NASA satellite image of the oil slick from May 1st:
The slick is now the size of Puerto Rico and still growing.
Meanwhile the Washington Post sheds a tear for poor BP and its CEO:
On the day he got news that the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico, BP chief executive Tony Hayward received a series of crisis updates in his London offices. The rig belonged to Transocean, but BP had leased it to drill an exploration well and BP bore legal responsibility for any consequences.
The grim updates were interspersed with long silences. One person there said that on several occasions, Hayward asked, “What did we do to deserve this?” {…]
But Hayward hasn’t tried to deny BP’s obligations. In his video, he vowed “steely determination” to control the well, clean up and “do everything we can to understand how this has occured and to ensure that it never occurs again.”
Yes, what did poor BP do to deserve this? It’s not like they had a history of oil rig failures and safety issues — oops, sorry. I have to take that last part back:
[Hayward’s] predecessor [as BP CEO], Lord John Browne, had been a brilliant deal maker and a friend of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s, but BP was often accused of neglecting safety precautions and adding to risks through deep cost cutting. Under Browne, who resigned after revelations about his personal life in Britain’s tabloid news media, a fatal explosion took place at BP’s Texas City refinery, leaks sprang onto the tundra from a company pipeline in northern Alaska, and a BP production platform in the Gulf of Mexico suffered structural problems that delayed its start date.
But in truth, who really matters the most in this crisis? Gulf Coast residents and native species of plants and animals, or the shareholders and senior executives of a major multinational oil company that worked the refs regulators to avoid the cost of the most up to date safety equipment at their well site?
In a letter sent last year to the Department of the Interior, BP objected to what it called “extensive, prescriptive regulations” proposed in new rules to toughen safety standards. “We believe industry’s current safety and environmental statistics demonstrate that the voluntary programs…continue to be very successful.” […]
But according to aides to Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who has followed offshore drilling issues for years, the industry aggressively lobbied against an additional layer of protection known as an “acoustic system,” saying it was too costly. In a March 2003 report, the agency reversed course, and said that layer of protection was no longer needed.
“There was a big debate under the Bush administration whether or not to require additional oil drilling safeguards but [federal regulators] decided not to require any additional mandatory safeguards, believing the industry would be motivated to do it themselves,” Carl Pope, Chairman of the Sierra Club told ABC News.
Yes, because business that isn’t subject to governmental regulation will always be voluntarily motivated to take the least risks possible. Just ask all those extinct Wall Street firms that used to bestride the Global Finacial Industry, like Lehman Bros. and Bear Stearns, about how risk taking is a non-starter when Federal Regulators just get out of their way.
I’m sure, this is all good news for Republicans and their policies of de-regulation and lower corporate taxation.
And I’m not kidding about that. Watch in the weeks ahead as the GOP used this oil spill to blame Obama, the Democrats and Big Guvmint rather than where the fault really lies: on the politicians, mostly Republican but also many conservative Democrats, who allowed massive de-regulation of industries from finance to Big Oil to Big Pharma to Food manufacturers to occur.
Republican policies have made us less safe in every way imaginable. But that’s not how our fair and balanced news organizations will report it (and I don’t mean just Fox News). They’ll all get in line, with a few exceptions, to blame President Obama and the Democrats for these catastrophic failures caused by Republican control of our Government for most of the past decade. Just watch and see.
St. Pete Times:
See Booman, that’s a genuine conservative comedian for you. And Rush is absolutely the very best at this stuff, that’s why he’s paid so well.
Yep, it’s all natural. I mean everything on this planet comes from nature. The radioactive materials; arsenic, cyanide, melamine, etc. – every last toxic substance we have started with materials gleaned from nature. The fact that we vastly concentrate, re-combine, move them into areas where they don’t naturally occur, dump them in streams and oceans, burn them, let them blow into neighboring towns and even migrate on wind currents to the poles. It’s all still “nature”, so what’s the worry?
Sadly, once again Bobby Jindal gets to look like a hero while other folks do all the work.
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(FT) – I had first wanted to meet John Browne in 1995 when, after working for the company for 30 years, he had become chief executive of BP. By 2002 he had been created a life peer and named the most respected figure in business for three years running (the Financial Times describing him as a “sun king“).
Report Beyond Safety
BP's eco flower"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Jim Hightower on Bill Moyers’ last show:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04302010/watch2.html
Just a few lines:
The rest continues about Plutocrats and populism and how governments are corrupted by the corporations, big money, and by extension, the wealthy.
It’s a good way to appreciate what is happening in the Gulf today.
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The U.S. government had two months to prepare for the expected impact of the IXTOC I oil on the Texas shoreline. During this time the government realized the importance of coastline mapping in regards to oil sensitivity. This led to a mapping project which resulted in the first Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) prepared by Research Planning , Inc. (RPI)
In Texas, an emphasis was placed on coastal countermeasures protecting the bays and lagoons formed by the Barrier Islands. Impacts of oil to the Barrier Island beaches were ranked as second in importance to protecting inlets to the bays and lagoons. This was done with the placement of skimmers and booms. Efforts were concentrated on the Brazos-Santiago Pass, Port Mansfield Channel, Aransas Pass, and Cedar Bayou (which during the course of the spill was sealed with sand).
Economically and environmentally sensitive barrier island beaches were cleaned daily. Laborers used rakes and shovels to clean beaches rather than heavier equipment which removed too much sand. Ultimately, 71,500 barrels of oil impacted 162 miles of U.S. beaches, and over 10,000 cubic yards of oiled material were removed.
[Shallow water depth 150 ft., drilling depth 2 mi. – the burning platform collapsed into the wellhead area hindering any immediate attempts to control the blowout (BOP). – Oui]
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."