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I have more faith that the Almigthy Lord of the Sea and Maker of Monumentally succesful movies- James Cameron and the team of brains hes working with can solve this debacle. And maybe make another multibillion dollar 3d movie in the process

Thats just a touch of sarcasm, but he is a seriously experienced oceanographer- and who knows- crazier things have happened.

But a boycott is superfluous at this point- 99% or people have no clue where there gas comes from- if its not a named station they can get it from a variety of vendors that might use BP, exxon, chevron etc etc. And as others have mentioned- if you stop buying BP's stuff, they cant afford to fix their enormous fubar.

rdlb wrote:
Beware!!! Canadians are just Brits in disguise!! I've seen the coins!! You can't fool me!

Damn! This Buddy-Guy caught us! We've been exposed! You haven't heard the last of us, Eh?

metallifan wrote:

rdlb wrote:
Beware!!! Canadians are just Brits in disguise!! I've seen the coins!! You can't fool me!

Damn! This Buddy-Guy caught us! We've been exposed! You haven't heard the last of us, Eh?

You put the queen on your money!!!

THE JIG IS UP!

helgrenze wrote:So.. It is now week 7 after the accident.
Obama has only this week made any effort to talk to the families of the men that died on that rig.

The president's private meeting with the families in the State Dining Room is part of his effort to show the public, that he is on top of the situation.

7 Weeks after the fact he is "on top of the situation."

Official numbers on the oil they are now recovering is @620,000 Gallons a day, estimated to be half of what is flowing.
Given even that number, means that more that 300 Million Gallons has already spilled into the Gulf.
Thats over 700,000 Barrels.
Thats more than enough to flood a major city.
To put that into perspective, a 55 gallon drun is roughly 3' tall x 2' diameter... It would take @75 of these to fill a 10'x10'x10' space. It would take nearly 10,000 such spaces to hold all that oil.
Or 140 US football fields, endzone to endzone.
And that is a conservative estimate.

As for a boycott... not needed. BP is being hurt worse by the bad press than any boycott could do.

Just an FYI, when they talk about "barrels of oil"; a barrel equals 42 US gallons. The term goes back to the late 1800s when they used wooden barrels.

I blame Mexico. Its their gulf.

Ironhide wrote:

Just an FYI, when they talk about "barrels of oil"; a barrel equals 42 US gallons. The term goes back to the late 1800s when they used wooden barrels.

I know, but there is nothing referencing the dimentions of an Oil Barrel. The height and diameter should be close enough for a comparison though.

ShivanAngel wrote:
All Obama is doing is kneejerk reactions and using this for publicity. He has offered very little constructiveness to the whole situation.

The thing is Obama is getting so much stick for this. People are not buying his spin. So why bother continuing. He could always try doing something constructive instead.

Orlanth wrote:

ShivanAngel wrote:
All Obama is doing is kneejerk reactions and using this for publicity. He has offered very little constructiveness to the whole situation.

The thing is Obama is getting so much stick for this. People are not buying his spin. So why bother continuing. He could always try doing something constructive instead.

Constructive like using his black magic to fix the leak at the bottom of the ocean.

Frazzled wrote:Why is Napolitano even near this?

Napolitano is the Secretary of Homeland Security. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is a component of The Department of Homeland Security. Janet Napolitano is the cabinet member who is directly responsible for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is one of the agencies involved in the federal response to the oil spill.

Napolitano is a kind of pizza, isn't it?

Also, ice cream.

I work in the oilfield for an oilfield services company. Two of our personnel when the Deepwater Horizon exploded (They got off fine). I think there needs to be some clarification on this whole thing.

First BP was the overseeing entity for that well. They contracted Transocean to drill the well, an oilfield services company to conduct the directional drilling segment(s) of the well and to survey/log the well, another third party (Halliburton) to do the cement work, another to maintain and condition the drilling fluids (mud). There are meetings every twelve hours where all of the representatives from these various companies give a status of their operations and an outline of the next twelve hours activities. Anything occuring that was not discussed at the meeting must be brought to the "Company Man's" (The BP Rep) attention. I speak from first hand experience that everybody out there is playing a big game of CYA.

The mud engineer puts too much loss circulation material (LCM) down hole and clogs up the works for the survey equipment, but decides to omit that from the meetings and the survey guys take the heat for their tool failing. The rig hands dump too much diesel into the drilling fluid which lowerd the mud weight causing a gas kick, but they leave that detail out of the meeting and the mud engineer get blamed.
It goes on and on. So BP may or may not have been aware of the situation that ultimately led to the explosion.

Next is the fact that the oil companies do have the technology and expertise to deal with sealing the well better than the government, but on the cleanup front the government could have and should have taken a much larger role and earlier in the disaster than they did. BP would have to pick up the bill of course but the government has done more to impede the process of containing the spill than helping. A suspension of the Jones Act, a willingness to accept help from foreign advisors knowlegable in oilfield and/or subsea blowouts, allowing the Army Corps of Engineers to forego Environmetal Impact Studies for building protective sand bars etc etc would have helped. The apathy towards this crisis until the polls were dripping in bile is disgusting, but Obama will just continue as his MO dictates and blame everybody else. Maybe the ass he's looking to kick should be his own.

sexiest_hero wrote:Thing is when Obama said nothing Fox and friends roasted him. Remember them saying this was his Katrina? I think he spoke up because when he was quiet Rush started to say he was in with the BP people. At this point nothing he can do is right.

Fox isn't a news channel.

Its a propaganda channel for retards and dumbasses. If you watch Fox, your as dumb as Glen Beck.

Karon wrote:
Fox isn't a news channel.

Its a propaganda channel for retards and dumbasses. If you watch Fox, your as dumb as Glen Beck.

I might be a good idea to avoid drawing false conclusions when making claims as broad as yours.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyras wrote:...but Obama will just continue as his MO dictates and blame everybody else. Maybe the ass he's looking to kick should be his own.

He placed blame directly on himself in at least one his public addresses. Granted, he was harshly critical of BP for about a month before the speech being discussed in that article, but there it is.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Orlanth wrote:

ShivanAngel wrote:
All Obama is doing is kneejerk reactions and using this for publicity. He has offered very little constructiveness to the whole situation.

The thing is Obama is getting so much stick for this. People are not buying his spin. So why bother continuing. He could always try doing something constructive instead.

Constructive like using his black magic to fix the leak at the bottom of the ocean.

I hear he learned a lot of that in Kenya.

dogma wrote:
He placed blame directly on himself in at least one his public addresses. Granted, he was harshly critical of BP for about a month before the speech being discussed in that article, but there it is.

Obama's words and actions are often, as is in this case, completely uncoupled from each other. He and his administration have been acting like teens who's parents just discovered their weed stash. "I was just holding it for them, it's not my fault, I didn;t think it would be a bad thing, blame them it's their drugs"...

How long will be long enough for Obama to take responsibility for his own administration and stop blaming Bush? Yeah, Bush was too cozy with the oil companies, but what exactly did Obama do to fix the problems at the MMS? He even made it a point in his campaign. His administration was apathetic, for whatever reason, and now he's in damage control. The sad thing is he seems to be more focused on PR damage control than environmental and economic damage control.

As a side note, while I'm posting in the thread: People are going to have to brace themselves for the reality that current law caps the financial responsibilty a company can be held liable for in crisis like this. BP won't get the full tab on this, and if Congress puts out a retroactive law to go after BP they might win some points with an angry public but will do irreperable damage to the business climate in the US. Companies will be so frightened to do business in the US for fear of laws being created to mold a litigious environment to suit their own whims that the doors to the US economy might as well be boarded up with an "Out of Business" sign.

Tyras wrote:

dogma wrote:
He placed blame directly on himself in at least one his public addresses. Granted, he was harshly critical of BP for about a month before the speech being discussed in that article, but there it is.

Obama's words and actions are often, as is in this case, completely uncoupled from each other. He and his administration have been acting like teens who's parents just discovered their weed stash. "I was just holding it for them, it's not my fault, I didn;t think it would be a bad thing, blame them it's their drugs"...

How long will be long enough for Obama to take responsibility for his own administration and stop blaming Bush? Yeah, Bush was too cozy with the oil companies, but what exactly did Obama do to fix the problems at the MMS? He even made it a point in his campaign. His administration was apathetic, for whatever reason, and now he's in damage control. The sad thing is he seems to be more focused on PR damage control than environmental and economic damage control.

As a side note, while I'm posting in the thread: People are going to have to brace themselves for the reality that current law caps the financial responsibilty a company can be held liable for in crisis like this. BP won't get the full tab on this, and if Congress puts out a retroactive law to go after BP they might win some points with an angry public but will do irreperable damage to the business climate in the US. Companies will be so frightened to do business in the US for fear of laws being created to mold a litigious environment to suit their own whims that the doors to the US economy might as well be boarded up with an "Out of Business" sign.

Funny how that doesn't stop companies from operating in china... Faux economic hyperbole with little bearing on reality aside, while the government was "slow to react" the climate of the disaster has been one of a 'constant promise of an end'. When BP promises that the leak will be stopped in a week every two weeks while significantly (and intentionally) underreporting the size of the leak it creates a situation where it is easy for a governmental body to be somewhat complacent. The government fell for the trap of the promise that the leak would end soon and now it's left with the final admission that the leak is significantly larger than the recorded estimates and promises of BP itself. The final admission of the realistic size of the issue now that BP finally can't do anything to stop it (aside from capturing a bit and waiting) has made the problem significantly worse for the government (in hindsight). The country shouldn't have trusted BPs analysis of the problem in the first place, in retrospect it's quite clear that there was significant reason for BP to lie about the scale of the disaster while it still believed it could stop it quickly.

Many of the things obama could have done in response to quicken the government reaction to the spill are still unpalatable. You specifically mentioned environmental impact modeling for the creation of sandbars, and while that may seem like an unimportant process in light of the danger the dead sea effect and constant erosion of the coast created in dubai by these very same practices speak otherwise. In truth there isn't a spectacular amount the administration could be doing here. There is already a considerable amount of question as to the effect of the dispersants and whether they were a good idea at all and no one in history has attempted to control or deal with the plume effect now being grappled with. To quote a comedy article relating to this exact issue, until we manage to figure out how to flip submarines upside down and shoot the well to death the government doesn't have a whole lot of hard power on this issue.

Tyras wrote:
Obama's words and actions are often, as is in this case, completely uncoupled from each other. He and his administration have been acting like teens who's parents just discovered their weed stash. "I was just holding it for them, it's not my fault, I didn;t think it would be a bad thing, blame them it's their drugs"...

I suppose I'm not really certain how one accepts blame with action. At least , short of 'acting' to accept blame by stating "I accept the blame for this bad thing which happened."

Tyras wrote:
How long will be long enough for Obama to take responsibility for his own administration and stop blaming Bush? Yeah, Bush was too cozy with the oil companies, but what exactly did Obama do to fix the problems at the MMS? He even made it a point in his campaign. His administration was apathetic, for whatever reason, and now he's in damage control. The sad thing is he seems to be more focused on PR damage control than environmental and economic damage control.

As I said, it appears he said exactly that. Given the delay between the his first response, and the speech mentioned in the article I posted, the period of time appears to be 31 days. That said, I don't recall the Bush administration ever being mentioned. I recall a lot of discussion about how the MMS was too closely tied to the petroleum industry, but that's it. Though, in all honesty, I'm not sure what you expect from political speeches. They're all about public relations, even when they are focused on economic or environmental relief efforts, and in a crisis situation that means damage control.

If you think that Obama is spending too much time giving speeches, then I can see, and agree with, your point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ShumaGorath wrote:
Many of the things obama could have done in response to quicken the government reaction to the spill are still unpalatable.

At the moment it seems that simply acting quickly, instead of waiting 7 days to become personally involved in the issue, would have done a lot to prevent the criticism. However, as you pointed out, its difficult to effectively prioritize issues when the agencies already in contact with the situation do not know its severity, or are being deliberately mislead by an actor that does. At the very least FEMA and the EPA should have placed personnel and equipment on standby for quick deployment in order to facilitate containment.

Not that it would have been effective, of course, but it would have been the prompt involvement people seem to be calling for.

Some of the blame lies in BP catering to the environmentalists and not drilling closer to shore which would have been safer and less risky and easier to repair the damage had it been closer to shore. Of course the tree huggers want wells drilled as far off shore as possible to try to protect the environment.

Not saying being closer to shore would have stopped an explosion but getting equipment 1k feet down would be a far cry easier than getting equipment apporximately 1 mile down.

Some quick hits on the oil leak and the gov'ts response.....

"It's very discombobulated and disorganized," Orange Beach, Ala., Mayor Tony Kennon said of the federal response after tar balls stained the beach and entered Perdido Bay this week, without protection from booms. "They had five weeks to get ready for this, and it still happened."

Early on, the Coast Guard was widely viewed as giving BP too much control on the scene, effectively looking the other way when the company offered misleadingly rosy assessments. Allen, for example, went along for weeks with BP's insistence that measuring the amount of oil spewing from the well was unimportant, only later pressing for accurate figures after scientists complained that it could help officials plan for containing the mess and account for liability.

There's also the Katrina-like gap between what federal officials say is happening and what local leaders say they are seeing. Since the beginning, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen has insisted the government and BP deployed more resources than needed. That is consistently disputed by local and state officials who complain of poor coordination, shortages of boom and skimmers, agonizing delays in getting responses to requests and a general reluctance to try new or experimental cleanup strategies.

Allen said that he had dispatched Coast Guard liaisons to every local official three weeks ago and that he could only respond to specific concerns leaders say aren't being addressed.
"The parish presidents have a conduit into the incident command and the president every night on a conference call," he said.
Asked by another reporter if he "trusts" BP, Allen said "We have to have a cooperative … relationship."

"I have spent more time fighting the officials of BP and the Coast Guard than fighting the oil," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said. "We've got to find someone to put in charge who has the guts and the will to make some decisions."

Nungesser's parish includes the Louisiana marshes first hit by oil a month ago where recently pelicans were found coated with thick oil.

David Camardelle, mayor of Grand Isle, La., said he meets daily with state and federal officials but that when he brings up a problem or offers a solution he's told "BP or EPA, or the Coast Guard is going to have to approve this before we can do anything."

Camardelle complained that shrimpers in his community who sign up for the "vessels of opportunity"
"are being sent off on ships where they find no oil (and) ... they want to return and help protect their communities." At other times they were "ready to go but just waited at the docks for the call," he told lawmakers.

Does any of this sound like a Government that acted quickly and resposibly... or a bunch of national politicians trying to save their jobs and look good in the press?

Some of the blame lies in BP catering to the environmentalists and not drilling closer to shore which would have been safer and less risky and easier to repair the damage had it been closer to shore. Of course the tree huggers want wells drilled as far off shore as possible to try to protect the environment.

I'm pretty sure thats more an issue with coastal property costs and the ruination of oceanside vistas damaging the value of oceanside property, but then environmentalists typically don't want any sort of sea based oil drilling anywhere.

Not saying being closer to shore would have stopped an explosion but getting equipment 1k feet down would be a far cry easier than getting equipment apporximately 1 mile down.

The oil would have also had a significantly more major impact on the coast much more quickly. Oil disperses in water while bacteria eats and reduces it in volume. On the shore it just sort of sits and rots while it kills things. The farther the oil travels the more it disperses (hence why the ixion disaster didn't destroy the planet while the exxon valdeez is still being talked about. One is hundreds of times the size of the other.).

Does any of this sound like a Government that acted quickly and resposibly... or a bunch of national politicians trying to save their jobs and look good in the press?

Did someone say that they acted quickly and effectively? That said it's unlikely they could have protected everything (even with a better reaction time), five hundred miles of coast is a lot of floaty logs and rope.

Whichever tv pundit talked about nationalizing BP needs to be put down and have his family sold into sex slavery in eastern europe. Totally unacceptable to hurt our diplomatic relations with the UK over an oil spill. Allies>Environment.

I'm going to go out on a limb, and suggest that such a punishment is too severe for the 'crime' committed.

Marshal2Crusaders wrote:Whichever tv pundit talked about nationalizing BP needs to be put down and have his family sold into sex slavery in eastern europe. Totally unacceptable to hurt our diplomatic relations with the UK over an oil spill. Allies>Environment.

An oil spill caused by a massive multinational corporation. If it was just england dumping oil into the gulf I think environment>allies would make sense.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Marshal2Crusaders wrote:Whichever tv pundit talked about nationalizing BP needs to be put down and have his family sold into sex slavery in eastern europe. Totally unacceptable to hurt our diplomatic relations with the UK over an oil spill. Allies>Environment.

An oil spill caused by a massive multinational corporation. If it was just england dumping oil into the gulf I think environment>allies would make sense.

Yet it would seem as if some members of our faultless government are acting as if it is just Britain. And the Environment is never worth losing an ally over. I pity the person that thinks pretty trees and beaches are more important than the security to have pretty trees and beaches.

Marshal2Crusaders wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Marshal2Crusaders wrote:Whichever tv pundit talked about nationalizing BP needs to be put down and have his family sold into sex slavery in eastern europe. Totally unacceptable to hurt our diplomatic relations with the UK over an oil spill. Allies>Environment.

An oil spill caused by a massive multinational corporation. If it was just england dumping oil into the gulf I think environment>allies would make sense.

Yet it would seem as if some members of our faultless government are acting as if it is just Britain. And the Environment is never worth losing an ally over. I pity the person that thinks pretty trees and beaches are more important than the security to have pretty trees and beaches.

Meh, it's not like england has anyone else to cozy up too. Might as well get mad when they feth up the pool.

Except the UK has been our closest military ally since, what? 1914? It really isnt worth losing trust over. Its some oil, itll get cleaned when it gets cleaned, until then Mrytle Beach/Hilton Head is very nice.

We should all totally just have horses. Or Musk Oxes. Grass fueled and everything.

Marshal2Crusaders wrote:Except the UK has been our closest military ally since, what? 1914? It really isnt worth losing trust over. Its some oil, itll get cleaned when it gets cleaned, until then Mrytle Beach/Hilton Head is very nice.

I think my point was that if they cut ties over something so small as that then they would clearly be fairly self destructive as a country.

OH! Ill leave my post for the disbelievers who want to string up the UK.