Salazar: Gov't failed to assure drilling safety

[Andronex]

Source: The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar conceded Tuesday that the government failed to hold the oil industry accountable and ensure safety in offshore oil drilling.

Salazar, in his first appearance before Congress since the April 20 Gulf accident, promised an overhaul of the agency that regulates offshore oil drilling to give it "more tools, more resources, more independence and greater authority."

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., in opening a hearing into the spill, said Congress will examine "the role of regulatory failure" in the accident at the BP PLC oil rig that unleashed millions of gallons of oil into Gulf waters.

While the cause of the accident and spill has yet to be pinpointed, information uncovered so far raises the question of where the Minerals Management Service was in regulating the drilling process, said Bingaman.

Bingaman said he hopes to determine "the cascade of failures that caused the catastrophic blowout."

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/7010339.html

[polichick]

1. In this case "the government" is him. nt

[ShortnFiery]

2. Why hasn't Salazar submitted his resignation? He's RESPONSIBLE for his department.

Oh, that's right - if you are high enough in the corporate/government bureaucrat, you never have to TAKE any of the blame. Well, unless you live in China. :grr: :nuke:

[Donnachaidh]

3. So when can we expect your resignation, Salazar? n/t

[fascisthunter]

5. He should be investigated and then thrown in Prison

for being somewhat responsible for the oil leak. It was his deregulatory drive that created this mess... he should be held responsible as well as many others.

[fascisthunter]

4. There it is: Gop gets elected and destroys government from within, then...

they claim the government is disfunctional. To me this proves motive to bring this government down to it's knees or the knees of the wealthy class.

[No Elephants]

10. Salazar is an elected Republican? Or, were you referring to Obama?

Or, are you saying Bush was responsible for this?

Not really following your reference to elected GOP's claiming the government is dysfunctional in the context of this particular thread.

[flyarm]

6. no shit sherlock Salazar..and of course Salazar is not part and parcel of the problem ..yeah right!

Dems are equally up to their eyeballs in this .............

ahhh the strange bedfellows.....remember Dashle who pushed Obama during our primaries..and was one of his top advisors...........working with Whitman..the lady who lied about the air quality at Ground zero in NY?? Can i tickle your memory..she lied and people died and keep dying!! And that is just one example..

Spill, Baby, Spill
By Michael Isikoff, Ian Yarett and Matthew Philips | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated May 10, 2010

BP has been trying hard to burnish its public image in recent years after being hit with a pair of environmental disasters, including a fatal refinery explosion in Texas and a pipeline leak in Alaska. One major step was to announce, in 2007, that it had hired a high-powered advisory board that included former EPA director Christine Todd Whitman, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, and Leon Panetta, who were each paid $120,000 a year. (Panetta left when he became President Obama's CIA director.) Two years ago the oil giant's chief executive, Robert Malone, flew board members out to the Gulf of Mexico on a helicopter to demonstrate the safeguards surrounding BP's advanced drilling technology. "We got a sense they were really committed to ensuring they got it right," Whitman told NEWSWEEK.

Now BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, finds itself blamed for what could prove to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. And only weeks after Obama announced an ambitious plan to open up more U.S. offshore waters to oil drilling, shunting aside environmental concerns from his own Democratic Party, his administration is facing a comeuppance from hell. "There was a lot of wishful thinking, I guess," says Villy Kourafalou, a scientist at the University of Miami's Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "The new technologies were said to be so wonderful that we'd never have an oil spill again." Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who had sought to block the expanded drilling, says the oil and gas industry was pushing this idea hard. "They said, 'We'll never have a repeat of Santa Barbara,'?" referring to the 1969 rig explosion off the California coast. Both the Bush and Obama administrations "were buying the line that the technology was fine," Pallone adds.

BP pressed hard to make that point in D.C. Its PR efforts included payments of $16 million last year to a battery of Washington lobbyists, among them the firm of Tony Podesta, the brother of former Obama transition chief John Podesta. Last fall, after the U.S. Interior Department proposed tighter federal regulation of oil companies' environmental programs, David Rainey, BP's vice president for Gulf of Mexico exploration, told Congress that the proposal was unnecessary. "I think we need to remember," he said, that offshore drilling "has been going on for the last 50 years, and it has been going on in a way that is both safe and protective of the environment."

Read the full article at:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/237298



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf
Source: McClatchy

Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf

By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama's vow that his administration would launch a "relentless response effort" to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday — the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling.

The exemptions, known as "categorical exclusions," were granted by the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, or MMS, and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a British Petroleum exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet.

"Is there a moratorium on offshore drilling or not?" asked Peter Galvin, the conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, the environmental group that discovered the administration's continued approval of the exemptions. "Possibly the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has occurred, and nothing appears to have changed."

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/07/9376 ...

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

and never forget this..we Floridans won't!!!


YouTube - Barack Obama on Offshore Oil Drilling ( to Florida voters while asking for their votes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8fkbEuCQss ...

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Obama: “Oil Rigs Today Generally Don’t Cause Spills”

Obama Repeats Katrina Oil Spill Myth To Defend Offshore Drilling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm8gLmuTvJ4 ... ...


By: David Dayen Thursday April 29, 2010 1:42 pm

snip:

What a difference 18 days makes. Here was Barack Obama, on April 2, before the BP oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, claiming that oil rigs are safe to justify his position on offshore drilling:

I don’t agree with the notion that we shouldn’t do anything. It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore.

Not only does this quote look ridiculous in hindsight, it wasn’t true at the time, as Brad Johnson points out:

Obama’s claim that oil rigs did not cause any spills during Hurricane Katrina is simply false, as the Wonk Room reported in June, 2008, when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other conservatives made the same false claim:

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused 124 Offshore Spills For A Total Of 743,700 Gallons. 554,400 gallons were crude oil and condensate from platforms, rigs and pipelines, and 189,000 gallons were refined products from platforms and rigs.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused Six Offshore Spills Of 42,000 Gallons Or Greater. The largest of these was 152,250 gallons, well over the 100,000 gallon threshhold considered a “major spill.”

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/04/29/oba ... ... ’t-cause-spills/

[east texas lib]

8. Hmmm...

"BP has been trying hard to burnish its public image in recent years after being hit with a pair of environmental disasters, including a fatal refinery explosion in Texas and a pipeline leak in Alaska. One major step was to announce, in 2007, that it had hired a high-powered advisory board that included former EPA director Christine Todd Whitman, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, and Leon Panetta, who were each paid $120,000 a year. (Panetta left when he became President Obama's CIA director.) Two years ago the oil giant's chief executive, Robert Malone, flew board members out to the Gulf of Mexico on a helicopter to demonstrate the safeguards surrounding BP's advanced drilling technology. "We got a sense they were really committed to ensuring they got it right," Whitman told NEWSWEEK."

Unless these these people have any drilling rig experience or can tell the diffrence between a blowout preventer and a paint bucket, I fail to see how bringing them onboard contributed anything worthwhile to safer day-to-day rig operrations. But they did make a little coin, at least.

[WhiteTara]

7. He should be fired n/t

[No Elephants]

9. If he had any honor, he'd fall on his sword, or at least resign.

Funny. Salazar was one of the few Obama appointees I thought was a good choice, from the perspective of the American people.