The Republicans don't know which line to take on this problem...
Cycloptichorn
Republicans on the Hill have calculated that President Obama's successful demand that BP set up a $20 billion escrow account to pay out claims is ripe for political attack. In the wake of Wednesday's White House announcement, a host of GOP officials are raising questions about both the process by which the deal was made and the deal itself -- going so far as to apologize to BP on America's behalf.
"I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) during a hearing on Thursday morning with BP's CEO Tony Hayward." I think it is a tragedy in the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown -- in this case a $20 billion shakedown -- with the attorney general of the United States, who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the American people, participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that's unprecedented in our nation's history, which has no legal standing, which I think sets a terrible precedent for our nation's future."
"I'm only speaking for myself. I'm not speaking for anyone else, but I apologize," Barton added. "I do not want to live in a county where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, [it is] subject to some sort of political pressure that, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown."
Airing criticisms against the notion of forcing BP to fork over $20 billion in liability revenue would seem like a fairly risky proposition considering just how reviled the oil giant is in the current political environment. And Democrats quickly jumped on the congressman's remark, as well as those from other Republicans, as evidence of a lack of sensitivity for the victims of the spill.
"We know they oil companies have been the GOP's patrons for years," said DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan, "but given the devastation inflicted on Americans by BP's recklessness, we're surprised that Republicans would not want to hold BP accountable to the families and small businesses of the Gulf."
Indeed, despite saying he was speaking on his own accord (and not on behalf of the Republican Party) but Barton was far from alone. The Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative members of the House, was even less diplomatic with a statement describing the Obama administration's actions as a "Chicago-style political shakedown."
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"These actions are emblematic of a politicization of our economy that has been borne out of this Administration's drive for greater power and control," wrote chairman Tom Price (R-GA).
Price was echoed later in the evening by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who said during an appearance on CNN that the president appears to be using BP as a "permanent ATM card," with eyes on taking over "private industry."
None of the critiques, however, matched the more philosophical pushback offered by Mississippi Governor Hailey Barbour, who objected to the idea of forcing BP to invest money for the purpose of paying out claims when the company could simply use that money to expand offshore drilling so that they could make money to pay out claims.
"If they take a huge amount of money and put it in an escrow account so they can't use it to drill oil wells and produce revenue, are they going to be able to pay us?" Barbour told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
For certain, Barton, Bachman, Price and Barbour's comments represented some of the more extreme remarks aired on the issue. But they aren't isolated within the GOP tent, nor are they far removed from the sentiments of party leadership. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's office has not commented directly on the escrow account, an aide confirms. But House Minority Whip Eric Cantor has.
"I don't want to pile on the president, but people need leadership right, and the President has not offered any plan to help the people right now who need it most," the congressman said in a statement. "We're facing a real environmental catastrophe right now and the President has taken no demonstrative action to show that he has a plan and is going to get it done. I do commend the President working with BP to establish the fund, and clearly BP has to pay. For their part, they've stepped up and taken responsibility. But the President still has not offered a fix to the problem at hand, which is plugging the leak and cleaning the mess."
On Thursday morning, meanwhile, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) tried for the fourth time to eliminate the $75 million cap on liability for economic damages that oil companies must pay in the wake of a spill. His effort for a unanimous consent agreement was rejected, once more, by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who said the policy would make drilling offshore economically prohibitive for smaller oil companies.
"I do not want to live in a county where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, [it is] subject to some sort of political pressure that, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown."
Friday, June 18, 2010
The Spill Response [Rich Lowry]
An e-mailer who’s an expert on oil spills weighs in on that Wall Street Journal story the other day on the chaos of the response:
Quote:
-The criticism about not having adequate ocean boom is probably valid. It costs a lot, and is practically never used, so there isn’t a lot in inventory – anywhere in the world. But it is irrelevant for this spill (see the next point).
-Booms and dispersants are not compatible with each other. Booms only work when the oil floats on the surface of the water. Yet the whole purpose of dispersants is to get the oil to disperse down into the water column, breaking the oil into tiny droplets that have vastly increased surface area, so that natural degradation processes can work much more rapidly. You can’t really “boom” dispersed oil. Spill responders have to make a fundamental choice when it comes to a big spill. If there is any hope of containing it in booms and recovering it, then that is the obvious choice – and the government (who has to individually approve the use of dispersants on each spill) would never approve the use of dispersants instead of booms. Really big spills, like this one, can’t be boomed and skimmed effectively – especially when they continue for weeks on end. It just can’t be done – at least not in the open ocean. Thus, the “least bad” option is to disperse whatever you can’t contain and skim. I give the government credit for making the call fairly early in this spill to use dispersants, and on a massive scale. That was the right call. Biologists are right to worry about the effects of the dispersed oil, and there will be lots of studies on the pros and cons of letting the oil sit on the surface versus dispersing it into the water column. These studies might change the decision for some subsequent spill… but based on what we know now, dispersing it is the right thing to do. The flip side is that most of the remaining oil won’t boom very well. I’m not saying that boom wouldn’t help at all, or that its use is a complete waste of time… I’m just saying it won’t work as well as it would on fresh, floating oil.
- The EPA’s dispersant flip-flop was bureaucratic bungling at its worst. There is an extensive testing process involving toxicity tests (both acute and chronic), for a dispersant to be listed as an “approved” dispersant for spill response use. The one that BP was using was already “pre-approved”, and was stockpiled in large quantities for THIS EXACT SCENARIO. For EPA to step in during the crisis and decide that, well maybe they like a different dispersant better, and BP better find one in 48 hours, borders on criminal negligence on EPA’s part. And, subsequently, EPA was forced to back down once the idiocy of their decision became obvious. It would be hard to find a better example of how these guys can step in and muck things up, while the disaster unfolds around their clueless heads.
- The shoreline response is about what I would expect for this type of spill, and has gone pretty well all things considered. BP and NOAA had site-specific trajectory analyses of the spill, and used them at the outset to figure out what to protect first. These models were (and still are) updated on a continuous basis. The models aren’t perfect (kind of like predicting the course of a hurricane), but they are the best way to determine where the spill will go and what will be impacted first. Lots of people were mobilized to place lots of boom in the most likely places. Of course, no one is happy with the boom deployment, because everyone wants THEIR beach/inlet/whatever to be first priority, regardless of what a trajectory model might say. Everybody just screams as loud as they can in hopes that they will win the contest to get boom first, and of the best type for their situation. BP and the USCG are left in the middle of a no-win situation. There will be LOTS of unhappy people, regardless of what they do.
- By the way, it isn’t a sign of negligence that there was boom available that had not been deployed. Since it wasn’t clear exactly where the boom would be needed, and there isn’t enough to boom every possible location on the Gulf Coast, it would be prudent to leave some on the boats or on the docks that could be rapidly deployed once it DID become clear where it would be needed. Of course, given the political pressures involved it would be unacceptable not to be seen to be using every foot of boom – especially when thousands of voices are screaming for it. So it gets deployed somewhere, anywhere … probably in the wrong spot, to avoid criticism and at least satisfy somebody in the crowd. Yet another example of how poor decisions are made because of political, not scientific, considerations.
Interesting. However the Administration could have accepted the offers of other nations for tankers and skimmers, and mobilized our own as well, that could have collected large quantities of surfaced petroleum. They did not do this for reasons that have not been disclosed. Some speculate that the unwillingness of the current administration to use its emergency powers to waive applicability of the Jones act (which requirres all such ships to be crewed by dues paying members of the U.S. seafarers union) was the cause. In any event the law was not waived and the skimming fleet (which has been used very effectively in other catastrophic spills in the Persian Gulf and West Africa) was not employed. This method too would have favored the avoidance of dispersants & surfactants (and the colateral environmental damage associated with them).
I hope this isn't the case, but we'd better get ready for that - the reserve has something like 1.5 billion barrels in it!
Quote:I hope this isn't the case, but we'd better get ready for that - the reserve has something like 1.5 billion barrels in it!
I hope so too Cyclo. Headless chickens are bad enough. Chickenless heads are unthinkable.
I think the worst thing the Administration has done is not "the messaging" of their response, but the inept and sometimes chaotic response itself.
In this case, unlike Katrina, the Federal government - not the individual states, is the primary responder and the responsible agency for preparedness and emergency action.
It will be interesting to read the technical description of the failed drilling/capping process when it finally comes out. My impression is that the redundancy and reliability of the various containment measures planed were grossly inadequate compared to the consequences of failure.
[The response has not been inept in the slightest, but I understand why detractors such as yourself would like to paint it so. Truthfully, much as the account I posted above stated, they have done an adequate job dealing with the disaster.
Quibbling that they should have accepted Dutch ships a little earlier, or that various departments didn't act as efficiently as they should have, are truthfully minor complaints, George.
Quote:In this case, unlike Katrina, the Federal government - not the individual states, is the primary responder and the responsible agency for preparedness and emergency action.
This is also incorrect. The primary responsibility lies with BP and their partners in the drilling operation. The Feds have a secondary responsibility after that. BP has admitted that they never believed the worst case scenario would happen and were unprepared to deal with it, despite repeatedly assuring the government that they were prepared - even after the event happened.
This was not an act of God, or a natural disaster - this is a failure of Big Business, driven by greed. To pretend that those who caused the problem through their reckless actions are not responsible is a true example of apology on the part of ideology.
Where Gulf Spill Might Place on the Roll of Disasters
From the Oval Office the other night, President Obama called the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.” Senior people in the government have echoed that language.
The motive seems clear. The words signal sympathy for the people of the Gulf Coast, an acknowledgment of the magnitude of their struggle. And if this is really the worst environmental disaster, the wording seems to suggest, maybe people need to cut the government some slack for failing to get it under control right away.
But is the description accurate?
Scholars of environmental history, while expressing sympathy for the people of the gulf, say the assertion is debatable. They offer an intimidating list of disasters to consider: floods caused by human negligence, the destruction of forests across the entire continent and the near-extermination of the American bison.
“The White House is ignoring all the shades and complexities here to make a dramatic point,” said Donald E. Worster, an environmental historian at the University of Kansas and a visiting scholar at Yale.
The professors also note the impossibility of ranking such a varied list of catastrophes. Perhaps the worst disaster, they say, is always the one people are living through now.
Still, for sheer disruption to human lives, several of them could think of no environmental problem in American history quite equaling the calamity known as the Dust Bowl.
“The Dust Bowl is arguably one of the worst ecological blunders in world history,” said Ted Steinberg, a historian at Case Western Reserve University.
Across the High Plains, stretching from the Texas Panhandle to the Dakotas, poor farming practices in the early part of the 20th century stripped away the native grasses that held moisture and soil in place. A drought that began in 1930 exposed the folly.
Boiling clouds of dust whipped up by harsh winds buried homes and cars, destroyed crops, choked farm animals to death and sent children to the hospital with pneumonia. At first the crisis was ignored in Washington, but then the apocalyptic clouds began to blow all the way to New York, Buffalo and Chicago. A hearing in Congress on the disaster was interrupted by the arrival of a dust storm.
By the mid-1930s, people started to give up on the region in droves. The Dust Bowl refugees joined a larger stream of migrants displaced by agricultural mechanization, and by 1940 more than two million people had left the Great Plains States.
However, the Dust Bowl lasted a decade, and that raises an issue. What exactly should be defined as an environmental disaster? How long should an event take to play out, and how many people have to be harmed before it deserves that epithet?
Among sudden events, the Johnstown Flood might be a candidate for worst environmental disaster. On May 31, 1889, heavy rains caused a poorly maintained dam to burst in southwestern Pennsylvania, sending a wall of water 14 miles downriver to the town of Johnstown. About 2,200 people were killed in one of the worst tolls in the nation’s history.
At the time it happened, that event was understood as a failure of engineering and maintenance, and that is how it has come down in history. Perhaps a one-day flood is simply too short-term to count as an environmental disaster.
On the other hand, if events that played out over many decades are included, the field of candidates expands sharply.
Perhaps the destruction of the native forests of North America, which took hundreds of years, should be counted as the nation’s largest environmental calamity. The slaughtering of millions of bison on the Great Plains might qualify.
Craig E. Colten, a geographer at Louisiana State University, nominates “the human overhaul of the Mississippi River Valley,” which destroyed many thousands of acres of wetlands and made the region more vulnerable to later events like Hurricane Katrina.
However, those activities were not seen as disasters at the time, at least by the people who carried them out. They were viewed as desirable alterations of the landscape. It is only in retrospect that people have come to understand what was lost, so maybe those do not belong on a disaster list.
Oil spills, too, seem to be judged more by their effect on people than on the environment. Consider the Lakeview Gusher, which was almost certainly a worse oil spill, by volume, than the one continuing in the gulf.
In the southern end of California’s San Joaquin Valley, an oil rush was on in the early decades of the 20th century. On March 14, 1910, a well halfway between the towns of Taft and Maricopa, in Kern County, blew out with a mighty roar.
It continued spewing huge quantities of oil for 18 months. The version of events accepted by the State of California puts the flow rate near 100,000 barrels a day at times. “It’s the granddaddy of all gushers,” said Pete Gianopulos, an amateur historian in the area.
The ultimate volume spilled was calculated at 9 million barrels, or 378 million gallons. According to the highest government estimates, the Deepwater Horizon spill is not yet half that size.
The Lakeview oil was penned in immense pools by sandbags and earthen berms, and nearly half was recovered and refined by the Union Oil Company. The rest soaked into the ground or evaporated. Today, little evidence of the spill remains, and outside Kern County, it has been largely forgotten. That is surely because the area is desert scrubland, and few people were inconvenienced by the spill.
That sets it apart from the Deepwater Horizon leak. The environmental effects of the gulf spill remain largely unknown. But the number of lives disrupted is certainly in the thousands, if not the tens of thousands; the paychecks lost in industries like fishing add up to millions; and the ultimate cost will be counted in billions.
Even with all that pain, can it yet be called the nation’s worst environmental disaster?
“My take,” said William W. Savage Jr., a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, “is that we’re not going to be able to tell until it’s over.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/science/earth/19enviro.html?hp
