Consequences of US oil leak

[b.c.]

Obama and the dems are more dangerous to America than all the oil spills ever.

Dangerous? How so? And how more dangerous than, say, the last eight years under GWB??

 

[fluoro]

the oil rig which caused the problem belonged to the US company Transocean,

Transocean was an American-based company, moved to the Cayman Islands in 1999 and then to Switzerland in 2008, where they enjoy a much lower tax rate.

 

[b.c.]

not at all a "good thing"

the environmental consequences are dire and extremely severe; but just think -- Obama was planning on expanding off-shore drilling throughout the Gulf shoreline ... that has now been nipped in the bud

the other consequences stemming from the possibility of an Obama second-term, are now also less likely

should the precipitous decline in the Obama political fortunes continue, the likelihood of undoing the consequences of the Obama four-year term are enhanced

looking for the silver lining, dear fellow

As I can recall, a part of Obama's platform (not the Republicans') was the development of alternative sources of energy, other than oil. Fact is, during the election, it was John McCain and the Republicans who called for expanded drilling.

And, considering many Republican politicians (and Democrats as well) have big oil money in their hip pockets (including a local Republican senator who as of late has called for a ban on drilling - see attached link), since when has opposition to expanded offshore drilling become a Republican priority???

(answer: since it's become politically expedient)

http://oilmoney.priceofoil.org/fede...unt=0&minCandidateAmount=0&minCompanyAmount=0

 

[B_VinylBoy]

^^ What b.c. said...
If any Republican tried to run on that premise, they would be laughed off stage faster than William Hung on American Idol.

 

[B_Nick4444]

since when has opposition to expanded offshore drilling become a Republican priority???

(answer: since it's become politically expedient)

Oil Change International - Follow the Oil Money - U.S. Congress

so is that not better than having the Obama initiative of expanded drilling implemented? (whatever the reason?)

 

[B_talltpaguy]

^Obama's proposal for limited expansion of drilling was a blatant sop to Republicans, with the hope being to coax a few of them into voting for energy reform... But as we have already seen lately however, Obama has begun taking steps back from that proposed compromise.

 

[invisibleman]

I think that this whole ordeal is total mess. I wish I knew what to do. I don't even have a solution one to that. How does one clean up a deluge of oil seeping into the ocean from the ocean bottom. How do you clean it? How do you get the sea life back and ocean water viable after something like that? That has to affect a lot of sea water and other life elsewhere down the road.

I hate it when the news media reports on it. (WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR IS: SOMETHING IS ACTUALLY PRODUCTIVE BEING DONE ABOUT IT....INSTEAD OF "Yeah, it is pumping...trillions of gallons of crude oil...still. And BP isn't doing anything...but saying "WE ARE GOING TO CLEAN UP and EVERYTHING WILL BE RIGHT AS RAIN."

Yeah, I don't believe that an oil gusher in the Gulf is "clean"-able and "right as rain"-able. I am thinking everyone in the Gulf is totally assfucked as far as the fishing industry...and maybe even tourism are concerned. Who wants to eat seafood from the Gulf now? Who wants to go to Louisiana the way it is now?

 

[b.c.]

^Obama's proposal for limited expansion of drilling was a blatant sop to Republicans, with the hope being to coax a few of them into voting for energy reform... But as we have already seen lately however, Obama has begun taking steps back from that proposed compromise.

Again, to his own discredit for trying to work with them (Republicans) in some form of bipartisanship. It never fails to bite him in the ass when they turn it against him, regardless.

Now it's the "The Obama Initiative..." undoubtedly the new catch phrase that "they" sent out to 'em. Wholly laughable, if it weren't for the tragically widespread implications of this environmental catastrophe.

Leave it to the usual rabble to try to spin it to their own political gain.

 

[vince]

More consequences...
Caught in the oil - The Big Picture

If you are wondering how big it is...
IfItWasMyHome.com - Visualizing the BP Oil Disaster

 

[B_talltpaguy]

^If they had included the portion of the slick that is down in the Loop Current, it's probably about the size of Ireland.

 

[Andy627]

I don't want to get bitched at... but after reading most of this thread (which by the way most of your arguments are really good :O ) I thought one thing...

BP contracted the rig from Transocean... Wouldn't BP send like safety inspectors to check the rig too? Wouldn't they want to make sure their asses are covered?

 

[B_talltpaguy]

^No, that would cost money.

 

[vince]

I don't want to get bitched at... but after reading most of this thread (which by the way most of your arguments are really good :O ) I thought one thing...

BP contracted the rig from Transocean... Wouldn't BP send like safety inspectors to check the rig too? Wouldn't they want to make sure their asses are covered?

Yes but.. It appears the problem was not with the rig itself, but with the procedures and possibly the materials used to plug the well. The rig was a drilling platform. Once the well is drilled, it is capped until a production platform is in place to actually suck up the oil and deliver it to shore.

If you're interested in some background, the NYTimes had a story today about the technical problems, overlapping regulations and conflicting interests at play on the rig in the month prior to the explosion.

In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Oil Rig - NYTimes.com

 

[FRE]

I don't want to get bitched at... but after reading most of this thread (which by the way most of your arguments are really good :O ) I thought one thing...

BP contracted the rig from Transocean... Wouldn't BP send like safety inspectors to check the rig too? Wouldn't they want to make sure their asses are covered?

Not necessarily.

Consider who suffers when a company loses money. It is not necessarily the executives who make the decisions. Often their remuneration, including bonuses, is several million dollars per year. If they can increase company profits by gambling, i.e., taking shortcuts with safety measures, they have an incentive to do so because then they get more bonuses. If a tragedy occurs, they may be able to shift the blame. If not and they lose their jobs, they have still made plenty of bonus money from when the gambles did pay off. Of course, the shareholders and public may suffer, but that is collateral damage that doesn't necessarily concern the executives who made the decisions which caused the tragedy. The result is that company executives often run the company in such a way that the risks would be unacceptable to public welfare.

It is not clear to me that the solution is, but somehow company executives have to have their incentives changed to make them more risk averse. Probably a large component of their remuneration should depend on the long term profits of the company and they should be forced to be more socially responsible. And, this must be done without excessively reducing incentives to innovate.

 

[FRE]

Yes but.. It appears the problem was not with the rig itself, but with the procedures and possibly the materials used to plug the well. The rig was a drilling platform. Once the well is drilled, it is capped until a production platform is in place to actually suck up the oil and deliver it to shore.

If you're interested in some background, the NYTimes had a story today about the technical problems, overlapping regulations and conflicting interests at play on the rig in the month prior to the explosion.

In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Oil Rig - NYTimes.com

Should it really be called a platform?

To me, at least, a platform is something with foundations. A platform with foundations can be used in shallow water, but not in deep water. There really is no way to have foundations which reach all the way from a rig to the ocean floor when they are drilling through mile-deep water.

To keep the rig stationary requires keeping a positioning system running at all times. A tendency to drift is countered with propellers the speed of which has to be constantly adjusted to compensate for changes in wind and ocean currents. A failure of the positioning system could cause the pipe which runs from the well to the rig to be broken. Whether they could reliably keep the rig properly positioned if a hurricane struck, I don't know; obviously they think they could.

I see this as a call to work with more urgency to end our dependency on oil.

 

[Industrialsize]

A great SIGN at a BP gas station

 

[dandelion]

Not necessarily.

Consider who suffers when a company loses money. It is not necessarily the executives who make the decisions. Often their remuneration, including bonuses, is several million dollars per year. If they can increase company profits by gambling, i.e., taking shortcuts with safety measures, they have an incentive to do so because then they get more bonuses. If a tragedy occurs, they may be able to shift the blame. If not and they lose their jobs, they have still made plenty of bonus money from when the gambles did pay off. Of course, the shareholders and public may suffer, but that is collateral damage that doesn't necessarily concern the executives who made the decisions which caused the tragedy. The result is that company executives often run the company in such a way that the risks would be unacceptable to public welfare.

It is not clear to me that the solution is, but somehow company executives have to have their incentives changed to make them more risk averse. Probably a large component of their remuneration should depend on the long term profits of the company and they should be forced to be more socially responsible. And, this must be done without excessively reducing incentives to innovate.

OK, how? If you tie bonuses to share price, they are getting money for nothing, because in general there has been more and more speculators pushing up the price without the real company value (ie assets) changing. Anyone can boost profitability for a year or two by running a company for short term profit instead of investment. Things like taking risks, Id say odds on BP will make a profit despite this spill. How bad does a mistake have to be before you lose bonuses and for how long?

I think any bonus linked to share price or profits immediately makes employees go for short term gain, or risk. Tie bonuses to the asset value of a company? Would that have stopped the bank collapses: all those duff mortgages used as collateral?

 

[sbat]

In all fairness to BP - they wouldn't be in business without customers. They were drilling to fulfill (in large part) American demand.

We all are part liable for this mess. We voted in the ass clowns who make themselves slaves to contractors and blow millions more than necessary without ensuring appropriate accountability or enforcing simple emergency preparedness standards. We don't demand fuel efficiency for any of the devices we use, allowing ourselves to be held hostage by the energy industry.

We the public, LET THIS HAPPEN. Yet we always expect someone else to take responsibility.

 

[B_New End]

In all fairness to BP - they wouldn't be in business without customers. They were drilling to fulfill (in large part) American demand.

We all are part liable for this mess. We voted in the ass clowns who make themselves slaves to contractors and blow millions more than necessary without ensuring appropriate accountability or enforcing simple emergency preparedness standards. We don't demand fuel efficiency for any of the devices we use, allowing ourselves to be held hostage by the energy industry.

We the public, LET THIS HAPPEN. Yet we always expect someone else to take responsibility.

I love it how every time the American public fucks up, it's "we are in this together", "we all share the blame". Fuck that. Fuck up with the Iraq war, "let's be United"... Fuck up Afghanistan, Petraeus says "we need civilians to be united behind us as well" Drill baby drill comes back to bite you in the ass... "we are all responsible". Fuck you all. I saw democrats defending Obamas decision to open off shroe drilling ebcause it was some brilliant political maneuver. THIS ISN'T A FUCKING GAME.

I don't drive no SUV or Hummer. I hardly ever even drive. I conserve energy, I use public transportation if walking is too far. I give a fuck, and I've given a fuck about my environment for a long time. Fuck all the planet rapists who are just now finally figuring out, now that it is too late, that raping the planet means they get their ass torn too.

This will not be the last massive environmental disaster. Many, many more are to come. Fuck America. Drown in your fucking oil. Drown in it. You want to murder and enslave for it... now drown in it. Drown.

I hope you all are saving up your tears for your precious red white and blue, because it is going to crash and burn so fast before your very eyes the only thing you will be able to do is cry and ask why. Mark my words. Happy 4th everyone!!!

Every time, your stupid little government, elected by stupid Americans has done the stupid move. And people keep saying that "we're America, guddammit, we'll get through this, we always have". We have been choosing the most disastrous, but short term pain free solution every time at cost of long term but wise decisions for decades now. It is time to pay the piper. we never paid the Korean war debts, we never paid off Vietnam, and we will never be able to pay off Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the end.

It's a clusterfuck, with a shortage of solution, at the moment. Blame can be cast far and wide. For the moment, I'm focussed on the solutions rather than finger-pointing.

The mating call of the yellow bellied neo-con mocking chicken. How many times have we heard this when conservative policy has failed miserably? And by conservative, I mean corporatist... like Obama and Hillary and Lieberman and Bush and Cheney and all the other so called democrats and republicans.

And what solutions do you have, anyways? Hair nets and straw? Give me a break. There is no solution. Milk is spilled.

I feel bad for all the sea life... but America deserves everything coming to it.

Next up, the Mexican drug war spills across the border and morphs into a race war. Watch.

And all this could have been solved with reasoned pragmatic policy.

 

[faceking]

Rush Limbaugh said we don't need to do anything, since oil is "perfectly natural."

Anyone here agree with him?

(Or am I just baiting with this question? LOL)

Where and when did he say that?