Posted on 06/21/2010 12:13:05 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
WASHINGTON — The bipartisan commission named by President Obama in May to study the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the future of American offshore drilling will hold its first formal meeting in mid-July at the earliest, most likely delaying the delivery of its final report into next year, a co-chairman of the panel said in an interview.
The co-chairman, William K. Reilly, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under the first President Bush, also said it was unlikely that the panel would recommend the lifting of the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling before it completes its report. Such a move would require profound changes in industry practice and government oversight that cannot be done that quickly, Mr. Reilly said in his first extensive remarks on the commission’s work.
The oil industry, its supporters in Congress and Gulf Coast officials have called for swiftly lifting the moratorium, saying the ban was causing severe economic hardship and that drilling could resume safely under tighter interim rules. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and some other administration officials had given the industry hope that the ban would be lifted as soon as new regulations were in place.
But Mr. Reilly said that ending the moratorium would require that the industry adopt safer drilling techniques and that the government regulatory agencies, particularly the Minerals Management Service, a part of the Interior Department, be markedly strengthened.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Polish that up a bit and we can have a Standalone thread...
"It is now so obvious that it is a LONG WAY from just punching a hole into the EARTH!
They had a plan for the leak, it’s just that everything in the plan failed.
Would you recommend that we ground all airplane flights until the airline industry can give us a guaranteed plan for how to safely land if all their engines die, or if they get hit by lightning or a freak storm front?
How about we ban all driving until the car companies can give us the plan that guarantees that every idiot driving can stop their car under any circumstances they get into, without causing an accident?
We could also ban all manufacturing until the companies can come up with a plan that guarantees that no workers can have an accident.
See #13!!!!
And by the way, you don’t think that a 20 billion dollar loss is a sufficient incentive to pressure the industry? Or more likely twice that amount when we are all done?
About the only change I support is to increase the liability for companies to include the full cost of compensation, with them having to buy a liability policy if they can’t cover the costs.
I’ve heard people complain this would put small companies out of business — but I’m certainly glad the company that just spoiled the Gulf has 20 billion dollars to throw around, I’d hate to have this be the result of a half-billion startup company.
Given that deep water drilling is only going to increase in the future, don't you think they should have something on the shelf that they can use to contain an unisolable leak until they can kill the well?
I'm not saying the moratorium is appropriate, but you have to admit that the industry simply was not prepared for this foreseeable event.
~ ~ Pinging without Big Blue.
~
Ernest, et al, here is a recent FRmail:
**IRAN and British Petroleum have many joint ventures! I saw this on www.godlikeproductions first. Then I did a search on Iran and BP and came up with the Times magazine article.
“According to Fox News, Iran is a major stock holder in British Petroleum!”
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1104333/pg5
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1996921,00.html
“But BP remains one of the most active major western oil companies engaged in joint-venture energy projects with the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum outside of Iran. In the last five years, BP has begun extracting around 4 million cubic meters per day of natural gas from a field in Britain’s North Sea in a 50-50 joint venture with Iran, worth $1 million a day at June 15, 2010 spot prices.
And BP operates one of the world’s largest gas fields in Azerbaijan in a joint venture with Iran and other foreign oil companies, producing 8 billion cubic meters of gas per year, worth up to a reported $2.4 billion per year.”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1996921,00.html#ixzz0rWIm43tr
“Fox News reported that IRAN is a major, major share holder in British Petroleum. Really! REALLY! Well, there is nothing wrong with that unless it’s a country that wants to wipe both Israel and America off the map!
So, is the Arab world coming after America through BP (British Petroleum)? Is that thinking far fetched? Israel, do you know about this?
… And, Obama, being raised in the Muslim faith is … THE ENABLER??? I mean this President is so concerned about the Gulf that he’s out golfing.
Let’s just say that the very worst happens from this spill … like a monster disaster that America has never experienced before in her existence. …
AND, THEN ISRAEL IS ATTACKED AT THE SAME TIME. We may not be able to help Israel. IS THAT WHAT’S BEING PLANNED? ARE AMERICANS BEING DOUBLE CROSSED? ARE WE BEING BETRAYED?
Are Americans learning that something, as the expression goes, is ROTTEN IN DENMARK with this oil spill?”**
Kudlow of the CNBC Kudlow Report has been hollering about the BP dealings with IRAN!
Putting words nobody uses in all caps isn’t all that helpful.
The failure of a BOP doesn’t, in and of itself, inevitably lead to a leak that cannot be isolated — on the other hand, the definition of unisolible is a leak that cannot be isolated, it’s like saying someone should have a plan to solve an unsolvable puzzle.
I see no reason to assert that the current leak isn’t isolated to the big broken pipe where we see all the oil. As some of the wiser people at OilDrum have pointed out, there is no real evidence of oil leaking elsewhere, and if there was a leak around the well casing, the obvious place to see that would be at the surface where the well casing comes out of the ground — and they’ve been watching that closely, and see no evidence of any oil leaking out.
It is possible that there is oil leaking through some cracks in the rock, because anything is possible, but there’s no reason the oil wouldn’t just come up next to the pipe in the big hole they drilled, rather than try to sneak around cracks of rock.
They actually DO have a plan, it’s a plan that is used all the time — drill to near the bottom of the out-of-control well, and pump fluid in where it can stop the flow. We don’t know if the plan will work, but it is a plan.
They also had a plan to collect the oil, several in fact, the first one failed because they didn’t take into account temperatures at the depth of the well.
Now they have a system that MIGHT be able to stop the well, but they are obviously afraid that the collapse of the pipe damaged the BOP and weakened it’s connection to the well, and they worry that trying to stop the flow from the top could cause a catastrophic failure which would leave them in worse shape.
Nobody has ever had to pay out 20 billion. So it’s never been a concern in the industry before.
Now it is. Note we have no plans to deal with all sorts of forseable events, because the number of forseable events far exceeds our ability to pay for plans for all of them. When it is too hard to fix the result of a failure, the answer is to make sure that failure is highly unlikely, not stop doing anything until you can handle unhandleable problems.
When the levees broke in New Orleans, according to the logic used here, apparently we should have made people move from any land anywhere in the country that was protected from flooding by a levee, until we could figure out a surefire way to fix breaks in any levee that exists.
But somehow, we’ve managed to re-open New Orleans, even though the only choice we have if a levee breaks is to wait until the city is underwater, so we can rebuild the levee after the pressure is equalized.
Any day someone who was crazy could take out one of those walls, and yet we didn’t shut down the city.
You and I saw the episode tonight! It was jaw-dropping! Too bad I can’t find a clip of the tv show, but here’s the transcript from Glenn Beck’s radio discussion today..
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/42150/
He has got it wrapped up!
Soros, John Podesta, Larry Podesta, Obama, and the greater cast of socialists have planned the denuding of the oil industry and are carrying it off right before our disbelieving eyes!
Ernie, I am shot at this point. Hard day at work... I will pass on a few other responses and new pings you offered. Let us hope Obi and his commie squad do consider what Gov. Jindal has with good reason requested.
IF IT WASN’T FOR BP, IRAN’S OIL WOULD PROBABLY STILL BE WHERE IT ALWAYS WAS...
http://www.ehow.com/about_5078945_history-bp-oil.html
Since the 1908 discovery of oil in present-day Iran, British Petroleum has been a leading player in the global energy market. The London-based multinational is the world’s third-largest energy company, behind Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. Officially incorporated in 1909 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, BP turned 100 years old in 2009.
.History
After years of exploration, adventurer William Knox D’Arcy discovered oil in Persia (now Iran) in 1908. This was the first oil discovery in the Middle East. In April 1909, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was incorporated. This company was the predecessor of BP.
Controversy
In 1935, after Persia became Iran, the company renamed itself Anglo-Iranian Oil. After World War II, the company became the focus of discontent among Iranians, who charged that the dividends they received from oil production were too small. In 1951, under the leadership of Mohammed Mossadeq, Iran nationalized its oil industry. This led to a 1953 coup that resulted in Mossadeq’s overthrow. The British government and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency were implicated in the coup, which some critics charged was undertaken in part to protect Anglo-Iranian Oil’s profits in the region. By 1954, Anglo-Iranian Oil was renamed British Petroleum and resumed oil production in Iran. BP continued its Iranian operations until 1979, when the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini confiscated the company’s assets in Iran.
Diversification and Expansion
The situation in Iran demonstrated to BP leaders the hazards of depending on one country for its oil. During the early 1950s, BP expanded into other parts of the Middle East, as well as Canada, Africa, and Europe. BP became a key player in Alaska after the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay. It further expanded its activities in the United States when it acquired marketing and refining capacity from Atlantic Richfield (Arco).
Privatization
For years, the British government had owned a stake in BP. This changed in the 1980s under the privatization policy of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. By 1987, the British government had sold its holdings in BP.
.
Read more: The History of BP Oil | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_5078945_history-bp-oil.html#ixzz0rYFlZY00
see #39!
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