BP’s Response to Stuff Happens or Houston We Have a Problem
by: Valerie Elverton-Dixon on May 24th, 2010 | 7 Comments »
Thinking about BPs response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we hear one of its representatives say: “Alternatives are currently being progressed.” This is what Doug Suttles, Chief Operation Officer of the Exploration and Production Division of BP told Matt Lauer on the Today Show on Monday, May 24. A more straight forward response would be: “We do not know how to fix it.” The federal government officials should say the same thing. Instead we get awkward statements in the passive voice and talk about the federal government applying more pressure to BP. Until we have better answers, we ought to stop off-shore drilling.
BP’s response reminds me of a scene in the movie Apollo 13. Three astronauts are coming back home after an explosion caused them to have to abort their mission to the moon. “Houston we have a problem.” It turns out there were a series of problems that needed a solution to bring the men home safely. One problem was how to power up the capsule for reentry. At one point, one of the astronauts rightly surmises:” They don’t know how to do it.” Much of the suspense of the movie is watching the experiments on the ground to find the correct procedure to give the men enough power to return to earth safely.
In this current disaster, engineers from across the oil industry are in Houston working on the problem. However, it is correct for us to surmise that they do not know how to do it. If they had a solution, it would have already been deployed. The federal government does not know how to fix it. I have no doubt that BP would listen to anyone with a workable idea at this point. The problem of fixing a leak at this depth is clearly beyond our current knowledge. Spokespeople for BP and for the federal government should treat the public as if we are adults and say so. Everything BP does at this point is an experiment, and they have no idea how these experiments will work. They do not know what the consequences of the fix to the problem will be.
They have used chemical dispersants on the oil spill that may be more toxic than the oil itself. At the same time, the Obama administration has come under attack from friend and foe for its response. The New York Times reports that despite President Obama’s moratorium on permits for drilling new oil well, that permits have nonetheless been issued. During his media address to the nation on Saturday, May 22, the president announced a bi-partisan commission to study this accident to learn the root causes and the options for preventing such a thing in the future. This is to be a comprehensive study.
In his response, Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana said that people opposed to off-shore drilling ought not to use this disaster as a reason to press for the end of off-shore drilling. He says the choice of whether to drill off shore or not to drill off shore is a false choice because we still need the oil. I say: we do not need the oil at this price. We ought to end off-shore oil drilling because we do not have the knowledge to fix the inevitable problems that will occur when drilling at the depths of the current leak. It is an assault on the environment and a violation of small business interests to have oil gushing into the gulf and possibly even into the Atlantic Ocean and beyond while the oil companies experiment.
When we think about our energy future, we not only have to think about sources of fuel, but we ought to also think about using less of it. We have to think about our energy needs within the context of new thinking on everything from urban planning to mass transportation, from painting the roofs of our houses white to retrofitting them for solar energy and the like. We ought to think about battery operated cars that allow us to run local errands and develop systems of high-speed rail to get us from city to city. We need to return to the bike with baskets model for short trips to get a few items from the store. Perhaps a way to address the problem of overweight and obesity in this country is to only eat what we can carry from the store either walking or in our baskets on the bike.
To drill or not to drill is a false choice if we see the problem within a narrow context of fueling our energy needs according to our present way of living life in the United States. The change we need will require more creative thinking beyond how much gasoline we use and the price at the pump.
There is an amusing list of ideological and religious responses to when S**t Happens. This BP disaster is giving us more to add to the list.
BP: Alternatives (to fix the s**t) are currently being progressed
President Obama: I have created a commission to study the s**t.
Rand Paul: It is un-American to criticize businesses that cause s**t to happen
David Vitter: It is a false choice to stop doing the s**t that causes s**t to happen.
I could go on.
The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is not funny. It is a tragedy affecting life in that area in ways we cannot comprehend for a length of time that we cannot know. BP ought to make the people affected by the spill whole. It ought to pay for the environmental damage that this spill has done and will do. There ought not to be caps on its liability. If anything good comes out of this, it will be that we stop drilling for oil off shore at dangerous depths and think more creatively about the lives we live and the ways we fuel our life-style choices.
I urge everybody to google Nickola Tesla and consider the work that genius was carrying out towards ‘free energy’ almost one hundred years ago, and its suppression and his possible murder…………..it places fossil fuels and their consequences for the planet at the lowest end of intelligence and morality……………the future for energy could be
a real release and freeing for the human race and our planet………maybe it will take a catastophe such as that in the Gulf of Mexico to force the issue………Tony Roeber
Possible solution re the ongoing disaster in the Gulf:
Call in the cautious and competent Norwegian engineers who have been exploiting the
North Sea oil deposits since shortly after WW2 without a major accident, often under
extreme weather conditions. The oil recovered – incidentally – is considered to be the
natural property of the entire Norwegian people and is exploited for their benefit.
I have read that Norwegian Government supervisory regulations require that TWO Blowout
Preventer valves be installed as a new well is drilled; the first a primary BPV and the second
an emergency back-up BPV. Each BPV costs about $500,000.
Our basic problem is that although our oil industry is generally awash in enormous amounts
of wealth it is never enough. Raw greed and avarice are the engines that drive our economic
system, and with little or no government supervision careless and miserly avarice always wins
out.
The long history of the oil industry in the United States is a sordid one, going all the way back to
the first well dug in Pennsylvania by Edwin Drake in 1858.
The best known of the common thieves and rascals drawn to the oil bonanza was the miserly and
unscrupulous John D. Rockefeller, closely followed by a loathsome man with no redeeming human
qualities, H.L. Hunt. There have been countless scoundrels in the industry even up to the present
day, all of whom make the Mafia look like a benevolent charitable society.
The man who founded BP got his start stealing Persia’s (now Iran) only major natural resource with
the connivance of the then Shah. Following the exile of a successor Shah, Mohammad Reza, BP (Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company) was kicked out of Iran in the 1950′s by the new Prime Minister Mossadegh. The
US Government and its agent, the CIA, then financed and provoked the unseating and exile of Mossadegh
and returned the Shah to his throne. BP was out, but now the Iranian oil resource was under the indirect
control of US oil interests. That condition lasted until Ayatollah Khomeini’s successful revolution of 1979.
The US has spent the last 30 years subverting the Iranian government, an effort intended to return the
situation to the natural order of things, i.e., US hegemony over Iran’s affairs and the indirect control of
the Iranian oil industry to British and US oil companies.
There is a massive historical source of facts and information on the people and the events of the
oil exploration and production industry readily available at most County Public Library systems.
Worth a reading by any individual who has an interest in how the world works..
The basic problem is that no system based on greed can be trusted to police itself. Oversight is always required.
how about a national boycott of bp?
There are quite a few people on Facebook who are trying to get a “Boycott Petroleum Products Day” going for July 6th. Here’s a link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boycott-Petroleum-Products-Day/117242101649732?ref=ts
To really be effective,however, it needs to be a complete and irreversible cultural change on the part of all of us who care. A one-day boycott will not do much, other than attract (maybe) some cursory media attention, and a guffaw on the part of BP executives.
If we all work hard at changing our lifestyles, i.e. stop driving so much, or better yet, getting rid of our cars and using mass transit or walking, and tell the retailers of products that we buy that we will not patronize their business if they continue stocking products that require oil to manufacture, then we will make a noticeable difference.
Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana said that people opposed to off-shore drilling ought not to use this disaster as a reason to press for the end of off-shore drilling. He says the choice of whether to drill off shore or not to drill off shore is a false choice because we still need the oil. I say: we do not need the oil at this price.
Indeed. yet the Administration is taking up Vitter’s [ill]logic. Every single BP exec who insisted on cutting corners should be tried and convicted of gross negligence and manslaughter at the very least. It’s the owning class deciders who keep doing assinine things and making the rest of us pay for it. When will this become an issue of human dignity and honor?
Democracy Now!’s broadcast today had a very powerful interview by a local Louisiana shrimper, a local mucky muck who owns the big town biz. His working class logic is impeccable and he speaks from the heart, at one point nearly breaking down when he lays out who’s responsible and who’s paying the price for the actions of those who will never bear those costs. I’m so conditioned to hearing right wing nonsense from rural working class folks in the south, it was refreshing to hear a nuts and bolts response that was dignified, crackling with integrity and justice.
Meanwhile the CEO of BP “wants his life back.” Boo hoo rich guy. I can tell that scoundrel a bunch of Gulf communities want theirs back. But he took it from them and they won’t get any of it back.
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