WSJ - "Documents Show BP Opposed New, Stricter Safety Rules" Proposed By Obama Administration

[TomCADem]

This is not being reported on much, but the Petroleum industry was actively opposing efforts by the Obama administration to reverse Bush era rules, and improve the safety of offshore drilling. Of course, Bobby Jindal and other Republicans are now demanding that Obama immediately end the moratorium on deep water drilling because they insist that it is safe even as the leak continues!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471204575209331720726738.html

As BP PLC defended its handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, documents show it argued against new, stricter safety rules proposed last year by the U.S. agency that oversees offshore drilling.

The British oil giant was one of several companies that wrote to the U.S. Minerals Management Service this past September saying additional regulation of the oil industry was unnecessary. In a letter, BP said the current voluntary system of safety procedures was adequate.

* * *
As BP touted the scale of the cleanup, documents showed that it was one of several companies that opposed efforts to tighten up safety procedures offshore. Last year, the MMS studied more than 1,400 offshore incidents that led to 41 deaths and hundreds of injuries between 2001 and 2007. Many of them, the MMS found, were linked to factors such as communications failures, a lack of written procedures and the failure of supervisors to enforce existing rules, and proposed mandatory requirements to reduce the number of incidents. That would have replaced a system under which many safety procedures were voluntary.

In a letter published on the U.S. government Web site Regulations.gov, Richard Morrison, BP's vice president for Gulf of Mexico production, wrote that while BP "is supportive of companies having a system in place to reduce risk, accidents, injuries and spills, we are not supportive of the extensive, prescriptive regulations as proposed in this rule."

[Scurrilous]

1. K & R

:thumbsup:

[Catherina]

2. And the Administration rolled over and acquiesced.

BP's opposition is no excuse. We didn't vote for BP to decide policy in this country.

[TomCADem]

11. Because The Public Demanded It, Up To 74% Supported Offshore Drilling Before The Spill

Whenever a President opposes a position that over 70 percent of the population supports, that President is on shaky ground. Americans demand their cheap gas, and any effort to insist on tighter controls will likely be spun by the corporate media as elitist and insensitive to the energy needs of normal Americans.

Look at the Bobby Jindal now complaining about how Obama does not get it about the moratorium on drilling hurting jobs even as the leak continues to gush. On DU, some folks were hailing his actions because he pandering to the camera. BUT the media ignored his support for the 2006 DOER Act.

The article shows that the Obama administration was pushing for stricter regulation, but encountering stiff opposition. Look at the energy bill. Even after the spill, Republicans are still stonewalling and also opposing lifting the cap on the liability for oil companies.

Does the media call them out? No. Instead, the corporate media carries their water.

[girl gone mad]

14. Convenient excuse.

But we elect leaders to lead.

If public opinion and public demands were really such a primary consideration, we would have gotten the public option and no mandates. That didn't happen.

Everyone knows what's going on here, and it has absolutely nothing to do with what the public demands.

[TomCADem]

16. Leadership Means Reponding To The Needs Of The People. Cheap Gas!

The only thing convenient is to say an amorphism like "we elect leaders to lead." Perhaps the people elect leaders who promise cheap gas, and delivering on this promise is "leadership."

Why is it when an elected does something that we support, but the majority oppose, we call it leadership. However, when an official does something that we oppose, but the majority support, we call it "pandering."

I think Obama has exercised great leadership in trying to meet the competing demands of its people. Americans demand cheap gas, but our future demands that we prepare for a future that is dependent on alternative fuel shortages.

Anyone on an internet message board can recite amorphisms like "we elect leaders to lead," to dismiss the wishes of the majority. A real leader deals with the reality that Americans would quickly rebel against any policy that is perceived to increase gas prices. However, a real leader also tries to balance these current demands against the need to prepare for a future in which we need to transition to alternative fuel sources.

This is exactly what Obama has been trying to do, and is continuing to do, by pushing for a climate bill that helps fund the development of alternative energy sources.

Now, I am open to either cap and trade or a carbon tax. I am not dogmatic about either. Yet, watch if you propose either, and you will see liberals deeply divided on these proposals.

So, welcome to leadership. Its not magic. Its hard work and compromise, and dealing with the fickle opinions of the public in a Democratic system of government with a corporate dominated media.

[Hekate]

19. KnR for your post, Tom.

I wouldn't want that man's job for all the oil stock in Cheney's back pockets.

Hekate

[blm]

3. Boy, does THIS need to be frontpaged....

.

[Bozita]

4. +1

[malaise]

15. This needs to be sent to KO and Rachel

very important

Rec

[jillan]

17. Definitely - and frontpaged on every newspaper....

like THAT would ever happen :eyes:

[JVS]

5. K&R

[Turbineguy]

6. That's the problem with regulation.

if it costs, it's too much. When things go wrong, it's not enough.

[pnorman]

10. Hi, Turbineguy!

:hi: :hi:

[Turbineguy]

13. Hey!

:bounce:

[Laelth]

7. Of course BP opposed stronger safety rules.

And who is surprised by this?

Just like Republicans who fought against Social Security, civil rights, and Medicare/Medicaid. Conservatives are almost always wrong, on almost every issue. Why we keep listening to them and actually considering their views is beyond me.

In the words of the great Mark Shields, "A conservative is a person who agrees with liberal policy 20 years after it becomes law."

:dem:

-Laelth

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

8. Teenager protests weeknight curfew

Not a surprise. And the response should be exactly the same.

"Because I said so".

[spanone]

9. k&r

[flyarm]

12. And drunk drivers swear they are not drunk!..who read these reports?

it must have been drunks in our government who read this report of the SPILL PLANS by BP last year..to allow the report that is a cut and paste piece of shit to pass through this or any admistration and our government!




Read more: http://www.adn.com/2010/06/09/1315823/bp-c-plan.html

"Lutz is listed as a go-to wildlife specialist at the University of Miami. But Lutz, an eminent sea turtle expert, left Miami almost 20 years ago to chair the marine biology department at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He died four years before the plan was published."
BP's Gulf spill plan outdated, error-filled

By JUSTIN PRITCHARD, TAMARA LUSH and HOLBROOK MOHR
The Associated Press

Published: June 9th, 2010 10:32 PM
Last Modified: June 12th, 2010 11:38 AM

VENICE, La. - Professor Peter Lutz is listed in BP's 2009 response plan for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a national wildlife expert. He died in 2005.



Under the heading "sensitive biological resources," the plan lists marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals. None lives anywhere near the Gulf.

The names and phone numbers of several Texas A&M University marine life specialists are wrong. So are the numbers for marine mammal stranding network offices in Louisiana and Florida, which are no longer in service.

BP PLC's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig are riddled with omissions and glaring errors, according to an Associated Press analysis that details how BP officials have been making it up as they go along. The lengthy plans approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company's preparedness to deal with one.

"Look, it's obvious to everybody in south Louisiana that they didn't have a plan, they didn't have an adequate plan to deal with this spill," said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. "They didn't anticipate the (blowout preventer) failure. They didn't anticipate this much oil hitting our coast. From the very first days, they kept telling us, ‘Don't worry, the oil's not going to make it to your coast.' "

In the spill scenarios detailed in the BP's exploration plan, fish, marine mammals and birds escape serious harm; beaches remain pristine; water quality is only a temporary problem. And those are the projections for a leak about 10 times worse than what has been calculated for the ongoing disaster.

There are other wildly false assumptions in the documents. BP's proposed method to calculate spill volume judging by the darkness of the oil sheen is way off. The internationally accepted formula would produce estimates 100 times higher.

The Gulf's loop current, which is projected to help eventually send oil hundreds of miles around Florida's southern tip and up the Atlantic coast, isn't mentioned in either plan.


The website listed for Marine Spill Response Corp. - one of two firms that BP relies on for equipment to clean a spill - links to a defunct Japanese-language page.


In early May, at least 80 Louisiana state prisoners were trained to clean birds by listening to a presentation and watching a video. It was a work force never envisioned in the plans, which contain no detailed references to how birds would be cleansed of oil.

And while BP officials and the federal government have insisted that they have attacked the problem as if it were a much larger spill, that isn't apparent from the constantly evolving nature of the response.

Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said in an e-mail Wednesday to the AP that he and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., have asked for a criminal investigation of some of the company's claims.

"The AP report paints a picture of a company that was making it up as it went along, while telling regulators it had the full capability to deal with a major spill," Nelson said in an e-mail. "We know that wasn't true."

This week, after BP reported the seemingly good news that a containment cap installed on the wellhead was funneling some of the gushing crude to a tanker on the surface, BP introduced a whole new set of plans mostly aimed at capturing more oil.

The latest incarnation calls for building a larger cap, using a special incinerator to burn off some of the recaptured oil and bringing in a floating platform to process the oil being sucked away from the gushing well.

In other words, the on-the-fly planning continues.

---

Some examples of how BP's plans have fallen short:

- Beaches where oil washed up within weeks of a spill were supposed to be safe from contamination because BP promised it could marshal more than enough boats to scoop up all the oil before any deepwater spill could reach shore - a claim that in retrospect seems absurd.

"The vessels in question maintain the necessary spill containment and recovery equipment to respond effectively," one of the documents says.

BP asserts that the combined response could skim, suck up or otherwise remove 20 million gallons of oil each day from the water. But that is about how much has leaked in the past six weeks - and the slick now covers about 3,300 square miles, according to Hans Graber, director of the University of Miami's satellite sensing facility. Only a small fraction of the spill has been successfully skimmed. Plus, an undetermined portion of the spill has sunk to the bottom of the Gulf or is suspended somewhere in between.

The plan uses computer modeling to project a 21 percent chance of oil reaching the Louisiana coast within a month of a spill. In reality, an oily sheen reached the Mississippi River delta just nine days after the April 20 explosion. Heavy globs soon followed. Other locales where oil washed up within weeks of the explosion were characterized in BP's regional plan as safely out of the way of any oil danger.

- BP's site plan regarding birds, sea turtles or endangered marine mammals ("no adverse impacts") also have proved far too optimistic.

While the exact toll on the Gulf's wildlife may never be known, the effects clearly have been devastating.

More than 400 oiled birds have been treated, while dozens have been found dead and covered in crude, mainly in Louisiana but also in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. On remote islands teeming with birds, a visible patina of oil taints pelicans, gulls, terns and herons, as captured in AP photos that depict one of the more gut-wrenching aspects of the spill's impact. Such scenes are no longer unusual; the response plans anticipate nothing on this scale.

In Louisiana's Barataria Bay, a dead sea turtle caked in reddish-brown oil lay splayed out with dragonflies buzzing by. More than 200 lifeless turtles and several dolphins also have washed ashore. So have countless fish.

There weren't supposed to be any coastline problems because the site was far offshore. "Due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected," the site plan says.

But that distance has failed to protect precious resources. And last week, a group of environmental research center scientists released a computer model that suggested oil could ride ocean currents around Florida and up to North Carolina by summer.

[Hydra]

18. And BP got their way..why?

The Administration can meditate on how rolling over has worked for them so far...but I don't buy that it's "rolling over." They lose so much ground each time that it's a form of political suicide.

So why do they keep doing it, of not because they want to?

[chill_wind]

20. Of course they did. And they're good at it. Their Atlantis is still operating

despite lawmakers and whistleblowers---- thanks to Salazar in the court.

[Raine]

21. and so BP like a spoiled brat having a tantrum

ended up getting their way. :mad:

edit: changed word