Is the Gulf oil slick seeping towards the White House?
That’s the question. And the answer given here is “Maybe. A little bit, anyway:”
…[Coast Guard commander] Allen has repeatedly pointed out that it is BP, not the federal government, that has all the equipment and expertise to deal with the spill. “They’re exhausting every technical means possible to deal with that leak,” he said Monday.
But in the wake of BP’s continued inability to shut down the enormous leak at the deep water well, the Obama administration is getting slammed by those who would normally be seen as allies of the president.
“They’re not tough enough,” Democratic operative and Louisiana native Donna Brazile said Sunday on “This Week.” On the same show, Cokie Roberts, another daughter of the Pelican State, agreed, mocking Obama for naming an investigatory commission: “That is what you do when you really don’t have anything else to do.”…
I’m not at all certain it will end up mattering. Voters who still approve of Obama are so deeply compromised already that they may be unable to change their minds no matter how much he disappoints them. But perhaps the accretion of offenses will add up in the end.
Meanwhile, Obama (whom Rep. Steve Scalise calls “the finger-pointer-in-chief”) blames, blames, blames. In this case, of course, much of the blame of BP appears justified. But some of the blame is Obama’s own. He has refused to open up the alternative of land drilling in places such as ANWR. And his administration failed to properly implement recommendations that would almost certainly have contained the problem. In this last, his presidency is not alone, however; the program was designed in 1994, but has never been put in place.
Once upon a time presidents used to take responsibility for what happened under their watch. The idea was that, even if they weren’t directly responsible, whining and blaming served no purpose and was unpresidential.
That’s the way grownups in charge behaved. And that’s what the public demanded.
Here’s a little nostalgia for you:
Yeah, his lack of leadership is finally catching up to him. The guy’s got no chops, and the left finds the environment sancrosanct, so this oil spill is killing them. Even Bob Herbert of the New York Times, who worships the ground Obama walks on is fed up. It’s pretty interesting. The constant whining of Obama and his inexperience is adding up, and the left is finally figuring it out — the dude’s got no chops! The whining is especially unattractive, and everyone’s getting tired of it. The rest of us realize it’s par for the course and expect nothing else from this guy, but the left seems to be waking up and they are not happy. They seem genuinely shocked and surprised at what they are seeing.
I don’t think Obama can stop his blaming and whining. He’s stuck in permanent adolescensce like so many of his supporters who blamed and whined to get him elected.
Well, actually, much of blame on BP appears to be NOT justified – read this post by an industry insider, my online friend Tim Newman.
As someone called Duffy said in the comments: this factual information about BP actions and efforts has never been presented by our media.
Hmmm….media distorting and avoiding facts in order to paint the picture most pleasing to Obama…what’s new?
…and his next post, on the same topic.
When I hear Obama speak, I always hear this petulant tone.
His presidency was supposed to be a victory lap. How divine he was… a black president.
Then… problems! How dare the proles expect him to fix problems! That wasn’t at all what he signed on for.
Problems are for other people.
The Great Obama was sent to transform the landscape, lower the oceans and cleanse the air.
And, then… all those stinking, little problems! How gauche!
Just saw that BHO is going to skip Arlington wreath laying for a vacation in Chicago. I can’t ever remember another president dissing the military on Memorial Day before. But it seems perfectly in character with what everyone above has mentioned.
Just like my adolescent daughter: “I don’t want to do it, so I won’t!”
I’m not usually open to conspiracy theories, but I’ve been getting more and more bothered that his presidency isn’t so much a victory lap as a stepping stone to President of the World or something. He doesn’t act or think like an American, something he’s proud of. Our problems don’t touch him. He doesn’t revere the things the rest of us do. Memorial Day is no big deal. And all the speeches he and his minions are giving lately talking about the new world order tell me that this guy has other plans.
I agree that an oil company with drilling experience is the correct group to try to resolve the underwater problem. I think the federal government could have been getting prepared during this time to deal with the oil as it got closer to the coast.
I understand that Bush was calling the LA governor to try to get her to ask for an emergency declaration prior to Katrina. Has Obama done the same for the states that are on the gulf coast? Why haven’t the feds gotten the oil spill stuff purchased and in place along the coast to deal with the oil before it got close to any land?
From Jindal’s remarks, LA’s request to put sand berms in place to catch the oil is still under review by the Corps of Engineers. So, I’m glad he is going ahead with it, but I would have told the local guys to just do it and not wait.
I wish them luck with the cleanup.
Comment on the cause of the Deepwater Horizon explosion; there is suspicion that a poor cement job may have been the culprit. A well is seldom drilled as a single unit. Initially a wide diameter hole is drilled and as drilling progresses narrower and narrower holes are used. After each portion of hole a pipe, called casing or liner is installed and cement in place. Bad cement jobs have been noted as the cause of blowouts before. I do not know enough about deep water well drilling or cementing to speculate what went wrong beyond stating that maybe the gas may have traveled up through the bad cement, to the riser (that is a pipe through which the drilling and production pipe is installed) and then to the surface. I am not sure but the gas detectors may only work within the well tubing, in which case they would not have detected any gas.
Tatyana,
Thanks for those links to Tim Newman’s posts. None of this has been reported by the media, not even Fox.
Forbes had a good article about the events yesterday and they pointed out that BP has 470 of the best scientists and operators from the global oil industry working 24/7 to try to get this well under control. The government has no comparable expertise when it comes to how to cap or contain the well. They do have some expertise on containment and cleanup. It woulld seem that Obama and company would be putting all their emphasis on that to control the extent of damge from the oil.
So, BP is the organization with the know how to cap the well. The worst case scenario is they have to drill an intercept well, which will take 3 months. If that is the case then there is going to be a lot of oil relearsed. You would think the government would be mobilizing to protect the shorelines. If BP has over 600 boats and thousands working on containmment and cleanup, that is a lot, but apparently not enough as the oil is has reached sopme coastal areas. Governor Jindal complains about the Corps of Engineers not getting with the program to allow dredging up of sand barriers. If true, that’s an example foot dragging or incompetence by the Feds.
Something about this seems a bit fishy to me. It has occurred to me that maybe Obama and company want this oil spill to be a stupendous environmental catastrophe. That would ensure (in their minds at least) that the public would demand (and they could comply) absolutely no more offshore drilling. Naw, they wouldn’t be that devious, would they?
Tatyana
I beg to differ. BP replaced heavy drilling mud with seawater that was approximately half the density of the drilling mud it replaced BEFORE setting the cement plug on the bottom. That does not correspond with my experience on drilling rigs. You do not replace the heavy mud with much lighter seawater until AFTER the cement plug has been set and hardened.
From the May 15 WSJ:
It is tomfoolery to replace dense drilling mud with seawater with about half the density of the mud it replaces, BEFORE you set the cement plug on the bottom. That is an invitation for formation fluids to rush into the wellbore.Which is precisely what occurred. BP did not follow standard operating procedures here. Prudence and caution are in order when dealing with wells.
At this stage I would agree that BP or some combination of oil industry honchos would have better knowledge of how to fix this than some idiot government bureaucrats, but BP also appears to blame for this mess in the first place.
Gringo,
I’m not an oil engineer and claim no expertise or even basic knowledge of standard practices. You will probably be better served if you debate directly with Tim.
What I am saying is all this information that Tim provided was not made public here.
And he also said that BP conduct their own investigation as well as pledged to fully cooperate with the one started by US government – and that at this time any speculation, until completion of investigation appears to be premature.
My pov- in any engineering event I’d rather trust an expert engineer than a journalists who write about the subject, that’s all.
Tatyana, Tim had a good summary of what had been done AFTER the blowout. I am not going to fault BP on what they have done after the well was lost, nor Tim’s reporting on that. I would also agree with him that we don’t have a complete handle yet on what occurred.
But that he didn’t catch what the WSJ did about the testimony- the drilling mud being replaced with seawater BEFORE setting the bottom plug- doesn’t speak well of his reporting, nor his engineering. For me, with my engineering experience on drilling rigs, it was a red flag. This ran through my head: what were these IDIOTS thinking?
As a commenter on aMay 11 WSJ article said, it was like popping the cork on a bottle of champagne.
I have left a comment on Tim’s thread.
J.J. formerly Jimmy J. Says:
May 25th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
I think we all know that sooner or later Obama will make a move to nationalize the energy industry. It’s what Communist dictators do. Always. Every time.
I’ve assumed that that was on the back burner for now. There are other, more urgent priorities such as amnesty and cap & trade. But this oil spill may turn out to be a crisis that is just too good to waste.
Someone should remind Obama of what he said earlier about health care: He doesn’t care who made the mess, just shut up, get out of the way, and he’ll be the one to clean it up.
Where’s that same “roll-up-the-sleeves-can-do spirit?
I’d love to see Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman or Jan Brewer question him on that. I have a hunch his oh-so-thin skin would be even thinner given it was “girls” putting him on the fly.
Sooner or later, something is going to drop. You don’t put that many irons up in the air and juggle them forever. Will it be BP? Blago? Iran? Something old or something new?
“Seeping towards the Whitehouse”
Any allusion to “slouches towards Bethlehem?”
We’re seeing yet another example of why the noses of the so-called “press” are so brown — Bush, in accordance with the law, waited for requests for assistance from the Gulf state governors during Katrina, and is excoriated by the “press” for not sending aid to Louisiana anyway, when its governor was too paralyzed to do anything. Barry, on the other hand, did almost nothing for the first days about a problem which was COMPLETELY under federal jurisdiction, and the “press” says nothing.
Gringo,
Halliburton mentioned not setting the final cement plug in their testimony:
We understand that the drilling contractor then proceeded to displace the riser with seawater prior to the planned placement of the final cement plug, which would have been installed inside the production string
and enabled the planned temporary abandonment of the well. Prior to the point in the well construction
plan that the Halliburton personnel would have set the final cement plug, the catastrophic incident
occurred. As a result, the final cement plug was never set.
Halliburton is confident that the cementing work on the Mississippi Canyon 252 well was completed in
accordance with the requirements of the well owner’s well construction plan.
This would suggest that BP’s well construction plan was being followed. So was the plan wrong? I am hopelessly out of my depth when it comes to the technicalities of drilling and if you have some experience in this area I’ll defer to you without question. But personally, I doubt it the plan was so fundamentally wrong. I’ve seen people deviate from procedures countless times, it is much rarer that I’ve seen an established procedure be wrong in such a manner. Perhaps the plan itself deviated from standard drilling practices, but again, I think it unlikely given how many wells would have been drilled under the same sort of plan. Certainly, Halliburton never mentioned in their testimony that what they were instructed to do was fundamentally wrong, but perhaps that was not the time and place to do so.
Why I haven’t been paying much attention to the MSM during this incident is because they seem to leap to conclusions: the WSJ article has assumed not setting the final cement plug was a major error, whereas Halliburton has not stated this in their testimony (for whatever reason). I’m trying to go off the industry sources rather than journalists.
Tim Newman:
Given how the MSM operates overall, I would tend to agree with you. However, the WSJ is more reliable than most.
That is a misreading of the article. A major error appears to be replacing the dense drilling mud with seawater , which was approximately half the density of the drilling mud, BEFORE the final cement plug was set. Once the kick and then blowout occurred, it was impossible to set the final cement plug.
See my previous statements.
The WSJ May 11 uses industry sources. Here are a petroleum engineering professor and a rig hand, who from different vantage points, reach the same conclusions.
Here are two industry sources who agree that displacing the dense drilling mud with seawater before setting the bottom plug was not standard operating procedure.
Regarding why they did it this way, and specifically who made the decision, is yet to be determined.
Halliburton is simply covering itself, to point out that it did what BP told it to do, so it was a dutiful contractor.
Gringo,
Interesting stuff, indeed. As somebody who is not so familiar with the drilling procedures, I didn’t spot that Halliburton’s testimony alluded to such an error on the part of the well construction plan. I am surprised nobody else has picked this up, because this is as close as we’ve got to a root cause. I am guessing there are people who know but are either keeping their mouths shut (it not being their place to speak up), or they are waiting for the right time and place before committing themselves. Still, I’m surprised the industry journals and web forums aren’t all over this.
I was listening to an engineer while going to work yesterday who said simply that nothing would stop this oil leak. BP really messed up here and the administration needs to focus on stopping this or the whole coastline will be lost. I doubt this top kill strategy will work but we’ll see. It has never been tried at these depths before. They’re just experimenting now.
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on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea,
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on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea,
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on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea,
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on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea,
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on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea,
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On the frog on the bump on the branch
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There’s a fleck on the speck on the tail
On the frog on the bump On the branch
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🙂
rickly says,
“But this oil spill may turn out to be a crisis that is just too good to waste.”
Sure fits the MO doesn’t it?
Trouble is, people along the coasts don’t care whose fault it is that the well blew out. What they want is action on containment and cleanup. Obama and company seem clueless about how their lack of leadership on that issue is going to hurt them.
Here is a description of what happened;
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704113504575264721101985024.html?mod=