Why isn't the Tea Party protesting BP?

On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:01:13 -0400, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> =?iso-2022-jp?q?Hachiroku_=1B$B%O%A%m%=2F=1B=28B?= >
> wrote:
>>On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 17:09:21 -0400, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>>>The real problem here is P_B: Preident (o)Bama.
>>>
>>> You want some kind of miracle here? You want the president to just
>>> wave his arms and make it all go away? I'd like that too, but I don't
>>> think that is going to happen and I don't expect it.
>>
>>Nope. Not what I'm expecting. But there were plenty expecting it of Bush
>>during Katrina. Obungler could have accepted assistance from others.
>
> You expect immediate response from a government that is specifically
> designed to be slow and careful about making decisions. That slowness and
> deliberation is what makes the American government so successful. It has
> a downside in times of crisis. Sorry about that.
>
>>>>Why are the lefties ranting about this like they did Katrina? Because
>>>>Obungler went there and ate some seafood? "It...was...delicious."
>>>
>>> Well, in the case of Katrina some of the problem was actually caused by
>>> government-funded and promoted rerouting of waterways and land
>>> reclamation.
>>
>>So, it was Bush's fault?
>
> Nahh, it was Truman and Eisenhower's fault, really. Although the whole
> notion that we can change huge forces of nature is very powerful and it is
> popular with right and left alike.
>
> Read some of Mark Twain's "Life Along the Missisippi" about how unstable
> the river was back a century ago. If anything, the alterations made have
> improved things a lot since then. Some of the alterations, like mrgo, and
> like building on reclaimed land, weren't so good.
>
>>> You can argue that some of the current problem is caused by a lack of
>>> proper government regulation of drilling, but I think that's really
>>> just trying to move the blame around. This particular disaster was
>>> exclusively the result of BP's corner-cutting.
>>
>>The rig passed a safety inspection with flying colors months before the
>>explosion.
>
> That's nice but not really all that helpful, especially given some of what
> we now know with the lead-up to the break. I feel maybe a little sorry
> for the folks on that inspection team now, but not all that sorry.
>
>>> But, just like Katrina, it happened, and there isn't going to be any
>>> wonderful miracle that will make everything go away. It's going to be
>>> ugly, and it's going to take a lot of time, and there really is not
>>> much that the government can do that will make things better.
>>
>>Exactly. You know that, I know that. But it's funny that the bunch that
>>would have been howling at Bush are silent now.
>
> No, instead a different bunch are howling at Obama. But it's the same
> howling, just from a different quarter.
>
>>That's the only real problem I have. They know Obama can't really do
>>anything about it, just like Bush couldn't.
>
> Well, Obama at least is trying hard to look like he cares, which is more
> than Bush did. It's all any of them can really do, but it's important to
> put on a good face and do the Churchill bit. You could argue that that
> sort of symbolic stuff is really the most important job of the president
> even if they really doesn't directly get anything done.

Sure beats the pics of Bush playing a guitar...

Yeah, response is the big thing, and about the only thing a President can
really do (in all fairness, if I were the President and someone came up to
me three days after a similar disaster, I probably would have said "No
thanks", too, and kept a close eye on BP. However, I would have contacted
those who offered help once it was seen BP was having trouble. Oil
skimmers are most effective when the oil is thick...)



>
> And... let's face it... FEMA is about the most incompetent operation
> around. It's been that way through plenty of Republican and Democratic
> administrations both, and I don't see it changing any time soon. --scott

Bob Cooper > wrote in
:

> In article >,
> "sjedgingN0Sp"@m@mwt,net says...
>>

>
> I agree with all you've said.
> With the caveat that it's hard to separate fact and fiction at this
> point.
> Anybody mentioning the "Jones Act" is automatically suspect in my
> book. Irrelevant, and spoken from either ignorance or politics.
> All these so-called "offers of aid" are commercial offers.
> There is no reason in the world to think the Dutch are experts on Gulf
> of Mexico oil spills.
> Like it or not, BP and the other oil industry experts working with
> them, are the experts.
> And the Army Corp of Engineers are the experts on the estuaries of the
> Gulf. The Mississippi river and the Gulf fisheries and wetlands are
> not the North Sea.
> Having said all that, in my opinion the government never showed the
> "sense of urgency" this disaster required.
> More resources should have been applied earlier, whether foreign or
> not, expensive or not. BP will foot the bill in any case, but even
> that isn't important when it comes to saving our natural resources.
> Even now the command structure isn't clearly defined or evidenced.
> The oil hitting the LA marshes was preventable.
> The issue of dispersants has not been properly aired, and there has
> been an overall lack of transparency in the entire effort.
> This really called for a military command operation with strict lines
> of accountability, daily press conferences, etc, etc.
> There is no excuse for the confusion reigning in the LA parishes and
> the seeming lack of communications between the different parties
> working to prevent oil invasion and clean up where it has invaded.
> The buck stops with Obama, and IMO he has failed here.
> I'll wait for the studies and books to come out before coming to a
> final opinion, but for now it just looks to be barely avoiding being
> called a plain old cluster****.
>
There's one thing that comes to mind to me with the above: Isn't it
possible that the authority and responsibility to do the clean up rests
with BP and no one else to the extent that the government simply *can't*
get involved or remove them from such?


--
(setq (chuck nil) car(chuck) )

"Hachiroku $B%O%A%m%/(B" wrote:

>
> Yeah, response is the big thing, and about the only thing a President can
> really do (in all fairness, if I were the President and someone came up to
> me three days after a similar disaster, I probably would have said "No
> thanks", too, and kept a close eye on BP. However, I would have contacted
> those who offered help once it was seen BP was having trouble. Oil
> skimmers are most effective when the oil is thick...)

Except that this is all based on your drunken hallucinations. You make
up fiction rather than deal with real facts.

When did the President respond to any offers of help with "No thanks"?
When was oil in the Gulf any thicker than it is right now?

Here is a live feed from the ship "Boa Deep C":

mms://a214.l9789245685.c97892.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/214/97892/v0001/reflector:31499.asx?bkup=31500


That live video feed is from a Norwegian ship with a Norwegian crew that
has been involved in the subsea work at the site of the spill since
April. Many other foreign ships have been long involved in this
including Pemex oil skimmers from Mexico.


As for the effectiveness of the response. The BP gusher is now and has
been through out June leaking at least as much oil every week as the
entire Exxon Valdez oil spill did. Yet the damage to shoreline from the
Exxon Valdez oil spill was 100 times worse than the damage that has
occurred so far to the Gulf of Mexico shoreline. After the Exxon Valdez
spill there was 1300 miles of coastline that was buried in crude oil.

"Hachiroku ãƒ�ãƒ�ãƒ*ク" > wrote in message news:5nu_n.11313
>
> The rig passed a safety inspection with flying colors months before the
> explosion.

This was not a rig safety problem..

It arose because of technically questionable (well, no longer questionable,
I guess) operational factors.

For example, your car could pass a safety inspection, but you could drive
recklessly
and kill a bunch of people, destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars of
property, etc.

The fault here, IMO, lies at the feet of BP.

Obama, though I detest his administration's methods, cannot be blamed for
this.

hls wrote:
>
> "Hachiroku ãƒ�ãƒ�ãƒ*ク" > wrote in message news:5nu_n.11313
> >
> > The rig passed a safety inspection with flying colors months before the
> > explosion.
>
> This was not a rig safety problem..

Yes.

>
> It arose because of technically questionable (well, no longer questionable,
> I guess) operational factors.

Maybe.
>
> For example, your car could pass a safety inspection, but you could drive
> recklessly
> and kill a bunch of people, destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars of
> property, etc.
>
> The fault here, IMO, lies at the feet of BP.

Yes. Putting all the blame on reckless BP is the current strategy of
the Petroleum Industry. This they believe will have the effect of making
the whole thing appear to be a fluke happening that will never happen
again. That was the same approach the Nuclear Industry took after Three
Mile Island. It didn't work for the Nuclear Industry. Investors ran away
after TMI, and that is what is more than likely also going to happen to
oil exploration. In particular, companies involved in deep water
exploration will see capital investment dry up.

This is what the future for petroleum exploration will look like:

http://www.anadarko.com/Investor/Pag...ase-id=1439847

jim <"sjedgingN0Sp"@m@mwt,net> wrote:
> Yes. Putting all the blame on reckless BP is the current strategy of
>the Petroleum Industry. This they believe will have the effect of making
>the whole thing appear to be a fluke happening that will never happen
>again. That was the same approach the Nuclear Industry took after Three
>Mile Island. It didn't work for the Nuclear Industry. Investors ran away
>after TMI, and that is what is more than likely also going to happen to
>oil exploration. In particular, companies involved in deep water
>exploration will see capital investment dry up.

The thing is, when big disasters happen, it's because a whole bunch of things
went one. Not just a couple things going wrong, but a whole chain of things
going wrong.

And when a whole chain of things go wrong, there's plenty of blame to pass
around.

The TMI accident is actually an example of when things worked out properly...
lots of things went wrong and some people did some really boneheaded things,
but in the end the degree of redundant safety systems held. That's good,
that's how safety is supposed to work.

The BP incident is an example of when things don't work out properly. Similar
folks made boneheaded decisions but in the end the safety systems weren't
enough.

I think in the end investment in the oil industry will be reduced, in part
due to fears about this sort of thing happening again, and in part because of
fears of added government regulation. But in the end, safety is just a part
of the cost of doing business, and you can pay a little now or a lot later.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
> jim <"sjedgingN0Sp"@m@mwt,net> wrote:
> > Yes. Putting all the blame on reckless BP is the current strategy of
> >the Petroleum Industry. This they believe will have the effect of making
> >the whole thing appear to be a fluke happening that will never happen
> >again. That was the same approach the Nuclear Industry took after Three
> >Mile Island. It didn't work for the Nuclear Industry. Investors ran away
> >after TMI, and that is what is more than likely also going to happen to
> >oil exploration. In particular, companies involved in deep water
> >exploration will see capital investment dry up.
>
> The thing is, when big disasters happen, it's because a whole bunch of things
> went one. Not just a couple things going wrong, but a whole chain of things
> going wrong.
>
> And when a whole chain of things go wrong, there's plenty of blame to pass
> around.
>
> The TMI accident is actually an example of when things worked out properly...
> lots of things went wrong and some people did some really boneheaded things,
> but in the end the degree of redundant safety systems held. That's good,
> that's how safety is supposed to work.

From the point of view of investors, there is nothing at all good about
that.

Wall street doesn't give a hoot about safety. The only thing Wall
Street learned from TMI is that engineers in the control room were able
to turn a 2 billion dollar asset into a 2 billion dollar liability in
about an hour. The dollar amounts involved in the Deepwater Horizon
incident are much much larger.



>
> The BP incident is an example of when things don't work out properly. Similar
> folks made boneheaded decisions but in the end the safety systems weren't
> enough.

You don't know why this happened. The current picture being painted by
the oil industry is intended to make it look like this was an easily
preventable accident that won't happen again in order to restore
investor confidence. The reality is there is no clear evidence that BP
did anything that any other well operator wouldn't have done in the same
situation. You may be able to convince the pubic that this was just a
boo-boo that will never happen again, but investors are a little more
savvy than that.

>
> I think in the end investment in the oil industry will be reduced, in part
> due to fears about this sort of thing happening again, and in part because of
> fears of added government regulation. But in the end, safety is just a part
> of the cost of doing business, and you can pay a little now or a lot later.

It has nothing to do with safety. Nuclear energy was much much safer
after Three Mile Island and Nuclear has probably always been safer than
oil exploration and still no one was willing to invest. It has to do
with perceived risks. The magnitude of the potential risk and liability
of the investors in oil exploration just got a major revision.

-jim


> --scott
> --
> "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

jim <"sjedgingN0Sp"@m@mwt,net> wrote:
> From the point of view of investors, there is nothing at all good about
>that.
>
> Wall street doesn't give a hoot about safety. The only thing Wall
>Street learned from TMI is that engineers in the control room were able
>to turn a 2 billion dollar asset into a 2 billion dollar liability in
>about an hour. The dollar amounts involved in the Deepwater Horizon
>incident are much much larger.

Investors do a lot of things that don't make sense. I can't help that.

>> The BP incident is an example of when things don't work out properly. Similar
>> folks made boneheaded decisions but in the end the safety systems weren't
>> enough.
>
> You don't know why this happened. The current picture being painted by
>the oil industry is intended to make it look like this was an easily
>preventable accident that won't happen again in order to restore
>investor confidence. The reality is there is no clear evidence that BP
>did anything that any other well operator wouldn't have done in the same
>situation. You may be able to convince the pubic that this was just a
>boo-boo that will never happen again, but investors are a little more
>savvy than that.

I don't know why it happened... but there's a considerable amount of evidence
now that BP knows why it happened. You read the press and nobody even
mentions the riser pipe having broken... and BP certainly isn't talking about
that. So the big questions become ones like when the pipe broke and what
other evidence did they have of the hammering in advance, and I'm waiting to
see all of that.

But it's pretty clear that there were a long chain of failures in place,
the problem now is to identify all of them so they can be corrected. This
is of course being made as difficult as possible by BP and surprisingly the
press isn't helping.

>> I think in the end investment in the oil industry will be reduced, in part
>> due to fears about this sort of thing happening again, and in part because of
>> fears of added government regulation. But in the end, safety is just a part
>> of the cost of doing business, and you can pay a little now or a lot later.
>
>It has nothing to do with safety. Nuclear energy was much much safer
>after Three Mile Island and Nuclear has probably always been safer than
>oil exploration and still no one was willing to invest. It has to do
>with perceived risks. The magnitude of the potential risk and liability
>of the investors in oil exploration just got a major revision.

Possibly to the point where they might become a bit more realistic about
things. Too long the oil industry has been considered some sort of magic
scheme that creates money out of nothing. It's not that way, it has severe
risks and liabilities like everything else in this world.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 07:25:33 -0500, hls wrote:

>
> "Hachiroku ãƒ�ãƒ�ãƒ*ク" > wrote in message
> news:5nu_n.11313
>>
>> The rig passed a safety inspection with flying colors months before the
>> explosion.
>
> This was not a rig safety problem..
>
> It arose because of technically questionable (well, no longer
> questionable, I guess) operational factors.
>
> For example, your car could pass a safety inspection, but you could drive
> recklessly
> and kill a bunch of people, destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars of
> property, etc.
>
> The fault here, IMO, lies at the feet of BP.
>
> Obama, though I detest his administration's methods, cannot be blamed for
> this.


Of course he can! They blamed Bush for Katrina.

On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:23:04 -0400, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> I think in the end investment in the oil industry will be reduced, in part
> due to fears about this sort of thing happening again, and in part because
> of fears of added government regulation.

And this is the real reason *I* think Obama is dragging his heels. He
hates the oil industry and made campaign noises indicating such. (even
though BP ponied up $2M to get him elected...). He also said he would like
to see gasoline prices at $4-5 a gallon.

Like Rahm Emanuel said, "Never waste a crisis." Talk about having on laid
in their lap...