Jun 15 2010
Narcissist In Chief
UPDATES BELOW!
Major Update: Good God, I was easy on Obama versus Olberman, Mathews & Fineman on MSNBC
These are the sycophant Obamabots for goodness sakes!
More here at Hotair – end update
The president’s speech was a pathetic dud. Â The take away line – contrary to the pundits – was his admission that “we don’t know how to get there”. Brit Hume said it well last night, cleaning up the Gulf is too small for this egomaniac. This president wants to wean the world off oil!!!
Talk about your Walter Mitty moment. The idea we should tax energy AND cut off 30% of our oil supply with a 6 month embargo of off shore drilling (which will grow into a many year drought as oil rigs move to other nations) is stupendously reckless. Want a double dip recession? We just got one.
I tried to think of an analogy with Bush and 9-11. What would have happened if Bush came out after 9-11 and focused half his bull-horn speech to deficit cutting? There is no connection between carbon taxes and unsafe drilling and dealing with this mess.
And why does Obama need a commission to determine how his administration gave BP a reckless waiver to basic drilling safeguards, which in turn led to this disaster getting out of control? We don’t need ‘new’ regulations, we need people to follow safe practices. Why do the Dutch demand secondary relief holes for all new wells and BP was allowed, by this administration, to skip that basic step?
Get real – we know the cause! We had a huge Obama-fundraiser get waivers on safety by the Obama administration. This ain’t complicated.
And what was that crap about a speedy response? All his claims about booms and ships were completely misleading. Does Obama really think no one knows his administration held up Dutch assistance, left booms sit in a Maine warehouse and delayed permits for LA to build sand berms? Does he think we are as ignorant has his team is?
Who is this clown kidding?
When Obama said he would not allow inaction – Â after 4 fundraisers, 2 vacations and 7 rounds of golf before he focused on THE Gulf in the last 2 months – the guy sounded mad as a hatter. Maybe Alvin Green would do better?
This was not a ‘save the Gulf’ speech, it was ‘save Obama’s agenda’ speech.
He did not connect, he repulsed and let down. In fact, I felt like I was watching someone totally losing it. Instead of admitting to his administration’s and BP’s mistakes and focusing on the issue at hand, the guy went cosmic and rambled on about an oil free world.
Dude – you need a physics lesson. Let me explain some hard facts of reality. You cannot transport massive amounts of sea cargo using sails (if we could, we would!). You cannot fly jetliners on wind power. You cannot move freight trains on solar panels. Get an eff’ing clue!
Our dreamy President is acting like life is a Disney-Pixar movie or a Star Trek episode.
Sorry, but for anyone with a modicum of science, engineering or math background they know what he said was incoherent and naive. And do we need to remind him he CANCELLED our trips to the moon, he did not enable them or make them happen.
As one nation, we will rise up and get people in office who know something about reality.
Be afraid folks, … be real afraid. Obama is the original, albeit more loquacious, Alvin Greene candidate. Someone voters randomly turned to without realizing the need for experience, knowledge and wisdom in our leaders.
Update: Not surprisingly the left whines Obama did not go far enough on crippling this nation’s energy production, and therefore its economy. Dreamy morons. This is why people need basic science in school.
Update: Goodness, even Maureen Dowd is now slamming ‘The One”.
I don’t blame Obama for the ineptitude on display. I blame the people that put him in the White House.
That aside, what could we possibly expect from someone like Obaama who doesn’t possess a scintilla of executive experience or a Cabinet/Czar crowd that has possibly the least amount of business experience of any presidency in history.
Academic credentials are on display for what they truly are and cannot fix the damned leak.
Obama is a man (debatable) of many missed opportunities. Suck it up and make the calls to the countries or companies that can help. This country will rally around him if he shows some real courage.
I have to wonder if Obama’s inaction is intentional because he saw this as a great opportunity to push his favorite cap n trade bill. He also used Global Warming as one of the reasons for cancelling the Constellation and Ares 1 rocket programs.
AJ,
It is the nature of irrational regimes to act even more irrational under pressure as the factions inside the regime vie for power.
The most offensive to the outside world symbolic acts are chosen to further the power interests of one or more irrational factions at the expense of the larger national interest.
We have seen this over and over again since 9/11/2001. The Taliban blowing up the Budda statue and giving sanctuary to Al-Qaeda.
We saw it with Saddam and his dead end Sunni-Bathist followers in Iraq.
We have seen it most recently with North Korea torpedoing a South Korean frigate.
Now the Obama Administration is following that script very closely with the BP spill.
The problem now is that the American Left that Obama represents is not a monolith.
And as this particular irrational regime become more so under the pressure of the reality, it will start sending out messages it’s wingnut factions till take all too seriously.
as in:
“Will no one rid me of this priest.”
Just because the usual political Leftist political “Bulls” are doing their usual thing of Ailinskite “making it personal” doesn’t mean the Kossite fringe won’t take violent hints from their collective Ids once targets are identified for them.
That is our near future.
Another point to be made here is that if those deepwater rigs all head to Brazil that will just enrich Soros who bought into Petrobras just before the US via the IMF funded them to the tune of 2 billion dollars to drill there.
Don’t discount the dot connections here.
Gov. Bobby Jindal is making Pres. Obama look very, very, bad in Louisianna.
OUCH: Poll: Louisianans think Bush did better on Katrina than Obama’s doing on the oil spill. “Devastating. Especially since it comes from left-leaning pollster PPP. . . . The big winner? Bobby Jindal, whose 63 percent approval (65 percent on handling the spill) is the highest for any senator or governor in PPP’s polling this year.â€
Posted at 8:38 am by Glenn Reynolds
This has implications for the Democratic Senator from Louisianna.
AJ,
Irrational Regimes behave more so under pressure:
Obama Administration Exhibit B:
Obama Officially Embraces the Lame-Duck Session Strategy
June 16, 2010 9:13 AM By Jim Geraghty
The Politico’s Mike Allen puts this in his morning newsletter:
EXCLUSIVE: Phil Schiliro, the White House congressional liaison, has told the Senate to aim to take up an energy bill the week of July 12, after the July 4 break (and after the scheduled final passage of Wall Street reform). Kagan confirmation will follow, ahead of the summer break, scheduled to begin Aug. 9. The plan is to conference the new Senate bill with the already-passed House bill IN A LAME-DUCK SESSION AFTER THE ELECTION, so House members don’t have to take another tough vote ahead of midterms.
Every Republican challenger ought to be demanding that their Democrat incumbent opponent pledge in writing that they will not pass an energy bill in a lame-duck session if they are defeated. When the people make their opinion clear, fundamental concepts of accountability and responsibility require that the opinion not be ignored.
Lame duck sessions are not designed to be shortcuts to ignore the will of the people and erase any sense of legislative culpability.
Everyone keeps saying that Obama just keeps voting ‘present’. No, they keep him as far from whatever the current crisis as possible. It has worked over and over because MSM refused to even acknowledge the pattern. Holden follows the same. They see nothing, they read nothing, they discuss nothing, they know nothing so therefore they can not be held responsible or answer questions. Holden announces the trials in NY is perfect example or they refuse to read the AZ bill. Geezzzz.
Read a comment somewhere that asked why he did not have every Gov from TX to FL to the WH to confer with BP the very first week. He could have chosen to call them a Panel or Commission?
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/the_presidents_oil_reserves_li.html
power the nation for upwards of three centuries. That’s three-hundred years, Mr. President. We are not running out of oil reserves, it’s just that those oil reserves have been declared off limits due to decades of environmental lobbying of our politicians, especially those on the Left. This lobbying has driven the likes of BP and others out deep into the Gulf of Mexico to extract the nation’s needed oil.
Note the following statement from the article:
“…untapped reserves are estimated at about 2.3 trillion barrels, nearly three times more than the reserves held by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Counties (OPEC) and sufficient to meet 300 years of demand-at today’s levels-for auto, aircraft, heating and industrial fuel, without importing a single barrel of oil.”
Merlin and all, did you see the Canada Free Press article by JD McGrath talking about the sale of BP stock by Goldman Sachs after BP pulled out of a key Climate and Global Warming Coalition and the mysterious airlift of “Schlumberger personnel the morning of the day of the disaster, reportedly over a refusal to allow them to run a Cement Bond Log to confirm the integrity of the very cement seal that failed as the final straw that broke the camels back and resulted the gas explosion.”?
Here is the link: canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/24277
I would be very curious to see what you think.
Goldman and BP are heavy into climate change and cap and trade as I understand it. $$$$$$$$$$$
jhstuarton 16 Jun 2010 at 6:43 am
“I dont blame Obama for the ineptitude on display. I blame the people that put him in the White House.”
And I lay a large majority of that blame on our sycophant, biased, lame-stream media!
And it is my fervent desire to see the AP-NYT-REUTERS-CNN-USATODAY-MSNBC-ABC-CBS… media be called to account for their bias…
Facinating article, Ivehadit, especially for me – that used to be my job. Among other things, I ran CBL logs for Schlumberger for 12 years, and I remember how pissed off companies would be when I told them their cement job was crap and they needed to repair it. No one ever likes to hear that. Yes, it’s pretty much SOP for *everyone* to run a CBL once the cement job has set up, because they often *don’t* go as planned.
But I still don’t think there was any intentional failure here, it still sounds just like more incompetence piled on top of incompetence. Canceling the CBL log probably means that BP knew the cement job was no good, but didn’t want it documented. (Bad policy, but it happens. a lot.) Btw, an operator couldn’t get away with that onshore, because State regulations require it – but State regs don’t apply offshore, and apparently the Feds have never been interested in doing any actual quality control up to now. Sounds like BP was planning to abandon the wellbore completely, and was trying to cut all the corners they could on their way out.
And the probable reason the Schlumberger crew was yanked just before the explosion (Don’t you know they’re STILL thanking heaven for that!) is that once the CBL operation was canceled, there would have been nothing left for them to do out there, and they’re worth too much for Big Blue to just leave them sitting out there staring at the ocean for no reason.
(Schlumberger crews typically bounce from rig to rig, as needed)
I agree with the author of this article – Negligent Homicide charges should be lodged against anyone involved in the decision making during those final 3 hours. Those 11 men died because of the incompetence and stupidity of the men giving the orders – and that’s what negligent homicide is all about.
Thanks, WWS. I lived in New Orleans for 20 years, btw. 🙂
“sufficient to meet 300 years of demand-at today’s levels-for auto, aircraft, heating and industrial fuel, without importing a single barrel of oil.”
Maybe we have a longer-term national strategy to burn up middle-eastern oil as fast as possible in order that we might be able to get out from under their thumb faster and then at some point be able to tell them to “take a hike” and stop tolerating their crap.
CP,
I have been thinking the same thing. The best way to preserve our national security is to be the last ones with untapped oil reserves. I would actually back that as a plan.
Cheers, AJStrata
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/chairman-goldman-sachs-international-was-until-last-year-chairman-bp
Ivehadit
The prior Chairman of BP before this one was at the same time the Chairman of Goldman Sachs International ,one of their string of companies.
Just a close knit group that goes round and round.
I have a person I have know for a while in a chat room I use and I have no reason to doubt their integrity.
This person worked over 30 years for Schulumberger on all the rigs in the GOM. That included Deepwater Horizon.
He retired about a year ago but is fairly current on the status from those he knows who are still actively involved in day to day work on the rigs.
He says of the last 3 men in charge of the rig,
1) First guy was good and reached mandatory retirement
2) Second guy was good and was killed in a motorcycle crash during a shore R&R
3) Last guy was a get her done guy who MAY have shortcut the system while they were shutting down the well.
A P&A (plug and abandon temporary) op was in progress since pipelines to the shore were not connected to make it a production well. This was so they could move the 400k a day plus rig to the next drill site.
Wow! Merlin that is very interesting. And I just found the same at wikipedia, not that that is a great source, lol!
Does Rolling Stone know about this? They have written tough articles on Goldman last year…
As I have been saying for years: GLOBAL SOCIALISTS, imho communists, have taken over the democrat party…just as their game plan stated years and years ago.
I’ve generally discounted the articles that seem to be scare-mongering a bit too much, and yet there was one yesterday at The Oil Drum that I cannot dismiss so easily – even though I wish I could.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593/648967
long article, read it to see what may be happening. If this is true, things are indeed worse than anyone official is letting on. The relief well still has a chance of working – but that truly may be the last chance we get at stopping this.
It sounds ridiculous to say, as this writer does, that the entire 2.5 billion barrel reservoir is in the process of dumping itself into the gulf – and yet, when I see today that BP has just upped the estimated flowrate to 60,000 BOPD, that’s exactly what it sounds like is happening. I also have noted the small reports, later deleted, that oil is leaking from around the outside of the BOP, not just through the middle of it. That is a thing that should not be possible unless something is much, much more wrong that we’ve been told so far.
I hadn’t ever believed the high flow numbers, because those were impossible. No oil well in the world flows at that high a rate!!!! And yet that, as of today, 60,000 is now the official flow rate. Every rate given is higher than the one the day before – do I believe this is the final estimate? I can’t say that I do.
This is no longer a “normal” blowout – what’s happening downhole is the stuff of nightmares, and is now most definitely something that *no* *one* in the industry has ever run into before.
Up to this point, I have always been very confident that eventually this well would be brought under control, and the major problem will be dealing with the messy aftermath. I still believe that to be true; but I can no longer deny the possibility that something truly, unknowably awful may happen.
btw – the so-called “nuke fix” probably won’t work. One of the nightmare possibilities is a general collapse of the seafloor in the area – an underground nuke would only accelerate that process.
WWS:
“there could only be one conclusion…the wells casings were ruptured and it was leaking ‘down hole’ “\
That is one conclusion I have been slowly coming to myself as the evidence mounts.
“There are no “Disks” or “Subsea safety structure” 1,000 feet below the sea floor, all that is there is well bore.”
This could be an over-simplification of the plug that was cemented into place, or attempted to be cemented into place.
So it is starting to look to me like the pipe in place could not take the pressure of the field. When the well kicked, the BOP probably *did* activate and something ruptured below it, sort of what might happen in a “water hammer” situation with household plumbing. The BOP slams shut and the pipe below it splits open.
This might be an indication that the amount of oil or its pressure below the BOP was underestimated during the initial engineering calculations and the casing used is too weak for the job.
If that is the case, then the article is right, there really is no way to stop it until you allow that pressure to bleed out to some value that the pipe can hold.
This is where the government COULD step in. Naval (and Army) resources could be brought to bear to expedite the building of pipeline to the location. Simply catching it on production vessels at the surface and lightering to tankers isn’t going to work, at least not during hurricane season. There will be periods when the site will have to be abandoned.
The best long term approach at this point is to bring whatever resources can be brought to bear to collect and transport that oil to shore as quickly as possible without requiring surface tending of the location. That would seem to require the building of a pipeline which was due to be built anyway.
The problem with a relief well is that you can’t be sure the relief well strikes the old bore at a point below the blowout, if the bore is blown out below the BOP. If the blowout is 2000 feet below the sea bed and you strike the bore at 1500 feet down, you are no better off than you are now.
Maybe that would explain the second relief well. I would bet that the two wells are aimed at striking the bore at two different depths in case the first one strikes above the rupture.
Note: all of this is fundamentally speculation from everything I have read, but the weight of the information coming available would be consistent with something like this going on.
Another resource the US government has that could be brought to bear is possibly NASA. One approach I might try to close that well is creation of a cryoplug. Imagine if something could be dropped down that well and chilled to extremely cold temperature to freeze that oil and create a plug that way.
While that isn’t NASA’s normal bailiwick, they have the science and engineering talent to possibly pull off something like that.
I just don’t see enough “out of the box” thinking going on concerning this problem to suit me. Not that there ISN’T any, just that it doesn’t seem obvious.