Spill baby spill, slippery politics

“We seem to be a bit intoxicated by this idea that BP will pay for everything,” said Frank Glaviano, former vice president of Shell Exploration and Production. “Maybe they will, and maybe they won't. Even if they do we're doing so much destruction to the land, the environment and the culture and the jobs and the economy here, that money won't be able to repair all of this.”

RALEIGH, N.C. — Republican congressional candidate William "Bill" Randall is suggesting that the Obama administration and BP conspired to intentionally spill oil in the Gulf, resulting in 11 deaths and the worst environmental disaster in the nation's history.

Randall, who has aligned himself with the tea party movement, readily acknowledges that he has no evidence that what he says is true. But that is not stopping him from making the claim as he campaigns in the June 22 GOP runoff to face incumbent Democratic Rep. Brad Miller on the November ballot.


"Now, I'm not necessarily a conspiracy person, but I don't think enough investigation has been done on this," Randall said at a media conference on Tuesday. "Someone needs to be digging into that situation. Personally, and this is purely speculative on my part and not based on any fact, but personally I feel there is a possibility that there was some sort of collusion. I don't know how or why, but in that situation, if you have someone from a company violating a safety process and the government signing off on it, excuse me, maybe they wanted it to leak.


"But then it got beyond what was anticipated, and we had an explosion and loss of life. And, oh man, then we have panic. Is there a cover up going on? I'm not saying there necessarily is. But I think there's enough facts on the table for people that (they) really need to do some investigative research and find out what went on with that and get a subpoena of records and everything else."


Randall made the statements after a reporter asked him if he supported President Obama's six-month moratorium on new deep water drilling for a safety review in wake of the disaster.


Pressed on what possible motivation the federal government and BP would have to purposely spill oil, Randall said he had no idea but reiterated that the issue needed to be the subject of investigation.


Both Randall and his GOP primary opponent, Bernie Reeves, have been outspoken supporters of oil and gas exploration off the North Carolina coast, where drilling has long been banned.


Randall, a U.S. Navy retiree who moved to North Carolina 19 months ago, led in the results of a four-way primary last month, edging out second-place finisher Reeves by just 135 votes.

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Randall, who has aligned himself with the tea party movement, readily acknowledges that he has no evidence that what he says is true.

The administration made an excellent choice in choosing Kenneth Feinberg to oversee the fund BP is agreeing to set up.

Predictions by analysts of the overall cost of the spill to BP, when criminal penalties are included, have been rising. On Wednesday, Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James, estimated the total legal cost, including criminal fines, at $62.9 billion, which would dwarf the $20 billion escrow account to be used to pay claims of economic loss.