Gulf Oil Spill

[robklurfield]

MSNBC showed some video footage last night that broke through the de facto BP/US govt embargo on shooting oiled wildlife and shoreline. It was heart-wrenching to see. BP has enlisted the assistance of all kinds of local to federal level government employees to block access to areas where the damage seems most visible. Also, they've made all the local folks hired to do contract cleanup work (ie, fishermen, etc.) from speaking with press, etc.

For a country where people of all politcal stripes are always shouting about how important our many freedoms are to us, and even worth dying for, it never fails to amaze me how readily we give up those freedoms. In this instance, I can't fathom any reason of NATIONAL importance for covering up the facts. BP certainly has all the reason in the world to do so, but why on earth would anyone from the government at local, state or federal levels think it's in anyone's interest to hide the truth? If anyone thinks this makes the government look better, they are wrong; it makes it look worse. And, why on earth would the government aid and abet BP in hiding the facts?

A free press in the US is becoming more of a myth than a reality. I hope at some point this awful trend, like the spill, comes to an end.

 

[ederek]

Wow Rob, I don't watch TV and had assumed there were images such as the ones in the link posted here yesterday all over the news. I agree with everything you said about trends with the press - it's troubling...

 

[dave lackey]

Free speech can sometimes come back and bite you... hehe,


What was it, three weeks ago, BP inserted a tube and began collecting 5,000 barrels/day when the original TOTAL was 5,000 barrels/day? For the last week and a half BP has tried Top Kill/Top Hat/LMRP, etc. and now with a cap on the pipe are "successful" in collecting 1800 barrels since yesterday!!!😛😛😛😛

Idiots.

 

[antiquark]

It seems that the Tea Partiers and their friends have been mostly silent in recent days. This disaster exposes their ultra-right ideology as the fraud that it is.

 

[robklurfield]

dave, one way to avoid having free speech bite one's self on the ass is to not lie. a lesson BP is rather slow to learn. their CEO may be a good geologist, but he is a lousy manager and spokesman. I'm wondering how long their board will wait before firing him. my guess is that they want to continue using him as their public punching bag for as long as they can. their lawyers must certainly be logging an awful lot of billable hours.

 

[dave lackey]

Heh...Rob, you and are definitely on the same wavelength!

How old is that CEO? They will fire him with a multi-million dollar severance and he moves on smirking all the while. It surprise me to see the relief wells fail the first time (they have a high failure rate) and the second maybe failing. By then, the stock prices of BP will be so low that bankruptcy may be the only way that BP can go.😡

THEN, we all get the shaft. Today, I saw a headline on Fox about charging taxes for drivers to pay for this?😱

 

[dave lackey]

Is it just me or does the BP "LIVE" view of the oil leak seem much larger than weeks ago?????😱:bang:

And why is it we don't see all the dead wildlife shown on CNN/Fox/MSNBC, etc.???

 

[wblanchard]

Goldman Sachs sold 44% of its BP Stock, Three weeks before the Oil Rig disaster.
They then increased their holdings in Hess Oil by 51% and Occidental Petro by 14% at the same time.

On March 31st they owned 6 million shares of BP…after it sold 4.7 Million shares!

http://moneycentral.msn.com/ownership?Holding=Institutional+Ownership&Symbol=BP

 

[ebolton]

My understanding is the most productive similar well in the Gulf of Mexico produces 25,000 bbl per day. BP was saying the leak had to be less than that number, since any given well isn't likely to be a recordbreaker. That ignores the fact that the pressure in the oil resevoir is pushing the crude a mile up a pipe through the water in the producing well, which has to offer some resistance. 25,000 bbl per day might be the minimum that was coming out before they got the 'top hat' sort of working. I see now they have maxxed out their capability to process 10,000 bbl per day out of the top hat, so 15,000 bbl per day might still be leaking. BP held to their 5,000 bbl per day estimate for a long time; it is clear they were full of something other than shanola.

 

[aldenfender]

Is there anyone with photos of the oil spill? Or is it a bit too early?😕

Hey Dave, I'm new to the forum, I have one photo up so far, not dealing with the actual oil, but of a cemetery erected in a grand isle home owners yard. There are 101 croses which each bearing something special that will be missed by the family. I believe it is in my gallery?

I have a view of the beach with miles of boom, and bagged sea life in piles... I will put them up tomorrow... Its a sad situation.

 

[Olsen]

A lot of talk of money

A lot of talk of money

There is a lot of talk of how much money BP has to pay for the disaster. To compare: Take Exxon Valdez. Exxon was awarded by the Ancorage jury 287 million $ in actual damages. What equalted one year of Exxon profit back then. Much of it Exxon claimed from their insurances, spreading the bill in the financial market, along with cleanup damages also covered by the insurance. Exxon was awarded an additional 5 Billion $ in punitive damages. After 19 years of court wranglings Exxon paid 507million dollars for the punitive damages...

 

[Olsen]

Carl-Henric Svanberg caring about small people

Carl-Henric Svanberg caring about small people

The Swedish Chairman of BP and ex CEO of Erichsson etc. said in a speach after his meeting with pres. Obama that 'BP cared about small people'; a typical translation error that we scandinavians do when trying to speak English. (- I do them all the time, but I am not the chairman of BP). What he ment was 'little people' or rather 'ordinary people'. I don't believe his statement for a minute. What BP cares about is their own profit. Which this crisis is a symptom of.

20 Billion $?

The final bill will be far - far less. Check out other environmental disasters, like Union Carbide's Bopal, Dow Chemical's Agent Orange - or the Exxon Valdez etc. and compare.

 

[chris00nj]

What BP cares about is their own profit. Which this crisis is a symptom of.

20 Billion $?

The final bill will be far - far less. Check out other environmental disasters, like Union Carbide's Bopal, Dow Chemical's Agent Orange - or the Exxon Valdez etc. and compare.

Or Chernobyl. Those victims got nothing!

BP likes to talk safety but they don't do safety if big bucks are involved. BP's Texas City refinery exploded a few years ago for because of shoddy process safety.

Of course, the US government is to blame as well. Not for the leak itself, but for allowing the spreading oil to effect so much of the Gulf. Among other things, they turned down offers of the Dutch for skimmer ships offered as late as May 4th.
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/dutch-oil-spill-response-team-standby-us-oil-disaster


Obama is no better at handling a disaster than Bush, and dare I say, perhaps even worse.

 

[dave lackey]

Wow, 60 days into this event and NO one has photos they have taken themselves?

 

[WikiLeaks]

The Swedish Chairman of BP and ex CEO of Erichsson etc. said in a speach after his meeting with pres. Obama that 'BP cared about small people'; a typical translation error that we scandinavians do when trying to speak English. (- I do them all the time, but I am not the chairman of BP). What he ment was 'little people' or rather 'ordinary people'. I don't believe his statement for a minute. What BP cares about is their own profit. Which this crisis is a symptom of.

20 Billion $?

The final bill will be far - far less. Check out other environmental disasters, like Union Carbide's Bopal, Dow Chemical's Agent Orange - or the Exxon Valdez etc. and compare.

20 Billion $ is peanuts, it won't be anywhere near enough. Noone has got a clue about the long term effects. Most likely large parts of the Gulf will die and not recover for decades. There is no amount of money to cover for this. We must unite against greed, corruption, war mongers and capitalism before they kill the entire planet. It's us humans or them criminals. It's time to choose sides. If we let these crooks continue they will soon destroy the planet.

 

[Olsen]

20 Billion $ is peanuts, it won't be anywhere near enough. Noone has got a clue about the long term effects. Most likely large parts of the Gulf will die and not recover for decades. There is no amount of money to cover for this. We must unite against greed, corruption, war mongers and capitalism before they kill the entire planet. It's us humans or them criminals. It's time to choose sides. If we let these crooks continue they will soon destroy the planet.

Sure. But who are the criminals in this case?

It is not only BP. The US government and US society as a whole must take a large part of the blame. Where was the US controlling and regulatory organs in all this? Are private companies supposed to look after themselves?

Sure, 20 billion $ is far from enough.

But PB's lawyers will insist on some justice in all this. When Exxon was awarded a 5 billion fine and got away with actually paying only 507 million $ - BP will never accept that the final bill to be anywhere near 20 billion $. So, it is only fair that you, USA & Americans, have to carry the heaviest burden yourself.

What we Norwegians are hoping for is that this accident will prompt USA to set limits and regulations to how deep sea drilling is to be performed. Limits and regulations that will have international influence. That will control and regulate some of the most eager oil companies operating on our shelf too. Further; oil producing nations must be equipped to handle spills of this magnitude.

That's why it is important to have in place these governmental controls and regulations. Like you have police in the streets. This catastrophe is a good example of what 'small government' and 'deregulation' creates anarchy.

 

[Olsen]

Or Chernobyl. Those victims got nothing!

Indeed you are right!

This is very much due to that the old Sovjet Union was regarded as dirt poor. While they actually was the richest nation on earth (just look at the map). We can still meassure the effect in the flora and fauna here in Scandinavia. My niece was born that year. With a cancer tumor as large as a fist. She was operated successfully and has had no bad effects since....

 

[chris00nj]

Sure. But who are the criminals in this case?

It is not only BP. The US government and US society as a whole must take a large part of the blame. Where was the US controlling and regulatory organs in all this? Are private companies supposed to look after themselves?

Sure, 20 billion $ is far from enough.

But PB's lawyers will insist on some justice in all this. When Exxon was awarded a 5 billion fine and got away with actually paying only 507 million $ - BP will never accept that the final bill to be anywhere near 20 billion $. So, it is only fair that you, USA & Americans, have to carry the heaviest burden yourself.

What we Norwegians are hoping for is that this accident will prompt USA to set limits and regulations to how deep sea drilling is to be performed. Limits and regulations that will have international influence. That will control and regulate some of the most eager oil companies operating on our shelf too. Further; oil producing nations must be equipped to handle spills of this magnitude.

That's why it is important to have in place these governmental controls and regulations. Like you have police in the streets. This catastrophe is a good example of what 'small government' and 'deregulation' creates anarchy.

There were plenty of governmental regulations in place. You can't drill anywhere without getting the government okay on every detail of drilling. Much of the problem is that government bureaucrats don't understand any of the engineering behind it, so they can't make informed decisions - only political decisions.

 

[Olsen]

There were plenty of governmental regulations in place. You can't drill anywhere without getting the government okay on every detail of drilling. Much of the problem is that government bureaucrats don't understand any of the engineering behind it, so they can't make informed decisions - only political decisions.

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.

 

[WikiLeaks]

Sure. But who are the criminals in this case?

It is not only BP. The US government and US society as a whole must take a large part of the blame.

Of course, I fully agree with that. As you sow so you shall reap.