EdCone.com

Heedless:

"The industry convinced nearly everyone in government that what they were doing was so sophisticated that it was both totally safe and impossible for government to understand, much less regulate," said California Rep. George Miller, a veteran environmental advocate in Congress. "Government was romanced," he added. "And it succumbed to the romance."

How oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico echoes the financial industry meltdown: "Both stemmed from collective national drives toward a laudable goal...with little thought to potential downsides."

The Commission may wish to recommend adoption of policies or procedures to ensure that, in a federal spill response, the federal government dedicates appropriate scientific expertise to initial spill volume estimates...

I second that emotion.

Huge underwater oil spill leaves a lot of oil underwater.

I liked last week's story better.

Analogies to Obama team's underestimation of housing and employment woes too obvious to belabor.

If the flow of oil was controlled as tightly as the flow of information, this whole Gulf spill would be no problem.

Big skim: "The ship is the best hope to date for an effective clean-up."

Good thing criticizing BP is an un-American blame game for which we must apologize, because otherwise people might say some unpleasant things about its alleged cost-abatement plan:

"The lack of equipment at the scene of the spill is shocking, and appears to reflect what some describe as a strategy of cleaning up oil once it comes ashore versus containing the spill and cleaning it up in the ocean."

Maybe the money for a decent PR firm is in escrow? "[W]ord came Saturday that BP's CEO was taking time off to attend a glitzy yacht race in England."

The real tragedy of the Gulf oil spill. UPDATE: Barton's comments not playing well with some of his colleagues. UPDATE II: Apology Joe is having a tough day.

What would Barton make of NC13 candidate Bill Randall's allegation that BP might have colluded with Obama to make the spill happen? Unfair to BP, sure, but also unfair to Obama. Tough call.

(Randall's opponent for the GOP nomination, Bernie Reeves, is mocking the conspiracy theory).

Sorry, Democrats, I don't think Randall's going to win, either.

Socializing risk while privatizing profits is bad policy.

Not at all unrelated.

Some questions about oil-company liability for Jon Hardister, a candidate for the NC House:

You mention raising the cap from $75 million to $100 million. I understand that this may just be an example.

Do you think $100 million is a reasonable cap?

If not, what number do you think might be reasonable?

Even a much, much larger cap would leave a huge amount of the costs for a major spill uncovered.

Who should pay any costs in excess of the cap?

Responsibility:

I have no doubt that it is true that people have problems estimating the chances of certain rare events [...] But to stop there is to whitewash the sins of the companies and the executives who created these crises.

Thnx to JC for the pointer.

Every man for himself:

Rex W. Tillerson, chairman of Exxon Mobil, testified that if companies follow proper well design, drilling, maintenance and training procedures accidents like Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20 "should not occur," implying that BP had failed to do so.

John S. Watson, chief executive of Chevron, also pointed an implicit finger at BP, saying that every Chevron employee and contractor has the authority to stop work immediately if they see anything unsafe.

More than the pipe is broken:

From the beginning, the effort [to keep the oil away from land] has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP. As a result, officials and experts say, the damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been if the response had been faster and orchestrated more effectively.

Don't tell Rand Paul: "BP appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure."

Going beyond regulatory capture to pretty much handing the government over to big oil:

House Minority Leader John Boehner backed Tom Donohue, President of the Chamber of Commerce, in saying taxpayers should help pick up the tab.

Update: "[I]t's this distinction [between cleanup costs and damages] that's getting Boehner hammered today." He now seems to be backing off the CoC position.

Zero investment, zero oversight:

BP buys the top spot for the search term "oil spill."

It's a smart use of new media, unless enough people perceive it as a cynical move to greenwash the disaster.

The BP site does link the official Unified Command site.

Don't tell Rand Paul:

A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways.

North Carolina may not have to wait for offshore drilling to enjoy some of the benefits.

"It's crazy," one senior official said.

That's a "no" on nuking the oil well, but thanks for the suggestions.

I choose to believe BP because its version of reality is so much more pleasant:

40 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico, ground zero of the oil leak, scientists have discovered three huge swaths of oil particles, some up to 20 miles long and six miles wide, despite BP's claims that plumes do not exist.

Engulfed state:

Louisiana accepted the dirty role pretty much from the moment the first oil well was sunk here in 1901...oil companies never could remember their promises to backfill when they were done raping the landscape.

The scale of the catastrophe, and the reasons for it, have been known for as long as anyone can remember...But Big Oil owned the Legislature.

We make two basic — and opposite — types of mistakes. When an event is difficult to imagine, we tend to underestimate its likelihood...

...On the other hand, when an unlikely event is all too easy to imagine, we often go in the opposite direction and overestimate the odds.

Getting big stuff wrong.

NOLA: "The federal government may not be able to stop the leak, but it can and should take charge of keeping oil from reaching our shores."

Less than three weeks before the spill:

“It turns out, by the way,” [Obama] said, “that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.”

Well, he did say "generally." 

Meanwhile:

BP Plc said in permit applications for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico that it was prepared to handle an oil spill more than ten times larger than the one now spewing crude into the waters off the southern United States.

Those permit applications went to the infamous Minerals Management Service.

The office’s history of corruption and coziness with the industry it was supposed to regulate had been the subject of years of scathing reports by government auditors, lurid headlines and a score of Congressional hearings. But the promised reforms of the agency were slow to arrive, and the subject of the minerals service never came up at the meetings leading to the new drilling policy, according to a senior administration official involved in the discussions.

"If this (the BP spill) were in the Niger Delta, no one would be batting an eyelid," said Holly Pattenden, African oil analyst at consultants Business Monitor International. "They have these kinds of oil spills in Nigeria all the time."

That's not an argument for doing less in the Gulf, but for doing more in the rest of the world.

Jindal's constant presence at the scene of the disaster has suggested vigilance and reconnected him to his constituents on an emotional level.

Also at NOLA, an archive of articles on the oil-spill hearings.

Meanwhile: "This scares everybody, the fact that we can't make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven't succeeded so far," said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer.

Rich:

Obama’s news conference on Thursday [...] was at least three weeks overdue. It was also his first full news conference in 10 months. Obama’s recurrent tardiness in defining exactly what he wants done on a given issue [...] remains baffling, as does his recent avoidance of news conferences.

BP made choices over the course of the project that rendered this well more vulnerable to the blowout...Some of BP's choices allowed it to minimize costly delays.

Maybe Rand Paul will release an amended statement, changing "sometimes accidents happen" to "sometimes accidents happen when you cut corners to save money."

Not asleep...

Employees of a federal agency that regulates offshore drilling—including some whose duties included inspecting offshore oil rigs—accepted sporting-event tickets, lunches and other gifts from oil- and natural-gas companies.

...just looking the other way:

Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil — and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency.

Previously: "The part of wisdom is not to destroy the Commission, but to utilize it."

Good thing they got people to sign those waivers:

More and more stories about sick fishermen are beginning to surface after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico...

...Marine toxicologist Riki Ott said the chemicals used by BP can wreak havoc on a person's body and even lead to death.

Meanwhile: "BP continued spraying the chemical on Monday despite the E.P.A.’s demand that it use a less toxic dispersant to break up the oil."

Crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and washing ashore in Louisiana is exposing how ill-prepared the U.S. has been to respond to a major offshore oil spill.

In the fight to limit environmental damage from the month-old spill—which is on track to rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in size—BP PLC executives, government officials, and scientists are learning as they go, even though the industry has been drilling in the Gulf for decades and has 77 rigs operating there, according to ODS-Petrodata, a research firm.

So we were woefully unready for disaster, even as the "drill here, drill now" chants echoed. 

At least we know now to move slowly and...um, what?

In the days since President Obama announced a moratorium on permits for drilling new offshore oil wells and a halt to a controversial type of environmental waiver that was given to the Deepwater Horizon rig, at least seven new permits for various types of drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted.

In fairness to Rand Paul, he may be more than a libertopian with a limited grasp of history -- he's also a  shill for irresponsible corporations.

"I think that sounds really un-American in [Obama's] criticism of business."

Paul continued: The President's reaction is "part of this sort of blame game society" where "it's always someone's fault." Paul added: "Maybe sometimes accidents happen."

Meanwhile: 

The company conceded Thursday what some scientists have been saying for weeks: More oil is flowing from the leak than BP and the Coast Guard had previously estimated.

"It's anger at the people who are supposed to be driving the ship don't have any idea what's going on," said E.J. Boles, 55, a musician from Big Pine Key, Fla. "Why wouldn't they have any contingency plan?"...

..."Everything in that marsh is dead as we speak," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said.

Without adequately planning for trouble, the oil business has focused on developing experimental equipment and techniques to drill in ever deeper waters, according to a Wall Street Journal examination of previous deepwater accidents. As drillers pushed the boundaries, regulators didn't always mandate preparation for disaster recovery or perform independent monitoring.

I guess past successes like the Exxon Valdez just gave the industry a false sense of confidence.

Perhaps slightly worse than the sheen of gas behind a ski boat: "There's a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water."

Into the silent water:

The millions of gallons of crude, and the introduction of chemicals to disperse it, have thrown this underwater ecosystem into chaos, and scientists have no answer to the question of how this unintended and uncontrolled experiment in marine biology and chemistry will ultimately play out..

"If you apply the dispersants to the source of the oil down there, you are completely hiding the problem...It looks like it's gone away, but there is no 'away' in the ocean. It's like sweeping it under the rug."

It's too bad that government is always the problem, because sometimes I think big business poses some risks that might need attention.

Then again, it's big ocean, so maybe we should all just calm down.

"BP has repeatedly claimed that measuring the plume would be impossible."

Or, not.

Yet for decades, specialists have used a technique that is almost tailor-made for the problem. With undersea gear that resembles the ultrasound machines in medical offices, they measure the flow rate from hot-water vents on the ocean floor. Scientists said that such equipment could be tuned to allow for accurate measurement of oil and gas flowing from the well.

21% of voters said the spill made them more likely to support offshore drilling. That includes an even split among GOP voters, 28% of whom said the spill made them more likely to support drilling and 28% of whom said the spill made them less likely to support drilling.

Few voters buy into Rush Limbaugh's conspiracy theory that environmentalists may have been responsible for the spill in an effort to build support for their agenda. Just 9% of voters say they think environmentalists caused the spill while 22% are unsure and 69% don't believe they had anything to do with it. Even among GOP voters only 13% are buying into the 'the environmentalists' did it frame of mind.

"Just 9%" and "only 13%" may seem an odd way to phrase it, but not when you look at the numbers for other unlikely beliefs.

I guessed that scale would be an issue when alert reader Fred fowarded this clip about the virtues of hay as a weapon against the Gulf oil spill, as they're covering the entire surface of the bowls with relatively thick layers of the stuff (I've since read that hay is being used as a localized solution, and also that it can, under some circumstances, make things worse).

Anyway, about the scale of the spill -- check out this overlay of its contours on a map of the Piedmont. You can see other examples and create your own map here.

 

Alan Greenspan was shocked to hear this ended badly:

The small U.S. agency that oversees offshore drilling doesn't write or implement most safety regulations, having gradually shifted such responsibilities to the oil industry itself for more than a decade.

Feeling a little better about that oil spill after this morning's Times front-pager saying things might not be so bad?

Not so fast, at least when it comes to one of the paper's key sources, the Gulf of Mexico Foundation:

At least half of the 19 members of the group’s board of directors have direct ties to the offshore drilling industry. One of them is currently an executive at Transocean, the company that owns the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded last month, causing millions of gallons of oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico.

[Governor Robert] McDonnell (R), who has made drilling off Virginia's coast one of his administration's top priorities, flew to Houston on Monday to tout the benefits of offshore drilling at an industry-sponsored conference. He told reporters before he left that he does not want to postpone drilling but to learn from the accident off Louisiana's coast.

Many other VA pols want to at least slow down the rush to drill in the wake of the Gulf spill.

Meanwhile, at the conference, BP canceled its lunch session, "The Challenges and Rewards in Operating in the World's Offshore Basins."

The tree-hugging saboteurs are winning:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today pulled his support for the controversial Tranquillon Ridge oil drilling project, effectively killing a project that had only become more controversial ever since he endorsed it more than a year ago.

I predicted to a friend the other day that someone would try this deflection tactic: "[W]hat better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig?"

At least he didn't blame the Community Reinvestment Act.

Not that BP has been acting in anything less than noble fashion.

(Link to Limbaugh quotes via Greensboring.)

In the 52-page exploration plan and environmental impact analysis, BP repeatedly suggested it was unlikely, or virtually impossible, for an accident to occur that would lead to a giant crude oil spill and serious damage to beaches, fish, mammals and fisheries.

See also: Titanic, The; Financial Crisis, Global; etc.

With an oily stench permeating the air across southeastern Louisiana, a massive oil spill was expected to start coming ashore in the Mississippi River delta early Friday, triggering all-out efforts to stave off an enironmental and fishing industry disaster.

Don't worry, they're on it: "BP has assembled spill experts from several major oil companies to brainstorm ways to stop the leak. The company has also asked for military technology."

The oil well spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico didn't have a remote-control shut-off switch used in two other major oil-producing nations as last-resort protection against underwater spills...U.S. regulators don't mandate use of the remote-control device on offshore rigs.

Nobody really knows how well it would have worked, and anyway regulations are for socialists.

We do know how things have gone without the device: "Oil Leak in Gulf of Mexico May Be 5 Times Initial Estimate."

On a conference call today, the N&R's Mark Binker twice asked Kay Hagan if that big nasty oil spill in the Gulf has given her any second thoughts about drilling off the NC coast.

Kay talked about the families of the lost workers and the need to make sure existing and future offshore wells are super-safe and extremely unlikely to do what this one just did.

Which I guess is Senatorese for "No."

Those other techniques must be something: "Burning oil on the water is the most environmentally friendly technique that one can think of."

Other than, y'know, not spilling massive amounts of oil into the water in the first place.

Not entirely unrelated: After nine years of regulatory review, the federal government gave the green light Wednesday to the nation’s first offshore wind farm, a highly contested project off the coast of Cape Cod.

Just a reminder as we move closer to more offshore drilling: oil spills are nasty.