Posted on 04/30/2010 8:11:27 AM PDT by thackney
An army of workers conducted frantic combat on Thursday with booms, chemicals and even fire to limit the damage from a massive oil spill invading the Mississippi River delta.
Pushed by swift southeasterly winds, the arrival of the oil slick opened a new chapter in the Deepwater Horizon disaster saga, both environmentally and politically as lawmakers in Washington raised the heat on the offshore energy industry.
Federal regulators sent a SWAT team of inspectors into the Gulf of Mexico area to ensure compliance with safety rules on deep water drilling rigs.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency so officials could begin preparing for the oil's impact.
And the state opened an early shrimp season in waters east of the Mississippi River to allow shrimpers to bring in as much of the commercially important catch as possible in case the spill forces fishery closures.
“The state is doing the right thing,” said Mike Voisin, owner of Motavatit Seafood in Houma, La. “Any time we have is better than none.”
Although the White House initially downplayed the possibility the incident could affect the president's just-announced plans to open up parts of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans and the eastern Gulf of Mexico for new drilling, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs acknowledged that could change...
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Suttles said BP had invited experts from Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and Houston-based Apache to its operating center in Houston to help find new ways to cap the well, which government estimates now say is pumping as much as 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, of oil into the Gulf every day.
“We've invited the biggest oil and gas companies to bring their best experts to sit next to ours and make sure we haven't missed anything,” Suttles said.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Hope this is mitigated quickly with minimal damage.
Oil well leak like that... last time this happened was 40 years ago. Sounds like a pretty good safety record.
Predictable. Drudge is headlining the "new Katrina" angle, but the media won't touch that with a ten-foot pole. After all, Bush is no longer President.
Instead, Obama and his kooky energy czars will just use the crisis Alinsky style as yet another way to shut down exploration and drilling. After all, he owes his buddies in the Middle East some higher oil prices.
I propose a moratorium on new legislation pending an investigation into the disaster that is health care reform.
Rush said the same thing yesterday but I can't find anything. Is sabotage suspected?
Sadly, not true.
http://home.versatel.nl/the_sims/rig/index.htm
In terms of deaths, this event doesn't make the top 20.
This is Obama’s Katrina.
BTTT!!!!
No investigation of the failure has been completed yet, and will take a while to do so. Be wary of what the press leads people to believe.
Reading posts on other threads that this was done deliberately to drive oil prices up are nonsense.
He probably meant teams of inspectors not realizing that SWAT is an acronym for Special Weapons And Tactics.
“They’ll never find out how we made the coal mine and oil rig disasters. Once we stop all energy production in the US Cap & Trade is a shoe-in. Hey Rahm, make sure those union workers get paid for those wack jobs. Then it’s trillions and CCX”
Isn’t this like that Bruce Willis movie where it APPEARED terrorists wanted a bunch of demands met when in reality is was a good old fashioned bank robbery.
“Welcome to the party, pal”
Thank you for the link. It is tough to keep up with everything related.
So the President Obama announced SWAT, although it appears to be lacking in the Department of Interiors announcement. I haven’t read a transcript of their briefing but I have read their announcements.
Thanks again
Well excuse me... 3 as opposed to 2 ... Still looks like a PRETTY DAMNED GOOD as far as safety goes.
If anything, they will pin it on Jindal.
>> but the media won’t touch that with a ten-foot pole. After all, Bush is no longer President.
It’s about establishing the historical tone - the association of fault and other negative imagery.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the Leftists and Liberals are grateful about the spill - it gives them an excuse not to drill offshore. But despite any glee, the MSM cannot excite the situation to the point people start questioning the “Brownie” factors.
What was I counting... MAJOR SPILLS in American Waters.. with your list, there’s not much MORE than that. So many on that list happened without Spills of any statistical significance... (There ..that PC enough for you)
DRILL BABY DRILL
Good thing they have everything under control. sarc/
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