Obama Berates BP, TransOcean, Halliburton, and the Minerals Management Service - Stop the Fingerpointing and Clean Up the *%&#$ Oil Spill

He's on the warpath about this and I am glad!

Well, some of it is probably cya. But he's shown that he doesn't put up with excuses. That's a good thing.

Absolutely right David. And I saw him saying: you have to pay...

Those corporations are all just awful

Well, that makes it pretty clear. :)

the blame game is pre-lawsuit posturing. BP, Transocean, they all want to keep the money they make from the oil game. It would displease shareholders if they were to actually accept responsibility for what happened.
As to the cleanup, BP has spend a couple hundred million already I understand. But they do NOT want to be successfully sued for the full damages, in the many billions. It would be nicer for them if the Feds took the fall for that money, which means you and me would eventually be the payers.

Good perception, Chris. They are not saying anything that will increase the lawsuit settlement numbers when everyone that is currently getting screwed sues their collective buttocks.

You and me will be paying for this anyway, in the extra few cents a gallon that will appear at the pump.

We live along the gulf coast and you would not believe how many ads on are tv for lawyers right now. At least half of them are from out of town. It is ridiculous! The term "ambulance chaser" has a whole new meanign to me now. And the term is "oil chasers".

the circular firing squad is embarrassing. There is a grain of truth that the SYSTEM failed. Corporate oil production was sloppy, and Congress and the presidency had allowed them to regulate themselves so that there was in effect no backup plan.

I suppose the Exxon Valdez only taught us that double hulled tanker are better than single hulled tankers. It really taught us nothing about the dangers of deep water drilling.

I agree that the system failed. I don't agree that corporate oil production was sloppy, it was done according to the plan, which is to keep costs low, assume that risks are overestimated, and that the costs of spills will be bogged down for decades in appeals court. It's been 21 years since Exxon Valdez and Exxon continues to fight having to pay most of the money that was awarded. And so they make record profits.

It's mind boggling.

And we still don't have double-walled tankers everywhere. Single-walled tankers can still enter our ports.

The deep water drilling is a big concern. We will be seeing more and more of it because we've exhausted all the shallow water locations. We have to go deep. And as we've seen, if there is a leak and the "fail safe" mechanisms fail (which ALL of them did), there is no way to get a person down there to shut off the valve.

I watched and listened and POTUS 44 is tired of being passive! Watch out the proverbial ooooz has hit the fan!

Good. I want him to knock some heads.

I see this new voice as lifesaving for the Party and 2012! I have been waiting for this day, not knowing it would cost us the Gulf coast, I am relieved that he has demonstrated his peeved face and voice!

Thank you for posting the link to the speech. Now that was a breath of fresh air!

You're welcome, Tina. It's an important step.

When I watched the hearings and saw the BP/TransOcean/Haliburton ping pong I was incensed. This looked like a kindergarden where kids got caught having a paint fight, not three corporations trying to get to the bottom of what happened and how to fix an oil spill.

Kudos to POTUS for speaking up (I do wish it was sooner).

If voters want to be angry at someone it should be at the CEOs who have lost any semblance of credibility. They should also be angry at the political party that wants to protect those corporations and not the political party that is working hard to fix the problem.

I saw part of the hearings too and those big execs were like school kids pointing the finger at each other.

Unfortunately it is standard practice to lie to Congress these days. The risk of lying to Congress is less than the cost of lawsuits should any CEO actually admit culpability.

I have to paraphrase, so someone please correct me.

Apparently, in response to suggestions that the oil flow might be much larger than BP estimates, a BP spokesperson said something to the effect "We are not concerned as much with the size of the leak as in stopping it."

That makes some sense; It might sound good to some; we know that the flow is large enough to be spend a lot stopping it.

But I'd really want to know the flow rate if were involved somehow in trying to stop it. Especially since it is so difficult, I'd want to know as much as possible.

It seems rather obvious that the spokesperson who said the above (perhaps taken out of context; I don't know) was flustered, perhaps ill-informed and perhaps disingenuous,

It's possible that the BP spokesman was just trying to emphasize that we all know that it is a big leak, whether we know the exact amount or not, and that the focus is on getting it stopped rather than counting oil drops.

Or that he was trying to distract from the fact that the leak seems to be much larger than had been estimated.

Either way, they have to figure out how to stop the leak. At nearly a mile deep, and with all the fails-safe mechanisms failing to keep it safe, that's easier said than done.

I agree. It just seemed like an ill-considered statement.

I now read that the 5k barrel/day estimate was a NOAA measure that was adopted by BP.

I think the PIV estimate from Purdue would be an upper limit if the whole flow were oil without gas, but I have not read details. But, should be good within a factor of 3.

I do think that it was honest to release the video.

Not sure what we will learn from this.

Question: What is driving gasoline prices down in the last week in the US?

I now read that the 5k barrel/day estimate was a NOAA measure that was adopted by BP.

Actually, BP had said that there was only 1K barrels/day, and NOAA had to correct them based on their assessment. So early on it appears BP was either trying to low-ball the estimate or just severely got it wrong. The estimates by NOAA now are much higher.

The Purdue estimate is probably closer to reality, but again, who knows. The thing is nearly a mile deep so there is no good way to get a measurement.

I do think that it was honest to release the video.

Apparently BP withheld it for a while, and have additional video they have not made public. BTW, it turns out the pipe is 2 feet in diameter, not some soda straw sized pipe. That is a lot of oil.

Not sure what we will learn from this.

The first thing we should learn is that extracting oil from the sea bed is an inherently dangerous and environmental risky exercise. The second is that it will only get worse as we will drill more wells that deep because the shallow water locations are all drying up. As are most other reserves around the world.

Question: What is driving gasoline prices down in the last week in the US?

Prices fluctuate, and we just had a big spike in prices, so the fact that they came down a little is no big surprise. In fact, take a look at this site and click the 6 month button just over the chart. You'll see this little dip is part of the noise and that prices have been going up for a while. We can expect them to continue to fluctuate, but definitely will continue to go up as oil gets harder and harder to extract.

Yes, it would hardly be worth the trouble to extract oil with a soda straw.

22 inches is the diameter I read. From that and piv of the leak(s) it is easy to estimate the flow rate. But I have not done it, yet.

I agree that there is noise in most things.

But, whether it be a butterfly or a bull, there are sources for that "noise" at the non-thermal/quantum level.

Obama said the right things in the right tone of voice. Now let's see what this Administration actually does. Let's see if Congress has any backbone. (I'm betting they have pasta for bones.) The culpable in this case are at least 90% likely to get off almost untouched.

I share your concerns on this. Obama has removed the subsidies to the oil industry from his last two budget proposals, and Congress has put them right back in. The oil lobby is as strong as the tobacco lobby was for years.

Richard,

Corporations are not people. They do not learn. Their top management is not making decisions on the basis of what is good for the corporation in the long run since they will be in charge only in the short run. They will do what they can to evade punishment for themselves and care about little else. Corporate fines will do little good except to move the money around.

It's the system that's broken.

Actually, according to the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision, apparently corporations are people. But not in a good way.

Unfortunately, corporations make decisions based on a quarterly earnings report schedule. And if you're making a profit now, why worry about where the company ends up after you've bailed out with your golden parachute.

Since the end of WWII the quarterly earnings statement has been king. It's led to the end of heavy industry in the US and a host of other downright silly things. As long as the earnings are 75 cents a share and not, God forbid, 73 cents a share, management is doing a great job. :)

The Supreme Court has allowed corporations to be considered people by allowing their unlimited campaigning for their little puppets in congress.

I think the MMS suffered the same sort of thing the SEC did during the Bush years. Rather than eliminate it, the appointees at the top adopted a mission of giving the oil business what it wanted.

After all the Quid pro quo of the most recent bill passage, nothing in government would surprise me... I know that cities have had public works personnel turn their heads to inferior products and construction while money changed hands under the table.

Do you suppose that same scenario happens with the lower level decision makers of the 3 private entities involved?

Yes, we should be prepared for lots of blame to share, on this one...

The MMS, like the forest service and other agencies whose missions are more to encourage resource use then to protect resources, they tend to be in bed with the industry they "regulate." [In the case of the MMS, literally]

Which is why Obama has ordered that the two competing functions be split up into different offices.

great minds, David. i posted on the MMS mess this morning.

This is just a God Awful Mess made by people not an Act of God.

When things go wrong people have the tendency to name it, Act of God. God had nothing to do with this mess; people had everything to do with this mess. I say, Leave God Alone. He has enough on His plate.

"Actually, according to the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision, apparently corporations are people. But not in a good way."

that is wonderful, David. It should be chiseled in stone onto some public monument. :)

I'm tired from the blame game. Pointing fingers isn't the answer but clearing the problems are. No one seems to get that. too much noise, not enough solutions.

I absolutely agree.

Go Mr. President, I say.

John Wellik:
I believe that people can attain a greater grasp of the scale of what is unfolding when they can relate it to their own backyard.

That said, I feel that I must point out some of the untold story of what is going on out there. I spent four years as an environmental geologist investigating and characterizing commercial and industrial sites impacted by unauthorized releases of various types of chemical pollutants (generally gasoline/diesel/motor oil spills). What is recognized as the extent of the spill today would be classified as "free phase" product, that which is still very close to its manufactured, or in this instance, natural state. There are several phases that a product like oil can take, as I said above, there is the free phase state, then there is the sorbed phase state where product comes into contact with a medium like soil (as when the spill reaches a beach) and adheres to soil particles and is released slowly through dissolution; there is the vapor phase state as the product comes into contact with a medium such as air and volatilizes; and then there is the dissolved phase state as the product comes into contact with water and a portion of it dissolves and is released into the water column.

The dissolved phase state is the one that will most likely travel the farthest, because in this phase it is incorporated into the water column and will travel almost nearly as fast as the water itself travels, so think about the currents of the Gulf, and where the water is likely to travel to next, as it is likely that the "invisible" dissolved phase has already reached that location along with the water and is impacting the ecosystem.


Also, in this state the chemicals will also be most easily ingested by marine life through normal respiration of water, thereby entering into the food chain to be passed along as each creature consumes the one beneath it in the chain. Think about that for a second, these chemicals will be able to be ingested into marine life by respiration and food consumption, eventually reaching us through the food chain, and correlate that to the known effects of mercury in "top of the food chain" species like tuna.

So while we are all focused on the admittedly horrible and graphic impact of the free phase oil that is prominently displayed on our televisions and the web, the untold story of the dissolved phase is still sitting out there ready to impact our food for years to come.
Another reader writes:
One thing I think needs to be added to it, however, is the concept of volume rather than two-dimensional overlays. Imagine that the spill not only lay on the ground in those locations, but drifted from ground level to 5000 feet in altitude--killing and sickening wildlife wherever the oil was encountered. Then we begin, I think, to grasp some of the horror of what is happening. Most of it is where we can't even see it right now.

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