Oil Slick In The Gulf

[TWCToday]

Ive been watching the Congressional hearing with BP CEO Hayward. My god I have never in my life seen such complete and utter BS from politicians. Seriously its a complete joke! Stupak is the chair of this particular one. I listened to him not understand the concept of a failsafe mechanism. Its so sad that these are the people running our government. I think Mr. Haywards time should be better spent working with BP to fix this problem rather than listening to the dribble and hot air out of Washington politicians. Seeing our politicians speak with about as much intelligence as a 3rd grader enrages me so much.

[toxictwister00]

Maybe what I'm about to say isn't as simple as it sounds, but why didn't they have an emergency plan worked out well before this oil spill happened so they could be somewhat prepared for a disaster like this? I mean it's not like this is the first time there has ever been an oil spill in the world, there has been at least a dozen major ones in the past 35 years.

[wxntrafficfan]

Well from what I have been told, other countries do have an emergency plan of sorts. Foreign nations have an emergency shut off option, where you can have a ship over the well send a signal down to the well and shut it off. The United States does not require that sort of thing.

[TWCToday]

Well from what I have been told, other countries do have an emergency plan of sorts. Foreign nations have an emergency shut off option, where you can have a ship over the well send a signal down to the well and shut it off. The United States does not require that sort of thing.

Thats what the blowout preventer is. Its the failsafe that should automatically shut off or can be manually closed in an incident. Its not clear why it failed here but the fact the oil rig above caught fire and sank may have caused damage to it. Every undersea well in the US and world has this.

[wxntrafficfan]

So I have looked over a couple clips on youtube of the hearings yesterday. All I can say is... wow. Evasive is an understatement to how Tony Hayward responded to much of the questioning. I know less about the company and operations than he does and I could have answered the questions better. One misconception that just about everyone has is that it is not all BP's fault. Granted, BP very easily should have prevented this disaster, and they carried out the operations of the well. But they only lease it; they do not own it. Even though many are already on both the cleanup and shutoff operations, just about everyone can do more.

[TWCToday]

So I have looked over a couple clips on youtube of the hearings yesterday. All I can say is... wow. Evasive is an understatement to how Tony Hayward responded to much of the questioning. I know less about the company and operations than he does and I could have answered the questions better. One misconception that just about everyone has is that it is not all BP's fault. Granted, BP very easily should have prevented this disaster, and they carried out the operations of the well. But they only lease it; they do not own it. Even though many are already on both the cleanup and shutoff operations, just about everyone can do more.

Why is it all BPs fault? As you said it wasn't even their own oil rig but contracted out. Could they see into the future and forsee this accident? Does CEO Steve Jobs know everything about his company? No and no. Its ridiculous to expect Hayward to be able to answer every single question. Just because you are CEO doesn't mean you know every single piece of information about the company. I think he did a fine job and made a good point that answers should not be given until all the facts and reports are in. BP has hired outside parties to help distribute relief money and has the largest cleanup operation ever in place. Sure in a perfect world we would all be driving electric cars and oil free. But the fact is the technology and costs are not there yet. Oil is a part of our daily lives and will be so for years to come.

[wxntrafficfan]

Just like you have the highest position on this site, he has the highest position at BP. He has the responsibility of being proactive with choices made at BP below him. He obviously did not care, and did not even attempt to say he did not have an answer or respond correctly to the questions. He was sent a letter several days in advance of the hearing, and could have gone to others who knew more about what happened and the poor choices that were made. He was asked once if he made a commitment to safety, and if he followed through on that commitment. His response? "I am distraught". I fully understand it is not completely BP's fault. But they could easily have prevented it by taking safety into their own hands and being proactive with decision making.

[TWCToday]

Just like you have the highest position on this site, he has the highest position at BP. He has the responsibility of being proactive with choices made at BP below him. He obviously did not care, and did not even attempt to say he did not have an answer or respond correctly to the questions. He was sent a letter several days in advance of the hearing, and could have gone to others who knew more about what happened and the poor choices that were made. He was asked once if he made a commitment to safety, and if he followed through on that commitment. His response? "I am distraught". I fully understand it is not completely BP's fault. But they could easily have prevented it by taking safety into their own hands and being proactive with decision making.

I dont think you can compare my admin position with that of a CEO. A CEO doesn't own the entire company and isn't responsible for all divisions under him. He can even be kicked off by stock holders or a company committee. Why is it obvious that he did not care? He didn't want to be held accountable for words he wasn't prepared to make. Every question asked by those retards we call congressmen related mostly to questions that still have no been ancestored or to solutions that haven't been properly researched. Did you actually watch the whole thing? It was several hours long. Once a BP, independent, and government investigation finds out what actually went wrong then I will assign blame. Right now the media and the rest of the zombies just blame BP for not being safe. When someone explains how not being safe led to his accident or/and that someone knew about it, then I might reconsider.

[P71nnacle]

In some sense, from what I've seen, it was probably inevitable that given the design of the rigs, something like this would happen. And based upon the fact that oil companies (by design) go for giant profits (I get dividends EVERY quarter from my shares in ExxonMobil) they could care less about regulation by the government.

The sad thing is that the government can regulate it, but there are certain people (who shall remain nameless) who HATE government regulation at any point, and would rather "live free or die". And then they run their mouths when something bad happens. I say this: the politics of this, as with most environmental things, is not even worth discussing because it's all Grade A, USDA Prime bovine excreta. The hypocrisy and the fact that no one wants to be offended until it's time to point fingers is probably why the oil hasn't been shut off by now.

And BTW, Katrina's still a wide open book. There's an article that I want you all to read in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30rich.html  - it compares Katrina to the oil leak. I wrote an op-ed to the op-ed for one of my classes, available http://www.psu.edu/dept/e-education/blogs/geog030/2010/06/ethical-hurricane-a-response-to-frank-richs-obamas-katrina-maybe-worse-by-steve-zwolinski.html

[The Weather Guy]

Ive heard some talk about not even doing the drilling moratorium. Is it just me or does the news just keep getting worse??

[TWCToday]

Ive heard some talk about not even doing the drilling moratorium. Is it just me or does the news just keep getting worse??

Actually things are improving. A lot more oil is being collected before it gets into the gulf and BP hopes to get somewhere close to 90% of it collected within a few weeks

[Anistorm]

* Anistorm bumps this thread with her poking stick

So I'm hearing all around the news that BP has a new cap and it's finally sticking in the leaking well. Well finally we're seeing some results here. I hope this ends the leaking thats making the spill worse. 

[TWCToday]

BP will be testing the cap to see if they can turn it off almost completely if they had to leave in case of a tropical system. The new cap should capture close to all of the oil escaping the well. Relief wells are also supposed to be finished within a week

[P71nnacle]

Apparently the most recent report is that BP has been able to stop oil from flowing into the Gulf.  But, they also maintain that this is not over, and that the vent will have to be reopened eventually.  Story: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/15/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html?hpt=C1

And don't blame it on "global warming", either. You'd be asking for trouble if you did so. 

[toxictwister00]

Has anyone heard that BP is considering acquiring into buying the name "Amoco" to rebrand themselves and start a clean slate after this whole Gulf Oil Spill Disaster. Some folks are mixed about the idea, what do you guys think?