Project Katrina

Yeah a few million people that live around the Gulf of Mexico would like their lives back as well.

Of all the bad predictions and downright misinformation BP has presented to the public in the last month,  this one ranks pretty much at the top of the list. BP actually told the federal government in 2009 that it was prepared to respond to a blowout at the Deepwater Horizon location flowing at 300,000 barrels per day—as much as 25 times the rate of the current spill.

Ponder that for a few seconds. Put aside that the spill gusher even happened. Who is to blame. All of that. In their own documents, submitted to our government, they said a spill of the current flow rate was basically no problem.

This bold assertion (insert lie) came in an ’09 Initial Exploration Plan (PDF) for the well that ultimately blew out, which was required to be filed with the Minerals Management Service.  BP says in the document that it “has the capability to respond, to the maximum extent practicable, to a worst-case discharge, or a substantial threat of such a discharge, resulting from the activities proposed in our Exploration Plan.”

Writing at Talking Points Memo:

It’s time for the federal government to put BP under temporary receivership, which gives the government authority to take over BP’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico until the gusher is stopped. This is the only way the public will know what’s going on, be confident enough resources are being put to stopping the gusher, ensure BP’s strategy is correct, know the government has enough clout to force BP to use a different one if necessary, and be sure the President is ultimately in charge.

If the government can take over giant global insurer AIG and the auto giant General Motors and replace their CEOs, in order to keep them financially solvent, it should be able to put BP’s North American operations into temporary receivership in order to stop one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

The Obama administration keeps saying BP is in charge because BP has the equipment and expertise necessary to do what’s necessary. But under temporary receivership, BP would continue to have the equipment and expertise. The only difference: the firm would unambiguously be working in the public’s interest. As it is now, BP continues to be responsible primarily to its shareholders, not to the American public. As a result, the public continues to worry that a private for-profit corporation is responsible for stopping a public tragedy.

I have no problem with the concept. But alas Reich (who I admire) offers no laws or US Codes that could be used to achieve this. Factor in the fact that BP isn’t a US based company and I just don’t see how this is possible. I hope I am mistaken and Obama and Eric Holder peruse this path, but I don’t see it happening.

You really have tor hand it to BP. Top kill was a total failure and new evidence is surfacing that shows they were well aware of the Deepwater Horizon rig’s “serious problems and safety concerns” and the company’s “systemic failure” now endangers the cleanup workers. but at least it knows how to stage a photo op.

Via Think Progress and New Orleans NBC affiliate WDSU reports:

Officials from Jefferson Parish claim BP bused 400 cleanup workers into Grand Isle on Friday in time for a visit from President Barack Obama.

According to BP the extra workers supposedly were brought in to help:

The extra workers were brought in for Friday only, at a rate of $12 an hour, officials told WDSU. They were mostly from Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes.

President Obama was visiting Grand Isle, a tourist haven now facing economic destruction as its beaches are soaked in oil and chemical dispersants.

(Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris) Roberts said that since oil started coming ashore in Grand Isle last week, no more than a dozen workers hired by BP have been seen on the beaches in the area, until Friday when the president arrived.

BP sure is good at spinning things. Just not sure they are aware we’re in a 24/7 now media world where getting away with this shit is harder and harder.

The New York Times has the bad news:

BP engineers failed again to plug the gushing oil well on Saturday, a technician working on the project said, representing yet another setback in a series of unsuccessful procedures the company has tried a mile under the sea to stem the flow spreading into the Gulf of Mexico.

BP made a third attempt at what is termed the “junk shot” Friday night, a procedure that involves pumping odds and ends like plastic cubes, knotted rope, and golf balls into the blowout preventer, the five-story safety device atop the well. The maneuver is complementary to the heavily scrutinized effort known as a “top kill,”which began four days ago and involves pumping heavy mud into the well to counteract the push of the escaping oil. If the well is sealed, the company plans to then fill it with cement.

The technician working on the project said Saturday pumping has again been halted and a review of the data so far is under way. “Right now, I would not be optimistic,” the technician, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly about the effort. But he added, that if another attempt at the junk shot were to succeed, “that would turn things around.”

The Republicans have been trying pretty hard to equate the BP oil gusher to Hurricane Katrina and President Bush’s total mishandling of it.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones dispatches that notion effortlessly:

This conflates two very different things. Katrina was an example of the type of disaster that the federal government is specifically tasked with handling. And for most of the 90s, it was very good at handling them. But when George Bush became president and Joe Allbaugh became director of FEMA, everything changed. Allbaugh neither knew nor cared about disaster preparedness. For ideological reasons, FEMA was downsized and much of its work outsourced.When Allbaugh left after less than two years on the job, he was replaced by the hapless Michael Brown and the agency was downgraded and broken up yet again. By the time Katrina hit, the upper levels of FEMA were populated largely with political appointees with no disaster preparedness experience and the agency was simply not up to the job of dealing with a huge storm anymore.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion is almost the exact opposite. There is no federal expertise in capping oil blowouts. There is no federal agency tasked specifically with repairing broken well pipes. There is no expectation that the federal government should be able to respond instantly to a disaster like this. There never has been. For better or worse, it’s simply not something that’s ever been considered the responsibility of the federal government.

FEMA’s job, its sole reason for existing, was to handle disasters like Katrina, but Dan Bartlett had to make a DVD for Bush to watch because he didn’t even know what every American knew as the tragedy was unfolding. Via Newsweek:

The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One. How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less “situational awareness,” as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.

I take issue with how the White House has approached this issue, because the president should have been out there sooner, but to draw a parallel to the Bush’s Katrina is completely ridiculous. The White House knew what was happening and didn’t need a DVD of news reports made for them. If conservative governance proved anything, it was that without competent oversight, regulations, and a willingness to then implement those tools, horrific things result.

Think Progress, which put together the above compilation video has much more about this myth that this is unprecedented. It is well worth a read.

Rachel Maddow’s video references a similar oil rig, Ixtoc I which blew up and/or sunk in almost the exact same manner as the Deepwater Horizon one did in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979. The big difference was it was only in 60 of water, not 5,000. They tried all of the same procedures (containment dome, top kill, junk shot, etc.) to stop the oil as are being tried with Deepwater, and they all failed. Talking Points Memo has the details on Ixtoc I.