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Oil could hit Florida Panhandle by Wednesday

But now a series of recent missteps just keeps getting worse for Barack Obama’s political operation, already under fire from inside the party for losing its golden touch.
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And bungling that fix is at odds with the Obama team’s image — built around the likes of Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, David Plouffe and Obama himself — as shrewd political operatives who know the game and always win it.
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Well-connected Democrats are complaining that the Obama political operation since the 2008 campaign has been more clumsy than clever.
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One senior House Democrat said it is baffling "how one group of people can be so good at campaigning and so bad at politics" — a phrasing nearly identical to that of a second veteran House Democrat who expressed the same sentiment.
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Lawmakers say the White House seems capable of handling only one issue at a time — a stunning contrast to the candidate whose campaign promised that he could "walk and chew gum" at the same time in 2008.
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Now this senior House Democrat said he's worried that the White House isn't able to handle multiple major challenges.
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White House political team stumbles, bumbles - Jonathan Allen and Carol E. Lee - POLITICO.com

unbelievable
 
The Prof said:
White House political team stumbles, bumbles - Jonathan Allen and Carol E. Lee - POLITICO.com

unbelievable
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Hey look, no mention of the gulf oil spill...

And back to your claim Obama is not prioritizing the gulf oil spill:

Obama visiting Gulf again as spill frustration mounts - Yahoo! News

With storms threatening to spread the Gulf oil slick to Florida's beaches, the White House announced Thursday morning that President Obama will visit the region Friday.
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The timing of the Romanoff news is especially unwelcome, since Obama is already under fire for a similar case involving Sestak and for his handling of the BP oil spill, which is drawing rebukes even from some fellow Democrats.
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unbelievable
 
The people from SE Louisiana use Pensacola FL and Destin FL as our beach. It's beautiful there. We had a great turnout for a big protest rally downtown. So I guess another industry - tourism - down the tubes because of the spill.
 
Redress said:
Your link was about his handling of the Sestak controversy and the Romanoff scandal.



See? This has nothing to do with the gulf oil spill, nor does it disprove Obama can do more than one thing at once. It's just a random post.
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Random post? Could have fooled me. I thought he was trolling. :mrgreen:
 
nonsense

the poster argued obama could two things at once

an hour earlier, politico put up a piece reporting that multiple veteran house leaders worried, in dread detail, that the president couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time

allen and lee corrected the oversight
 
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FilmFestGuy said:
That it didn't stop it altogether until we KNOW that these greedy bastards can actually fix a problem they started by first having all safety regulations wiped away is what makes it worse; and then by not even following those which were in place because the MMA was so (literally) in bed with BP in Louisiana (good ol' Southern politics).

No one's hands are clean in this. In many ways, we're all complicit.

You can blame the Obama administration; but anyone who acts like the oil industry is the victim in this is so clearly suckling their teat that they've no idea who their real masters are.
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Yes, go say that to half the oil rigs that are now going to be shut down. Don't forget, they hire caterers, maintenance workers, rig workers, oil tankers, and of such to keep the rigs running. Because Obama halted all operations, goodbye jobs. So not only is the oil spill damaging their fishing economy, you also got rid of a good chunk of workers that works on the oil rig.

Obama just wants to look like he's doing something, so he banned all deepwater drilling in that area. Way to go.....

Quite frankly, if I were in his position, I would have gotten the world leading engineers and experts of that kind of thing from all over the US and get them together and start churning out new ideas. And slapping BP with the bill is ok, I guess. But right now, it's being a blame game and BP is in the cross-fire. You do know in the top oil disasters in the world, 2 came from oil rigs. And his little action goes a long way and will ultimately make us rely on foreign oil, something I am really against.
 
So how come Florida gets free oil, and we don't? :lamo
 
megaprogman said:
Wanting to prevent another ecological disaster is weak minded?
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Putting untold thousands of people out of work during a severe recession is a good idea in your book?
 
bouncing on the point made above:

Obama

(bloomberg, today: "obama's drill ban may trigger job losses, slow gains")

maybe we wouldn't be losing all these JOBS if the president's OWN mms and epa did THEIRS
 
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The Prof said:
bouncing on the point made above:

Obama

(bloomberg, today: "obama's drill ban may trigger job losses, slow gains")

maybe we wouldn't be losing all these JOBS if the president's OWN mms and epa did THEIRS
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I think it's an even farther stretch to say that MMS and/or EPA caused this blowout than blaming it on BP, Halliburton, MI Swaco, Cooper-Cameron and Weatherford.
 
indeed, just a week before the tragic explosion, the cozy crowd at mms approved 3 changes in bp's operation, federal records show

one bureacratic ok took all of four and a half minutes to be approved

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704490204575278952784008676.html

terrifyingly:

One of the design decisions outlined in the revised permits, drilling experts say, may have left the well more vulnerable to the blowout that occurred April 20, killing 11 workers and leaving crude oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.
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this perhaps decisive deliberation came down seven minutes after the permit was requested
 
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The Prof said:
of course they didn't cause it

they just exempted the damage studies, expedited permits...

U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits - NYTimes.com

the mms is cozy, remember
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Let's just say they didn't do all that. That BOP still wouldn't have worked.

They took man made equipment and placed it thousands of feet under water and thousands more feet below the ocean floor. It broke and failed to operate properly. Excuse me while I show you my surprised face...
 
By April 14, when BP filed the first of three permits that would later be amended, the London-based oil company had already faced many problems with the well, including losing costly drilling fluid and fighting back natural gas that tried to force its way into the well. The problems had caused BP to use eight pieces of steel pipe to seal the well, rather than the planned six pieces. The permit filed on April 14 dealt with the eighth and final section, which hadn't yet been installed in the well.

BP had hoped to get a 9 7/8-inch pipe—big enough to handle a lot of oil and gas—into the reservoir. But for the final section, the largest pipe they could fit was a 7-inch pipe. The company had to decide whether to use a single piece of pipe that reached all the way from the sea floor down to the oil reservoir, or use two pipes, one inside the other.

The two-pipe method was the safer option, according to many industry experts, because it would have provided an extra layer of protection against gas traveling up the outside of the well to the surface. Gene Beck, a longtime industry engineer and a professor at Texas A&M University, said the two-pipe method is "more or less the gold standard," especially for high-pressure wells such as the one BP was drilling.

But the one-pipe option was easier and faster, likely taking a week less time than the two-pipe method. BP was spending about $1 million per day to operate the Deepwater Horizon.

In an April report, a BP engineer concluded that the one-pipe option was the "best economic case" despite having "some risk" of leaving an open path for gas to travel up the outside of the well. The two-pipe option, the report said, would provide an extra barrier against gas but would only be used if "stability problems" or other issues arose with the well.
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Flurry of Changes to BP's Well - WSJ.com
 
The Prof said:
Flurry of Changes to BP's Well - WSJ.com
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And, at the end of the day, no one really knows why the well blew out.

Word on the street--take it for what it's worth--down here in the oil patch, is that the cementing job was faulty. The Halliburton hands said the casing needed to be, "squeezed"(forcing cement at high pressure into the fissures within the existing cement), the company man decided not to squeeze, the packer didn't seal, the mud hands with MI Swaco had already taken out the 16# mud and pumped sea water into the well bore, which was heavy enough, the packer gave way allowing the gas to start upward and then, the BOP failed. It was a Greek tragedy, where everything went wrong, all at once.

Any other day, on any other rig, everything I just posted would be routine operations.

So, now we have the blame game:

1. BP's fault, for not squeezing the cement?

2. Halliburton's fault, because the cement job sucked ass?

3. MI Swaco's fault for pumping the heavy weight mud out of the wellbore?

4. Weatherford's fault because the packer didn't seal?

5. Cooper-Cameron's fault, because their BOP stack failed?

IMO, at the end of the day, the blame rests with Cooper-Cameron, regardless of how/why/who caused the well to blow out, because the BOP is the very last line of defense in a blowout. If nothing else works on a rig, anything from the derrick to the top drive to the stove in the galley, the BOP must work.

If the BOP would have just closed, there would have been a brief story about how an offshore rig burned and sank and a few greedy oilfield hands died and that would be it.

Oh and BTW, I'm still not totally convinced that this was an accident. If for no other reason, this much stuff don't go wrong, on one rig, at the same time. 40,000 wells drilled in the GOM, in the past 30 years without a hitch and suddenly everything that is supposed to prevent a blowout, doesn't work. Not to mention, the riser is damaged in such a way, that it's nearly impossible to cap the well. I bet the odds of that go into the millions.

With all that said, I believe that there is a helluva lot of this story that hasn't been told, yet.
 
bp, bop's, halliburton, swaco, cooper cameron...

"blame" for this tragedy must not necessarily be confined to one entity

either way, we know (thanks to the ny times, wapo and wsj) that the epa waived damage studies, the mms expedited permits and approved in mere minutes changes to bp's operations which potentially facilitated or exacerbated or enabled all that gas starting upward...

it is what it is, a mess of monumental measure

america will be "blaming" all kinds of companies and officials and individuals for this catastrophe as day number 47 becomes day number...
 
deliciousirony.jpg
 
The Prof said:
bp, bop's, halliburton, swaco, cooper cameron...

"blame" for this tragedy must not necessarily be confined to one entity

either way, we know (thanks to the ny times, wapo and wsj) that the epa waived damage studies, the mms expedited permits and approved in mere minutes changes to bp's operations which potentially facilitated or exacerbated or enabled all that gas starting upward...

it is what it is, a mess of monumental measure

america will be "blaming" all kinds of companies and officials and individuals for this catastrophe as day number 47 becomes day number...
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That's the part that no one knows: what component of the assembly failed and initiated the blowout. It might have been the single lined well bore and then again, it might not have had anything to do with it.

Again, I'm not ignoring the possibly--however improbable--of sabotage. Politically, the timing couldn't be more perfect. And, now, there's a gas well in Pennsylvania that has blown out. Awful lot of coincidence, if you ask me.
 
thanks, friend

but i wouldn't call epa's exemptions and mms' expeditings "sabotage"

i think the president's characterization of the relationships as "cozy" is more apt

time will tell

cliff
 
The Prof said:
thanks, friend

but i wouldn't call epa's exemptions and mms' expeditings "sabotage"

i think the president's characterization of the relationships as "cozy" is more apt

time will tell

cliff
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I wasn't calling it sabotage, either. However, you raise a good point. What if regs were intentionally unenforced, in the hopes that oil companies and drilling companies would get lazy and increase the odds of an accident? Just sayin'.

Here's Elizabeth Birnbaum's resume:

officer and member of numerous boards and commissions, including the National Capital Section of the American Water Resources Association; Arlington County Environment and Energy Conservation Commission, and the Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Section of the District of Columbia Bar.

Birnbaum received her Juris Doctor from Harvard University in 1984 and her A.B. degree, magna cum laude, from Brown University in 1979. She was Editor in Chief of the Harvard Environmental Law Review, Volume 8.
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She ain't exactly a short order cook, who has friends in high places. Not to mention, she's Obama's girl.

Food for thought, I reckon.
 
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