Intro:
On April 20, 2010, an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon, which was under contractwith British Petroleum (BP) to drill an exploratory well at the Macondo site in the Gulfof Mexico. The explosion was swiftly followed by the unrestricted flow of oil and natural gas from the well-head into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It has been 71 days since the accident,and a massive volume of oil continues to spill into the Gulf. As of June 30, 2010, the government estimates that between 40.7 million gallons(969,000 barrels) and 117.6 million gallons (2.8mbarrels) of oil has been released. BP and the federal government have suffered a series of setbacks as they have attempted to plug the well, and most of the oil remains in the Gulf in various states of decomposition.
Not a bad summary of the events leading up to this debacle, but here is the meat of Issa's report:
• Officials on the ground dispute key White House assertions about the number and timeliness of assets deployed in the Gulf.
Local officials describe White House outreach efforts as more focused on stopping bad press than on addressing the disaster at hand;
• The White House’s assurances that there are adequate resources are at odds with the reality on the ground, where those on the frontline of the spill express significant frustration over the lack of assets.
Local complaints are supported by the fact that the White House waited until Day 70 of the oil spill to accept critical offers of international assistance.
Local workers and boats could have been assisting more with the clean-up if the Federal government had provided them with needed supplies and equipment;
• While the White House has tried to use the delay in finding a visible leak to explainits early silence on the oil spill.Transocean officials and Coast Guard documents from the scene of the oil spill reveal clear and early indications of a substantial oil leak days earlier than White House accounts;
• The failure of Administration officials to quickly waive laws preventing necessary foreign assets from reaching the Gulf and other regulations are hampering efforts to clean-up and limit damage from the oil spill.
Local officials feel the federal government is making the perfect the enemy of the good in cleanup efforts;
• Local officials strongly dispute President Obama’s insistence that the federal government – and not BP – has been in control since day one. One Coast GuardAdmiral told congressional investigators that decisions on the ground are made
through a “consensus-based” process with BP. In practice, the Federal Government is not in charge of oil spill response efforts through a command-and-control approach;
• Local officials strongly believe the President’s call for a drilling moratorium will significantly compound the economic damage caused by the oil spill and will actually increase risk associated with future offshore drilling projects. (Highlighted Parts Mine)
Probably one of the more aspects is the accusation of "phantom assets) in the Gulf. Apparently the White House team that gave us saved and created jobs also has mythical numbers for rescue and clean up equipment:
The White House blog details a number of assets deployed in the region to combat the spill.This includes vessels, boom, and dispersant. The number of assets claimed, however, does not appear to match what is actually in the field. Parish officials maintain that the thousands of vessels cited in the blog are non-existent. One senior official refers to them as “phantom assets.” When asked to elaborate, he explained that when he asks the federal government to provide the location of its assets, it either refuses or cannot do so.4 Daily helicopter search grids performed by the Parish sheriff’s department confirm to him that very few of the assets claimed are deployed.
Later aspects include a damning portion which compares the president's all out war rhetoric with the disorganized clean up effort on the ground. Its clear he Federal red tape has gotten to the point that going to jail isn't enough to deter people from taking things into their own hands:
These bureaucratic breakdowns have forced at least one Parish to take matters into its own hands.One Jefferson official, who said that “the only thing [Coast Guard and BP] understand is threats and embarrassment,” commandeered over fifty vesselssitting idle at docks while oil slicks approached shore. He told committee staff that BP and Coast Guard repeatedly denied his request to deploy the boats because they had no fuel or groceries. Despite Coast Guard’s threat of military force, he exercised his emergency law enforcement powers to seize the equipment. Using Parish funds, he supplied the vessels and sent them out to sea.
Desperate times certainly call for desperate measures! Of course one of the more controversial decisions was Obama's delays in waiving the Jones Act:
According to local officials, the decision to not waive the Jones Act has impaired Gulf Coast clean-up efforts. The most likely application of a broad-based Jones Act waiver would be for the operation of boats equipped with skimmers, which is one of the most effective tools to clean up the oil. Rear Admiral Jim Watson conceded in a briefing to Chairman Towns and Ranking Member Issa that the Coast Guard does not currently have access to a sufficient numbers of skimmers. The importance of skimmers is articulated by Deano Bonano, Homeland Security Director of Jefferson Parish: “The enemy is the oil. Lets put a fleet out there and every skimmer we can find and skim off as much as we can before it gets ashore, because here in Louisiana, our marshes are so fragile, once the oil gets there, the battle is over.”20 Accordingly, the President should be taking swift action to facilitate the delivery of every available skimmer into the Gulf, regardless of the flag flown.
Why not use every asset you possibly could? Even worse they did turn skimmers around:
While Administration officials have maintained that the Jones Act is not an obstacle and going so far as to claim that “nobody has come forward with a Jones Act Waiver [request],”21 the Deputy Administrator of the Maritime Administration confirmed that one foreign flagged skimmer has made a Jones Act request, which was denied ostensibly because American vessels could perform the same functions.22 Moreover, local officials reported that to their great disappointment, Norwegian skimmers en route to the Gulf were turned around. A St. Bernard official bluntly stated that he and other local responders were “salivating over the prospect of getting this equipment.” These anecdotes call into question the claim made by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs that “if somebody down there needed a ship from the Netherlands or somewhere else the President and Admiral Allen would waive the Jones Act in 10 seconds.”
Of course the Obama double whammy was the moratorium on drilling:
President Obama has announced his intention to impose a six-month moratorium on drilling.Although court action has now thrown the implementation of the moratorium into question, if imposed, the moratorium would apply to new drilling in water depths greater than 500 feet, and suspends drilling on 33 wells currently under construction.30 The President’s action is based on an apparently manipulated recommendation from Secretary Salazar, contained in a May 27, 2010, report on “Increased Safety Measures for Energy Development on the Outer Continental Shelf.”31 Local officials in Louisiana coastal communities broadly believe a six month moratorium on any drilling is overly broad, imposes acute economic pain on the residents of the Gulf, and fails to contribute significantly to the stated safety goals of the President. In their view, it neither stops the current leak, nor contributes in any way to cleaning up the Gulf; rather, it significantly compounds the economic damage caused by the oil spill.
Of course the Gulf region is going to need every dime to repair the damage, but the President for political reasons shut them down. We are talking about the loss of 40,000 jobs and the possible relocation of the rigs overseas as they look for actual work. Double whammy indeed!
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