The BP Mess

The awful BP oil leak continues, and has revealed a system fucked up beyond belief. Congressional hearings into the matter began with Rep. Joe Barton (Tex, R) telling BP CEO Tony Hayward that he is personally "ashamed" of the White House meeting where Obama made BP agree to establishing a $20 billion contingency fund. (It won't be enough.) Barton called it a "shakedown" and a "tragedy". He said he didn't want to live in a country where "legitimately wrong" actions are held to account, "so I apologize." Hey Joe -- since you don't wanna live here, kindly get the hell out!

For his part at those hearings, Hayward played the role of the most ignorant, unknowledgable, incompetent CEO in history. His answer to every question was that he was unaware of it, he knew nothing about it, he is not normally informed of such things, he delegated that, he could not recall, that is not his area, blah blah blah. Tony, if you're the CEO and you don't know anything about anything, then what fuckin' good are ya? BP's chairman has since yanked Tony from the public eye and given him back his normal life of yachting.

President Obama has taken heat for being slow to respond to this disaster, and such criticism is at least partially deserved. But the reality is that nobody -- not BP, not the President, not the Coast Guard, not Jacques Cousteau -- really knows exactly how to fix this kind of deep sea leak. Official protocol dates back to the Exxon Valdez spill and says let the oil companies fix it/clean it up because they have the "expertise". Well, bullshit! Obviously they didn't have the expertise for this one. Yet permits for similar deep water drilling are issued almost daily. When it comes to oil exploration, the inmates have been running the asylum for too long.

These permits are issued by the hitherto unknown federal agency, the Minerals Management Service, a part of the Interior Dept. During the Bush/Cheney years, the MMS became a rubber-stamp outfit where managers earned bonuses for pushing through offshore oil leases, auditors were ordered not to investigate safety issues, and staffers routinely accepted gifts from oil companies. MMS even gave deep-sea drillers a "categorical exclusion" which exempted them from any environmental review. The fox has been given the keys to the goddam henhouse!

The bigger-picture fuck-up of Obama was not recognizing this corrupt cluster of cocksuckers sooner. That he didn't is attributable to his choice of Ken Salazar as Interior Secretary. (I have a hard time taking seriously a Cabinet member who appears publicly in a cowboy hat and bolo tie.) Salazar did make a few heads roll at MMS, but he didn't clean house and the agency remains populated by "drill, baby, drill" douchebags. That's because Salazar has been a long-time proponent of more and more offshore drilling. On his watch, 53 million acres in the Gulf are available for offshore drilling -- an all-time high. Jesus! The ocean floor is gonna look like swiss cheese!

And then we have the bizarre ruling of District Court Judge Martin Feldman (Marty Feldman?!) which blocked Obama's 6 month moratorium on deep-water drilling. Obama's order affected only 33 of over 3000 oil rigs, but Feldman could see no point in taking a break to consider the obvious need for more safeguards. In his decision, the judge (who is personally invested in oil exploration companies) asks, "If one tanker spills oil, do we ban all tankers? If one train wrecks, do we eliminate all trains? If one oil rig explodes due a defective part, does that mean all rigs have defective parts?" My dear moron judge, in this case, yes, it might mean exactly that, given the piss-poor oversight of recent years. And the larger point is that we know how to respond to a tanker spill or a train wreck, but we don't know nearly enough about how to respond to a deep-water oil leak and before we proceed willy-nilly, we oughta fuckin' figure it out!

Meanwhile, the good citizens of the Sportsman's Paradise don't know whether to shit or wind their watch over this whole thing. Louisiana has a long and sordid history as a look-the-other-way, laizzez bon temps roulez kinda place. Now half the people are bemoaning the tragic damage to habitat, wildlife, tourism, the seafood business, etc. The other half are complaining about slow-downs, layoffs and job loss in the oil industry, which is a huge employer on the Gulf Coast. They want to get back to business as usual. But if you want to have your shrimp and eat it too, the old business as usual may not be in your long-term interests. What price your bon temps?

I'll wrap up with one last BP tidbit. Judge Feldman's decision is being appealed and Interior may also order a temporary halt to some deep-sea drilling. It's pretty clear that some sort of moratorium will be reinstated. But here's what BP is planning for this fall, and it won't be subject to any moratorium because it's not technically "offshore". Up in Alaska near the Prudhoe Bay, BP has built an "island" 3 miles out into the Arctic water. This pile of rocks is connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway. So now it's "land-based", see? Salazar's Interior Dept. closes its eyes and agrees that it is. So, already 3 miles out, BP will put a drilling rig on its island and drill straight down for 2 miles. It will then drill 6 to 8 miles sideways to reach the site of the oil. This sideways shit has never been tried before, but BP pooh-poohs any safety concerns and has, as always, low-balled the quantity of any possible leak (leaking which, of course, is virtually impossible. Yeah, right.) The MMS has given BP the go-ahead for this project. You think it was tough to get to BP's blown rig a couple miles out in the Gulf of Mexico? Now try it 9 to 11 miles out into the friggin' Arctic Ocean! This is totally bat-shit crazy nuts!