Joe Barton, the $20 billion shakedown and BP

This whole situation is screwed up four ways to Sunday.

First of all, Barton is right--this is a shakedown. And not just a garden-variety, DC shakedown.  No, this is shakedown of Chicago proportions.  Yesterday, BP agreed to place (at least) $20 billion in an escrow account, which is to be managed by a third party, to help compensate those who have lost jobs or livelihoods to the oil spill disaster.

But secondly, I believe it's a perfectly legal shakedown.  By all accounts, BP voluntarily agreed to the deal, but you can be certain that Mr. Obama made it clear to company officials that if they didn't do it willingly, it would be done to them.  The government can't retroactively force a company to spend money to remediate a disaster for which a law prescribing how remediation is to be paid for already exists.  That's what the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 is for, so the administration's threats were a tad on the hollow side.  If they'd followed through, then we'd have a whole different discussion about the rule of law.

Thirdly, even though it's a shakedown, and probably just fine under existing law, I believe it's a very bad idea, because it's going to open the door to all sorts of fraud, just like we saw after Katrina and the 9/11 fund. It also does not relieve the company of its obligations under OPA, nor will it provide any immunity from current and sure-to-come future litigation.

Fourth, even though Barton was right, and even though it's a very bad idea, he was still stuck on stupid when he apologized to the CEO of the company who's screwed up safety procedures led to the worst environmental catastrophe in the Gulf since Ixtoc blew out and spilled (by some estimates) 200 million gallons of crude.

BP, the whole United States Congress, the whole executive branch, and every last environmentalist group should look at the American people, and apologize.  BP should apologize for screwing up their safety protocols, killing 11 men and spilling crude into the Gulf.  The government should apologize for the abysmal failure in oversight manifested in the Minerals Management Service.  And all those environmental wacks should apologize for pushing oil and gas exploration far enough off shore that they don't have to look at the rigs.  Absolutely none of the above have served the interests of this country, and they should all be shaken down.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Nag, nag, nag...

Wives spend six days a year week nagging their husbands, study shows

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Wives spend 7,920 minutes a year nagging their husbands about household chores, their drinking and their health.

This equals two-and-a-half hours of earbashing each week - which totals 11 hours a month or five-and-a-half days a year.

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I'm calling BS on this study.  If this is true, I married the wrong nationality.  American wives nag their husbands six days a week.  The only day we have off is Saturday, which of course is the day set aside for performing all of the tasks she's been nagging about the whole damned week.

Until football season starts...

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Oil spill mapping tool

On June 14, the government unveiled a new GIS-based mapping tool to allow interested members of the public and press to review the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The new web-based service is found here. While the development and release of this information at least partially satisfies the NIMS protocol for communications and information management, there are a few key weaknesses in the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA) tool:

1. You can't print the maps without using a screen capture method, such as Alt-PrtScrn and copying and pasting into another application.
2. You cannot download any of the data.
3. You cannot query the data.
4. You cannot incorporate the data into your own GIS applications.

Let's say, for example, you've created a custom GIS application to track hurricanes and tropical storms in the Atlantic Basin.  Or, you've developed a mapping tool to plot the locations of oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

If you wanted to incorporate any of the data from the ERMA application, you're out of luck.  If you wanted to incorporate any of your own data into the ERMA app, you're out of luck again.  Geospatial information on a particular incident, such as a hurricane, earthquake or oil spill, is absolutely critical to documenting how the response effort is being coordinated and executed.  For nearly two months after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, burned and sank, BP and/or the governmnent closely guarded the GIS data.  This blogger had to cajole one of the GIS professionals working on the spill trajectory maps into providing some basic and dated information on the spill trajectory maps.

While the development and unveiling of the ERMA app linked above is a huge improvement over the previous quarantine of geospatial data, the inability to download, manipulate, query and incorporate the data into other applications is still a glaring shortcoming.  The public has a right to these data, and the public can even help the governmnent and the responsible party by spotting inconsistencies and alerting the incident managers to potential shortcomings.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

More data that the deepwater moratorium is an economic disaster

It's bad enough that the Gulf Coast and the rest of the country are dealing with an unprecedented ecological disaster in the Macondo Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  But more and more data are emerging that the knee-jerk reaction of slapping a six-month moratorium will have a potentially more disastrous impact on the economy:

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Specifically, estimates from Wood Mackenzie Research and Consulting show the six month moratorium will result in the following consequences:

• The 33 drilling platforms which support some 1,400 workers, offshore and onshore will be forced to shut down
• As many as 46,200 jobs could be idled by the moratorium
• These are well-paying jobs – $5-10 million per month, per platform in lost wages
• Long-term job losses as a result of the moratorium could reach 120,000 by 2014
• The State of Louisiana estimates that the deep-water drilling suspension will result in a loss of 3,000-6,000 in-state jobs in the first 2-3 weeks and potentially more than 20,000 Louisiana jobs within the next 12-18 months

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Wood MacKenzie, or "WoodMac" as it's known in the consulting industry, isn't some rightwing think tank or industry mouthpiece.  It's one of the most respected organizations in the world for providing insight, forecasting and cutting edge analysis in natural resources utilization.

Which is why this report from an industry group based in Lousiana deserves more credibility. Summarizing that report again:

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Suspension of operations means roughly 33 floating drilling rigs – typically leased for hundreds of thousands of dollars per day – will be idled for six months or longer.

Impact: $250,000 to $500,000 per day, per rig – results in roughly $8,250,000 to $16,500,000 per day in costs for idle rigs.

Secondary impacts include:
• Supply boats – 2 boats per rig with day rates of $15,000/day per boat - $30,000/day for 33 rigs – nearly $1 million/day
• Impacts to other supplies and related support services (i.e., welders, divers, caterers, transportation, etc.)

Jobs –
• Each drilling platform averages 90 to 140 employees at any one time (2 shifts per day), and 180 to 280 for 2 2-week shifts
• Each E&P job supports 4 other positions
• Therefore, 800 to 1400 jobs per idle rig platform are at risk
• Wages for those jobs average $1,804/weekly; potential for lost wages is huge, over $5 to $10 million for 1 month – per platform.• Wages lost could be over $165 to $330 million/month for all 33 platforms

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If you work through the math, the message is clear:  The moratorium is bad policy.  It is going to devastate a sector of the economy in a region that depends heavily on that sector.  The oil spill is wrecking commercial fishing and tourism.  Why is the regime going for the hat trick by wrecking the oil and gas industry?


Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Obama replaces inexperienced lawyer with another inexperienced lawyer

On May 27, Elizabeth Birnbaum was fired, forced out or simply resigned as Director of the Minerals Management service, roughly a month after the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon explosion.  The explosion and fire killed eleven men and the damaged Macondo well it was drilling is now spewing millions of gallons of raw crude into the Gulf of Mexico, fouling marshes, soiling beaches, killing wildlife and knocking thousands out of work.

That Birnbaum was anywhere near spitting distance of the Director's office is but one of many tarballs on the Obama regime's record of appointing unqualified political hacks to jobs they are incapable of doing.  Birnbaum is an environmental activist and "community organizer."  Like the community organizer in chief, she had virtually no management experience and absolutely no management experience in issues dealing with energy, commerce or natural resources.

Enter Michael R. Bromwich, another Harvard-educated lawyer, with...  surprise: No management experience in issues dealing with energy, commerce or natural resources.  Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is in the process of splitting the MMS into at least two new agencies--one to manage leases and revenue collections; the other to manage regulatory enforcement and safety.  It's not clear how rearranging the nameplates at MMS will do much good.  But as of now, there's technically no MMS for Mr. Bromwich to serve as Director.  It's also not very clear how a man with no experience managing any organization that oversees energy or natural resource production will organize two completely new agencies whose only roles are in energy and natural resource management.  Surely, I am not the only one for whom the logic defies belief.

What Mr. Bromwich does have is experience as a prosecutor.  Hmmm.  He's also turned around a pair of ailing police departments:

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Bromwich helped prosecute Oliver North in the Iran-Contra investigation in the late 1980s. After that, he was inspector general for DOJ during the Clinton administration. He then went into private practice at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. But his most high-profile work at the firm has been leading turnaround efforts at troubled agencies like the Houston and Washington, D.C., police departments.

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It's not a stretch to turn to a lawyer and former prosecutor when looking for someone to overhaul a law enforcement agency.  But is it a stretch to turn to someone with that resume when the goal is to overhaul a natural resource management agency?

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Al Gore: Stop censorship?

Al Gore posted the following on his blog yesterday afternoon:

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These reports are deeply disturbing:

“When the operators of Southern Seaplane in Belle Chasse, La., called the local Coast Guard-Federal Aviation Administration command center for permission to fly over restricted airspace in Gulf of Mexico, they made what they thought was a simple and routine request.”

“A pilot wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to snap photographs of the oil slicks blackening the water. The response from a BP contractor who answered the phone late last month at the command center was swift and absolute: Permission denied.”

This behavior is completely unacceptable. Access by reporters should be as unfettered as possible. This de facto form of censorship needs to stop.

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Access for thee, but none for me, Al?


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Wow... Boobs at the Beach!

The left boob is Charlie Crist. The right boob is Barack Hussein Obama.

Efficient, well-run government needs to take over BP claims process

If you have been financially harmed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, you'd better get your claim into BP. Like, yesterday. Our remarkably well-functioning, hyper-efficient and totally responsive federal government is set to take over the claims process from BP, which the government says is going too slowly:

Obama administration may seize Gulf oil spill claims processing | al.com

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Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs says the administration is ready to take over the handling of oil spill damage claims from BP if the British company doesn't set up an "independent entity" to do it.

Speaking from Washington, Gibbs said the oil giant's claims processing work has been unsatisfactory. He noted that Obama "has the legal authority" to make the claims process independent. And Gibbs also said "the best way to prevail upon BP is to take the claims process away from BP."

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When residents of the Gulf Coast ask the government to "do more" in response to the spill, we don't mean yet another power grab. We mean we want you to send more skimming equipment, more motorized beach cleaners and large vacuum tankers to clean up the Gulf.

The last mega disaster to strike this area--Hurricane Katrina--also resulted in the US government handling the claims of hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents who were affected by the storm. How'd that turn out?

Well, hundreds of thousands of legitimate claims were paid, but FEMA wasn't exactly speedy with the processing and if anyone thinks the federal government has gotten better at it isn't cooking a full pot of Gumbo. And, the Department of Justice is still indicting, prosecuting and convicting people for filing fraudulent claims. In three years, more than 900 cases were adjudicated.

Is BP any more effective at rooting out fraudulent claims than the government is? That's impossible to say, but when it's your money being distributed, don't you think you'd try a little harder to separate the victims from the criminals?

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

The President. A straw. You must caption this...

Gentle readers of the I Bleed Crimson Red blog, please use the comments section to caption this photo, taken during teh Obi one's visit to Tacky Jack's in Orange Beach, Alabama.

If you're ever in this area, be sure and visit the local watering holes.

Just when it looks like things couldn't get worse...

There is mounting evidence that the Deepwater Horizon oil well disaster is careening into a worst case scenario, and that the relief wells currently being drilled constitute a race with Mother Nature. The problem: the well is damaged below the seafloor. i.e., "down hole." At this point, all of the evidence is circumstantial and represents the observations of people who are supposed to be subject matter experts.  But as the evidence grows, so does the sense of horror that we could be on the verge of an unprecedented calamity in the Gulf of Mexico.

Evidence points to damage beneath the sea floor.

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As I noted Tuesday, there is growing evidence that BP's oil well - technically called the "well casing" or "well bore" - has suffered damage beneath the level of the sea floor.

The evidence is growing stronger and stronger that there is substantial damage beneath the sea floor. Indeed, it appears that BP officials themselves have admitted to such damage. This has enormous impacts on both the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf, and the prospects for quickly stopping the leak this summer.

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Also: The Oil Drum -- "The magnitude and impact of this disaster will eclipse anything we have known in our life times if the worst or even near worst happens..."

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It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo.

We are not even 2 months into it, barely half way by even optimistic estimates. The damage done by the leaked oil now is virtually immeasurable already and it will not get better, it can only get worse. No matter how much they can collect, there will still be thousands and thousands of gallons leaking out every minute, every hour of every day. We have 2 months left before the relief wells are even near in position and set up to take a kill shot and that is being optimistic as I said.

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And: Doug Ross @ Journal.

The magnitude and impact of this disaster can't be understated, if the worst case scenario described by the Oil Drum's poster plays out. The post is long and chock full of technical details about why the poster thinks disaster is looming and all but inevitable.

To summarize--the casing system itself (i.e., the mechanical system consisting of the well bore and cementing that holds the well pipe in place) has been compromised somehow. There is likely at least one leak somewhere between the damaged blowout preventer on the seabed and the oil reservoir. The "top kill" procedure failed to stop the oil flow because it was like jamming a finger into a gushing hose that has leaks between the spigot and the nozzle. When you let the water flow, the leaks don't leak so bad. When you plug the nozzle, the the leaks spew liquid. Why is this a problem? Because those leaks start eroding the material surrounding them, and the well pipe loses its support from the sediment and rock formations surrounding it. Eventually, that erosion causes the sea floor itself to weaken, and the 450-ton blowout preventer falls like a house built on sand.

I'm a little more optimistic than he is--as both BP and Thad Allen have said that the relief well drilling is ahead of schedule. But, as the evidence shows, this is clearly a race against time. Any interruption in the drilling of those wells could have dire consequences.

Extra point: The nuclear option is looking more and more attractive. Not only will the oil foul the Gulf, we can also have fish that glow in the dark.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.