June 20, 2010
BP well deeper than permit allowed, lacked safety valve
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What we're not being told by the government or BP: "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 [sic] last gasp in a horrific crescendo."
Republicans are calling BP's failure a "natural disaster," suggesting nothing could have prevented it.**
BP's pointing fingers and blaming the other guy
Of course.
**GOP Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the ranking member on the House Energy Committee, called the escrow fund a "shakedown" and apologized to BP for the "tragedy" of its $20 billion fund to pay damage claims from the Gulf Coast oil spill. Barton's top corporate donor is a partner of BP on Deepwater Horizon. Can you say conflict of interest?
Barton later backpedaled after House Republican leadership ganged up to throw Barton under the bus and force him to recant, but Republicans still continue referring to the Gulf Coast oil spill as the "nation's largest natural disaster."
*WTF?*</a>
Protest in Boise against BP draws 1--and 5 reporters
I'da been there if I'da known. Then there would have been two of us that care.
As oil spews in Gulf, BP chief Tony Hayward attends yacht race at UK's Isle of Wight
From Mother Jones's Mac McClelland: My BP Mole Spills the Secrets of BP's Cleanup Ops
"We Don't Need This on Camera": BP's Crappy Cleanup Job
More Dirty Details From My BP Mole
And on PBS (video): The oil reaches Grand Isle
Nevermind our government taking charge now that BP looks incompetent. Somebody? Anybody? OUR OWN GOVERNMENT IS INCOMPETENT! It's a world-wide problem now. Time to send these bratty little kids to their rooms to sulk. Bring in the Norwegians? Bring in the Russians? The Chinese?
Help us!
Everybody Please Keep It Down. Your Ruling Class is trying to think.
All the signs are there: Business as usual.
Six weeks after the spill began, BP started a $50 million TV ad campaign, promising to restore the Gulf, even before they started paying out claims for damages.
Must control the spin.
I see lots of references to someone referring to the oil catastrophe as a "natural disaster." However, I do not actually read that quote anywhere. Where does it come from?
Bernockle, quotes all over:
My most recent source is from Reps. John Boehner (R-OH), Eric Cantor (R-VA), and Mike Pence (R-IN) joint statement distancing the GOP from Barton's apology:
The oil spill in the Gulf is this nation's largest natural disaster [bolding mine] and stopping the leak and cleaning up the region is our top priority.
full text here
More stupid quotes on "natural disasters" and "acts of God."
"From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented." —Texas Gov. Rick Perry, May 3, 2010
The BP oil spill "is an anomaly–like an airplane falling from the clear blue sky." June 15, 2010 —John Culberson (R-Texas)
"...I think what you have to look at is when there is a natural disaster like this we do expect our government to do some things and to do them well." —Teabagger Matt Kibbe, Freedom Works CEO
The media's doing it: NYT Helene Cooper seems to think BP's major cockup is a “natural disaster” and CNN earlier reported "federal, state and local officials scrambled to avert a natural disaster...."
That's the spin, folks--nobody to blame but God.
Parker Griffith. R-Ala., at an Energy and Commerce hearing argued that the treatment of oil executives has been "disrespectful." (June 15)
Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., told reporters "I mean, accidents happen. (May 4)
Only in the sense that the whole universe might as well be an accident.
Man claims to find oil in oyster at Cornelius restaurant
Yum!
The Big Picture: Oil in the Gulf, two months later
BP oil leak setback: 'Top hat' removed, oil flow unhindered
Live Video
Someone here at work said that boycotting BP stations isn't going to help, because it just hurts the station owner.
I still say, fuck 'em. I'm not buying their damn gas. I'm not giving them one cent. Sucks to be a BP station owner and all, but christ. This is not a company I want to support, even tangentially.
It isn't their actions prior to the incident that bother me. It's their actions since, and their lack of action in areas that might have helped.
First they came to burn the endangered sea turtles... When they finally come without caution for the live frogs, then it will be too late!
.
That makes 12 lives.
Depression, Abuse, Suicide: Fishermen's Wives Face Post-Spill Trauma
Attack of the Show: BP Gulf Oil Spill Devastation, BP Oil Spill Effect on Wildlife
That was a VERY well written article, polychrome. Thank you.
"...And no one gets a completion bonus when a well comes in late."
There you go.
BP should have hired contractors to consult whether undersea rock elves, or hidden people, might be offended by some rapacious corporation's hubris or not...
(Those idiots REALLY should have had more respect for Nature!)
If It Was My Home: here's if the oil spill was in my town.
Yikes! According to this the oil spill is now as large as my entire province. This can't be good.
If it was in my town, it would reach Amsterdam, Maidstone in Kent, almost to Brighton, almost to Dusseldorf, cover more than half of Belgium, almost reach Le Havre and Rouen on the French side...
From Lille
And just think, that's what's on the surface!
New thread on the Blue: BP Slick Covers Dolphins and Whales.
Just think! BP is amazed to hear these results. Never encountered them before. Those clean-up people must be doing something wrong.
Health problems afflicted the heroes who went into the Chernobyl and World Trade Center Disasters too. One was a friend of a friend who worked for the city of New York picking through the rubbish to identify remaining things of value. We were on the Statin Island Ferry so he had time to show us a photo of a bronze head from a large statue in the style of Rodin. I did hear later that he'd died of cancer within the year.
Oh great. Even before the Gulf of Mexico debacle, BP was spewing 538,000 pounds of carcinogens from a Texas refinery malfunction.
"I'm like, 'Oh goodness,'" Bruce Clawson, Texas City's coordinator for emergency management..."We expect better from them.
Riiiiight. This is the kind of hard-hitting government officials we need going after slimeball oil companies.
Industry experts say BP had reason to believe from the outset that emissions from the flare would be substantial.
And just see how well the industry regulates itself!!
Remember Dow Chemical and the Bhopal disaster? This is called karma folks. We shrugged are shoulders and said, "Oh, well, capitalism happens." Well, here's your rampant unregulated capitalism in action, right here in our own country. Eat it, citizens.
I'm tired of hearing how it's the people's fault because we keep driving our evil oil-guzzling cars. It's the industry's fault, and it's industry-owned government officials that allow this to happen. Oil burn-off and waste in the oil industry accounts for five times more than the amount of fuel we use in our vehicles.
Industry is getting subsidized for the production of ethanol, which takes twice as much energy FROM OIL to produce as it yields in energy for fuel. Nobody wants to solve the oil use problem.
This country is so fucked, and we can thank BP now for this much of it. I think a lot of people are going to die, then there will be a revolution, and then more people will die. Maybe it won't be too late, but I'm not real optimistic about that.
It's late, I'm tired and disgusted and probably not making much sense. Nothing makes sense right now.
BP buys up Gulf scientists for legal defense, roiling academic community
Well we knew the advertising, legal, and 'misc' funds would be 100 times larger than the cleanup money, now didn't we?
How much oil spilled in the Gulf? Less than six hours' worth
Brilliant. Way to minimize one of the worst environmental disasters in history.
By my reckoning it's about 9 Exxon Valdez spills. Is that better that 6 hours worth?
Strangely they don't seem to know how much the Exxon Valdex spilled... "between 10 and 32 million gallons". Well, how much did it set sail with, and how much got to a port? Seems BP math was working back then as well.
This Kiplinger Newsletter says we only need to drill in North Dakota to satisfy the gas guzzling life style. They also claim it's not an environmentally sensitive area, unlike the off shore and Alaskan reserves. Only because of the depth, it's just a tad more expensive, so prices may need to go up first.
Then again, what if drilling so many miles down causes some unlooked for effect? The Yellowstone super volcano won't be shocked into activity by drilling a well will it? Hopefully not, although that part of North Dakota is cited as being in the danger zone should there actually be an eruption.
Alternative energy.
That is all.
Scientists Find Evidence That Oil And Dispersant Mix Is Making Its Way Into The Foodchain
The Crime of the Century: What BP and the U.S. Government Don't Want You to Know, Part I
Scientists Say as Much as 79% of Oil Remains in Gulf of Mexico
BP and Transocean Point Fingers as Giant New Oil Plume Found
I'm waiting for BP to go back to their stance of 'What oil spill?"
Report: White House squelched release of BP oil spill estimates
NO! Tell me it ain't so?
*puts on shocked face*
*adds squelching to the rapidly growing list of Mister White House's superpowers*
Report: BP, Halliburton Knew Well Cement Was Unstable Before They Used It
Maybe Halliburton should kick in some more money for damages? By the way, has ANYONE heard anything non-smarmy about this company?
Nail Helliburton for real money? THAT will be the day!! The bastards can slip out of barb-wire zip ties.
Non-smarmy? I don't think so.
Homunculus, this makes me so mad!!
There ARE health concerns with this Gulf mess. People have gotten sick, will continue to get sick, and there will be YEARS of health repercussions from this, but damned if it will get any serious notice since it's been published in Al Jazeera and that dippy nurse with her 'detox' crap has gotten involved.
BP publicity department has probably been high-fivin' it all over the place since this started, knowing that politicians can point to this and discount any claim made for injury or illness.
My only consolation is that even if it had been reported in the NYT and WaPo, without Dippy McDippynurse's input, the American public would still have ho-hummed and gone about their day.
Hey, things are back to normal in the Gulf, and the economy's doing great.
Why do you hate America?
Well, aren't they precious!
I bet they get a tax break for their "cleverness".
In generations to come, they'll wish we had shot
the bastard.
BP Oil Spill Not Breaking Down On Gulf Of Mexico Floor, Study Finds
Homunculus, I read that and just wanted to puke.
Those utter, unmitigated assholes.
I'm just betting that Shushan is in someone's back pocket.
Is there anyone that doesn't think fracking is a crap idea?
Anyone not making a profit on it, I'm sayin'.
The problem is, to stop the fracking you have to stop using oil.
We're going to have to stop using oil sooner or later. Some people just want to push off that inconvenience onto their grandchildren.
If any dolphins in that part of the ocean remain alive two years after that disaster, it'll be better than I expected. This is why I consider it NOT a joke to rename the Gulf of Mexico "Gulf of America". We broke it, we own it.
"...may be far worse than feared."
What bullshit. I get so tired of all the minimization that goes on when corporationsspeaklie through their teeth about what happened.
How about Gulf of Shame and Infamy?
Investigation: Two Years After the BP Spill, A Hidden Health Crisis Festers
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