FEEDING SHARKS IN OILY WATERS

David Remnick says President Obama has a penchant for compromise and avoids head-on confrontation on principle. (“The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama” by David Remnick, Knopf, 2010). “His way is to absorb and synthesize the arguments of others for his earnest consensus-seeking style”. Examples abound during his first 16 months in office: Health care compromises with the insurance and drug thieves on price controls; Dropping the public option; Approving the Defense Department's surge strategy in Afghanistan; Turning a deaf ear towards the Israeli genocide in Gaza; Avoiding strong regulatory reform on Wall Street; Abandoning the auto workers and their hard-won retirement rights; No restraints upon AIG/Goldman Sachs and no government takeover of the major banks. How much of this compromising personality is a result of a minority mentality, whether the minority be intellectual, racial or foreign upbringing, and how much is sheer ambition at any cost? Obama sometimes displays a haughty self-removal from the field of play, as if he were above all that wresting in the mud stuff.

Solutions for the oil spill will not come from BP in time nor will they cover all aspects of the problem. BP has underestimated the spill, blocked independent investigation and generally taken their time in mobilizing: they have had 5 weeks and have not even capped the well. The Obama administration has provided reassurances about who is responsible and who will pay for the cleanup but has not formulated any plan whatsoever to fix the leak, leaving that entirely in the hands of the oil company that, through its own inattention to safety and to following regulations, caused the problem in the first place This is no longer a small matter but a national disaster and a national task force ought to take charge. Leaving it all to BP is equivalent to giving the arsonist responsibility for putting out the fire and repairing the house. Obama can't view this catastrophe from the beach much longer, he's going to have to wade out and get his socks oily.

SET UP A DISASTER MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY
The Obama Administration needs to appoint a group of non-partisan experts in deep offshore oil fields, underwater repairs, and coastal protection under one strong leader who will be given the authority to impose solutions upon BP. This Disaster Management Authority would take control out of the hands of the perpetrator, the rule breaker, and their lobbyists and technicians. Only in this way we can we be assured that we are getting the best, the fastest, and the most thorough program to cap the well. Obama has instead brought in the Coast Guard, the EPA, the Marine Management Service (MMS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and (for reasons most difficult to comprehend) the Small Business Administration. None, repeat none, of these bureaucracies has any noticeable expertise in capping runaway oil wells. There are plenty of specialists out there in the private sector who could be recruited to serve on such a disaster management authority. They would have no ax to grind in designing solutions to the disaster, whether related to the oil production hardware, the maneuvering of well capping or plugging equipment into place, preparing a coast line protection and cleanup plan, and oil dispersal technologies. Such a disaster management panel would not be bipartisan, it would not have any political dimension whatsoever. British Petroleum needs to be removed from the controls: their solutions are not necessarily in the best interests of the country as a whole.

Instead of a 'hands-on' approach, President Obama announced on May 21st a bipartisan commission to investigate what caused the oil spill and “figure out where the government went wrong, so as to make sure it never happens again” (NYTimes 05/22/10). Every time we hear the words 'bipartisan commission' we are warned that a political whitewash is underway, another Warren Commission report, another political coverup. With oil continuing to gush at what seems like an increasing rate, and after a month of confusion and failure by BP to come up with a workable method of capping the flow, collecting the spill, or repairing the well head, our highest priority is not an investigation of what went wrong. The Obama Administration has to come up with a plan to stop the disaster from continuing. They seem to think that the disaster was in the explosion and sinking of the drill rig. It was not. The disaster is in the present, right now, where some 95,000 barrels per day of crude oil flows unrestricted directly to the surface and spreads rapidly toward the shoreline or sinks as massive tar balls to coat the ocean bed, cutting off one end of the marine food chain.

“Mr. Obama has come under increasing fire for not being more aggressive. A letter to BP requesting more transparency was criticized as too deferential, and cable news channels are filled with commentators asking why the federal government has left so much for BP to handle. Spokesman Robert Gibbs explained repeatedly that the current law makes the company responsible for the recovery and cleanup, not the taxpayers” (NYT 05/22/10). BP has underestimated the size of the disaster from the moment of the explosion aboard the drilling rig. The current estimate of the leakage is “nearly 20 times the 5,000 barrels a day that both BP and NOAA have been citing for nearly three weeks. In fact the first estimate by BOP after the rig sank was only 1000 barrels per day. (MarketWatch 05/14/10) An engineering professor from Purdue University testified before congress on May 19th after viewing of video shots finally released by BP of the end-of-pipe. Professor Werely estimated a total flow of 95,000 barrel per day but allowed that this might be adjusted downward as more data are released by BP. Representative Ed Markey noted that the rate of leakage is critical to designing a solution, and that BP had been holding back the video and refused to allow independent scientists to perform more accurate measurements. (Wikepedia 05/23/10). Out of the total leakage, BP is collecting 5,000 barrels of oil plus associated gas through a 4 inch tube inserted into the end of the 19.5 inch well casing. This collection is brought to the surface and collected in tanks aboard their supply ship (RigZone.com 05/21/10). “If they had thought it was anything like that (95,000 barrels per day) they would have used a bigger pipe – say 10 or 12 inch - than the 4 inch employed” (Rodger Cagdell, Virtual Pipeline Systems).

So far, BP has tried five methods to cap the well including remotely operating valves on the well head, and dropping a huge metal box over the well head. The formation of ice crystals prevented this device from being successful. A 'Top Hat' was then lowered to the seabed but this approach failed as well. A 'top kill' device is now expected to be ready by Tuesday May 25th according to Doug Suttles, CEO of BP. This would involve lowering a large cap over the entire wellhead, securing this cap to the ocean floor, and pumping heavy drilling fluids (not seawater this time) into the blowout preventer to stop the flow. Then, cement would be injected to seal the well permanently (RigZone.com 05/21/10).

AN INOPERABLE BLOWOUT PREVENTER SAVED BP $500,000
Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan told a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the blowout preventer, a very complex heavy duty device mounted upon the well-head on the ocean floor, failed to operate when the drill bit encountered a bubble of high pressure gas. This device had a dead battery in its operating circuit, it had hydraulics leaks in the lines that were supposed to slam it shut, and was not designed to cut through the heavy drill pipe couplings to cut off flow. “Manufactured by industry and installed by industry with no government inspector witnessing the installation or its construction” said Coast Guard Captain Hung Nguyen during Committee hearings, and even though “MMS approves the design of the well they don't check to see if the type of drill pipe is capable of being cut by the hydraulic ram. We have self-certification and unenforceable safety notices”. MMS writes letters but does not inspect. Tighter rules for monitoring deep water drilling were proposed nine years ago by the Coast Guard but MMS higher-ups in Washington never approved them. As far as I know, they're still up in headquarters” (Alternative Energy 05/12/10). An acoustical shutoff switch intended to be the 'deadman switch' was not installed as a cost-saving measure thus saving BP $500,000. In another economy move, the drilling contractor Tranocean Ltd., replaced the heavy drilling mud, normally used to keep a positive pressure on any oil or gas that may be encountered, with sea water just prior to the blowout.

We are experiencing a major maritime disaster – well beyond the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska , the blowout in the Santa Barbara Channel 40 years ago, or even the Katrina hurricane's flooding of New Orleans. Anger is justified and demands for Presidential action are overdue. Its oily socks time in the White House!