'Obama's Katrina': an Illustrated Timeline

21 April 2010: All 115 workers are evacuated from the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig.

22 April 2010: President Obama delivers a speech on Wall Street to advocate more government intervention in the country's financial sector, but offers no reforms for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which helped precipitate the 2008 meltdown. He also delivers a speech regarding the contributions of Earth Day to environmental awareness.

23 April 2010: President Obama blasts the Arizona governor, state legislators, police officers and residents for backing federal laws that prohibit illegal immigration.

24 April 2010: The president delivers his weekly radio address, which focuses on further regulation of Wall Street. He also calls upon certain segments of his original supporters -- African-Americans, Latinos, Hispanics, and women -- and asks them to mobilize for political action.

24 April 2010: Efforts to contain the spill are hampered by lack of resources and difficult weather.

25 April 2010: President Obama interrupts a weekend getaway to meet with the Rev. Billy Graham in North Carolina.

25 April 2010: Oil spreads across the gulf and heads toward the Louisiana shoreline.

26 April 2010: President Obama appears in a "Vote 2010" video, distributed by his political action wing Organizing for America, which serves as a stark appeal to blacks and Latinos -- specifically -- for their votes in November.

26 April 2010: The Coast Guard warns that the spill could become one of the worst in United States history.

28 April 2010: The President holds a rare, impromptu press conference on Air Force One, addressing "questions on the Arizona immigration law, the financial regulation bill and other issues." Obama also prepared to make his second nomination to the Supreme Court and warns of a "'conservative' brand of judicial activism in which the courts are often not showing appropriate deference to the decisions of lawmakers."

28 April 2010: large pools of oil are spotted close to the Louisiana shore line.

29 April 2010: the White House Flickr Feed is updated with a photo of the President meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and senior administration officials, including National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, which indicates that they are urgently working the issue of the oil spill.

29 April 2010: Meanwhile, local officials, the Coast Guard and private citizens continue their efforts to prevent damage to the Louisiana coastline.

Perhaps if the oil breached the Louisiana levees, then caught on fire, and then turned New Orleans into a Dresden-like inferno, the President would stop campaigning for a couple of days and actually pay attention to his own, personal Katrina. Even The New York Times has noticed, decrying the President's lackadaisical response. But I'm guessing that somehow, someway, it's all President Bush's fault.

"..Truth is a living thing, a precious Being that cannot be reduced to the idolatrous systems of men, especially corrupted monkeymen who do not honor Truth to begin with and cannot distinguish it from a banana. Most modern and postmodern ideologies and philosophies are opiates of elites too sophisticated for such powerful pneumaceuticals as Truth. ..

"In the mental realm, truth is a force. In fact, it is without question the most important force. Some people -- mostly aging hippies and addle-brained youths, who represent the two main constituencies of the left, wacktivists and hedonists -- will tell you that love (or compassion) is the most important force, but love is a derivative of Truth, not vice versa.

"I do not worship "the God of love" unless he is first the God of Truth, for who besides a leftist would worship the lovely lies of Marx or Obama? ...

"Animals cannot lie. While they can have certain naturally selected mechanisms of deception, they certainly cannot consciously live a lie.

"But living a lie is in the normal course of events for human beings. Someone said that language was given to man so as to conceal his thoughts.

"Interestingly, this problem is also fully recognized in scripture, as the very first conversation recorded in the Bible is a tissue of lies. The serpent lies to the woman, the woman transmits the lie to the man, the man lies about it to God, and then a rebellious angel leaks the scandal to the New York Times.

"The very emergence of self-consciousness seems to be inseparable from lying. For how could it not be? Once we have an interior and an exterior (a self and a persona), the two can grow so far apart that our existence can shade off into the lie (which is one of the reasons actors have always been viewed with suspicion, since they are so adept at pretending to be what they are not).

"So lying is absolutely fundamental to human existence. ...."

The following is from The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, January 27, 2011, p. A-20, Review & Outlook (comments of the editors of The Journal)

LAND OF MILK AND REGULATION

President Obama says he wants to purge regulations that are “just plain dumb,” like his humorous State of the Union bit about salmon. So perhaps he should review a new rule that is supposed to prevent oil spills akin to the Gulf Coast disaster—at the nation’s dairy farms.

Two weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule that subjects dairy producers to the Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure program, which was created in 1970 to prevent oil discharges in navigable waters or near shorelines. Naturally, it usually applies to oil and natural gas outfits. But the EPA has discovered that milk contains “a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil,” as the agency put it in the Federal Register.

In other words, the EPA thinks the next blowout may happen in rural Vermont or Wisconsin. Other dangerous pollution risks that somehow haven’t made it onto the EPA docket include leaks from maple sugar taps and the vapors at Badger State breweries.

The EPA rule requires farms—as well as places that make cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream and the like—to prepare and implement an emergency management plan in the event of a milk catastrophe. Among dozens of requirements, farmers must train first responders in cleanup protocol and build “containment facilities” such as dikes or berms to mitigate offshore dairy slicks.

These plans must be in place by November, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is even running a $3 million program “to help farmers and ranchers comply with on-farm oil spill regulations.” You cannot make this stuff up.

The final rule is actually more lenient than the one the EPA originally proposed. The agency tried to claim jurisdiction over the design specifications of “milk containers and associated piping and appurtenances,” until the industry pointed out that such equipment was already overseen by the Food and Drug Administration, the USDA and state inspectors. The EPA conceded, “While these measures are not specifically intended for oil spill prevention, we believe they may prevent discharges of oil in quantities that are harmful.”

We appreciate Mr. Obama’s call for more regulatory reason, but it would be more credible if one of his key agencies wasn’t literally crying over unspilled milk.

NOTE: Click below to access the hot links within the article.

Obama Will Make You Pay More at the Pump
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/29/morning-bell-obama-wants-you-to-pay-more-at-the-pump/
Posted December 29th, 2010 at 8:45am in Energy and Environment

“What do you say to people who are losing patience with gas prices at $3 a gallon? And how much of a political price do you think you’re paying for that, right now?” This was a question asked of the president at a press conference in August…of 2006. The president was George W. Bush. In fact, it was a question that was asked in one way or another regularly during the entire eight years of the Bush presidency, regardless of where energy prices stood at that moment.

In May 2004, The New York Times reported that congressional Democrats “were stepping up pressure on the Bush Administration to ease gasoline prices,” when prices were still under $2/gallon. In April 2005, at another press conference, a journalist stated: “Mr. President a majority of Americans disapprove of your handling of social security, gas prices…” In 2006, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) exclaimed: “Since George Bush and Dick Cheney took over as president and vice president, gas prices have doubled…They are too cozy with the oil industry” after she drove one less-than-energy-efficient block to a press conference at a local Exxon station.

In 2008, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “blasted” the president for rising gas prices on his (and her) watch. In July 2008, ABC News asked the president what was his “short term advice for Americans about gas prices?” repeating a nearly identical question asked at a February 2008 press conference. In April 2008, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said gas prices were “the number one issue facing America today.”

You get the point. Yet, at the end of President Bush’s presidency, gas prices were 9% lower than when he took office (adjusted for inflation). So where have these outspoken critics been since Bush left office?

Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated, gas prices have been on the steady rise, as have home energy prices. During his tenure, he presided over arguably the worst federal response to an oil spill in our nation’s history, and has pressed legislation on Capitol Hill that would, in his own words, cause electricity prices to “skyrocket.” Yet there has been almost nothing said by the media as consumers face $3/gallon gasoline at the pump in December for the first time in U.S. history and see their home heating bills soar in the winter months.

Now this week, analysts including former president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, say Americans could be paying $5/gallon of gasoline by 2012. Investment banks are predicting a return to $100/barrel oil, and OPEC is refusing to raise production. All of this news would be less frightening if the White House were focusing on potential ways to lower energy prices. Instead, President Obama is admittedly fixated with raising them.

Just last week (as frigid temperatures and blizzards blasted Europe and the U.S.), the EPA announced that it will begin regulating power plants and oil refineries in an attempt to curb global warming. The new regulations will seek to cut greenhouse gas emissions by making it more expensive to turn fossil fuels into energy. And Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the Bureau of Land Management would issue new rules making it harder to develop natural resources on government-owned land. These measures will not only drive up the cost of electricity and gasoline but will also make us more dependent on foreign sources of energy.

But none of these actions compare to the brazen way President Obama has unilaterally declared the U.S. oil industry dead. During the BP oil spill, Obama needlessly declared a moratorium on deepwater and shallow water drilling, since no White House advisers apparently could draw a distinction between the two. After two federal courts said the moratorium was illegal, the Obama administration instead moved to a de facto moratorium, by issuing no permits, while speeding up the permitting process for wind farms.

In October, President Obama “lifted” the moratorium, but since then has issued almost no new permits. In late November, his administration effectively issued a seven-year ban on drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and across the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. We’re not even talking about ANWR anymore; these are publicly and politically accepted areas of drilling. These actions, of course, increase our reliance on foreign oil, which as OPEC points out, will only become more expensive in the near future.

Finally, this all spells disaster for the jobs market. Higher energy prices translate into higher costs for small businesses, which cause less hiring. Energy producers are moving platforms out of U.S. waters rather than have multi-million dollar assets sit idle as the president destroys an industry. And local businesses and retailers who service this industry along the coast are losing money and employees, if not entirely shutting down.

President Obama knows energy prices are skyrocketing. The liberal mantra has long been to disincentive Americans from purchasing cheap fossil fuels, by driving costs up. Because the only way consumers will choose the vastly-more-expensive wind and solar alternatives is if all prices are high, rather than wait for the market to bring alternative prices down. This is a reckless and devastating way to make a point about global warming at the expense of American families.

Nearly no questions have been asked of President Obama by the media regarding: 1) his bungled response to the oil spill; 2) his unilateral policies that are creating higher home energy prices; 3) rising gas and oil prices; or 4) the de facto moratorium on domestic oil exploration. It’s time to start asking the White House some tough questions. A two year moratorium on accountability is long enough.

Small producer pleads with Washington for deep-water permit
Fuel Fix ^ | December 28, 2010 | Tom Fowler

Posted on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 10:09:10 AM by thackney
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2648366/posts

When federal officials lifted the ban on deep-water drilling in early October, Houston-based ATP Oil & Gas was ready to roll.

The small production company was finishing up work on a well that tied into its Telemark production hub about 100 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River. It had filed a permit to drill a sidetrack off an existing well a relatively low-risk proposal for the world of deep-water drilling. It was even revised and updated to meet all of the new requirements imposed on deep- water permits in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon accident.

“So I kept the crew out there because I felt certain the government meant what it said,” ATP Chairman and CEO Paul Bulmahn said – that permit applications that met the new guidelines would be granted.

More than 70 days later, the company is still waiting. At a price of about $330,000 per day, Bulmahn has started to get impatient, leading him to take some actions unusual for the company.

First, ATP hired Washington, D.C., lobbyists for the first time to help push its cause.

“I usually look with great disdain on lobbying efforts,” Bulmahn said.

Then he wrote a personal letter to President Barack Obama – copied to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement – pleading with him to “Please issue a permit so we can go back to work.”

And on Sunday he ran the letter as an advertisement in the Chronicle.

“I can’t afford to keep these workers employed and playing cards,” Bulmahn said.

De facto moratorium? It’s a notion shared by many in the industry, which says a de facto moratorium remains despite the Oct. 12 announcement that the Gulf was open again for business. The administration says that’s not the case, however, and that the bureau has added staff to work through the backlog of permit applications.

The bureau doesn’t comment on specific permit applications that are still pending because the information is considered proprietary to the companies.

In the next few days, Bulmahn said he may have to pull the plug on the project, meaning some 200 workers will be off the clock or headed to work on offshore projects overseas. It’s not just an idle threat: On Monday Israeli media reported that ATP was considering taking a stake in several offshore natural gas projects there.

“I can’t comment on such speculation,” Bulmahn said. “But the technology we’ve brought to bear in the deep water is being courted by governments around the world to help open up their natural resources offshore.”

25 in shallow water That’s not to say there are no permits being issued in the Gulf of Mexico. Since July there have been 25 shallow-water permits issued, including six in December. Only 10 of those permits have seen drilling, however, meaning companies are choosing to hold off on putting crews back to work.

Only one of 15 new deep-water well permits has been granted since the moratorium was lifted on Oct. 12, with two pending as of Monday, according to the bureau’s data.

But federal officials note 60 permits to modify existing deep-water plans have been granted, as well as 49 revised permits to modify well plans.

That a company like ATP must wait to get a deep-water permit is particularly frustrating to the industry, said Stephen Berman, a senior research analyst with Pritchard Capital Partners.

The company buys proven, undeveloped reserves – wells that have been drilled but deemed uneconomic by larger companies. That means it’s often drilling in existing wells, often less risky than exploration wells such as BP’s Macondo well that was being completed when it blew out in April, killing 11 workers and leading to the largest oil spill ever in the Gulf of Mexico.

Extra safeguards The company’s equipment tends to have more safeguards than many other operators’ – deploying blowout preventers on both the seafloor and onboard the rig, for example, Berman said.

“ATP has the right business model and equipment for the post-Macondo world,” Berman said. “They should be near or at the front of the line when the new permits for deep water start. But I can see their frustration as what appears to be a lot of foot-dragging.”

While new wells can take years to reach production – meaning there’s little direct correlation between current oil prices and new drilling – Berman said he suspects rising oil prices will likely increase the pressure on the administration to move forward issuing deep-water permits.

“The deep-water Gulf is where the large finds are, so if you’re not making them, there’s even more of a feeling of supply being constrained,” Berman said.

"Barry the commie is doing his best ... to destroy the Republic. When will the voting public learn the lesson?"

When they learn this:

"Unscientific and simpleminded liberals like to pretend that "poverty causes crime..."

"If liberty were natural to man, it would have appeared much sooner in history, not just a few hundred years ago."

"Natural man" will always take security in exchange for liberty. Only transnatural man can say "give me liberty or give me death," since only he knows that there is something higher than nature, and that there are certain worldly political arrangements that are not worthy of man."

"Quite simply, it is difficult if not impossible to become what the Creator intended if one falls into the parallel looniverse of the left."

"True independence and individuation are marks of the spiritually mature, so long as one's prior dependence upon spirit is acknowledged and appreciated. Otherwise, the isolated individual is a monster, a mere caricature of uniqueness and wholeness. An original perhaps, but an original nothing -- creativity in service of death, vanity, and ego-aggrandizement. It is simply the opposite side of the same worthless material coin."

"Ideology is always nourished by religious roots. "

"...Thus, it merges nicely with the modern material ego, which is why it is also almost always left wing."

<>//<>

Explaining the Cognitive Barbarism of the Proglodyte Left

"..Politics truly is a sort of show business for the unattractive -- the psychologically unattractive. And you can well understand why the Democrat party would attract such people, because unlike conservatism, it does not mainly consist of ideas but of promises made to various constituencies of dysfunctional losers, weirdos, cranks, misfits, and malcontents. It is the party of the Unhappy who imagine that the state can make them happy. .."

DSM-IV 301.95 PROGRESSIVE PERSONALITY DISORDER

A. A pervasive pattern of progressive political thought and action, rooted in discredited leftist (neo-Marxist) beliefs, beginning in early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by at least five of the following (individual must be at least 18 years of age to qualify for the diagnosis of Progressive Personality Disorder, as many of the criteria are age-appropriate for adolescents and children):

1. Utopian thinking: A delusional belief that there exist simple, linear, side effect-free solutions to all social problems. (Note to clinician: please differentiate between mere historical ignorance, e.g., a doctorate in history from an elite university, vs. psychotic delusions of grandeur or adequacy.)

2. Anthroplastic ideation: The delusion that behavioral conditioning performed by the government or some other collective will cure all behavioral and social problems, rooted in denial of fixed human nature. Implicit in this delusion is the idea that human beings are infinitely malleable and subject to behavioral manipulation leading to perfect control and predictability. Free will, personal conscience, and objective morality are denied, devalued or denigrated. No concern for actual behaviors or personal beliefs that either cause or eliminate poverty.

3. Anti-theistic rebellion: An emotional antagonism to the Judeo-Christian tradition, rooted in an abnormal persistence of adolescent rebellion (may also be related to the need to avoid counter-arguments that would question utopian, anthroplastic ideation). This behavior ranges from a mere antagonism to Christianity to a hatred of all forms of religion. The rejection of religion leads to a deep longing for a secular messiah and master. (Generally the more Western a religion is, the more it is despised. Thus, these patients may openly accept more primitive pantheistic, neo-pagan, or animist belief systems, such as Wicca or fraudulent "new age" philosophies, e.g., Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, etc.)

4. Naturist delusion: The belief that mankind is evil and nature is benign. The incidence of this symptom is inversely related to practical knowledge and experience of nature. Collective self-hatred is a feature in this area, paradoxically existing side by side with egomaniacal omniscience, e.g., ability to accurately predict weather 100 years into the future. Typical thinking includes the paranoid belief that mankind is a cancer on earth and that the planet (subjectively felt as a "feeling being") will "retaliate." The naturist delusion includes considerable cognitive dissonance, since the typical Progressive Personality is a believer in natural selection, which has resulted in unimaginable suffering and cruelty, mitigated only by mankind's presence.

5. Environmental spasm: Chaotic, unreasonable, or incoherent episodes of manic activity on behalf of the environment or "mother nature." The delusional nature of this activity is evidenced by the misanthropic attacks on all works of man, and also by the manic focus on visible or totemic biological objects of little actual worth. The patient is typically obsessed only with cute or cuddly creatures, often a displacement of the nurturing urge (which is not infrequently unfulfilled due to abortion). Such patients may show more concern for the President swatting an insect than his waving aside the concerns of millions of human beings living under tyranny and crying out for his support.

6. Control obsession: The tendency to strive for excessive control over others through state intrusion. A contemptuous projection of unconscious greed into anonymous others (the mythic "little guy"), which is subjectively experienced as "compassion." Through the magic of this unconscious mechanism, the very people who want the state to appropriate your wealth can imagine themselves to be generous and "compassionate," irrespective of how they actually treat real human beings.

7. Racist/feminist hypocrisy: Passionate advocation of government-enforced discrimination based on sex or race, while aggressively proclaiming opposition to policies which are "racist" or "sexist." Obsession with conformity of thought within a racially diverse population. For example, such a person might favor seating a racist on the Supreme Court, so long as the person is of the "correct" "race."

8. Overemotional perception: Excessive concern with how a social action "looks" or "feels," to the exclusion of actual effects in the real world, in particular, any effects beyond the immediate. Resistance to, and denial of, objective evidence proving the adverse consequences of progressive policy. Superficial cognition about most matters of significant import, as the progressive personality relies on the "feel" of issues rather than truly understanding them. Obsession with "fairness" or "social justice" as opposed to what actually works.

9. Sexual dysfunction: Significant anxiety about sexual matters, manifested as:

a. Obsession with sexual and gender roles.

b. Passionate celebration of nontraditional sex roles and preferences.

c. The compulsion to define individuals by their "sexual preference" and to design social policy as if all individuals share the obsession.

d. An inordinate interest in preserving inappropriate, lewd, perverse, or antisocial forms of sexual expression.

e. Fascination with immature or deviant expressions of sexuality; reduction of human sexuality to animal sexuality.

10. Replacement of patriotism with matriotism: Unwillingness to defend country when attacked or threatened. Allied with inability to name or recognize evil. General devaluation of the masculine virtues.

11. Cultural and moral relativism: The fervent belief that all cultures are beautiful except one's own, and that it is immoral to judge another's morality unless they are conservative.

12. Devaluation of human life: The belief that the four-toed salamander or Illinois mud turtle is entitled to more protection than a human baby. Belief that a bald eagle egg is a bird, but that a human fetus is not a person.

Oil Spill Commission Failed to Examine Key Evidence
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=41460
by Tina Korbe
01/29/2011

President Obama’s oil spill commission spent six months examining the “root causes” of the Gulf disaster, yet never inspected the failed blowout preventer — the part of the well that could have, as its name suggests, prevented the explosion.

At a House Natural Resources Committee hearing this week, the co-chairman of the National Oil Spill Commission faced a barrage of questions from Republicans and Democrats about why their final report is long on regulatory recommendations but short on engineering explanations.

Lawmakers took issue with the commission’s apparent lack of effort to explain the failure of the blowout preventer. Republicans said it calls into question the commission’s recommendations — and, more seriously, leaves the Gulf vulnerable to a similar malfunction in the future.

“Why should we take [the commission] seriously if [it] did not even make that modicum of effort to determine the actual cause of the disaster?” asked Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.). “We’ve never had a blowout failure like this one. Until we find out why it failed, it could happen again. It could happen anytime — and the commission has not advanced our understanding of how to prevent that. … We have before us a report recommending bureaucratic solutions to engineering problems authored by bureaucrats rather than an engineering solution authored by engineers.”

Up until Wednesday’s hearing, the oil spill commission has largely avoided sharp questioning. Its 381-page final report on “The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling” was released earlier this month, the result of six months of research.

Republican lawmakers expressed alarm that the commission — made up of Obama appointees who lack engineering experience — would offer recommendations without attempting to identity the precise mechanical cause of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion.

“We still don’t know what caused the explosion,” said Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.). “We don’t know how or why the blowout preventer malfunctioned.”

Commission co-chairman and former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) responded: “It is true that no one at this point has had the benefit of a full examination of the blowout preventer. What we do know is that it didn’t perform as it should have.”

When Obama created the commission last May, it’s top priority was to “examine the relevant facts and circumstances concerning the root causes of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.”

The commission’s report heavily explores the human error and managerial mistakes behind the spill — again, at the relative expense of exploring the technological causes. It could have done both, McClintock said, citing the work of the Rogers Commission, which examined the causes of the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

“When the Challenger exploded, people only knew one thing for sure after the accident — that this was a launch that was fatal and catastrophic,” he said. “The Rogers Commission was a panel that was filled with technical experts that painstakingly recovered the wreckage from underneath the ocean and reassembled that wreckage and then determined the precise cause of the disaster. It then recommended changes so that the space program could move forward.”

Commission co-chairman William Reilly deflected criticism and defended the report. Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, drew an interesting analogy.

“I think you can draw an analogy between a blowout preventer and a seatbelt in an automobile accident,” Reilly said. “It’s obviously important to the survival of someone that a seatbelt wasn’t fastened, but it doesn’t really explain why the accident occurred. We explain why the accident occurred. We identified all the major contributors. … Examining the blowout preventer is not going to cause those other factors that we have covered to go away. They are there, they are distressing and they do have implications for policy.”

Those policy implications worry some committee members. The report’s imbalance suggests a desire to limit the capabilities of the oil industry, which is evident from the phrase “systemic, industry-wide failure” — without examples from more than three companies to back up its use. In fact, the report implies the need for a complete governmental overhaul of the industry when no such overhaul is needed.

“Here’s the issue,” Rep. Bill Flores (R-Tex.) said. “Congress has considered legislation, the Department of Interior has issued new regulations, lease sales have been canceled, other areas of potential offshore activity have been put off-limits again and it’s all based on a report that doesn’t give a full post-mortem of what happened.”

Even committee Democrats questioned the report’s most sweeping claim.

“Some of the verdicts, sometimes even just the words used in the report, I kind of have some concerns about,” said Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.). “One was the use of the term ‘systemic,’ that there are ‘systemic’ problems in the industry. If you look at a 30-year history, over the last 30 years, the history of the offshore oil industry, there have been some incidents, but I think a major incident is very rare and, if you compare it with the airline industry or the consumer trade industry, the oil and gas industry has done quite a good job.”

But Reilly and Graham stood behind this conclusion. While the report only cites as safety offenders three companies, those companies are highly prevalent in the industry, they said.

“It is simply inconceivable to us that this is a problem so exclusive, so especially circumstantial to one rig,” Reilly said.

That perspective is likely to shape future policymaking, a point that wasn’t lost on Flores. “This report is being relied upon to continue moratoria, either de facto or regulatory or however they want to be described, and it goes back to this ‘systemic, industry-wide’ failure comment.”

Going one step further, Flores asked the commission to remove the phrase from its report.

“Based on what I see, and the weight which this report is being given for the energy future of this country, I would respectfully ask the commission to remove from the report the phrase, ‘systemic, industry-wide failure.”

Oil Spill Commission Made Basic, Factual Mistakes
SOURCE Phil Rae

After $6 million dollars, 6 hearings, and seven months, the cause of the April 20th blowout laid out in the commission's report varies little from the one initially proposed by BP. It's a theory that still fails to explain all documented observations and known facts. More troubling though, the commission's 398-page report contains several claims that are factually incorrect.

For example, the commission reports the crew on the Deepwater Horizon saw the fluid level in the riser fall, realized they had a leak through the annular preventer, and topped up the riser with mud. Yet, that didn't happen.

When the crew started the negative test, they closed the annular preventer and bled off the drill pipe; but the pressure immediately rose. Consequently, they assumed the annular preventer was leaking. Upon inspection of the riser, crew members found it needed to be topped-up with ~60 bbls of mud. And for them, that appeared to confirm their suspicion of a leak.

Case closed, right? Wrong.

The annular preventer never suffered a leak. The pressure in the well rose, because the well was flowing. The commission fails to make this critical distinction. If the crew hadn't assumed there was a leak, they would have likely realized that the well was live and taken appropriate measures.

As explained in my report -- " Genesis of the Deepwater Horizon Blowout " -- the riser needed topped up because the casing shoe failed during displacement of mud with spacer and, consequently, the well lost mud. This is the actual reason the well went live, and it's important to understand this nuance if we hope to mitigate the risks of future blowouts.

The commission botched this and several other details. That means the members based all subsequent conclusions on a faulty initial analysis. Such foundational errors jeopardize the validity of the rest of its findings.

In addition to its erroneous assumption regarding the annular preventer, the commission report also makes it sound as if choosing a longstring over a liner when designing the well was perfectly acceptable. Such a stance misses the point altogether. There are specific reasons why BP should never have run a production long string on this well (or any other deepwater well). Yet, nobody has voiced these concerns so we can only assume the same mistake could be repeated anytime.

If the commission's true objective involved "examining relevant facts and circumstances concerning the root causes of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and developing options to guard against," it failed.

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