Column – Gulf gusher blame game should continue
July 1, 2010 at 5:00 pm in Alexandria Echo Press
So many people keep saying, “Stop the blame game! Just let’s all be nice and get together and plug the Gulf gusher.”
Yes, wouldn’t that be nice? Continue Reading

Did the United States have authority over this well in the first place? I haven’t heard anyone address this in the last two months. The well is out past the 12 mile territorial limit of the United States. I don’t know the answer.What authority do we have in regard to drilling in international waters? Normally I think it’s none but maybe there is some international laws that cover this. Can anyone answer this.
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“Under the ‘law of the sea’, (UNCLOS), an exclusive economic zone is a seazone over which a state has special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources. It stretches from the seaward edge of the state’s territorial sea out to 200 nautical miles from its coast”.
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Next questions would be:
Since BP is not a US company does that law apply?
“…a state has special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources.
Did any of the costal states have anything to do with that well?
Who would hold the “special rights” referred to?
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Well, Amos, the ‘state’ in this situation is referring to the country in question’s coastlines. And, in some cases, (like the US), the continental shelf comes into play, sometimes extending the rights past the 200 nautical mile limit.
In this case, the United States holds the mineral rights to the area where that well is located.
And since we leased to B.P., they fall under our jurisdiction.
I don’t know if it’s a very good comparison, but Toyota isn’t a US company either. But since their product is sold here, we do have the right to settlements for deaths and injuries resulting from defect vehicles, right?
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Very good points raised by amos and b.a.c. Food for thought well worth looking into. Thank you to both of you.
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Thank you b.a.c..
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Enjoyed trying to find an answer to your question, Rambo.
I’d never heard of UNCLOS before I saw your post and realized I’d been wondering pretty much the same thing but never thought to look into it.
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President Bush got bashed for his “slow” response for the Katrina disaster because “he wanted the black people to suffer.” Maybe Obama’s slow, inept response in this disaster is to make the white people suffer. Only fair to even things out, right? -BTW- this is tongue in cheek. Fair and balanced.
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It seems to me, bac, that with Katrina the elected officials didn’t ask for help so nobody helped for quite some time. Not only were they totally incompetent but they got re-elected. Now, who do they blame for that!
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That’s it. It’s all BP’s fault – even when Obama just dragged his feet for all those many weeks, not accepting the help that was offered from so many quarters. Maybe Obama operatives in the White House will claim that BP told the Obama Administration that they were prepared to do everything single handedly …… Now Obama can just play the Pontius Pilate role, washing his hands of all responsibility. “Who, me? Take responsibility? I’m the infallible one!”
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Naw, it isn’t really the same at all. Bush had no control over Katrina happening. Nagin and Blanco didn’t have the brains to ask for help for the people that elected them. It wasn’t Bush’s job to go looking for disaster in the Gulf. It was their job to notify the powers that be that they needed help and they just sat there like idiots! Blanco couldn’t even form a sentence that made sense much ask for emergency help. Nagin was so concerned with his image that he let those people go without transportation until the very last second and did nothing to prepare an area in advance or even later with the necessities.
BP was never forced to have a plan for a disaster. Obama said there would be no drilling of that type unless he deemed it safe. He chose to let them drill when there was no plan of what would be done in the event of a problem. Evidently, nobody bothered to read anything. Isn’t that the norm lately? Bp hired an outside firm to take care of any research but the firm never was funded to do any research. Incompetent people elected where Katrina was concerned, incompetent people running BP and an incompetent bunch running our country that allowed the drilling in the first place. I don’t care squat what Bush allowed. BO authorized this catastrophe all by himself. It happened on his watch and he gets to accept the blame. He did precious little to see to it that cleanup was initiated early either. Just let it fill up the Gulf. Well, I don’t care who caused it–I do care why it has been allowed to flow without doing anything to clean it up as long as it did.
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I did not say or imply that Obama “caused” the oil spill – since you used the word “Caused” in conjunction with Bush and Katrina. I don’t know of anyone claiming either president “caused” anything. What we have now is a complete absence of the key ingredient for the President of the United States – leadership. Obama has NONE!
Things could have been controlled much more efficiently and in a more timely manner if the Obama Administration had quickly allowed foreign countries to help in the cleanup effort. That did not happen. The same goes for what Bobby Jindal wanted to do with the sand berms to trap the oil and keep it from going ashore in Louisiana. The Obama Administration dragged its feet there too.
The whole fiasco could have been handled better, but Obama dropped the ball. That is on him.
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I hardly think calling someone a LIAR fits the Terms of Use for this Forum, Randy. You might wish to temper your anger a bit – and provide a long list of evidence to support your own positions.
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In other words, Bush took a lot of heat from the media and the left for a lot of things that were beyond his control. Now it’s Obama’s turn. If they can’t take the heat, they should move to Antarctica.
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Bac, this is 2010 and NOTHING has changed. This is our President that promised change. We are many months long into this term and what has changed concerning the oil companies? You want to blame Bush for what happened then you have to blame Obama for not requiring any changes on his watch either. It has been business as usual. Now they are looking to close the barn door but the horse is long gone!
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Have you read this, bac?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/us/14agency.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1278378036-gztuaGTFpfTS5KAyKB9xUg
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b.a.c. – Does this mean you are giving Obama and his Administration a PASS for allowing BP to do exactly what they did? Now Obama is trying to distance himself from his own Administration’s decisions. His decisions were no different from Bush, but all of the sudden it’s all Bush’s fault again?
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I have never known anyone who has been able to unring a bell, b.a.c. Yelling and screaming and pointing fingers at everyone – as our ‘beloved’ Commander-In-Chief is wont to do so very often – is not going to undo the problem that exists. All the whining about Bush and Katrina did nothing either. Nor could it.
What happened has happened. One was a natural disaster. The second one resulted from an industrial accident. The outcomes have been similar. Disasterous. The outcomes have been the result of poor planning to avert disasters and the absence of plans in place to deal with them should they happen. When Katrina hit there were ample warnings from President Bush and his Administration to evacuate the people of New Orleans. Local and State officials in Louisiana dropped the ball. They dropped the ball, too, by using State and local funds that should have been dedicated to keeping New Orleans from being flooded for some of their pork barrel local and State projects. In the current aftermath the local and State officials in Louisiana and elsewhere have stepped up to the plate. Obama has done little or nothing to facilitate a concerted and organized cleanup effort. He has been too busy point the finger at everyone else.
We can blame BP for the accident. The total failures of the cleanup effort failures are on Obama. I wish some of the starry-eyed, lost-in-denial far Left crazies would man up to who is really responsible for where things stand right now.
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Regarding the link that I provided:
“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is partly responsible for protecting endangered species and marine mammals. It has said on repeated occasions that drilling in the gulf affects these animals, but the minerals agency since January 2009 has approved at least three huge lease sales, 103 seismic blasting projects and 346 drilling plans. Agency records also show that permission for those projects and plans was granted without getting the permits required under federal law.”
This was done during the present administration not the Bush administration. Let’s not be playing favorites and pretending that there isn’t enough blame to go around. This administration is not without fault either.
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We need to also not when drill actually began on this well!!! There was ample time to halt the project.
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oops–make that “note when”
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The platform commenced drilling in February 2010 at a water depth of approximately 5,000 feet (1,500 m).[12] At the time of the explosion the rig was drilling an exploratory well.
There was plenty of time for action to have been taken on the complaints that the proper procedures were not followed etc. Nobody did anything. It was business as usual all the way up to the top dog, Obama.
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In addition to the time frame when drilling actually began …. there was an attempt by the Court to stop the drilling. The Obama Administration fought against that Court Order – and won. Drilling commenced.
Of course …. We all know Obama’s hands are clean on all this, right? Sure we do …..
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Yes, Pitney, that is the point. There was a chance to do something but nothing was done. At the point before drilling there was every opportunity for this administration to look into the matter and stop the drilling. How soon everybody forgets when it suits them.
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Are some people so naive as to believe that we can give up on petroleum and live in some magical world of ‘Green’ and purity? Why not throw in some make-believe social justice too? Maybe we need to nail all those evil rich people and spread the wealth to the slugs of society too? All of this is total nonsense. We cannot turn on a dime and make wind power and solar viable alternatives to petroleum, natural gas and coal. We still need petroleum and petroleum products. Get used to it.
What do some propose to do about ‘possible’ oil well leaks? Do those leaks actually exist? Or are they just more scare tactics from the people trying to promote energy sources way before their time? Where is the evidence?
Give us a break from this dooms day scenario. Be rational and precise and show workable solutions and purpose – not just more hyperbole.
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I did not specify any specific individual as being naive. If the shoe fits, though ….
Did I suggest I have a workable solution? No. I did not. You are the one, b.a.c., who is playing the dooms day card. How many capped wells are there? What evidence is there that any is actually leaking?
Better yet …. what is the alternative to using petroleum? We wait to be enlightened …..
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You have still failed to break open the magic energy pinata to reveal all the goodies inside. The long-term alternatives are possibly solar and wind, but the more efficient sources are still coal, petroleum, nuclear energy and natural gas. Ethanol is a joke. Some biofuels may have limited potential, but it will be many years before the world will be able to adopt all those limited alternatives efficiently.
How do YOU propose to move away from the time-tested energy sources completely? How soon? How many in the world will be served? How many will die from the lack of food and transportation to deliver food to the masses? How will electricity be generated? What will be used to create containers without petroleum, be they glass or plastic? How will metals be taken from ore to finished products?
Worried obout the CO2 boogieman? Do you believe Cap and Trade is a viable solution? Show us HOW!
See? I didn’t call anyone names …..
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Pitney, I believe my post is right in line with yours. I stated that the companies should inspect their capped wells to determine if they are leaking, and if so, to fix them. Now that isn’t too much to ask of an industry profiting from mining, refining, and selling Earth’s natural resources, is it? To be responsible for monitoring the status of capped wells?
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Indeed. They should. At the same time – and this is not being argumentative – I assume those natural resources are there for a purpose too. They are there to use – responsibly.
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An entity(company or individual) should be and usually is responsible for it’s assets, and liabilities, past and present. I do wonder though, how do they deal with wells capped by companies that are long gone as corporate entities? For legal purposes, when does the liability run out? When the company closes, bankrupts, or is dissolved and absorbed by others?
Many many water wells have been punched into the ground by settlers across the nation and they are not only direct safety hazzard to small children and animals, they are also a direct hole to the water table and a potential source of pollution from above ground cantaminants that would normally be slowly filtered out by traveling thru the soil layers instead.
These abandoned wells, by law must be disclosed on property descriptions as the buyer must be made aware they have a liability out there somewhere on their land they are buying. Unfortunately, NOT all wells have been declared and there are a significant number that have yet to be discovered by any of the landowners thru time. Now, who’s going to pay for the sealing of such abandoned wells? Obviously, the current owner will have to pay for the required licensed offical to seal the well. A current owner can’t necessarily recoup that money from a former owner unless they can prove that the former owner knew about it and did not declare it.
I grew up on an old farmstead…there were sandpoints all over the place when my folks bought it before the laws required disclosure. They pulled these old sandpoints and sealed all the ones they knew about, but we have no idea if we sealed all of them or not. The original people that put down those old wells are long gone, along with the knowledge of where and how many have been done over the years. They stopped being responsible for them when they either died, or sold the land.
Considering that our current laws don’t reach back to the beginning, how does anyone successfully deal with wells on the ocean floor that NO ONE claims? Those wells were punched into the ocean floor, using leases issued by the US Government, given to companies that may have morphed into other entities and may have not passed along all the pertinent information regarding the original ownership of such wells. Furthermore, and I didn’t check this, but is there any instances where wells have been created, temporarily sealed and later used or abandoned for better drilling situations? Does the well issue belong to the first party to put it down, or the last one to suck crude up thru it? Or, does it ultimately belong to the landlord(US).
There must be a statute of limitations and at some point the landlord has to ultimately take responsibilty for their property. Do the leases come with perpetual upkeep clauses to ensure that they are NOT left to deteriorate and begin leaking again, and the true party at fault has the cleanup and upkeep to maintain, no matter how many times the well may pass thru different companies? When one company sells out to another, do they transfer everything, including those old wells?
I hate to ask this, but how many old oil wells have just gotten “lost” thru the years? It would be interesting to see how clear and correct our Government’s documenation is on all those old wells and how they intend deal with the ones that may not have an owner to blame at all.
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The more I read about all of this, the more I believe we are being governed by a bunch of incompetent boobs and their political panderings are filtered by the MSM.
Soros puts $811 million investment towards Petrobras (Brazil) in the second quarter of 2008, and in August of 2009, Obama sends a preliminary commitment letter to loan $2 Billion for the exploration of deepwater oil off the coast of Brazill (Petrobras).
The Inspector General that oversees MMS was moved last year to watch over the stimulus, leaving behind an “acting” Inspector General, his deputy http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Mary_L._Kendall She testifies that several factors lead up to the failures that didn’t see Deepwater coming. One being that they are short on staff…but yet they can approve BP’s request in less than a month, after reviewing a 582 page plan.
In the plan “BP claims that a spill is “unlikely” and states that it anticipates “no adverse impacts” to endangered wildlife or fisheries. Should a spill occur, it says, “no significant adverse impacts are expected” for the region’s beaches, wetlands and coastal nesting birds. The company, noting that such elements are “not required” as part of the application, contains no scenario for a potential blowout, and no site-specific plan to respond to a spill. Instead, it cites an Oil Spill Response Plan that it had prepared for the entire Gulf region. Among the sensitive species BP anticipates protecting in the semitropical Gulf? “Walruses” and other cold-water mammals, including sea otters and sea lions. The mistake appears to be the result of a sloppy cut-and-paste job from BP’s drilling plans for the Arctic. Even worse: Among the “primary equipment providers” for “rapid deployment of spill response resources,” BP inexplicably provides the Web address of a Japanese home-shopping network. Such glaring errors expose the 582-page response “plan” as nothing more than a paperwork exercise. “It was clear that nobody read it,” says Ruch, who represents government scientists.” The MMS one-page approval put no restrictions on BP, issuing only a mild suggestion that would prove prescient: “Exercise caution while drilling due to indications of shallow gas.”
Since the explosion, The Center for Biological Diversity scoured 27 offshore projects that have received a seal of approval from MMS after the April 20 explosion, and found that environmental reviews were waived in all but one of them. Twenty-six of the 27 plans were granted a “categorical exclusion” from review under the National Environmental Policy Act.
On May 6th 2010, MMS approved BP’s exploration plan for the Green Canyon area of the Gulf, a site approximately 124 miles from the coast of Terrebonne Parish, La. 16 days after the explosion.
And there is more…so much more.
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I understand Glenn Beck has been covering this Petrobras – Obama – Soros connection recently. $2 Billion of taxpayer money to help line the pockets of radical George Soros – and fill the ‘contributions-for-democrats-for-election’ coffers. Shouldn’t this be illegal?
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Looks like at least one ‘liberal’ doesn’t like what Rieka and I have posted here ….. I guess documented facts can be painful when your guy is in the cross hairs.
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2010 — “[T]he Nature Conservancy lists BP as one of its business partners. The Conservancy also has given BP a seat on its International Leadership Council and has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years,†Joe Stephens wrote for the Post May 24.
It’s not just Nature Conservancy either, the Post found $2 million in donations to Conservation International and relationships between BP and other lefty activist groups Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Sierra Club and Audubon.” — In bed with the very environmentalist groups that would normally have blocked drilling efforts. If ya can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/06/rahm-emanuel-bp-gul-oil-spill.html “You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste” Serious failures in the chain of oversight at MMS, left BP to their own devices, thus creating an opportunity to have a crisis that could be used to promote an agenda that secretly benefits a few green investors. This serious crisis is of epic proportions and, IMO, due to extreme errors in judgement on the part of our government and BP.
Podesta connection — John Podesta as President of the Center for American Progress or CAP. John Podesta used to be Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff from 1998 to 2001. He is now a Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. He also was co-head of the Obama transition team and helped to select many of the top officials in the Obama administration. Years ago he set up a lobbying company with his brother Tony. Tony and their lobbying company The Podesta Group work for BP and for NBC, which is owned by GE. — Isn’t that cozy.
More Soros… Back in August of 2009, Soros turned his common stock in Petrobras into preferred stock, which had a lower price and offered 10% more in dividends, just a couple of days before Obama pledged $2 billion of loan money to PetroBras, the national oil company of Brazil, which produces a healthy profit most years. This Obama pledge boosted the value of Soros’ stock. How sweet.
the new Sheriff in town, Salazar, delivered a beatdown to the IG exposed employees that were getting paid to play with the entities they were supposed to be regulating in January of 2009. Speaking to Rolling Stone in March 2009, the secretary underscored his commitment to reform. “We have embarked on an ambitious agenda to clean up the mess,” he insisted. “We have the inspector general involved with us in a preventive mode so that the department doesn’t commit the same mistakes of the past.” The crackdown, he added, “goes beyond just codes of ethics.” — A month later, Obama moves the IG to oversee the stimulus act.
On Feb. 13, BP told the minerals service it was trying to seal cracks in the well about 40 miles (64 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast”.
“By March, the natural gas surges had gotten so bad that BP warned MMS that it had difficulty controlling them. On March 10th, BP e-mailed the MMS drilling director for New Orleans that they were in the midst of a “well control situation,†a result which led a Berkeley engineer to tell Bloomberg that “they [BP] damn near blew up the rig.†That was just a day under six weeks before the rig actually blew up in the Gulf.
“This revelation shows that the disaster was far from unforeseen. In fact, it appears that it had already come close to a catastrophic blowout just six weeks before eleven people died in the subsequent explosion. BP didn’t exactly keep it a secret, either. They informed MMS of the problem, which apparently did nothing to intervene in a situation serious enough that a similar situation caused Exxon to shut down its well in 2006.” Evidently, MMS did their job in 2006.
March 31st, Obama promotes offshore drilling at Andrews Airforce Base “We are not here to do what is easy,” Salazar declared. “We are here to do what is right.” He insisted that his reforms at MMS were working: “We are making decisions based on sound information and sound science.” The president, for his part, praised Salazar as “one of the finest secretaries of Interior we’ve ever had” and stressed that his administration had studied the drilling plan for more than a year. “This is not a decision that I’ve made lightly,” he said. Two days later, he issued an even more sweeping assurance. “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills,” the president said. “They are technologically very advanced.” — MMS KNEW of the trouble with Deepwater that BP was having…it was told on Feb 13th!!!!!!
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/111965?RS_show_page=0 — I guess people can go read for themselves, and them start digging for the facts. If any of the MSM has approached this in depth, or offered up more than a wimper, please point me to it.
This all fits like a glove, better than Oj’s …it couldn’t have been better ochestrated by a bunch of clowns, with fitting scapegoats to point fingers at. MMS is supposed to be the regulatory manager of our resources, but they were too busy living it up with the people they were supposed to be watching. Hen, meet FOX and the coop is having a party. IMO, the first place to go is straight thru the MMS and hand EVERYONE a pinkslip…strip them of their benefits, and their retirement too. This kind of gross negligence is UNACCEPTIBLE. Period.
As a voting citzen and taxpayer, I think we deserve much better officials than what has been given desks to push papers across without reading them. I am not sold on government as the solution, they just helped the problem explode into a catastrophy.
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Do you have anything to add to the topic?
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I think you followed the innumerated rules of 1. Staying on topic; 2. You did not use any profanity or vulgarity; and 3. You did not harass anyone.
Personally, I found your “essay” quite enlightening and interesting, Rieka. Keep it up! Maybe just too deep and thought-provoking for some, eh?
Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
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One doesn’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to decipher that group letters, does it?
By the way, the word is Italian and is spelled CIAO!
You like other threads better? Knock yourself out!
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Why is it that we can no longer report what we perceive as violations of the ‘terms?’
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Because the mods got tired of nonsense reports. If something is in clear violation, send a message to one of the mods, otherwise, they really don’t want to get caught up in policing like or hate type complaints.
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More insanity.
“Both the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration relayed their concerns to the Army Corps about the possibility that the rock dikes could result in environmental damage. And a number of environmental groups like the Florida Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club joined the federal government on Tuesday in their appeal of the decision by Judge Martin Feldman to block the President’s six month moratorium on offshore oil drilling.”
At this point, isn’t a bit idiotic to argue potential environmental damage when there is ALREADY oil and tar balls in the water?
Perhaps it’s time for an excutive order to allow for a much more broad approach to dealing with the disaster…suspend all those STUPID rules and regulations that are currently hamstringing the coastal states efforts to minimize the destruction that is lapping at their shores.
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Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the Bureau of Land Management will offer 190 tracts with bids to be opened Aug. 11 in Anchorage. The sale is one of dozens, mostly in Western states, that Salazar announced in November. — Current Administration’s new motto, “DRILL BABY DRILL.”
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BP is not the only “game in town.” Drilling does not have to be by BP. They are just the pinata for the moment. Governor Jindal and others in the Gulf states were right to want to go ahead with preventing oil from reaching their shores. And who was it who stifled action and progress? Barack Hussein Obama …. uh! uhhhh! uhhhh!
Why is it always necessary to cite Sarah Palin? She is not affiliated with BP.
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http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/06/22/degeneration_of_democracy/page/full
Read Sowell’s column.
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Already did. It is brilliant!
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Who’s in BP’s back pocket? They bought and paid for all those violations, and STILL get approved to DRILL BABY DRILL. Imagine a world where OUR government didn’t pander their hindends out for the highest payer and the biggest gifts.
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How much OIL is the Nature Conservancy swallowing from BP? $10 million in cash and land. http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7221 That’s a cozy little operation…
Then, let’s get down to the EDF, Sierra Club and Audubon Society and their willingness to accept $2 million from BP, their sworn enemy in eco-terms.
Given what has happened thus far…does it appear that BP successfully bought complacency? MMS liked that fine money didn’t they? Instead of shutting them down completely, they just keep rolling out the bill and lappin’ up the restitution.
Ethics…who needs ethics?
Oh…look over there, more Palin bashing…move along, there’s nothing to see here.
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I was half asleep the other morning when they were discussing the Gulf but I heard them say that BP is the biggest one going and doesn’t it seem logical that the company with the most activity is going to have the most violations and spills when other companies aren’t really doing much of anything in comparison? Not trying to give them a free pass but I would like to see some figures on percentages of violations in comparison to drilling being done to know if they are that negligent or if they are in the ballpark but have more drilling going on. For esample, if they were drilling 20 wells in comparison to another company doing 1 it would stand to reason that they would be more apt to have more problems.
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You’re not going to confuse us with the issues at large by using logic and reason, are you, LL?
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LOL, well, excuse me–sorry about that, I just wasn’t thinking clearly!!!!
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Ride’em Cowboy…Ken’s the new Sheriff in town, didn’t ya know. Everything is definitely NOT ok at the Gulf corral, so he’s gonna mosey on up to Alaska to do, what treehuggers and moonbats don’t want any REPUBLICAN to do…drill baby drill.
Hopefully, the MSM will let us know when they start the protests and court injunctions on THIS administration, and the companies trying to secure those leases.
It’s a appeasement, fodder for the extremes to sit and spin on, nothing more…Novermber is around the corner and they are just trying to keep from losing their butts and the moderate vote. If they succeed, they will return to that former portside tilt, you can count on it.
Maybe they need more money to donate to unworthy causes like re- electing the idiots they support.
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The President of EMILY’s list would probably NOT have anything nice to say about a Pro-lifer.
“Formally, there are only three requirements for a candidate to earn EL’s support: The candidate must be a woman; she must be a Democrat; and she must support unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand. EMILY’s List has withdrawn its support from women who vote against even the most extreme abortion positions. For instance, Mary Landrieu, the recently re-elected Democratic Senator from Louisiana, lost EL’s backing when she voted in favor of a ban on partial-birth abortion.”
Advocates Taxpayer-funded abortions on demand. HMMM. Supports partial birth abortions. That is such a banner organization to support…they want to be able to make everyone pay to kill babies.
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I believe the accident occurred in APRIL!!!!!!!
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“Last Month?” Last month was JUNE. The accident occurred in April. Where was Prince Barack Von Obama in APRIL????? On one of his vacations or Golf outings? “I won’t rest until ….” Really? You could have fooled a lot of people in America …… Seems to have been a whole lot of “resting.”
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Darn thos facts… April 20, 2010 –Deepwater Platform Explosion.
Three days after the explosion, the Dutch offered their equipment to be flown in to the US. Did the US accept them? NOPE. The EPA had a serious problem with how the equipment didn’t put back water that was clean enough…so they let it get dirtier, and spread more. The week of June 8th, equipment from Dutch Gov. arrives and is installed, over 45 days AFTER the initial offer.
Late May? A month after the explosion and they finally accepted help from the Mexican Government? 13,000 FEET of boom? That’s approximately 2.6 miles and it would have been helpful to have had it a month earlier when the spill area was much smaller. I read somewhere, that 3 million feet (568 miles) of boom has been deployed to try to stop oil from reaching shore.
There is currently about 2000 skimmer craft in the US. About 400 are on site, as of June 30th. The rest are tied somewhere else, fed laws require theyy saty within their area.
13 oil-producing countries, and the UN have offered their huge skimming tankers that can collect far larger amounts than what our barges, private boats can do.
The “A Whale” is here…from Taiwan, awaiting final approval…preliminary government tests and review still have it docked and waiting…that was printed July 5th. It’s capacity to process is 21 million gallons of oil-fouled water per day.
How many days are we into this now?
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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE6461LY.htm
“Dutch dredger proposes dike to block Gulf oil spill
“AMSTERDAM, May 7 (Reuters) – Van Oord, the world’s third largest dredger, said on Friday it had proposed building a massive dike off the coast of Louisana to protect the region’s ecosystem at threat from an oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.”
But… NYT writes this piece just a few days ago. “Louisiana and Scientists Spar Over How to Stop Oil” The rocks are sitting on 75 barges in the Mississippi, BUT, the Army Corps of Engineers deemed that the rocks would alter the erosion pattern of the coastline. BP bought the rock, got it there, and it’s SITTING!
I guess worries about erosion trumps OIL SPILLS, they just let it hit shore…thanks Government…once again, more punishment to an area of our country still reeling from the natural devastation of Katrina.
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Has Rosie O’Donnell agreed to this?
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I hope AMERICA learns a lesson from all this…don’t trust big government to regulate squat.
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Rabid Palin haters like to use fallacies to back up their rhetoric. If Palin says it, it’s just wrong. Never mind the message, just shoot the messenger.
Brush up on fallacies, then take a look at commentary these days. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
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Let’s all gang up and trash Sarah Palin again! After all, she is attractive and popular with millions. Some may never be popular with anyone ……
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Yonk!
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Evidently Huff and Puff is trying to do some serious damage control. ” Palin says” is their absolute favorite pasttime.
I still want to know why the MMS didn’t shut down BP when they were getting emails detailing problems.
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