Sense of DU: Is BP The Best Entity To Lead The Cleanup?

[MannyGoldstein]

Poll question: Sense of DU: Is BP The Best Entity To Lead The Cleanup?

What's your thinking?

[babylonsister]

1. What's your thinking? nt

[MannyGoldstein]

3. A government agency should be in charge

Using BP and other oil companies as assets, along with the smartest folks they can find who can be creative and pragmatic.

BP is incapable of thinking outside the box - a company like that spits out people who can do that. And we desperately need outside the box (but pragmatic) ideas right now, because we're horrifically fucked. We need a government entity to work with creative problem solvers to generate the ideas, and then command BP and others to execute the plans.

[LakeSamish706]

4. I agree, and with BP you know that they are going to be taking the cheapest route that

they can. That route may or may not be anywhere near the answer to where we need to go.

[babylonsister]

8. There's no government 'agency' per se, but from what

I gather, bp is answering to the gov't, and the smartest folks around are providing input.

As has been noted, bp has an economic interest and are suspect, yet they have the most 'intelligence'.

I think we are horrifically fucked unless someone comes up with a novel idea that no one has thought of.

As for ideas:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-02/bp-suggestion-box-frustrating-companies-not-cameron-costner.html

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc has received almost 35,000 ideas in just over a month on how best to clean up millions of gallons of oil from the biggest spill in U.S. history. So far, only four have made it into testing.

more...

[Warren Stupidity]

2. BP has demonstrated its inability to lead.

The government should be directing BP until this disaster is under control.

[niceypoo]

12. BP has also demonstrated they dont know how to stop oil leaks

They would prefer to hide the oil with dispersants rather than clean it up - less of a hit on their bottom line.

[Jennicut]

5. The cleanup can be taken out of their hands but stopping the leak

is their issue. We don't have the equipment of training for that.

[MannyGoldstein]

6. The Evidence Seems To Indicate That They Don't Either

At least as far as I can tell. They should be used as an asset, but they seem unable to make something happen in a timely fashion.

[Jennicut]

7. No, those attempts all had little chance of working.

The relief well could work (but still will be hard to do, must be very, very accurate). The other attempts had never been done in a depth of 5000 feet. BP pretty much lied about the chances of any of those things working. Top kill most certainly was never tried on anything but shallow water.
And I guess the govt. could take the equipment and the people using it and just put them under govt. control but the fact still remains that stopping this at 5000 feet is still incredibly hard. A timely fashion is two months or more. Other wells in shallower water too longer then that to get the relief well to work.

[MannyGoldstein]

9. So How Does That Help Your Assertion?

They are trying things that are unlikely to work. They can keep drilling their relief drill, but there should be very, very close oversight. From people who have a track record of being honest rather than slippery.

If we could launch a Saturn V in six years, we can close that well in a few weeks. Yes, we can. But, clearly, we need Saturn V caliber people, not folks who only know CYA mode.

[Jennicut]

10. It took 10 weeks to get the relief wells to even work for the Montara Oil Spill

in Australia, that was in water about 246 feet deep. That happened in August of last year. A much smaller depth. A few weeks for this well? More like two months, if we are lucky.

[On the Road]

11. The MMS is Built to Regulate

It would be like letting the bureaucrats at the FCC run the telephone network. BP and other oil companies are the operators.

Even if another oil company were to come in, it's not their well. You can't walk in to someone else's operation and expect to immediately do a better job. The relevant knowledge and skills are at BP.

It is unlikely that the brightest minds outside the oil industry are going to come up with a new concept that can be implemented sooner than the relief well. Other folks from the oil industry might be brought in, but it doesn't appear that lack of ideas is the issue. It is the ability to get one that can be implemented immediately.

[TheKentuckian]

13. Anybody that thinks BP is willing or capable of making decisions for the good

of the environment, wildlife, or the way of life and health of our citizens over what is good for BP and it's leadership is delusional.

I swear it seems like many are just incapable or very unwilling to see the scope of this fiasco beyond "plug the damn hole". You have to be pretty damn Republican to twist the mind to the point that one would'd believe BP would make better calls for the good of the environment than say the EPA, it is preposterous.

BP can't handle the area that is supposed to be their field of expertise and with some of the most advanced equipment. I can't imagine why anybody thinks they are at all suitable for leading in tasks they don't even give a crap about in addition to devising with all the help the world can offer to close off the flow.

BP has made some seriously detrimental environmental decisions for their own interest in reducing liability and evading culpability and that can't be allowed to go on under any circumstances. There will prices paid for some of these choices that a check will not square. Choices that rational people with different priorities would never make. Choices made without any real knowledge of the impact they would create. They nothing about using those dispersants at that depth and with that crude coming out at that pressure, that was an utterly irresponsible call that they continue to make. They overrule the EPA on Corexit to this very moment.

They know squat about protecting marshes, they know very little about their own methods, they know nothing about marine biology of note, they have no specific containment methods.

Plus, BP's leadership is careless, inept, irresponsible, dishonest, callous, and greedy to start. They offer nothing that can't be upgraded Tony fucking Hayward ain't going to be plugging any fucking holes, he simply hopefully has some folks on the payroll or a contractor that will.

[Dr Morbius]

14. There are legal issues. Issues of liability.

I'd hazard that BP would like nothing better than for this to be taken off their hands. They'd never have to pay a dime, because their lawyers would argue that since the feds took the problem for them, it eliminates their legal liability.

Having BP clean it up, with the Coast Guard monitoring the fire under their collective ass, is I'm afraid the best option of a small list of bad options.

I like this picture, which I lifted from a different thread.

[harun]

15. Two different tasks, the cleanup and leak containment.

For the cleanup, they shouldn't have anything to do with it other than paying the bill.

For leak containment they should have to propose everything they are doing to the U.S. government and if given approval, carry out their plan.