Oil and Water

[jake]

Sadly, I am not amazed at the very limited news coverage regarding the inaction by the Obama administration on both the Gulf of Mexico oil spill (after Obama came out for offshore drilling) and the TN floods.

There is plenty of blame to go around on the reason for the oil spill, but why hasn't the federal government done more and sooner to limit the extent of the damage?   

And I guess if the people are not looting and rioting after floods, there is no need for the president to visit the ravaged areas of our country....especially if they vote GOP.

[Port Meadow]

Obama oil response: aggressive as crisis unfolded
By H. JOSEF HEBERT and ERICA WERNER (AP) – 3 days ago

WASHINGTON — It was a two-day trip to the Midwest to talk about jobs and clean energy. President Barack Obama didn't mention the drama unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil was gushing from a broken well pipe a mile beneath the sea.

The situation hadn't become a priority. Soon it would.

On the return to Washington aboard Air Force One, Obama learned the spill had become more worrisome. A third break was discovered at the destroyed well pipe on the ocean floor 40 miles from Louisiana's precious coastal marshes. Federal scientists believed at least 5,000 barrels of oil a day were being released — five times more than original estimates.

And there was no way to stop the flow.

The Gulf region, ravaged five years earlier by Hurricane Katrina, was on the verge of a second ecological disaster. Would there be a repeat of the bureaucratic bungling that marked President George W. Bush's response to the hurricane?

While the Obama administration has faced second-guessing about the speed and effectiveness of some of its actions, a narrative pieced together by The Associated Press, based on documents, interviews and public statements, shows little resemblance to Katrina in either the characterization of the threat or the federal government's response.

On April 20, an explosion engulfed the floating BP oil rig in fire, toppling it into the sea and sending 126 workers fleeing. Eleven never made it and are presumed dead.

Eight days later, from Air Force One, Obama told advisers he wanted an aggressive response to what had suddenly become a more menacing threat to the ecology and economy of the Gulf Coast. The president made no mention of the new developments when he strolled to the back of the plane to chat with the traveling press pool.

The fresh concerns would be outlined by the Coast Guard at a news conference that evening. It was not until the next day — nine days after the explosion and five days after first word the well was spewing oil — that the government would declare it a "spill of national significance."

Critics have asked why the administration did not move more quickly on that declaration, even though the real-world impact is viewed by many as largely symbolic.

This came from Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.: "The American people deserve to know why the administration was slow to respond, why necessary equipment was not immediately on hand in the area and why the president did not fully deploy Cabinet-level federal officials" to the Gulf Coast until April 30.

The AP review found that the administration — aware of the political scars left on the Bush White House over Katrina — moved early with rescue efforts. Also, the government knew within days that while no leak had been found, the potential for environmental harm existed.

From day to day, as the situation evolved from devastating fire and dramatic rescue to a possible environmental hazard, the response activities changed, too, according to documents and interviews.

___

Word reached Washington at 10:30 on the night of Tuesday, April 20, that the floating drilling rig Deepwater Horizon was on fire. Its workers scrambled to be rescued. The Coast Guard sent a pair of ships and four helicopters.

For a time, it was a rescue operation, and nothing more. The president was alerted because of the potential for great loss of life.

Before noon the next day at the Interior Department, which oversees offshore drilling projects, the department's No. 2 official, Deputy Secretary David Hayes, raced to grab a commercial jet for New Orleans without even time to pack a bag. He sets up shop at a government command center already monitoring events.

"We obviously knew this was a bad situation," Hayes said in a recent interview. "But we were not in a mindset where we thought we were dealing with a major oil spill."

Underwater surveillance showed no active leak from the wellhead. Oil on the water surface was determined to be residual from the pipe and the burned out rig, now floating precariously.

Hayes and other officials were confident the blowout preventer would keep any spill to a minimum. But it failed catastrophically, allowing 3 million gallons of oil into the Gulf so far.

Asked why he flew to Louisiana so soon after the explosion, Hayes said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was concerned about potential deaths of 11 workers, especially so soon after the April 5 mine collapse in West Virginia that killed 29 workers.

Two days after the fire erupted, Obama convened an Oval Office meeting to get the latest on what still was viewed largely as a major accident and rescue effort — 11 workers could not be found.

He asked departments to respond aggressively to help in the rescue and assess the environmental fallout. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs in a statement called the response "the No. 1 priority."

A team representing 16 agencies and offices that included the Pentagon, the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Interior and Homeland Security was formed. As a precaution, 100,000 gallons of chemicals to break up oil on the waster was sent to three Gulf Coast locations.

By Friday, the rig toppled to the sea floor. Efforts to rescue the 11 missing workers ended. BP, which leased the rig for exploratory drilling, insisted that based on remote monitoring, there was no leak from the well pipe. Officials believed they may have dodged a bullet.

But that changed abruptly the following day when Rear Adm. Mary Landry, commander of the Coast Guard's Gulf region, called Hayes, back in Washington, with some bad news. "We found a leak," she told him.

A new centralized command was set up in Robert, La. While the possibility of a major spill never was dismissed, it now became a much greater worry.

Obama had yet to speak publicly about the issue.

For Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, later named as overall head of the response effort, the tipping point from rescue to potentially major environmental crisis came Thursday, April 22. That's when the rig, with 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel, sank to the sea bottom, raising the potential for more damage to the pipe and a worse release of oil.

"At that point we knew this could go very, very bad. We were moving into a much more vulnerable potentially catastrophic situation," he said in a recent interview.

___

Come Saturday, April 24, with the spill estimated at 1,000 barrels a day, containment efforts were stepped up. The number of vessels sent to the scene tripled to 30 and more chemicals were dumped on the growing oil slick.

By Tuesday, April 27, 20 more vessels had been added to skim oil and help out. In Washington, BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, and other company officials were asked to the White House to describe their latest efforts to plug the leak and their plans to mitigate the spill's impact. Officials were told a relief well to stop the oil could take three months to drill.

Obama was briefed, although he did not meet with the oil company executives.

At the same time, an internal report at Homeland Security brought more ominous news. It concluded that marine ecology along the Gulf "may be significantly more impacted than originally estimated" by the volume of oil now believed being released with a high risk of environmental contamination in the Gulf.

The next day Interior Secretary Ken Salazar flew to the BP command center in Houston to review BP's plans to deal with the leak and response efforts.

The news got worse on Wednesday, April 28.

In Washington, senior advisers and department officials were holding their daily meeting in the White House Situation Room when word came in from the Gulf of a third leak found in the submerged pipeline. Separately, government scientists monitoring by air the oil plume already on the water concluded BP's estimate of release was far too low and revised the estimate to 5,000 barrels a day instead of 1,000.

That's when the call was made to Air Force One.

On Thursday, the administration's team participated in a news conference at the White House, followed by Obama in an appearance in the Rose Garden, where he commented publicly for the first time on what he characterized as "the worsening oil spill."

The next day, Friday, April 30, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Salazar and other administration officials flew to the Gulf Coast. The Pentagon made available two C-130 aircraft to drop chemicals on the oil. A quarter-million feet of boom was on site, but in the coming days it grew to 1 million feet, and the number of vessels increased from 75 to 200.

Into the weekend, the weather turned rainy and the wind picked up, bringing the forward fingers of the oil slick within 9 miles Louisiana's eastern wetlands.

On the rainy wind-swept Sunday, 12 days after the $350 million Deepwater Horizon was consumed by flames, Obama flew to the Gulf to get a firsthand look. He took a helicopter flight over the ecologically precious wetlands that may be tarnished by the oil.

As Air Force One returned to Washington, press secretary Gibbs got the question he knew was coming.

Was the president mindful of some people wanting to make comparisons to the Bush administration's Katrina response?

Other than geography, Gibbs insists there is no connection: "We've done everything that we could."

Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Matthew Daly and Fred Frommer contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[jake]

"We've done everything that we could"...What happened to the federal emergency equipment that was funded by "big oil" that was not made available? 

Again, the disaster was clearly caused by BP, RIG, and/or HAL.  But the government should have stepped in earlier to protect the country and its people. 

Also, it will be interesting to learn more about BP's request to the federal MMS (and the MMS response) to cement the wellhead AFTER removing the mud and filling with sea water.

[jake]

So Obama is finally admitting that he has responsibility concerning the gulf oil spill.
He even mentioned is daughter thinks he should be doing something to fix it:

"When I woke up this morning and I'm shaving, and Malia knocks on my bathroom door and she says — did you plug the hole yet Daddy?"

I have a feeling that story will bite him in the ass.

On another topic, he completely dodged the Joe Sestak questions.

[jake]

And Obama is now telling us that the oil spill is the first and last thing he thinks about each day.  So I guess the economy, unemployment levels, the safety of our troops, etc. (you know, the topics that were previously political hot buttons that he was trying to convince us that he was on top of) have been pushed aside.

But hey, he got the "don't ask; don't tell" legislation some attention in congress.  You know, the legislation that essentially does nothing until a military review is completed at the end of the year!  Priorities...

[jake]

"The American people should know that from the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort"
"But make no mistake: BP is operating at our direction"

How is that going?

"As we devise strategies to try and stop this leak, we're also relying on the brightest minds and most advanced technology in the world. We're relying on a team of scientists and engineers from our own national laboratories and from many other nations, a team led by our Energy secretary and Nobel-Prize-winning physicist, Steven Chu."

"That's when I sent Steven Chu down, the secretary of Energy, and he brought together a team -- basically, a brain trust, some of the smartest folks we have at the national labs and in academia -- to essentially serve as a oversight board with BP engineers and scientists in making calculations about how much mud could you pour down, how fast, without risking potentially the whole thing blowing."

He neglected to mention one of the top physicists was dismissed from the project, not for inability, but for his political/philosophical beliefs.

And 18 months into his term, Obama continues to blame the prior administration...When was drilling on this well commenced?  What were the permit parameters?  What administration's MMS allowed the variances to standard practices?  Yeah.

And some laughs:
"And on that answer, the answer is yes" -Obama 5/27/10

[rbain]

OMG you SO have a crush on him! If he had pigtails you'd totally be pulling them!

[jake]

"As we devise strategies to try and stop this leak, we're also relying on the brightest minds and most advanced technology in the world. We're relying on a team of scientists and engineers from our own national laboratories and from many other nations, a team led by our Energy secretary and Nobel-Prize-winning physicist, Steven Chu."

"That's when I sent Steven Chu down, the secretary of Energy, and he brought together a team -- basically, a brain trust, some of the smartest folks we have at the national labs and in academia -- to essentially serve as a oversight board with BP engineers and scientists in making calculations about how much mud could you pour down, how fast, without risking potentially the whole thing blowing."
-Obama 5/27/10

Somehow Obama's account of this braintrust does not match the facts.  That Prof Katz is one of the brightest minds is not in dispute, and he was selected to be part of Chu's team.  But now Obama's braintrust is short one brilliant professor...so much for science trumping politics!

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/education/story/A37EC23F3494702D862577290006CBFD?OpenDocument

Anti-gay view costs WU prof job on oil spill
By Tim Barker
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
05/20/2010

Just a week after being asked to join an elite team of scientists working on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a controversial Washington University professor has been dismissed from the group.

Physics professor Jonathan Katz's tenure on the team was cut short after Obama administration officials — under pressure from gay rights groups — decided his polarizing opinions and writings could get in the way. Katz has not been shy about expressing his thoughts about a range of topics, including a defense of homophobia.

His writings — which have appeared on his university website — apparently escaped the attention of administration officials charged with putting together the team that also included scientists from Lawrence Berkeley Labs and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu confirmed Katz had been removed.
...
Katz, whose academic credentials have not been questioned, has long been known for his controversial views.
...
Some of the criticism has centered on Katz's views questioning whether global warming is really a threat and challenging the value of the diversity movement. But his stance on homosexuality has brought a firestorm of complaints from liberal and gay rights groups.
...
Katz's removal has drawn praise from several fronts, including gay rights organizations who say there's no room for such divisive views.
...

[eno]

This oil "spill" (oops!) is clearly Bush's fault; Pres. Obama and Speaker Pelosi have said so!

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20005039-503544.html

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/pelosi-blames-bush-administration-for-bp-oil-spill-95175304.html

However, the lovely Maureen appears to be learning (albeit, way too late) what many of us (but, unfortunately, not enough of us) knew long ago about Obama (the senator who voted "present"):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30dowd.html

Meanwhile, here is an extremely sobering piece (in today's WSJ) by an oceanographer re: the long-term effects of the "spill":

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604575282420254222384.html

[jake]

We are more than 6 weeks into this oil spill.  Has Obama met with the CEO or chairman of BP yet?