gov't sanctions such a company too aggressively, that company might just pack up and leave, depriving the Government in question of access to billions of dollars in tax revenue. Additionally, the nature of Corporate Personhood means that actually -hurting- these companies (and the people within them making boneheaded decisions) is very, very difficult.

B: Since the Gov't will not or cannot sanction such Corporations effectively, consumers and the market should step in. This is where I regard the de-legitimization of Corporate Personhood as essential. Using the Deepwater Horizon accident as an example, an environmental catastrophe like this -should- be opening up the principal actors (BP, TO, HB) to enormous and crippling lawsuits by millions of plaintiffs. Those lawsuits should stand, and those lawsuits should STING. But because the Gov't is dependant upon Corporate tax revenues (while at the same time being beholden on the individual-legislature level to Corporate lobbyists), neither is likely. If past behaviors are any example, the lawsuits may be allowed to proceed, but none of the principal actors (or their numbnutted employees who made these decisions) will pay a cent. Twenty years on, and Exxon -still- has not paid a red cent of their fine for the Prince William Sound spill.

C: As a result, I am in favour of a multi-part approach such as the following:

1: Remove the market distortion known as Corporate Personhood. I've made my thoughts on this step clear in other threads and earlier here, so I won't elaborate.

2: Consumer's groups (J.D. Power & Associates, for example) should step up to the plate and compile the same kind of quality reports for oil/gas firms, nuke plants, etc...that they already do for automobiles, consumer goods, etc. If a firm or product passes below an acceptable threshold, that firm should be slapped with the kind of bad press that sinks gunmakers (Smith & Wesson), electronics firms (Fuji) and auto manufacturers (Chrysler). If that product causes actual -harm- (as in BP's drilling fuckup)...

3: Lawsuits. BIG ones. Lots of them. Against not only the offending firm (BP, say) but also against the persons -within- that firm responsible for the decision(s) which led to the litigable harm. If the CEO of British Petroleum had to come to the US (or send his lawyers) to defend against lawsuits from essentially the entire Gulf Coast of the US, -plus- the Mexican east coast, -plus- all the people (seasonal workers, tourists, travel-agents, seafood resteraunts, etc) who have been harmed by this...methinks he'd make sure his company was a bit more careful.
It like "Fight Club" in reverse. What if, instead of figuring out if a company could afford lawsuits more than they could afford a recall, "Jack" had to have been employed as an auditor looking out for lawsuits-in-waiting because, should he -miss- one and someone get hurt, his jackass boss would have been sued down to his skivvies along with the company itself? Combine this with the power of the advocacy groups mentioned above, and the possibility exists for a very responsive and very thorough feedback/sanction system which would not only provide a marvelous incentive to deal with these kinds of problems pro-actively. If negligence of this scale was enough to sink a company and impoverish its' officers, this kind of thing would be a -lot- less common.

4: Unions. I know, I know, you never thought to hear a right-wing loony like me advocating Unions. But here is where I think they could have a serious impact and in the best possible way. Unions should step in to say to their employers "Look, if you guys get stupid, we're all out of a job. So we're here to make sure you don't get stupid. We'll help you find the stupid and get rid of it...but if you bring it back, we're walking out. All of us." And I think this is one area where Unions still have a very, VERY big voice and need for existence: keeping their employers smart. This is pro-active: if the Union decides or observes that the company is getting dumb, they can put pressure on the company from within well -before- something goes catastrophically wrong. If a Shop Steward representing even 50% of the workers on Deepwater Horizon had emailed BP and said "Look, we just finished a pretty important test out here, and my guys are getting edgy 'cause a big piece of safety equipment failed on us. This needs fixin' or we're outta here, 'cause we don't wanna get caught in the fallout when this thing goes kablooey" it would have gotten somebody's attention. Even moreso if that Shop Steward hit everybody on his/her email address-book with that same email. All of a sudden every manager and safety wonk in BP would know something was up, and every Union member would too. And just because someone doesn't join a Union doesn't mean they can't act in support of that Union when it's releasing vital safety/employment-related information. A general Union/non-Union walkout, or even the threat thereof, is the kind of thing that could make BP or someone like them sit up and pay attention, especially since it would be the kind of thing that would presage the likelihood of crippling lawsuits and bad press (as above).

Just my notions and ruminations. YMMV.

I'm pretty sure Exxon has started paying damages from that spill

Doesn't it seem odd that the U.S.A. can have NASA land a rover on Mars with cameras, but no one is able to cap a 22 inch hole in the Gulf of Mexico to stop the oil leak? It seems like we are more worried about star wars than our southern coast.

I find this most distressing!

No. First, I just find it unbelievable that our government on one hand is on a soap box about how bad BP and the rest are but is taking no responsibility for the accident and has not assumed a leadership role in fixing this mess. Think about it - BP says, guys it is just a small little leak, we will get it taken care of - and now a month later we get a real estimate of how much oil is leaking and it is much higher and nothing they have done is working???? How come we did not know this from day one, if it is true about the volume of oil? Why do we not know what the plans are to fix this??? How many chances do you give BP if you think they are criminal, negligent, they lie, etc., if I believed any of those thing - it is zero! So, what is up with that?

Second, everyone knows the risks in drilling oil a mile down in open water. Now we pretend that it could have been done without risk???

Third, given the alternative of drilling on land in Alaska, much less risk to the environment, tourism, and other industries we have no open minded consideration of that, but we have Obama one week wanting to expand drilling off-shore and the next wanting to stop it completely. Can we get someone to think this stuff through?

Fourth, we have Congressional show hearings before the leak is capped - what is that all about, other than politics and it is shameful in my view.

Fifth, using an example - if company A has a policy for workers to wear a certain type of shoe, and a worker comes to work in an unsafe shoe and has a fatal slip and fall accident due to the shoe - sure we can blame the company for not having a person check each employees shoes every time they enter the work site. But at some point we have to understand that with "systems", real people are involved and a company no matter how well intentioned may encounter work-place accidents due to human error and judgment. The issue is not to first demonize the company, but to learn and apply lessons learned.

There are other issue that also have my panties in a bunch, in summary I am tired of political show boating and I am tired of people just regurgitating what they hear in the media. Other than that, I am, as usual, always looking for a good debate or argument - it is my nature. Feel free to keep that in mind.:thumbsup:

I made this point earlier in this thread. The problem is that it is much easier to explore the moon than it is to do things a mile below the surface of the ocean. The pressures and temperatures at a mile blow the surface are much harsher than the moon.

I'm wondering who has technology to deal with something like this. The US Military does not. Maybe NASA has something to deal with this but that is unlikely. There are very few machines capable of operating at that depth let alone actually repair a leak.

This administration has not taken this issue seriously and we are not holding them accountable for that. I hate to say it, but if this had happened with Bush in office - you can bet the reaction to his failure to address this issue would be off of the scale. This issue is bigger than BP, the administration needs to take charge and treat it that way. The U.S.A. can handle this. It is funny but with my "git er done" attitude, it gets mocked! But that is exactly what we need. Academic or lawyerly types should not be put in charge when real work needs to get done. Yes, I have a bias and yes I know what it is.

---------- Post added at 11:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:28 PM ----------

First, how long did it take them to make the original dome? Too long. Second, there are people who knew why a dome at that depth would have problems, were they consulted? How long did it take to make the second dome? Too long. why did they choose to use a dome in the first place? Was it to salvage oil? was that decision in the best interests of the region or BP? What is the next plan? What is the plan after that? Who is approving these plans? The U.S.A. has not really devoted any resources to getting this fixed. It is a shame. We have the resources, the intellect, the talent to fix this, what we lack is leadership.

ace, what you fail to take into account is the whole reality of the regulatory set-up. it is absurd under that arrangement to expect the federal government to break out of the reliance on industry self-reporting "from day one"---it's not how reality works in this area. this is a main reason i started posting so much about the regulatory system---you know how it actually worked, not how you'd prefer to pretend to yourself it worked so you can find some way to pretend to yourself that the bush people would somehow have been more manly or some shit about this (like they were with katrina...but that's another matter).

so reality was organized so that bp was the source of information about the leak. and if you read the article i posted this earlier about the estimates concerning the amounts that are leaking, bp---which AGAIN is the informational center of this mess---obstructed efforts to get something like an accurate assessment.

why would they do that?
pubic relations, obviously.
it's pretty clear that bp was hoping they could downplay the magnitude of the problem in the hopes that they could get it under control quickly.
it didn't work.

and it's disengenuous to pretend that reality was organized otherwise.
its good to actually read stuff, i think. you learn things.


your second point above is little more than nationalist wanking. fact is that the technologies were not in place to deal with this kind of mess because and only because the regulatory arrangement didn't require it and the exclusive emphasis on profits precluded its development according to "business reasons"---what this sort of thing does is dismantle the pollyanna worldview of neoliberals who like to pretend the private sector will take care of everything...such obvious nonsense.

but i do find your snippy accusations about the state to be funny, given how inefficient and ineffective your metaphysics usually require that the state be.

So just to clarify you want big government come in and tell a private business how to run their business?

dunedan: interesting idea. what you outline sounds to me like a stakeholder association almost, a forum in which organizational expressions of the various groups/interests that would be impacted upon by drilling in the gulf would come to have some impact on drilling in the gulf and the policy orientations that shape it. presumably it would be an intermediate body that had effective power to force shareholder action. that's what a stakeholder forum would sooner or later have to do: in it's more interesting (to my mind) variants, the notion of stakeholder undercuts the primacy of ownership. it de facto forces resources out into the commons and makes claims concerning the management based on the way multiple interests/activities/communities interact with the same "resource context"---so for example, for bp the gulf of mexico is a site for the extraction of oil and a potential management problem should things go wrong---their leasing of a particular spot for drilling from the state (presumably) would from bp's viewpoint also be a redefinition of that space within the gulf as a resource/profit extraction space--which would tend to exclude other meanings, other types of usage, so other stakes in the same environment. which is lunacy. but without that private-property based lunacy, the present fiasco in the gulf would never have happened, i don't think. so i think this a step in a good direction.

i'm not sure i see the link to corporate personhood as directly as you do, but i will say that the notion of corporate personhood is particularly ...um...pungent as an allegory for one of the central problems that the private ownership model sets up, which is that the interests of wider communities are subordinated to the interests of capital. the fiction of corporate personhood simply makes the mechanism for this subordination explicit: a corporate entity engages in contractual relations as a corporation so is de facto acting as an individual, so why not give that individual rights, make it over into the legal fiction that is a person? in that way types of claims are flattened---human beings have no more rights than do corporate abstractions---so conflicts come to a matter of resources. and people almost always loose. it's capitalism in action.

the exception is some massive fuck-up that shakes the passive consent that folk are conditioned (and i use this word knowing what it implies) to give away to this system which is predicated on their subordination to phantoms and fictions....it's stunning to think the magnitude of incident that seems required to jolt people from their political slumbers, but there we are.

legal remedies---lawsuits and lots of em---seem a cumbersome way to substitute for the subordination of shareholders to stakeholders really.
and the basic inequality that is set up through the superficial equalization of persons and corporations reappears in it.

what i am seeing---through all the pr---is the collapse of a type of consent behind the existing arrangement as it pertains to oil extraction, particularly in the form that the right has for some time been trying to use for its own political benefit---as an aspect of a general "concern about the environment is for wimps" viewpoint that plays somehow as reasonable in some quarters--even as i know the way this position is marketed i can't say i understand it's appeal at all. but anyway, i see such traction as that stuff ever got dissolving at speed.

but mostly i see a disaster to the ecosystems of and around the gulf of titanic proportions and it's kinda difficult to imagine what chain of responses in the shorter term could do anything about it. hopefully something. so far nothing's worked.
and it's starting to hit land:

Oil spill from Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion begins to reach land | Environment | guardian.co.uk

I believe there is a role for government in society. I also believe our legal system plays an important role in maintaining order and justice. I am a simple person and I don't try to make simple things more complicated than they need to be:

Companies have an obligation to have safety policies and procedures. If they don't they should be forced out of business.

Employees have an obligation to follow company safety policies and procedures. If they don't they should be fired.

Companies have an obligation to ensure employees follow safety policies and procedures. If they don;t they should be forced out of business.

Government has an obligation to oversee and regulate safety policies and procedures based on "best practices" within each industry holding all accountable to those standards.

Our judicial system has an obligation to administer justice based on the above.

How does your view differ from mine?

Some liberals want to punish the entire industry for the actions of one company, I do not see that as justice. However, to the degree that there are costs to society that can not be allocated to one company those costs should be dispersed to the industry through taxation. Obama's notion of increasing taxes on all companies because of BP's failure is wrong in my view. If BP truely failed they should incur the burden and be put out of business if need be - so in that regard, yes, I want government to come in.

^^^ Well said, Ace^^^^.

Thanks.

hunnychile

I agree with all your initial points. My question is this, this accident has highlighted areas where regulations are not sufficient and this will lead to more regulations in those area's. Do you consider these added regulations a punishment to all companies in that field and if so is it a justified or unjustified punishment?

the points you lay out ace are all very nice & in some alternate fantasy capitalist universe they'd be adhered to (the initial points about obligations of various organizational layers)..but all you've really done here is restated the "bad apple" explanation for why things go wrong with capitalism. in your fantasy capitalism the system is perfect but people let it down. in your fantasy capitalism people are entirely dominated by capital, but that's cool with you, good even because capital does not let you down the way imperfect humans do. capitalism is a kind of god-term.

particularly given the realities of the regulatory arrangement in this situation. which you don't seem to have bothered researching even though there's alot of material you could have read posted to this thread. the regulatory arrangement was set up around assumptions exactly like yours, ace. that bidness knows better than regulators, that capitalism is a perfectly rational system, that profit uber alles works as an orientation for the greatest good for the greatest number and that profit taking and environmental "stewardship" aren't mutually exclusive. this in the face of instance after instance after instance in reality that show none of these metaphysical assumptions obtain in the actually existing world (strip mining anyone? for a particularly egregious example)...

in reality, ace, the regulatory arrangement was such that it is amazing that something like the deepwater horizon hadn't happened before. the regulatory arrangement was such that it more or less guaranteed something like this would happen again. profit-taking leads to cutting corners particularly when you dont take seriously the regulations that enforce environmental considerations. there's abundant information to back this up in the thread, and even more out there in the world of information.

i assume that when you write that statement about "some liberals" wanting to "punish an entire industry" what you really mean is that not everyone buys your bad apple theory nonsense. in that you are correct. but it's not about punishing an industry: its about recognizing the regulatory problem that petroleum corporations have created around themselves through their political and lobbying activities that resulted in a set of rules that made this disaster in the gulf of mexico possible.

*Ahem* ....

The Gulf Oil Spill: Conceivable and Precedented | Jamie Friedland's Blog

Giant Plumes of Oil Found Under Gulf of Mexico - NYTimes.com

it's interesting in a cynical awful kinda way that bp would resist efforts to work out how much oil is in the water. the response is basically "why measure? we're trying to fix this" while of course it's not being fixed and bp as every interest in any and all attempts to minimize the public image of the damage that's happening. so this is a kind of pyhrric brand triage it seems to me.

meanwhile, there's no agreement about what these plumes are or are doing: bp wants to spin them as evidence that the dispersants are doing something, while the scientists are concerned about the oil hoovering oxygen and turning the gulf of mexico into an underwater wasteland.

it's like the scientific community and bp aren't talking about the same thing at all.

Not without any risk no, most things have a risk factor, hell even crossing the street, but had they had a relief well drilled before this happened, if relief wells were mandatory, rather than starting it after it's already spewing oil, the leak wouldn't have been as bad, but them starting the relief well after this one already blew, and that relief well taking 70-90 days to drill doesn't really help anything.

this paragraph makes the problem with the use of dispersants more clearly than in the ny times piece above:

Ten-mile oil plume found beneath surface of Gulf of Mexico | Environment | The Guardian

ladies and gentlemen i believe that we are entering the space of a genuine clusterfuck here. that would be my interpretation. yes it would.

This whole thing is pretty bad

I understand the world economy needs oil, that as long as capitalist conditions exist there is no possibility really to move away from oil until it is too sparse and expensive to get... but you have to question why it is the case that BP is given a license to drill a mile under the sea when the only effective (or known to be effective) fix to a problem takes 2 to 3 months to implement.

This is the problem of an international structure where the demands or finance and capital take precedence over any social, environmental, or human need. BP dont deserve ALL the stick they are getting, but they are not helping themselves by trying to spin things and hide the real extent. The worst case scenario I have heard is 7000 barrels a day, say going on for 100 days...

Is it the end of the world? No.

Its the end of the US fishing industy on one side of the coast probably, the destruction of whole eco systems.

If you drive your car recklessly when drunk and go out of control and hit somebody, you probably would go to jail.

If endemic greed causes you to scimp on the maintenance of vital safety equipment, not invest the time and effort in strong health and safety procedures, and there is an accident that kills 11 people and pollutes half an ocean and costs billions of dollars and 1000's of local jobs... somebody should go to jail for that.

There was an interesting account of what happened on 60 Minutes tonight. It was actually pretty good journalism.

Given the circumstances and potential damage to the environment and innocent people, no. The type of regulations I would not support are the types of regulations that don't actually add value or don't actually protect society or innocent people.

---------- Post added at 03:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:40 PM ----------

This "bad apple" thing you describe, is what I see as a given in a regulatory system. As I stated previously "regulators" are responsive, it is not probable that in a regulatory environment you can have proactive regulators.

People are the system! What are you talking about? Corporations are legal entities run and operated by people. Government is a legal entity, run and operated by people. Justice is administered, determined and defined by people. Who is in a fantasy world?

Here is the issue - I say what I mean, but you project a bunch a garbage into it that is not there and then you form a response based on the garbage you projected. That is one way to always be right, but I see it as kinda silly.

To be clear - in my view, people control capital.


Here we go again. You can't resist this kind of stuff can you? So, you want people to believe that I have not done research but you have, correct? I can be honest and say, I have done some research but there is still much I don't know and that I don't understand - for me this is a process, including, doing research, asking questions, doing more research, presenting my thoughts, doing more research and responding to questions and challenges. I am to assume that you come to the table having done all the research there is to do, or that you have all the answers, that you are perfect, that you sit in judgment of all others, that you are superior to me and the rest of us. Please, please, give it a rest - it is not working for ya!:thumbsup:

---------- Post added at 04:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:55 PM ----------

I really doubt that anyone thought there were no risks of a major oil spill. Do you? "We" (all of us, one way or the other) made choices. BP has to be held accountable but I do not pretend to think that BP acted in a manner inconsistent with the risks of deep water oil exploration and drilling. If there is a probability of systems failing, sooner or later those systems will fail. So again the base issue is that oil drilling is not and never will be risk free.

---------- Post added at 04:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:03 PM ----------

O.k., I agree. And after the fact we can play the "if" game all day long, but there was a failure. BP will be held accountable for the failure, and we need to learn and improve systems and regulations based on that failure. I don't think we disagree, I am just very vocal about the blame game by our government, there lack of leadership, and the grand-standing.

you know, ace, i really don't care what you think of how i write. i could be much more blunt about your specious reasoning and frequently bogus information, but i guarantee you that you wouldn't like it.

but it's nice that you think people control capital. shame it doesn't really square with anything you say.

meanwhile, out in the world of stuff that matters....

washingtonpost.com

when folk talk about "punishing an entire industry" and they're conservatives, you can bet they're mean: what's gonna happen with the drilling off alaska? given that meme was central to the sarah-palin wing of the concern-about-the-environment-is-for-persecuting-elitists school. well, turns out that the massive oil spill in the gulf is forcing shell to say a whole lot of things about how very safe they'll be when they start drilling. if they do.

Shell Offers Reassurances on Drilling - NYTimes.com

that the plug has not been yanked on this as a matter of prudence is astonishing to me. that there's ***any*** possibility of proceeding with new drilling off the coast of the united states until a different regulatory arrangement is put into place--or better yet at all--is astonshing.

And what I find even more astonishing is that even in the midst of the commotion we still don't have any real idea of what the extent of this calamity actually is. Right now there is serious reason to believe that the well is gushing far far more than 5,000 barrels a day and nobody seems to be interested in actually quantifying this. BP seems just fine using a bunch of coagulants to keep things below the surface so to speak. So much for getting even a trace of accountability for their blunder.

Measuring or even getting a real sense of the scale of the disaster is not a priority for any of the corporate interests involved any more than it is for any of the "regulatory" agencies. nor is it a priority for the obama administration. everyone is like a rat from a sinking ship on this one now. meanwhile the oil appears to have reached the gulf currents and its getting pulled a very considerable distance away from the origin.
and meanwhile politico-types are saying that a basic rethink of this off-shore drilling business is obviously in order while at the same time the head of interior is trying to prevent that rethink for affecting expansion of drilling.

it's lunacy.

but read on:
Atlantic coast now under threat as current spreads Gulf oil slick | Environment | The Guardian

I'm a bit shocked that it took this long for people to realize tourism is suffering:

BP Fails Booming School 101 Gulf Oil Spill
 

YouTube - BP Fails Booming School 101 Gulf Oil Spill (MIRROR)
They have no idea about how to contain the oil. Or the problem is too big for them.

Also see:
Giant Plumes of Oil Found Under Gulf of Mexico - NYTimes.com

Disaster unfolds slowly in the Gulf of Mexico - The Big Picture

Blog Archive Gas Leak 3000 Times Worse Than Oil

more on the controversy over bp and noaa's attempts to obstruct something like accurate assessments of what's happening.

you really have to wonder what any of these institutions hope to gain by this sort of action.

Scientists Fault U.S. Response in Assessing Gulf Oil Spill - NYTimes.com

though perhaps bp/noaa/mms are looking more at the leak itself and not so much at what it's doing...the separation is lunacy in this context however. it does follow from a very basic capitalist rationality though---abstraction, separation---pathways to an illusion of rational mastery. the illusoriness is sometimes more apparent than others...

as if there was some prize at stake for generating maximum ambivalence, if you follow this link:

GlobalWarming.House.Gov | Oil Spill in the Gulf LiveCam

alternate link:

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_inte...ov_stream.html


and watch a live feed (sometimes) of the oil spilling from the deepwater horizon wreckage into the gulf.
as you'll see if you go to the first page, rep ed markey is pretty proud of having forced bp to make this stream public.

i assume the motive was to maintain public pressure by enabling folk to click onto the spill. but it's also a really bizarre choice, and i think it poses some interesting problems, this stream.
like:

what are we looking at?
is *this* the reality of the spill? is the spill the continuing flow of oil, so is it a matter of origin? or is it a matter of extent? if it's both, why is the feed from the origin separated from all other data?

when i've been able to get on, i've spent much of the time sitting while i'm supposed to be working, head in the palms of my hands trying not to say the phrase "what the fuck?" too loud because i'm at work.

but seriously....what other response is there?

what do you make of this?

I just wonder if the dome would work if the seabed isn't flat? They needed to have a much better plan on how to fix this problem and have it ready to go within a few days.

well, maybe an explanation for the wholesale lack of preparation for such a contingency is in part that the ms and epa didn't bother to press bp about it, but mostly because taking envrionmental considerations seriously just isn't how bp rolls.

EPA Officials Weigh Sanctions Against BP’s U.S. Operations - ProPublica

the **only** good thing that's been coming of this is a general exposure of the absurdity of the existing regulatory set-up and the actions that set-up has enabled, which allow oil corporations and the royalty gathering segments of the federal government to be complicit in what seems to be a marginalization (at the least) of environmental concerns---and bp in particular, which seems to have found it cost-effective to deal with these concerns by waiting until the shit hit the fan and paying the fines.

obviously this cannot go on as it has. it's one of those corrupt arrangements between state and corporations that could have continued endlessly so long as it was invisible. but now it's not any more.

it's hard to imagine a way in which any change would enable anyone to say that this spill is therefore somehow "worth it."

this is becoming a rather grim task i've undertaken for myself.
today's unfortunate development:

BP admits Deepwater rescue is capturing less oil | Environment | guardian.co.uk

and this provides daily updates of the fiasco, including maps that outline the extent of the spill and also helpfully show just how much of that extent is already caught in gulf loop currents.

Deepwater Horizon Response

the administration threatened today to pull bp off the efforts to stop the leak while at the same time saying that it's only the oil industry that can stop the leak.

so there is no governmental white knight to ride in to save us.

there are only fucking capitalists, the same people whose laxity with respect to planning and stewardship and those other aspects of plundering natural resources that are not cost-effective to think a whole lot about. you know, the people who caused this disaster in the first place.

this is an interesting side-bar: the efforts bp continues to go to in order to manage independent press access to the beaches off louisiana which are affected by the oil spill, with the full, um, co-operation of local "law enforcement" people:

?It?s BP?s Oil? | Mother Jones

just in case you may be under the mistaken impression that information about this situation is not being managed. o yeah--if you go into the media area from the "official" site linked above, you'll also get a nice glimpse of how infotainment is being streamed, who's doing it, for what ends and that sort of thing. it's good, if not happy-making, to know that in **any** situation of any size flows of information without prior shaping are now seen as being a Problem in this o-so-democratic united of states.

yeah.

Mother Jones is not a credible news organization.

there's alot of different types of information in this thread. there's links to bp's website (gasp!) to the "official" response site (managed information if there ever was any)...
i presuppose that folk can think for themselves and read critically.

so there's not a whole lot of point to the drive-by bullshit.
save it for another thread.

LOL! Yes, it is all me, I am the one with all the problems. Got it, but I continue...

---------- Post added at 08:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:22 PM ----------

Yes. I am not an anarchist. I believe "government" has a responsibility in a capitalist system. The issue for me is where the line gets drawn.

---------- Post added at 08:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:25 PM ----------

Who do you think could have/could, saved/save us from this? In what alternative universe is there, where "bad" things don't happen?

ace, dear, its not a matter of "bad things not happening." it's a matter of it being kinda predictable that something could, say, go wrong with an oil rig that's drilling at the bottom of the ocean. you'd think there'd be an actual plan for dealing with contingencies. but bp seems to have decided that the way to play things in this regard is to cut corners, avoid development and/or studies and/or regulation to the greatest possible extent and when the shit hits the fan pay the fines. they've demonstrated this "business model" for 20 years. the data's above, in this thread.

you'd think that a sane regulatory system would have taken into account the responsibilities of stewardship of a complex ecosystem like the gulf of mexico and even if you manly man conservatives can't get your manly heads around notions of environmental conservation or protection then you should at least be able to recognize that there are multiple stakeholders in the gulf of mexico, from fishing to tourism to plants animals fish and other things, and this not only close to the deepwater horizon site, but quite far away and potentially very far away as the oil from the spill reaches the main gulf currents and starts getting pulled out to sea and toward florida. for starters. none of these stakeholder interests have been protected by the existing regulatory system.

so you have a corporation with a history of negligence and a policy of fuck it when something happens we'll pay the fines all in the interest of profit maximization, which is of course in the manly man world of capitalism a necessarily good thing until something horrific happens like this at which point all the manly defenders of uncontrolled capitalism start looking for Daddy to bail them out or some Superhero to come in to save Everybody at the last moment because that's how invisible hands roll---but in this unfortunate situation, you not only have a corporation with a history of negligence and a host of specific instances of negilgence in the period leading up to the explosion and collapse and spill, but you have this corporation operating in a "regulatory" system that requires very little of them, that is passive, that does not protect other stakeholder interests, that does not protect the commons, that does not steward resources, but instead follows the lead of oil corporations. and the oil corporations have paid big money for this set-up. and for the political consent which had enabled it. and for the consent of people like you, ace. those were the priorities. not designing systems to contain leaks a mile below the surface of the ocean. so there are no systems. there are no systems and there are no ideas for systems. so there are no solutions at this point.

but there sure as fuck is a leak, and a massive one at that.


so it's entirely disengenuous to act as though this is just a bad thing that's happened.
this is a preventable thing that was not prevented in the context of a drilling policy that's risky and problematic at best which was not hedged round with regulation commensurate with that risk. so there's nothing in place or on the horizon that can stop this disaster from continuing. it's be nice were the junk shot to work, but like everything else that's never been tried a mile below the surface of the water. and we're just finding out about all these---um---gaps in testing and thinking now, 3 weeks into one of the worst oil spills ever.

meanwhile bp was dumping dispersants onto the oil at a mile below the surface that were not only unacceptably toxic but which didn't fucking disperse the oil. what they did was cause it to break up and then coagulate again, but with the dispersant as part of the new tar-ball masses, which float well below the surface of the ocean and below the reach of imaging technologies.

it just goes on and on ace. what happened is not just some random bad thing. what happened was an accident compounded by negligence corruption short-sightedness and greed.

As a capitalist, a person who has been a corporate officer for a small public corporation and as a small business owner, I can assure you BP had plans for this contingency. These plans were known and accepted by regulators. If you saw the news conference today, everyone in the industry is in sync with BP's plans and what they are doing. By the end of this BP will have spent several billion. Now you suggest that BP "cut corners" and had no plan. Here is how it works, business people plan for "cat" losses. Planning for "cat" losses involves a lot of speculation, they are not predictable. Perhaps, your point is related to the unfortunate reality that even the best plans for "cat" losses will involve property and casualty losses and damages. In the case of this oil leak everyone knows the real solution is going to take 90 days - that was the plan. Our government knows it, BP knows it, everyone in the industry knows it. If they solve it in less time it is a bonus - but they are doing what they can to stop the leak.

That aside, my personal view is the BP should be "fired". They F'd up. If you F'd up, I would fire you, if I F'd up I would get fired. Our government needs to act, take control, fire BP, and hire another firm to fix the problem and then force BP to pay the costs.

Everything else is just commentary. Unfortunately we have an administration that won't be honest with the public for some reason.

Ace, if they had a plan, it certainly isn't apparent given the lack of response. They still don't have enough booms deployed and no idea of how to stop the leak. One would think that a plan in place would have been used sometime in the last 5 weeks.

Have they tried to junkshot yet?

The whole thing sounds like a crapshoot, so I don't see why not....

ace, you can't assure me of anything. you have no idea. what jazz says is the case, and it should be obvious. there was no contingency plan that included a rational assessment of conditions a mile below the surface and technologies that were outfitted to deal with those conditions, so which had been tested even if only to withstand pressure and temperature conditions, not to get into questions of gasses in the environment which pose specific challenges because of these other factors.

but bp did appear to have a contingency plan in place to deal with damage to the bp brand. they did have a pretty effective media crisis team that sprang into action. so while oil is leaking into the gulf at some ungoldy rate that bp's media crisis team would prefer remain vague, those fine folk at bp are busy busy busy doing brand triage.

o and there's plenty of blame to go around on this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...topnews&sub=AR

oops.

That's supposed to happen tomorrow (Wednesday). They're still getting equipment in place. Which seems odd assuming that they had a plan in place since it would then be readily available and everyone would know where to go to get it. Oh, wait, sorry. I just "made an ass of you and me", as the old saying goes.

Not to mention that they've been a souped up kitchen degreaser that toxic to ocean life to try to break up the spill. But that was planned, I'm sure.

I will illustrate the problem here regarding a "plan" with a story.

I am the king of LaLa Land. My General comes to me a says that we face the possibility of an attack from a neighboring kingdom. I ask him to develop a plan. He comes back with a detail plan, in summary he says if we are attacked we must sacrifice Jazz City and Roachville, garrison resources and concentrate our defensive efforts on the grand city of Ventura. Then after 90 days we will be able to mount a counter attack and drive out the invaders from our land.

Given the above, if you are from Jazz City you would conclude, that "we" had no plan. You might go to the media and complain about the lack of response, about incompetence, negligence, etc. You may even confront me about "our" lack of a plan. But, the reality is that there was a plan, a plan that may be the best plan available to save the kingdom where the alternative of trying to do everything or save everything at once may have been more tragic than the loss in the two cities in question.

Given, BP and our government, we clearly know now what the plan is. And from the very beginning everyone in the know, knew it would take 90 days and that anything less was a bonus. I bet on the first day, Obama knew it was going to take 90 days to get the leak stopped.

according to happy-face brand triage central

The Ongoing Administration-Wide Response to the Deepwater Horizon BP Oil Spill

brought to you by all the organizations which are hoping to escape this without ruin, bp is continuing to drill 2 relief wells. these seem the most likely avenue to stop the leaking, but they're also some time out yet before they'll do anything.

meanwhile, the administration had ordered bp to cut the amount of dispersant they're using, which is not only causing oil to coagulate hundreds of feet below the surface (which makes measurements a problem, which helps brand triage maybe) but is also toxic on its own:

Gulf oil spill: White House orders BP to cut use of dispersant by half | Environment | The Guardian

more great planning from those champions of the environment at british petroleum.

meanwhile, pulling this from the giant repetition-o-sphere that is the net, this could have come from anywhere because it's everywhere the same, but apparently the equipments' in place for a top-kill attempt. the junk shot is plan b.

BP To Start Unproven "Top Kill" Maneuver On Oil Spill - MyStateLine.com


o and ace: your story is stupid.

Do you really believe they had no plan? Or, is your point that the plan was inadequate, I am not clear on your position?

If that's the case, Ace, then why did they have to construct both top hats? It's not like either was specifically designed for this leak. You'd have also thought that they'd have tested the technology at that depth especially given that it ultimately failed.

ace...are we going down the road of crack-head literalism here?
why would that be of any interest?
do you work for british petroleum?
did you author the plan you're so sure exists?
if not, i am not sure i see the point of this entire line.

ok *if* there was a plan, it was entirely inadequate.
i think the plan was basically whatever the absolute minimum was and a decision fuck it, let's pay the fine.
if you read the article i posted above from the washington post about mms and gulf drilling, you'll see a wholesale breakdown in accountability on all sides already in place well before this disaster got started.

profits uber alles, ace. mms is full of people who think like you do.

A 90-day plan to stop oil spillage doesn't seem like a very good plan. Should nobody be upset with BP's 90-day plan? Because it's a plan, right? As in it was made in advance, right?

In order to stop the oil from flowing the pressure has to be equalized one way or another. Drilling a relief well will work, everyone knows this and we know it will take about 90 days. In the mean time, other efforts are being attempted. These other efforts have much lower probabilities of success. Like in my little story - perhaps the folks in Jazz city can defeat the invaders even though the probability is small - and if they do the king won't complain.

---------- Post added at 02:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:25 PM ----------

Have you been paying attention to the CEO of BP, he has done several interviews, it is clear what the plan was. It is also clear from the WH press conference yesterday that BP is acting in accordance with industry standards and norms and even the WH's internal expert has nothing he would have BP do different. The WH stated that they have confidence in BP and what they are doing. BP has the blessing of the US government on how they are handling this and their plan. You seem to want to take issue with me, perhaps your focus is misdirected. You desperately want to believe there was no real plan, but the reality suggests otherwise and like the old saying -to make an omelate you have to crack a few eggs - in order to drill for oil 1 mile below sea level, some oil is going to get spilled - and it is spilling now - no one should be surprised, why are you? To me there are other issues much more important and more interesting here than if BP had a plan?

If your scenario is correct, Ace, whoever at BP concocted this plan of getting the relief well started 2 weeks after the accident (knowing it would take 90 days to complete) -along with whoever in the government approved it - should be brought up on criminal negligence charges. That's the stupidest fucking plan I've ever of since it basically dooms the fishing and tourism industies during and after the spill. I find it impossible to believe that you honestly think that BP is going to knowingly have a plan in place that's going to open themselves up to billions of dollars in losses, millions in legal costs and years of court time. To drive their stock price down by 40%? If that's was really and truly the plan, as you seem to believe, then I hope that their Directors and Officers insurance premiums are paid because those insurance carriers are going to pay out whatever limits there are, regardless of what those limits are.

That's the only logical conclusion of your story, Ace. And it makes no sense at all.

BP is an entity playing by the rules. Like it or not our government let BP drill with the plan they had. Why did "we" do that? We will eventually find out, but I would send an immediate message to the industry by "firing" BP rather than making nice with them. I would take over the clean up, the effort to stop the leak and revoke the lease. I would increase the consequence of failure sending the industry a message. But unfortunately I am not in charge.

---------- Post added at 02:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:45 PM ----------

O.k., so your position is that they had no plan and you think that is more reasonable than what I presented?

Why did it take two week to initiate the drilling of the relief well? Did they ask that question during the Congressional hearings? Has anyone asked that question? Isn't that a good question to ask? Like I said I think the focus is misdirected and there are some other issues that should be discussed. And I can not stress enough how important it was to get BP out of the picture as soon as it could have been done - on things like this you have to have an outside-impartial involvement to solve the problem of this scale most efficiently. BP's interests may not always be in "our" interest.

They've stated that they had to get the equipment in place. One would think that a major part of a prudent plan would have been to have that equipment standing by.

Ace, I would agree with you about getting BP out of the way if there was ANY other entity with the equipment, manpower and experience that was able to take over. The gulf has been an almost exclusive playground for BP (once you factor in the Gulf Oil purchase in the 90's) for decades. Who else in the world could possibly take over that's not already involved? I've heard exactly *ZERO* offers to take it over.

Our government will take a private citizen's gas station under eminent domain but they won't force every available tanker to the gulf to suck up and filter the oil getting to the surface???? This is a question of leadership above all else at this point. That is one reason government needs to take control, the government under these circumstances has power that BP does not have. This is driving me crazy, and it illustrates the problem with academics and lawyers being in control. We can do better! But who am I to say, let's discuss BP not having a plan some more , or how BP is a bad, really bad company.

Tankers aren't capable of "sucking oil" up off the ocean surface. They don't have anything close to the proper equipment. What you mean is an oil skimmer, and there are a finite number of those, and they're useless unless the water is calm.

Again, who's going to replace BP here? Who, in the free market, is capable of fixing this if BP isn't? You've yet to answer that, ace. The Coast Guard has already said they're not capable of dealing with this, and they're the most likely government agency to have the resources. Who else in the government is capable of handling this? FEMA's not (not to mention that Louisiana would probably justifiably go ape-shit if FEMA showed up again). Who else?

Many of us are still saying "how could BP have fucked this up so badly?", which is where the discussion about the plan comes from. But obviously this is all the government's fault, so let's talk more about that red herring.

ace you really haven't a fucking clue do you? there's tons of information in this thread and still you haven't the first idea of what you're talking about. you seem to have a need to exculpate bp from the mess **they made** (enabled by those eager cheerleaders of private enterprise and royalties, the minerals management service).

it's like you decided at some point that it's ok to ignore all of reality and just repeat the same stupid point over and over as if you're waiting for the moment when reality will decide: "o for gods sake let's just change so that ace guy will stop hitting his face against that door."

you don't seem capable of admitting that there is no technology hiding anywhere that will just swoop in and fix this and the reason for that is---again---that bp didn't develop it because they didn't fucking have to because mms bought the half-baked line that bp fed them that a serious incident that involved more than superficial problems was "unlikely"

want proof?
look at the initial exploration document filed with mms in 2009:

http://www.gomr.mms.gov/PI/PDFImages/PLANS/29/29977.pdf

look at the environmental protocols that run throughout it.

you just want something Manly looking to happen no matter how empty no matter how meaningless because you like the illusion of "leadership" even when there's nothing to be lead, no real coherent options to be advanced, no secret weapon to be unveiled.

now in a sane world, you'd think that drilling a mile below the surface would be understood as a risk, wouldn't you?
but not in this case.

so now, ace, that's the situation. please stop repeating things counter to reality over and over. reality isn't going to change.


but maybe there is something we can agree on: we all should i think hope that the top kill works tomorrow. no matter what you think of the actors, no matter what political viewpoint you work from, we all should hope this works. the junk shot seems a farce. the relief wells are at *least* 60 days away from being able to do anything. so if this doesn't work tomorrow, we may in the short-to-medium term be fucked. and no matter what that might mean, you can be sure that it will mean something else, something much worse, for the ecosystem of the gulf of mexico and for everyone who works on it lives near it depends on it, swims in it eats in or from it.

I will first use this as an example:

Gulf Oil Spill Supertanker Solution - BP Ignoring Secret Saudi Supertankers? - Esquire

so really, ace, the problem is that the obama administration isn't consulting with you about how to deal with this. but if you're such an expert then---again---why are you bothering to post stuff on a messageboard? why aren't you in louisiana bossing people around and being all "leadershippy"? i think your priorities are outta wack that you'd prefer to see the administration foundering than let them know that the Key to All Things is hiding out on a messageboard waiting to get a Call.

The technique has been used according to what I have read.

You miss the point. I can not make my position any clearer on our government leading this effort and getting BP out of the picture. BP is not the only major oil company in the world - I don't understand your point, just like I did not get the WH press conference response to the same question.

What a contradiction. BP is "bad" but you won't "fire" them from this??? BP delays drilling the relief well by 2 weeks and you and the administration give them a pass to screw up more? I don't get it!

---------- Post added at 09:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:04 PM ----------

Back up. You said I did not have a clue that there was no technology that could fix this, suggesting I just make stuff up. There are things that could be tried that have not been tried - I admit I don't know what will work best (realizing there are two key problems, one the leak and the other the oil slick). I gave you something and you now ignore it with an ad hominem argument. Perhaps one day, you will re-read this or reflect. I am pretty secure with what I present here and you are not fooling anyone following this.

no ace i said that you didnt have a clue about the regulatory system that this comes out of so dont have a clue when you wave your finger around and decry some imaginary lack of "leadership" on the part of the obama administration---of which i am no great fan in alot of ways, let me tell you---but this comes out of long-term negligence by minerals management and long terms sweetheart deals for oil corporations (which donate 3/4 of their campaign monies to republicans btw.) this comes out of a systematic construction in the image of oligarchy and there's plenty of blame to go around for it. if you look at this particular situation there's plenty. if you look at the obscenity that is the regulatory system, there's ALOT of blame to go around. and alot of it is heaped on the door of the right....PARTICULARLY the kind of thinking that's at the heart of the regulatory system itself, that bidness knows best and stay out of their way and help them make bigger profits and exempt them from stewardship or even from rudimentary safety at the regulatory level because bidness knows best....so to have someone like you, who happens to be the posterchild for this relationship to corporate structures that is on your kness facing forward with movements of the head region that cause one to raise one's eyebrows, to bitch about some imaginary "lack of leadership" when it is the way of thinking about regulation and bidess that **you** share that is above all responsible for the regulatory set-up that allowed this fiasco to happen in the first place....it's laughable ace.

so you misunderstood what i wrote, i doubt you read it.

Bravo. I'm grateful for your time, dedication, & writing skills.

I'm sick of listening to those that spout disingenuous drivel,
just to to hear themselves speak.

Yeah, let's just fire BP. What an incredibly naive, uninformed statement.


The Associated Press: BP's own probe finds safety issues on Atlantis rig

I am still waiting for clarification of the position that you and others are in. First, you make accusations about BP regarding negligence, fraud, deception and other forms of corporate misbehavior, yet you want to rely on them to fix the problem????

For the record when I used "fire", it is kinda short hand for...do I really need to clarify this, gee?

It's kinda like the DEA using druggies as paid informants.

It's a rob Peter to pay Paul, fiasco.

Gee.

Clear as mud to me. The druggies don't collect evidence, make arrests, etc, the DEA does the work.

ace---stop it. either do the research and get a working understanding of the general framework that's in place here or stop blathering as if you know. it's obvious you don't. the absurdity of that last analogy removes any doubt.

i wouldn't mind informed debate with you---but it never happens because you don't do the research, you construct weak arguments and when you're called on it you pretend not to understand. this is the stuff fifth grades do. i'm tired of it. do the work of shut up.

i didnt know a lot about this scenario before the deepwater horizon exploded. i found out about it along with alot of other people as this fiasco has played out.

i'm beyond appalled that this happened in the gulf.
and i'm stunned and--i dont know what to call it--by what i've found out has been the case between mms, epa and oil corporations.
i obviously hope that something can happen to end the disaster in the gulf---but i really hope this exposure of the relations between oil industry and state spells the beginning of the end of this period, this arrangement, the way of doing business.

this is pretty amazing, even in this context---an inspector general's report about minerals management's new orleans crew, a fine bunch of crank blowing porn watching folk, the absolute embodiment of an understanding of regulation that sees it as useless, as an obstruction and so fills enforcement if you want to call it that with people who fit that profile:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100525/..._washington_12

this connects back to the 2007 report about bribes being accepted and sexual liaisons being conducted that involved mms and oil corporation people etc etc etc. continuity. what a fine thing.

a pox on all their houses.

meanwhile, back out on the deepwater horizon, here's a composite narrative of the hours just prior to the explosion:

Panel Suggests Signs of Trouble Before Rig Explosion - NYTimes.com

-->something that's of interest in this is the sourcing for this information. a bulk of it comes from bp, so the narrative emphasizes concerns about the cement (halliburton) and the rig (transocean)...

on today's top kill attempt:
BP attempts to plug Gulf of Mexico oil leak with mud in 'top kill' technique | Environment | guardian.co.uk

which is contingent on these tests:
Update on Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Response| Press release | BP



as the stakes go even higher:
BP facing extra $60bn in legal costs as US loses patience | Environment | The Guardian

there was no fucking plan:

BP poised for 'top kill' to try to plug spill; final decision to come Wednesday

so maybe there's something i don't understand about drilling for oil and such, but it sure as hell looks to me like bp's been focused more on trying to capture the oil than shut down the leak.

maybe the thinking was more about being able to act expediently...


here's another bit on the routinized corruption characteristic of "regulation" cowboy capitalist style and the petroleum industry. it's based out of the same report as above:

washingtonpost.com

here's a link to the inspector general's report:
http://www.doioig.gov/upload/IOC_RED...05_25_2010.pdf

see if you are ideologically predisposed to see regulation as useless, you'd be inclined to staff regulatory agencies with people who make of regulation confirmation of your ideological predisposition, which of course you would see not as self-confirming, not as following from your appointments and predelections, but rather from the nature of regulation itself. this truncated view of the world is fundamental to cowboy capitalism, an enabling condition.

So they've moved on from the junkshot to a mudpump?

I hope it works. I also hope they film it: it would be an epic submarine story of Man vs. Nature, a mudpump vs. an oilspout.

RB, I get why they're trying to capture the oil rather than cap the well. Honestly, it's a lot easier to do, given the pressures involved. The oil is being forced out of the drill hole by the weight of earth and sea above it. It's under pressure and wants to escape. Stoping a liquid flow is much harder than just containing it. It's simply the path of least resistance, and honestly, it's the least bad option, at least until hurricane season.

---------- Post added at 09:13 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:12 AM ----------

BG, the junkshot is the mudpump. Same thing, different name as I understand it.

I thought the junkshot was old tires and dental floss or something. Now they're talking about 50,000 barrels of mud.

i get that. i think the combination of the IG report and the inconsistent infotainment brought to us by bp's media crisis management team created extra static in my brain.

so from what i understand, it's not obvious yet that there will be a top kill attempt. depth, pressure, temperature, gasses and the quite real possibility that incorrect actions could make this worse.

what's interesting is the extent to which the various narrative production systems seem to want this to be the Climax of the Story. it's a curious phenomenon, the need for narrative symmetry running up against a reality that's not necessarily co-operative.

To add to this already depressing story:

http://inapcache.boston.com/universa...8_23540017.jpg

Oil reaches Louisiana shores - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Not really sure what else there is to be said about the environmental problems.

The UAE are offering their assistance, so is Russia, and eleven other countries, I believe.


UAE - Oil Spill & Pollution Clean up Contractors Directory

There is also this:

http://www.worldfishing.net/news101/...kle-gulf-spill

but I haven't heard much about it yet.

at the moment, it appears as though we're moving through some kind of strange countdown to the top-kill attempt---which is strange because everyone is saying its about a 50/50 thing--maybe a little better. so it'll either work or it wont. if it doesn't it'll either leave things unchanged or make em worse. last update is that the feds approved the procedure, but BP seems not to yet be ready to move.

perversely, this will be a pretty available media event:

BP Agrees to Show ‘Top Kill’ Live - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com

links to a bunch of feeds are available on this page.

hope this works.

and this....this i really hope turns out to be wrong:

Wetlands cleanup may be impossible - Gulf oil spill- msnbc.com