Gulf Oil Spill

An excellent Forbes article on oil spills in Nigeria:http://blogs.forbes.com/csr/2010/06/17/bp-nigeria-and-csr/

I have one comment to this article: Transocean, the drill owner of the fatal Gulf accident, was originally a Norwegian company. It should be noted that one of the 11 dead, most of them Transocean employees, protested vigorously the decision by BP to shortcut the drilling process by switching from heavy mud to seawater. It was this decision that brought the well out of control. It could be that Transocean can be blamed for the faulty blow out preventer. This remains to be seen.

The originator of Transocean, Ole Lund, is about to sell his apartment here in Oslo. Anyone interested?

Link here: http://www.finn.no/finn/realestate/homes/object?finnkode=21415377&sid=xz70409931E222527
 
The latest on BP

The latest on BP

The latest on BP (per the 18th of June 2010)

Carl-Henric Svanberg, the chairman of the board of BP, has started searching for a new CEO to take over after Tony Hayward. I would not be suprised if the new guy has some contacts with the the many experienced business lawyers in NY...
 
dmr said:
Hey, gotta have a name to blame!
That's the way you play the game. :(
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Sure. There will be more people that have to leave BP. Just wait and see. But regarding CEO; BP now needs a guy with a wide legal experience. The most talked of issue at the BP boardrooms for years to come will be court cases....
 
Olsen said:
Then they are not competent as regulators. Besides Russia, USA is among the oldest and most experienced oil exploiting nations there is. There surely must be possible to man such regulating bodies with competent people. Otherwise you should not exploit the oil. To see to this is a political task. But if the policy is 'deregulation', 'small government' & 'less bureaucracy' then you end up with this. It is no coincidence that the Missisippi Delta now looks more and more like the Niger Delta, in Nigeria. And Nigeria is not the only African nation that can stand out as a role model for how it all ends if 'deregulation & small government' will look in the end.
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I'm not sure how more bureaucracy would have helped? If the government can tell you where, when, if, and how to drill, what power do they not have? What regulation was missing that would have helped?

The bureaucracy IS getting in the way of the cleanup. From ABC News:Against Gov. Jindal's Wishes, Crude-Sucking Barges Stopped by Coast Guard - the Governor of Louisiana is prevented from deploying skimmer boats because the Coast Guard hasn't verified they have the necessary paperwork.

Many Americans like "small government" because big government is expensive and doesn't do the job when its needed. How effective was FEMA after Hurricane Katrina and how many billions did we spend on it?

By the way, small government doesn't necessary mean, less government , but putting more government control at State and City levels, instead of Federal levels. Remember the population of Norway is about the population of Houston, Texas and its suburbs. I'm not sure how thrilled Norwegians are about turning over control over their laws to the EU.
 
chris00nj said:
I'm not sure how more bureaucracy would have helped? If the government can tell you where, when, if, and how to drill, what power do they not have? What regulation was missing that would have helped?
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A ban on offshore drilling would have helped prevent the problem.
 
antiquark said:
A ban on offshore drilling would have helped prevent the problem.
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Well, an outright ban is different than a lack of regulation. Media chatter indicated that problem was due to a lack of regulation, not that offshore drilling is intrinsically bad.
 
"By the way, small government doesn't necessary mean, less government , but putting more government control at State and City levels, instead of Federal levels."

Fragmentation of the authority is one of the things that is killing them down there, as I read that ABC article. This spill crosses state lines, so it is clearly the responsibility of the federal government to manage it. Maybe the state and city officials should be supporting that. That was the biggest mistake (maybe the only mistake actually) Bush made with Katrina, assuming that the locals down there could handle it. Similarly, Jindal and Barbour seem to think they can do better; it must be a Republican thing.

In reality, Obama could weigh himself down with some Stillson wrenches, put on some swim fins, and go down there and plug the leak himself with the bodies of BP board members, and he would still not be well liked in those red states.

Offshore drilling is here to stay as long as society is petroleum based. Offshore is where the oil is. Production has peaked, the easy stuff is already gone.
 
ebolton said:
Fragmentation of the authority is one of the things that is killing them down there, as I read that ABC article. This spill crosses state lines, so it is clearly the responsibility of the federal government to manage it. Maybe the state and city officials should be supporting that. That was the biggest mistake (maybe the only mistake actually) Bush made with Katrina, assuming that the locals down there could handle it. Similarly, Jindal and Barbour seem to think they can do better; it must be a Republican thing.

In reality, Obama could weigh himself down with some Stillson wrenches, put on some swim fins, and go down there and plug the leak himself with the bodies of BP board members, and he would still not be well liked in those red states.

Offshore drilling is here to stay as long as society is petroleum based. Offshore is where the oil is. Production has peaked, the easy stuff is already gone.
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The spill being offshore put the ball entirely in the feds court. The states have no jurisdiction offshore. The only can act when the oil gets to the shores.

You're right on Katrina and the fragmentation of authority. I think they all sat around waiting for someone else to act. One of these days we'll have an actual leader in the White House

There are some Republicans who will dislike Obama even if he eliminated the income tax, donned a Nascar jersey, and rocked out to Trace Adkins. Of course, there are Democrats who would hated Bush even if he would have declared himself a socialist, given billions to fight AIDS in Africa, and had the government pay for prescription medicines for the elderly.
 
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chris00nj said:
I'm not sure how more bureaucracy would have helped? If the government can tell you where, when, if, and how to drill, what power do they not have? What regulation was missing that would have helped?

The bureaucracy IS getting in the way of the cleanup. From ABC News:Against Gov. Jindal's Wishes, Crude-Sucking Barges Stopped by Coast Guard - the Governor of Louisiana is prevented from deploying skimmer boats because the Coast Guard hasn't verified they have the necessary paperwork.

Many Americans like "small government" because big government is expensive and doesn't do the job when its needed. How effective was FEMA after Hurricane Katrina and how many billions did we spend on it?

By the way, small government doesn't necessary mean, less government , but putting more government control at State and City levels, instead of Federal levels. Remember the population of Norway is about the population of Houston, Texas and its suburbs. I'm not sure how thrilled Norwegians are about turning over control over their laws to the EU.
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There could well be that any more bureaucracy would not have made a difference. We don't know yet. But Norwegian oil authorities insists that there is a wast difference between USA and Norway in this respect, though. What is sure is that we would have been just as bad off when such a disaster was a fact over here. Most likely, we would be worse off because of our far more adverse weather along our coast. The technology applied to stop the oil spill from spreading and picking it up is just laughably bad. Both in the US and here.

To what I know, EU have no regulating body overseeing oil exploration at all. EU does not seem to engage in such questions at all. That is why many think that EU is a disaster. Like it is for the European fisheries. The Norwegians have voted 'no' to becoming part of EU at two referendums in 25 years. With the crisis within EU it is even less likely now that we will ever become a member.
 
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