I stand second to none in my low opinion of the competence of the federal government, and particularly of DHS (and particularly of this DHS with its current secretary). So I’m not exactly surprised that there was apparently a lot more that could have been done to prevent the oil spill from spreading early on. But I also find it interesting that a government that is clearly opposed (despite lip service) to serious proposals for off-shore drilling accidentally on purpose took an action, or inaction, that is going to make such proposals now politically difficult, if not impossible.
I don’t think that George Bush and Karl Rove steered Katrina into New Orleans and blew up the levies and then sat on their hands for days because they hate black people, though exactly those kinds of ridiculous charges were flung around (and I’m sure there are still many people who believe them). But while not necessarily endorsing the theory, I don’t find it completely implausible that the administration may have taken actions that may have been viewed as potentially politically convenient because it hates fossil fuels (particularly cheap ones) and oil rigs. If one wanted to go all black helicopter, one could even postulate sabotage. But as usual, incompetence remains the most likely explanation. I don’t think that this administration could get it together to pull something like that off, though it would be easier than steering hurricanes.
And like Glenn, I’m a little surprised that the Gray Lady has jumped on this, and not buried or ignored it. I think that the honeymoon might be over, and if so, it doesn’t portend well for the White House either this election cycle or next.
[Update a few minutes later]
Follow the link to swat team called out. I’m thinking they did it so they can have the headline… “Swat team called out on Tea Bagger Ruckus.”
It was absolutely amazing (it shouldn’t be by now) how different the reporting was on the Phx immigration rally vs. any Tea Party Rally.
How does a well like this, a mile below the surface, get approved without a good plan for plugging it if a leak develops? Why do they even have to drill that far below the surface, when we could be locating these rigs on the continental shelf? I feel a new “Engineering Disasters” episode on Modern Marvels coming.
11 people are dead and the economic impact can’t be predicted until the well is plugged. Janet Napolitano is reduced to saying that we’re continuing to beseech BP to put more resources into fighting this spill.
Once again, we see that our government is great at discussions and after-the-fact fault finding, but short on effective action. It’s loaded with environmental lawyers and regulators, perhaps we should have some competent engineers in the EPA with plans to, you know, protect the environment instead of just fining people when things go awry.
Between our hubris, Obama’s focus on expanding government, the world-wide financial crisis, the Icelandic volcanoes and whatever’s next, do we have anybody who knows how to take effective action?
Actually, Ken, I think that SWAT team was just passing by on their way to the Gulf oil rigs.
There ya go. It’s time for B.O. to declare a state of emergency… sort of like the robots in that Will Smith movie. Red heart means we care.
Then you must be a racist, and Jim has the data to prove it.
They had a plan for plugging the leak if it happened. It just didn’t work. Their Rube Goldburg device was supposed to shut the well off at the sea bed in any of a dozen different ways. Unfortunately it looks like the blow-out was BELOW the sea bed and the device simply closed off the line above the leak, if it worked at all.
If it was me, at this point I’d pump liquid nitrogen down the wellhead until the oil froze and then pour a 2 story glob of hydraulic cement over the whole breach.
This sort of thing happened in late 1800’s Pennsylvania all the time — massive oil spills into creeks and rivers, dwarfing this one. And people were out there with buckets collecting the stuff to sell. 200,000 gallons a day is almost 5,000 barrels, or $400,000.
If we could keep and sell all the oil we could collect, I’d be down there in a heartbeat…
How about looking at it this way. Katrina was a gobnormous hurricane, thousands of people died from its effects, and millions of people were left homeless and jobless and New Orleans is probably nowhere near close to being rebuilt.
In this “disaster”, 11 workers died in an industrial accident in what is generally regarded as a dangerous occupation, and I really feel regret for what happened to the workers of Transocean and BP and their surviving families. I also feel regret because I own a small number of shares of BP and because I like to drive my car around and use petroleum products in other ways. I am proportionately and corporately responsible for what happened. But 11 workers losing their lives is no Katrina.
And a bunch of sea birds are going to perish from the oil slick, but call me a “specieist”, I don’t feel for those sea birds the same way I feel for the workers and their families.
And some fishermen are going to suffer severe financial hardship, but again this is no Katrina, I imagine that the fishermen could be compensated for their loss for a small fraction of the financial toll of Katrina.
Some conservatives talk about how this accident is Obama’s “Katrina”, but the conservatives who talk that way are trolling — there is a Latin term for this kind of unjustified snark, Mencius Moldbug (to whom I was introduced through Rand’s site) calls it “tu quoque” which I guess is a 500-dollar word for “same to you, but with knobs on top.”
Some liberals are beginning to talk about this being President Obama’s “Katrina”, but if they do, they are “hoist by their own petard” (that’s from Shakespeare, and I have heard various explanations and definitions of “petard”, but I heard it was a military analogy, sort of like “fragged by your own grenade.”)
You see liberals, many who enjoy driving their cars around and using petroleum products as much as I do, 1) believe ther is some magical tech that could do away with deep-sea oil drilling without affecting fulfillment their wants and desires that much, only held back from use by those same evil “oil executives” and 2) believe that the environmental damage from this spill, that I admit will be considerable, is in any way comparable to the terrible devastation from Katrina.
There seems to be a serious problem with even figuring out how to cap this open well. I don’t think it will be the Ultimate Environmental Catastrophe that the media are wailing about (long-chain hydrocarbons degrade when exposed to sunlight and bacteria), but it’s certainly going to be messy. And we just put down a deposit on a week in Destin around Memorial Day!
Semi-serious question: if you detonated the smallest nuke in our inventory on the seabed on top of the leak, what would happen? I suspect it would cauterize the leak nicely. The Operation Wigwam underwater nuclear tests imply the radiation exposure on the surface would be minimal.
Would any tsunami-like effects be noticeable onshore? Any idea if the hundreds of offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico would see their drill strings snapped like drinking straws?
Stephen Fleming,
Actually research was done in the 1960’s and 1970’s on the effect of nuclear devices on oil fields. I remember a professor talking about them in my drilling class. What they found was nuclear explosions make oil and gas flow more freely by fracturing the rock. So in this case the effect would be the opposite of what you hope, it would just make the oil flow out faster.
Tom
The problem is having to do all this work at 5000 ft. Drilling into the well is looking like the only option. Of course if we could drill in shallow water and onshore where there is oil and gas out the wazoo, we wouldn’t have these kinds of problems.
But that could spoil the view from some rich actor’s mansion, Bill! Think of the view!
I am not a petroleum engineer nor a underwater drilling expert but it appears the problem is caused by hydrate expansion.
off shore you get hydrates of methane in the mud and water which the colder they are and the higher the pressure, the more compressed they are.
that means you hit this hydrate slurry and if you destabilize it, it rapidly expands into gas. Now when you are cementing the borehole, the cement releases heat of formation, which drives this release process of the hydrates.
the problem is the pressure runs up like crazy, the pressure rises high enough it blows the cement back up, and exceeds the BOP valve limits.
essentially BP was using down hold equipment designed for shallow water in much harsher environments, and now it’s not functioning.
now the other question is is this accident a federal responsibility to clean up?
BP and the oil companies know what they are doing, and are supposed to clean up their own messes. Why are they running to the Feds to clean this up. Any Damages, BP should be able to pay.
One of the missed chances to act, reported in The Wall Street Journal occured in 2003. The US decided then to not require the installation of a secondary remote shutoff switch. Several other drilling regions, including Norway and Brazil, do require the device.
The article also notes that the device costs $500,000, and the spill is costing BP around $6 million per day.
I’ll bet that with the liability and cleanup it’s costing them a lot more than that.
Hey, I’m all for cutting The One some slack… just exactly as much slack that was cut for GWB, from 200 through 2008.
In other words, why does Barack Obama hate fishermen so much?
That’s all well and good, Chris G, but the device has never actually been tested in the real world in an emergency situation. You can speculate all you want as to whether or not you can place blame on the Bush administration, since the decision not to REQUIRE an un-tested, possibly completely innefective 3rd or 4th line of defense for all new rigs came in 2003, but the fact of the matter is, nobody knows if the things even work, and you can’t go back in time and prove whether or not it would have made any difference in this instance.
It’s nice to see you back spewing half of the facts and slanting stories in such a way as to blame Bush, though. I was beginning to worry for a minute that all of the BDS loonies had finally succumbed to their dementia.
I wasn’t actually blaming Bush – I was blaming a lack of regulation and pointing to a short-term corporate mentality.
Regarding “3rd or 4th line of defense” – actually it would be a second line of defense. Considering the difficulties of working at that depth (5,000 feet) arguing against a backup to your primary system seems to be, well, lacking.
Some of the lefty blogs I read are asking a good question, one that didn’t occur to me. Specifically, “why is this a government problem?” BP is a private company, and I’ve heard for months on this blog that “government is the problem.”
So now that a private company screws up, government is supposed to step in and bail them out?
Some of the lefty blogs I read are asking a good question, one that didn’t occur to me.
Well, it’s a question, but probably because it comes from lefty blogs, it’s not a good one, it’s a dumb one.
Specifically, “why is this a government problem?” BP is a private company, and I’ve heard for months on this blog that “government is the problem.”
Professor Bainbridge explains, to you and Dana Milbank.
Congress has the power to regulate maritime issues. That does not explain why our tax dollars should go to help a private company clean up a mess they caused. Isn’t that a market distortion? I mean, if BP had to pay to insure the full risk of something like this happening, would it be economical to drill at that depth?
I mean, if BP had to pay to insure the full risk of something like this happening, would it be economical to drill at that depth?
Who knows? If they could buy the insurance, would you let them drill? In ANWR? For that matter, I’d be happy to get rid of the Price-Anderson Act, and let the insurance industry regulate nuclear plants. They’d do a lot smarter job than the NRC.
Rand – I am not asking you what my opinion is. I am asking you what your opinion is. Does the willingness of the federal government to step in for cleanup constitute a market distortion?
Does the willingness of the federal government to step in for cleanup constitute a market distortion?
Yes.
I actually wasn’t criticizing the government so much as I was criticizing the ongoing bias in the media. You know how this would have been reported if it had been BUSH!! Did Barack say “heckuva job, Napolitani”?
Did Barack say “heckuva job, Napolitani”? Actually, no. Which is why the media is treating it differently. Obama appears to actually realize that things are not going well.