Charlie Rose

JimBullis  06/13/2010 05:48 PM Report

Today we have reports that Our Govts. did converse. Only it was with a mind to discuss how to be kind to BP. That was not my instruction.

We also have some token dissatisfaction for BP where a second Admiral involved yesterday, demanded a plan for improved response in 48 hours. I had a momentary thought of progress, but then realized that a plan is not action. I would have been happier to see them actually ordering in a tanker to enable them to hold the outgushing oil when it was readily possible to do so.

I then remembered what a plan means. A plan is a way to show concern and intent without actually sounding critical of past actions. So the on going Admiral in charge does not get embarrassed for having abdicated all control in favor of letting BP do it, and continuing to be fooled that they were a competent and well intentioned outfit. The plan can then be debated for a while, as gushing continues, but faces will be saved all around.

JimBullis  06/10/2010 03:18 PM Report

I called yesterday for termination of BP under joint action of UK and USA governments. (See tar and feathers below.)

Today, as reported in the WSJ, the UK government issued a statement defending BP, though really, it was in response to a threat that their dividend might be reduced.

But the real notable fact is the non-event of BP continuing to not-collect more than 15,800 barrels of oil. Two days ago they were cut off in their oil collection by the fact that they did not have a processing ship with capacity to handle more than that. I threw an internet comment tantrum when I heard that Coast Gurard Admiral Allen accept this as a reasonable situation. Yesterday, it was announced that another collecting ship was on site, but it seemed to not change the spill rate (from the video streams that I monitor -- along with millions of others, of course). I wondered, out loud on the internet, if they had forgotten a transfer pipe. They also said that a tanker was coming from the North Sea, and this evoked a continuing internet tantrum by me. (See below for an example.)

So today the artful dodger (corporate BP) announces, "The cap collected 15,800 barrels of oil Wednesday, and the containment system will be expanded over the coming days to increase its capacity to process the captured oil to 28,000 barrels a day."

The appropriate emotional response is, "!@#$%^&*()_+_)(*&^%$#@!---"

I guess I need to stipulate that the tar for BP is to be heated up to roofing tar temperture.

Oh well, our Energy Advisor said while wringing her hands that we might have to wait a few months for the relief wells, and oh my, this is a difficult situation.

The Republicans jumped on the situation with criticism that the limits on liability should be kept low. This was of course in defense of smaller operators, a noble and generous attitude on their part, but somehow they miss the concept that dangerous activities have to be carried out responsibly, whoever is doing such. By the way, it has long been the practice that bonds are posted to cover damages, and bonding companies exist for benefit of smaller operators. And we always had the corporate veil and bankruptcy which ultimately limit liability. Pres. Bush, the elder, seemed to think it was necessary to limit liability to $75 million, which would have provided generous payment for about a minute worth of oil spill damages.

As to my call for termination of BP: Case closed.

JimBullis  06/09/2010 12:38 PM Report

Updates from yesterday:

Well, BP must have authorized the additional ship to steam at full speed, deciding in the face of criticism that a less fuel efficient transit would be a good idea, so now we have another ship on site, supposedly to collect oil. Well, ok, but the oil gushes ever faster. Did they forget to bring in a transfer pipe?

And a tanker is coming down from the North Sea. What?!!!!! Oh boy. These guys really know how to jump on things fast. (sarcasm drips, er, gushes from my keyboard). This adds to my case that BP is ostracized in the industry, so of the hundreds of tankers normally plying the sea lanes to Houston, none can be spared. Or is the real limitation that BP does not want to get billed for use of such? So they found an old hulk lying useless at anchor up in the North Sea, and if they transit slowly, it won't be too costly to make a show of it as the tanker arrives.

Summing comments from yesterday:

It looks like BP is a bad apple in the barrel and should be turned out to the pigs.

First, tar and feathers are needed, uh, I guess we have the tar. The rest of the industry should bring the rail. Getting rid of this slimey incompetent outfit is necessary to the health of the whole energy industry.

After the riding out on the rail, it will be time to have the full force of the USA get with the UK and dismember BP and put it into manageable entities. When the oil gets into the gulf stream and dribbles up on British shores, then maybe the punishment for treason in the UK will be imposed. (I mean the punishment that King Edward established.)

On top of a long list of failures, only explainable as lack of preparedness, lack of competence, and lack of operational funding, we have the last botch where the collecting ship is only capable of handling 15,000 barrels per day. Do they think that that real big gee whiz number would bamboozle us and make us not notice that this means that some 5000 to 10000 barrels per day would not be collected? And would we not know that 10,000 barrels a day not collected would be 10,000 more barrels on the shore? Every g d day!!!!

Do we forget that BP was the primary instigator of the CIA action which set Iran up as our eternal enemy?

Yes, it is time to realize that BP must be terminated.

As to the rest of the industry, it is time to realize that drilling activity is subject to unplanned disasters. Even well planned operations can go wrong, and good planners know that.

So it is time to realize that there must be a well safety office that is empowered with authority to clamp off any well that goes out of control, and it also must be equipped to absolutely make that happen.

This could be compared with the range safety officer at space launches, where that person has absolute authority that can not be challenged, to blow up a rocket that poses a threat to the population.

Even simpler, it is like the fire department that everyone accepts. No, they do not worry about property damage until people are rescued. And nobody argues about that.

BP has been acting like a slum landlord who tells the fire department to stay away after his building has collapsed on the occupants, saying that he is the best equipped to handle it. Then he proceeds to save each beam as he picks it up off the dying bodies. What would we say about a fire department that allowed this?

The missing part of the energy world is a drilling safety office that would operate like a fire department. It would have the absolute authority to clamp down any well that is out of control, and it would have the equipment to do this.

Drilling should not continue until such an office was in place. Of course liability limits have to be removed, and in this circumstance, oil companies should welcome the safety office as a functional way of limiting their exposure.

The basic concept for clamping off a well would be a concrete encasement that was cast in place around the well head and deep around the bore hole pipe. This would of course be a final termination, and the well would be ruined. So with such a fire department like authority close at hand, oil companies will straighten up appropriately.

There is no meaningful regulatory action that our government, or any government for that matter, is capable of, beyond such an agency.

But today we hear about all kinds of tinkering being proposed by our government. Still we do not comprehend the situation.

charlizecourriers  06/08/2010 05:33 PM Report

The theory is that Israel can use the spoils of the 1967 war to lever the peace process. Arabs believe in the spoils of war theory, too. The NEXT war, which is going on as these deluded fools chatter away, will be the lever, to kill the Two State Solution. One solution is coming-the One State Solution.

JimBullis  06/08/2010 04:22 PM Report

We now read this morning in the Wall Street Journal that BP is only able to handle 15,000 barrels a day, so, oh my, the rest has to be dumped for another few days.

They have got to be g d f kidding. The spill reduction is limited by processing capacity? It seems that cost cutting continues to be top priority, so they failed to have adequate capacity on hand. Gee whiz, maybe there would have been a bill for a ship that wasn't needed. And who cares if it is processed? Surely there is tankage around that can hold oil prior to processing.

It is time for tar and feathers. And the rest of the oil industry should bring the rail.

And Admiral Thad Allen calmly tells us that a ship should be arriving in two to three days? Where the heck does he think he is? Super tankers, empty and full go to Houston all the time. Could it be that he does not realize that oil not collected is oil on the beach?

JimBullis  06/08/2010 04:15 PM Report

Using the spill as an incentive for energy policy reform is fine, but it is not a time to do this while the disaster continues to unfold.

When the time comes we need to work out an appropriate energy policy, we will need to figure out that renewables on a meaningful scale are a myth; those saying otherwise are numerically challenged, but happy to offer phony accounting, that accounting often rivalling the stories told by realtors when we were conned into buying houses we can't afford. Realism indicates that we need coal and we need oil, but we can not afford to foul our nest while getting the oil.

BP is the slum landlord that allowed his building to deteriorate, and now it has fallen to ruin, collapsing on the tenants. But now he turns away the fire department, assuring them that he will rescue the tenants, which he proceeds to do, but mostly he carefully saves the fallen beams as he takes them off the dying victims.

Our government is the fire department that says, "Sure, you are best equipped to handle this."

As a person who values how our industrial economy functions and also knows that industrial operations have to be controlled to prevent abuse of the environment, I am enraged. First at BP, second at the industry for not being also enraged enough, third at government which is unable to understand the flaws in the whole situation, and fourth, at environmentalists who seem to be resigned to the idea this spill could go on for three or four more months.

True, it was a marvel that BP allowed the world to observe that they were stumble-bums when it comes to under-sea operations. Sure it is hard, and those who never saw such things before can get all excited about gee whiz robitics, but there are key observations from the ongoing video that show incompetence, unpreparedness, and duplicity of motivation.

Just for the simplest fact. No machinist would expect that a circular saw blade would survive with lateral pressure, and duh, what is it that is causing that massive flow rate? Whoever is running things does not have on staff a competent mechanical engineer, and that tells us that that 'whoever' is incompetent.

Then every thing that has appeared has been late and makeshift in design. Why could they possibly not have put a bottom hole pump in the device that attaches above the leak. Then, the issue of hydrate crystals would be easily managed, but the same failure happened on the first 'top hat' which should have at least started some thinking to go on.

VP Joe Biden said to Charlie Rose that it was "absurd to think that stopping the leak was not in BP's best interest." Well, it is in their interest, but also in their interest is the desire to preserve the asset. Thus, each day a decision is made there is always the question, do we stop this thing dead in two or three days, or do we tinker a bit more and hope to make things a little better and keep the well alive.

From an underwater engineering perspective, it would be entirely feasible to encase this in a concrete block, like a dam in a river, only as a block over the whole top apparatus. The basic form for the concrete was already on scene, and with modification could have served as a form for pouring concrete. With some semblence of competence this could be engineered and implemented very quickly. Yes, some real marine resources would need to be commandeered. Unfortunately the possibility of this is not within the sphere of the Coast Guard or in the circle that advises Pres. Obama. Hence we have this repeating statement that this might go on for three months from a person such as Carol Browner. I am sorry to say, but my outrage is focused on the hapless Coast Guard Admiral and Energy Advisor Carol Browner. But perhaps the lack of coherent outrage from the oil industry is as much to blame. In fact, the entire industrial world is going to stagger with the impact of this disaster. And guess what?: That means the rest of us as well will be impacted as well.

Environmentalists should get a hint that this has to be a terrible environmental disaster, and the possibility of sensibly cutting back on use of coal and oil sands as energy sources is going to be severely set back.

But now we should get outraged that Pres. Obama is talking, this morning, about turning offshore oil back on as soon as possible. Actually, that is needed, but the outraged among us need to tell him to not do that until an independent agency is equipped with means to clamp off any well within 24 hours that fails to be controlled and empowered with authority to act without consent of the culprit. Unfortunately, Pres. Obama says that the offshore oil business will be quickly restarted with stringent safety regulations. But what we have to realize is that this administration is not capable of regulating anything, as demonstrated by their failure to show even a vague understanding of the nature of the ongoing situation.

Yes, the entire oil industry needs to have the heck kicked out of it. But then it needs to be put back in business.

Economic catastrophe has been looming over us for some time, even before this happened. An energy bill as a knee jerk response to a disaster might well kick the last pins out from under our developed existence.

REMant  06/08/2010 11:45 AM Report

Well, 3rd world development should reduce population growth and presuming that we continue to allow immigration as we have for the past few decades, the main difference will be not so much a population imbalance as a relative loss of European stock. Re Gaza I doubt Hamas will allow aid groups to overshadow or undermine its leadership, because it would appear that we were trying to buy them off as we have elsewhere, and so aid will have to go through them, which will mean that some will have to go into defense, and come possibly only from neutral sources. Israel simply has to come to grips with the situation as it exists, which, I'm afraid, is mostly of its own making.