President Barack Obama used the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to renew his pitch for alternative energy Wednesday, arguing that the unfolding environmental disaster “gives you a sense of where we’re going” without comprehensive reform.
The federal government is “going to bring every resource necessary to put a stop” to the spill, the president said during a visit to a solar panel manufacturing facility in Fremont, California. “We will not rest until this well is shut, the environment is repaired, and the cleanup is complete.”
But, he added, “a lot of damage has been done already. The spill in the Gulf, which is just heartbreaking, only underscores the necessity” of seeking alternative fuel sources. A failure to enact comprehensive energy reform, he argued, would pose a threat to national security and the economy, as well as the environment.
And this:
The Obama administration, under pressure to act over the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, is expected to announce Thursday that it will suspend consideration of any applications for exploratory drilling for oil in the Arctic until 2011.
The decision is a major blow to Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which had planned an ambitious oil-drilling program in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska this summer. Shell has been arguing to regulators that its operations in Alaska would face a lower risk of the kind of problems faced by BP PLC in its ill-fated Gulf of Mexico operation.
Is this enough? Not enough? Too much? Do you agree BP should be running the cleanup instead of the government? Given BP is the most knowledgeable on such things, despite never having tested some of their methods, is there a choice? What do you think about suspending drilling? Are you in the conspiracy camp that says the explosion was on purpose to further alternative energy? What other steps would you take?
Same apologist BS all over the net, even if the leak is stopped right now there’s still a month of flow yet to reach the coast. Screw politics and politicians I couldn’t care less, something like this should have transcended all that crap. Truth is I’m all out, been posting elsewheres on this subject since day one and I’m spent. I still feel very strongly about the death of so many eco systems over such a broad area. But from here on will mourn in silence. Enjoy your ecological catastrofe.
Obama should use this as a platform to push major legislation funding development of a national high speed rail system.
BP gets liquidated, and shareholders wiped out. BP facilities are pieced off to competitors and everything left over goes into a trust fund. If there is anything left after the cleanup the bondholders get paid.
>The0ne
No it shouldn’t have occurred, and it wouldn’t have if the same rig safety standards applied as in the North Sea.
But a lot of people spent a lot of money in Washington and Houston over the last few decades ensuring an ‘advantageous business environment’ for companies in the oil business.
I don’t think they set the explosion, but they may have taken advantage of it by delaying the cleanup. Better visuals of environmental disaster to support their no energy agenda. Plus the spill itself has only a short term impact.
“oil-drilling program in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska this summer. Shell has been arguing to regulators that its operations in Alaska would face a lower risk”
LOWER RISK??
of WHAT??
REGULATIONS?
SPILLS?
BEING CAUGHT DUMPING OIL?
OF USA/CANADIAN Shores being polluted?? I mentioned 2 Countries, not the other 230+ WHICH they could pollute..
Thanks for the video..
NOW I can see MORE of what is happening..and cant figure OUT WHY it isnt FIXED YET..
I know how to do it, and how it could be done..BUT, they aint done it. Funny.
I think we need some oilmen in the White House. They would know how to handle it.
Let Exxon handle it. 😉
On the lighter side,.. oh, there isn’t one.
#39
tHERE IS ONE…
The ability to decide/see WHICH side is more INCOMPETENT..
BOTH.
Can I say, to give an example of what is happening..
This is a STANDING ITEM with a broken top.
Perspective is WEIRD..
Lets take a water hose running Full blast,
NOW try to place another hose on the end.
There ARE WAYS to do this.
but I dont see them doing ANY OF IT.
I want to thank everyone who had posted to this point. I didn’t realize that the world was one huge conspiracy, and that no one was responsible for anything. Oh by the way if you say jesus backwards is sausage, oh my god its a conspiracy.
The prudent thing would be to see WHY this accident occurred and WHAT changes in equipment and procedures are needed to prevent it again.
Then go back to drilling for new oil and gas with the improvements.
Of course, Obama and the greenies are not prudent, but political.
#30 They shot up when the disaster occurred. Even a small window of a few days was more than enough for huge profits to be made on the suddenly overpriced crude, certainly greater than BPs government capped liability of $70 million.
As for the corruption, well its pretty damn obvious when petro-corp liability is capped off at a tiny $70m by any government that (as #20 stated) gets its 2nd highest tax revenues from the oil industry and massive contributions directly from the oil industry and its lobby groups.
So Obama’s been on top of things since day one, but he has no idea why the head of MMS resigned?
I’m sure she did a heckuva job.
#43…
There is already hardware out there that could have solved this. It was a $100,000 part, that connects at the Well head, Just like a Shut off valve. Can you guess WHO saved money, NOT installing it when they were Drilling?
Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
To all of you that are semi-jokingly suggesting we should nuke it if everything else fails:
“…the Soviet Union, a major oil exporter, used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities. The first happened in Uzbekistan, on September 30, 1966 with a blast 1.5 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb and at a depth of 1.5 kilometers. Subterranean nuclear blasts were used as much as 169 times in the Soviet Union to accomplish fairly mundane tasks like creating underground storage spaces for gas or building canals.”
http://trueslant.com/juliaioffe/2010/05/04/nuke-that-slick/
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In the meantime I want those who have assumed responsibility to fix things (i.e., the Gubmint) to fix the damn problem. Save the demagoguery for alternate energy for another day. Is it the problem difficult? Yes but I wonder as to the competence of those who are “in charge”. And no it’s not a reference to Obama it’s a reference to bureaucratic boobs who are slow to think and act lest they see their own shadow…
I get a kick out of people who say let the government or the military take over. Ha! Like they’d have a clue.
But the government response (other than claiming they had a boot on the throat of BP) has been dismal.
What should be done? Obama obvioulsy thnks the thing to do is fly all over the country doing fundraisers for politicians. But I didn’t see that as an option on the poll.
I’ll tell you what to do: Remember Bush & Katrina = Obama & BP when you vote. If you didn’t like the way Bush’s crew handled Katrina, you should be really pissed at Obama’s people, now.
How about this outrageous option, let BP continue, let the government do what it can and let citizens help if they want (or they can just sit and bitch about it on the interwebitubes).
#49
The democrats should be pressing alternative energy legislation. Republicans have time and again shown they can effectively exploit disasters to ram through unrelated legislation.
The parties are so frustrating. One is nice and irrelevant, and the other can reliably get the wrong shit done.
This oil spill is there, it isn’t leaving. The US Gulf Coast is completely screwed for at least a decade.
This thread question is simply answered. BP faces such liability/criminal penalties that it can’t continue as a company. No pocket is deep enough.
The spill is not Obama’s Katrina, but his handling of the spill might be.
The US government has to step in here by default, in some capacity. The US Navy should(and probably already does) provide logistical help. The guys who are attempting the dirt fill, or whatever, just get a new name on the paycheck.
If a company causes national level harm that company should be seized and sold.
Oh Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick. Not one of you know a darned thing about managing a runaway well. Hey, it’s 5,000 ft. deep. Usually the first thing tried is to stuff the casing with a ton of different sized junk and mud, ranging from basketballs to baseballs to golf balls to gravel. That’s just the first try. There are six other possible solutions, each tried in turn when previous solutions fail. Google them yourself. The major problem is the depth of the casing.
Right, nuke it. Holy neutrons, like that’s going to fix anything. Why not just figure out a better way to make the whole thing 100x larger? Just what I want — radioactive oil lining the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico.
Yeah, and leave the solution to Odumba and crew. That’s like having a class of six year olds fix the antilock brakes on your car. Good freakin’ luck.
If memory serves, BP was one of those responsible for cleaning up after the Exxon Valdez. They may not be the best organization for the job, either. But for goodness sakes, don’t let the govt. put their hands in it, that’s just asking for major trouble, and no one responsible for doing a great job (or a really bad one).
Why doesn’t Obama care about the oil leak?
This is worse than Bush’s Katrina!
Thanks Barry for abdicating your responsibilities and going on vacation.
SQUID seems to be a low tech approach that could work, and be relatively quick, cheap, and easy to implement. Let’s get on with it!
This Fast Company article is a good place to start to learn more: http://www.fastcompany.com/1652618/more-oil-spill-solutions-the-squid-oil-eating-microbes
#54
This situation seems largely equivalent to the banking crisis. People who are the acknowledged experts screw up something much larger than their own businesses( in this case the 11th largest body of water in the world).
BP is a big company and it is worth a lot. Forget the value of the stock, though. If you are facing, as Andrew said in one of the recent DH unplugged podcasts, “UNLIMITED LIABILITY” how do you continue in business?
BP can’t have cash on hand to cover a fair valuation of the damages. So it needs to piece out it’s valuable bits, only most of them are incorporated in such a way as to avoid liability moving up the tree.
If the US government doesn’t rape BP( which is a misnomer, because BP is really asking for it) this is the end of Obama’s active period. His Katrina, “I did not sleep with that woman” and “Read My Lips” combined. Done.
If Obama is seen as the bitch of “Big Banking” and “Big Oil” only 12% of the country is going to vote for him next time. He can’t wait too long either. If the congressional Dems do badly in the midterms, he will look weak for not supporting his people and scared for his own skin( in ’12).
Somebody here has to get fucked, and BP is a ripe target. If nobody gets fucked it goes to Obama by default.
to editor: Sorry for the language. It just happens to fit the circumstances here.
Oil company BP’s latest plan to cap the undersea well now gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico…
http://www.viewheadlines.com/News/Article.aspx?i=3799