Exactly! The government might want to do something about the 30 million or so gallons of crude floating around the Gulf or landed on the beaches. That, or get out of the way.SonyAD said:What clean up?
Out of the way of the http://www.newser.com/story/89765/jindal-to-us-were-not-waiting-for-you.html" and refused.SonyAD said:That's risible. Get out of the way? Of whom? BP? Are you pulling my leg?
That's not a apt analogy. Much can be done in the way of booms, berms, and skimmers to largely stop the oil from reaching sensitive areas.My point was that the spill should be curtailed first. Then focus on the clean up. You first get out of the cesspool and then wash.
SonyAD said:The escrow fund is $20 billion. BP made $14 billion in profits last year.
So they might need to sell some assets to pay that off within a quarter. Boo hoo.
Unless they manage to cap the gusher there is no point in discussing clean up costs. However, I'm sure an arrangement can be reached where by BP could pay what they owe gradually. It's not like they're some working stiff being foreclosed on by the bank because of a health care related bankruptcy.
1)
2) BP made $14 billion in profits in 2009.
From my experience, yes. Their motor oil sucks too. The Castrol Magnatec semisynthetics and group III oils suck. I've tried them too, before I knew any better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDZSa7LbscM" is how they advertise their tripe.
Cyrus said:What I'm saying is that the franchise owner of a Shell can't call up Texaco and have them deliver a load of fuel at a lower cost than what a Shell load might cost.
Are you suggesting that that $14 billion is just sitting around in a bank somewhere or are you suggesting that BP is going to make a $14 billion profit this year? Either of those claims would require at the very least a logical argument to support them.SonyAD said:The escrow fund is $20 billion. BP made $14 billion in profits last year.
So they might need to sell some assets to pay that off within a quarter. Boo hoo.
KalamMekhar said:Every gas station here is filled up by Rainy Lake Oil, I will head out there tomorrow to see who their seller is.
The stations that get filled up are:
Freedom
BP
Holiday
mynameinc said:I think you mean a year. But, the >$64,000 question is, will the escrow fund settle everything?
mynameinc said:But the payments could be so large that it has a good chance of bankrupting them.
mynameinc said:1) He made it clear he was only speaking for himself. Also, did he say anything about bankruptcy?
mynameinc said:2) Will $14B cover the cost? Really, the $20B Gulf tourism industry is the largest of their problems. That should recover quickly. However, the Louisiana tourism and fishing industry is worth >$6B a year, and is destroyed for years.
mynameinc said:Which supermajor does Liqui Moly belong to?
russ_watters said:Are you suggesting that that $14 billion is just sitting around in a bank somewhere or are you suggesting that BP is going to make a $14 billion profit this year? Either of those claims would require at the very least a logical argument to support them.
mheslep said:Out of the way of the http://www.newser.com/story/89765/jindal-to-us-were-not-waiting-for-you.html" and refused.
SonyAD that's an Associated Press story I sourced above. If you assert they are really 'Fox news talking points', then please provide a source, per the guidelines.SonyAD said:Please spare me the Fox news and BJ's talking points.
The National Guard is no doubt excellent at crowd control, preventing looting, and helping the injured, etc. I don't know that the Guard has a large stockpile of oil skimming or dredging equipment, booms, boats, or operators. I'm fairly sure you don't know either and don't care in the least. However, Gov. Jindal did indeed http://thehayride.com/2010/04/jindal-sends-request-letters-for-national-guard-callup-on-oil-spill/"SonyAD said:The gulf states' governors' haven't even deployed the national guard.
"[URLGov Jindal said:Honorable Robert M. Gates
Secretary of Defense
U.S. Department of Defense
Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310
Dear Secretary Gates:
I request that you approve funding for at least 90 days of military
duty in Title 32 USC 502(f) status for up to 6,000 Soldiers and Airmen serving on active duty in support of our response to the threat of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill to the State of Louisiana. Title 32 status will allow the members of the National Guard supporting the response to the oil spill[...].
May 1 said:The Louisiana National Guard began pre-positioning soldiers and resources today on the coast and by tomorrow, 600 Guardsmen will begin assisting with oil spill response efforts.
SonyAD said:Probably not. But BP and their R courtesans will fight tooth and nail all the way.
Excellent. Make an example out of them. Then seize their assets by executive decree to pay for the catastrophe they've caused.
Nothing will recover quickly. Not the ecosystem, not the local economy.
They're a German outfit manufacturing only in Germany. I think they buy their base stock from Ravenol but I'm not sure and I don't remember where I read that.
Are you really, really, seriously suggesting BP, which has a quarter trillion dollars in assets, 100 billion in equity, might be unable to gradually acquit themselves of a $20 billion escrow fund without risking bankruptcy? It's not like the claims come all at once. They take time to process, which will be purposefully drawn out. Many will be rejected as unfounded.
Even if BP goes under, tough tamales. It could hardly have happened to a more egregious corporate miscreant.
Office_Shredder said:Guardsmen debacle:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/24/eveningnews/main6615414.shtml
Obviously they thought they would need thousands of people to do something or they wouldn't have asked for it
ABC News said:Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has spent the past week and half fighting to get working barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state's oil-soaked waters. By Thursday morning, against the governor's wishes, those barges still were sitting idle, even as more oil flowed toward the Louisiana shore.
[...]
"It's the most frustrating thing," the Republican governor told ABC News while visiting Buras, La. "Literally, [Wednesday] morning we found out that they were halting all of these barges."
[...]
Sixteen barges sat stationary Thursday, although they had been sucking up thousands of gallons of BP's oil as recently as Tuesday. [...]
Coast Guard Orders Barges to Stop
So why stop now?
"The Coast Guard came and shut them down," Jindal said. "You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, 'Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil.'"
A Coast Guard representative told ABC News that it shares the same goal as the governor.
"We are all in this together. The enemy is the oil," said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dan Lauer.
But the Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.
[...]
The governor said he didn't have the authority to overrule the Coast Guard's decision, though he said he tried to reach the White House to raise his concerns.
"They promised us they were going to get it done as quickly as possible," he said. But "every time you talk to someone different at the Coast Guard, you get a different answer."
After Jindal strenuously made his case, the barges finally got the go-ahead Thursday to return to the Gulf and get back to work, after more than 24 hours of sitting idle.
They should have gotten out of the way of those barge skimming operators, whoever they are. They should get out of the way of the half million gallon per day skimmer the A-Whale, whoever owns it, and other foreign crewed ships http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575339650877298556.html?mod=googlenews_wsj" And so on.nismaratwork said:Obviously, as mheslep has shown with sources, the government has been utterly unprepared for this, but mheslep, how does this in any way mean they should "get out of the way" for the equally unprepared BP?[...]
Agreed, with respect to drilling accident itself. I'm talking about the cleanup.Of that group, MMS and their overseers, BP, and Transocean seem to be the ones to "blame".
mheslep said:They should have gotten out of the way of those barge skimming operators, whoever they are. They should get out of the way of the half million gallon per day skimmer the A-Whale, whoever owns it, and other foreign crewed ships http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575339650877298556.html?mod=googlenews_wsj" And so on.
Agreed, with respect to drilling accident itself. I'm talking about the cleanup.
mheslep said:They should have gotten out of the way of those barge skimming operators, whoever they are. They should get out of the way of the half million gallon per day skimmer the A-Whale, whoever owns it, and other foreign crewed ships http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575339650877298556.html?mod=googlenews_wsj" And so on.
Not quite, the claim was not qualified as 'not using all', it was "haven't even deployed the national guard."Office_Shredder said:Also, a claim is made that some gulf governors are not using all the national guard troops available.
To be clear: not from you, and not just on this sub-topic.You demand a source,
Thanks for the source. We've established that not all of the guardsman are employed in the oil cleanup effort. The question is how is that relevant to the cleanup effort. Note: guardsman is synonymous with 'barge operator', or 'boom layer' and the like.pointing out that some of them were in fact used a month ago. I post a source,
"Guardsman debacle" is a bumper sticker, not an explanation or accurate summary. Bumper stickers unless used very precisely distort the underlying facts. In this case I want to explore the details of whether or not the federal government is impeding local government and other efforts to clean up. The only relevant undisputed facts in the CBS story (and others) are that 1) the governors requested the guard be released to the effort, and 2) not every guardsman is being used. So? It is in dispute as to why, and we don't have much information at all (in this thread) as to what they would be used for.and the best thing you can do is debate whether the word debacle is an apt description? I assume this means you concede that the guard troops were not used very efficiently
Yes I agree that seems to be the position of the Coast Guard.Office_Shredder said:http://www.marinelog.com/DOCS/NEWSMMIX/2010jun00152.html
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/06/oil-spill-foreign-help-and-the-jones-act/
I don't really understand the intricacies of shipping laws and who's allowed to do what but the claims that Obama is actively hindering the process by refusing to grant waivers seems false. The Jones act applies to shipping between ports, it was lifted during Katrina because goods needed to be shipped there. The cleanup boats aren't shipping goods, they're cleaning up oil
Houston Chronicle said:Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help.
It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.
The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,'” said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston.
KalamMekhar said:an update:
Rainy Lake Oil gets their oil from Murphy Oil, and they supply all of the gas stations in my city.
KalamMekhar said:The National Guard has much more important things to do than to mop up oil. When people cry for BP to pay for the clean up, and then ask for the National Guard to be sent in, is astounding to me. You pay the NG's wages, and quite frankly, the NG is not the right tool for the job (cutting cast iron pipe with a porta-ban when you have a chain break right next to you.) A volunteer/partially paid force of diehard helpers is what is needed. If they want to see the beach cleaned up, they can head down there themselves.
KalamMekhar said:The National Guard has much more important things to do than to mop up oil. When people cry for BP to pay for the clean up, and then ask for the National Guard to be sent in, is astounding to me. You pay the NG's wages, and quite frankly, the NG is not the right tool for the job (cutting cast iron pipe with a porta-ban when you have a chain break right next to you.) A volunteer/partially paid force of diehard helpers is what is needed. If they want to see the beach cleaned up, they can head down there themselves.
mynameinc said:Interesting, at the least.
Agreed. Why can't BP pay the workers to clean it up? It's their monster.
Pentagon statement said:"In response to the BP oil spill, the Secretary of Defense is authorizing under Title 32 the mobilization of the Louisiana National Guard to help in the ongoing efforts to assist local communities in the cleanup and removal of oil and to protect critical habitats from contamination. As the responsible party in this incident, the government will hold BP accountable for the costs of the deployment."
KalamMekhar said:Well there we go, I personally don't think the NG should be doing this, but whatever floats Obama's boat.
SonyAD said:Thom Hartmann on corporate personhood, what difference a word makes.
arildno said:Why do you regard the State as some sort of Parent, KalamMekhar?
brainstorm said:This is a good point, but ironically it is not only the state that individuals' regard as a parent, but also any form of institutionalized authority, which they view as responsible for practically everything that goes on outside of their own sphere of direct control as individuals.
If you would look back to when gas reached $4 a gallon, you would see that consciousness of the free market forces of supply and demand, and the way they regulate pricing, had reached a high among the public. People were talking about ways to flood the market with oil to push supply-side competition so that speculation on a lower oil price would ensue and drive down the price at the pump.
The public had become very savvy, but they were also pushing for loosening (offshore) drilling restrictions and increasing the number of wells to flood the market with cheap gas. Ironically, this spill is even more of a "flood" than was intended. The fact is that when you push for more gas at a cheaper price, is it really any surprise that this would result in more risk-taking that could result in a spill or other disaster?
Now people want to blame BP for responding to public demand or they want to blame the government for not sufficiently regulating BP's response to that demand, but what about blaming the demand itself? What about the fact that after who knows how many years of escalating gas prices, people did not sufficiently adjust their everyday driving habits to sustainable levels?
The reason they didn't is because too many view themselves as powerlessly responding to external authorities. They think they have to work too far from home or live too far from work to walk or bike. They maintain a workplace culture of traditionalism that prevents them from fully implementing the possibility to work from home and telecommute instead of coming into the office every day.
If it was the case that the consumers and businesses that demand oil had done everything possible to reduce consumption and demand, I would say that this spill was more due to corporate management practices. However, what I really think is that the corporate managers work for the investors and the consumers who pay them, and when they are under pressure to produce more, the probability of taking risks and making mistakes goes up.
Now, people want to sell their stock in BP and boycott BP gas out of disapproval, yet the law holds BP accountable for the cleanup, so all people are really doing by boycotting is taking money out of the cleanup fund. Maybe this is not such a bad thing, since the cost should really be spread among everyone who consumes oil and gas. But the irony remains that people are white washing their consciences of responsibility as consumers by driving past the BP station for the next gas pump.
Until cultural reforms and technological innovations create sufficient diversity of alternatives for current oil-dependency culture, I think periodic spills and other disasters like this one involving oil drilling are going to be an inevitable facet of global economics.
People get tired of hearing about individual responsibility and continuing to go greener in their cultural habits, but how else are the consumption practices that require such high levels of energy as to necessitate fossil-fuel use supposed to change? Renewable sources cannot keep up with current per-capital demand levels. Conservation has to meet energy-source reform halfway. Consumers can't have their cake and eat it too.
Government could help by creating policies that facilitate better integration of workplace and residential zoning so people could live close to work. Management could help by becoming more flexible in allowing for telecommuting and scheduling that helps stay-at-home parents to work part time close to home without having to work so much to afford a second car, insurance, and gas/maintenance costs. Business entrepreneurs and city-planners could help by creating more local/neighborhood activities for kids and families to reduce the pressure to drive around the city or region in search of activities for kids and families.
Ultimately, it is possible to live well without much combustion transit but it requires pro-active approaches to achieving it. Without those, people just keep reacting to the lack of local amenities by getting in their car once again and driving off to the next thing, skipping the BP pump and filling their tank at the next potential polluter.
