[CajunConservative]

Of course it won't be enough to pay for the spill but the fact is that there is a good chunk of change in place to deal with this along with the laws to speed things up.

Of course the feds f'd up in their response and must get the same flack that that they gave Pres. Bush.

Despite plan, not a single fire boom on hand on Gulf Coast at time of oil spill

If U.S. officials had followed up on a 1994 response plan for a major Gulf oil spill, it is possible that the spill could have been kept under control and far from land.

The problem: The federal government did not have a single fire boom on hand.

But in order to conduct a successful test burn eight days after the Deepwater Horizon well began releasing massive amounts of oil into the Gulf, officials had to purchase one from a company in Illinois.

When federal officials called, Elastec/American Marine, shipped the only boom it had in stock, Jeff Bohleber, chief financial officer for Elastec, said today.

At federal officials' behest, the company began calling customers in other countries and asking if the U.S. government could borrow their fire booms for a few days, he said.

( Why don't we have more on hand? )

A single fire boom being towed by two boats can burn up to 1,800 barrels of oil an hour, Bohleber said. That translates to 75,000 gallons an hour, raising the possibility that the spill could have been contained at the accident scene 100 miles from shore.

"They said this was the tool of last resort. No, this is absolutely the asset of first use. Get in there and start burning oil before the spill gets out of hand," Bohleber said. "If they had six or seven of these systems in place when this happened and got out there and started burning, it would have significantly lessened the amount of oil that got loose."

In the days after the rig sank, U.S Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said the government had all the assets it needed. She did not discuss why officials waited more than a week to conduct a test burn.

At the time, former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oil spill response coordinator Ron Gouget -- who helped craft the 1994 plan -- told the Press-Register that officials had pre-approval for burning. "The whole reason the plan was created was so we could pull the trigger right away." Gouget speculated that burning could have captured 95 percent of the oil as it spilled from the well.

[worst-case scenario]

How can you contain an 5000-ft-underwater gusher that is pumping out 30K barrels a day? Does it just keep growing and growing?

And BP, the experts, have no way to cap it.

Are you in the oil drilling industry? I have not been able to find a single educated source who could verify for me that it is possible to corral and burn off the oil that is being produced at the rate. The weather doesn’t seem to be co-operating with the 275,580 feet of boom already in use. Has the burn been successful in combating this so far?

BP gives the impression that the real emergency lies in capping or covering the well-head. Is that a job that thew Feds would handle? Doesn’t BP have primary responsibility over the site?

What exactly could the Feds have done with this situation to fix it, since BP was lying about the flow from the get-go? If BP couldn’t fix it, why do you think the Feds would have a better chance?

Regarding the fund: the Deepwater Horizon rig itself cost 700 million. Since it was leased, the first payout from the Fund would go to paying off Transocean. Since a total of $1 billion of the Fund is available for any one incident, that $700 million payout for the rig won’t leave a lot behind. And BP’s legal liabilities are limited, as well.