BP Official – Open Heart Surgery at 5,000 Feet; Believes Cause is Failed Equipment

Good interview with McKay – bringing in the predicted risks and the ability of BP to respond, and raising the issue of trustworthiness of BP. The quality of that interview set the stage for the best ‘This Week’ in recent memory. I think the conservative viewpoint was reasonably well represented though a few more conservative bodies would be nice. (I haven’t a clue as for names.) I would pay big money to hear Al Sharpton, George Will, Ron Paul, and Stephen Colbert have a civilized discussion for 2 – 3 hours. Yes, it’s true that Brazil has done great things with biofuels (that the USA probably is not able to mimic, in our climate), but Brazil has a VERY ambitious oil exploration program.
Mostly want to say – GREAT show …. great show this week.

The other oil execs had to be cringing at the way McKay came off (still spinning). O&G industry has had a free ride for 40 years in Louisiana and they need to be perceived and seen as stepping up. The solution is with them, and the state regs out of Louisiana. It was weird hearing the republican strategist chastising the government for not being effective.

No more deep sea drilling till the environmental impacts are known and understood. These oil companies are too big and powerful. Why shouldn’t this be treated as a criminal act on the part of BP? If I destroyed someone’s home or backyard I would be tried for property damage. So why aren’t these people? Is it because they are threatening an ENTIRE ecosystem?

Was that equipment made in china ?

Who cares how/why? Get your booties out there and fix it! Now!

No advance plan to “perform open heart surgery at 5000 feet” was criminal.
These BP (and other responsible) executives need the damage taken out of their hides, not their wallets.

No, it is not like heart surgery at 5000 feet. It is like a plummer forgetting or deciding against putting in an shut-off value because it is too expensive. Or like a gas company deciding against putting in shut-off values in case of emergency. Dear BP, welcome to XOM’s world. Enjoy 40 years of US and world court systems and to condemnation of people around the world.

Mistakes may have been made, but did BP do this on purpose, No. Did BP comply will all regulations, Yes, as far as everything is known. BP did not want or have any idea this might happen. No oil company would have invisioned this to happen. BP is spending Billions now and nobody did anything criminal to cause this. Just like all large companies, they have catistrophic things happen. This type of accident has never happened before, and nobody could have forseen this event, especially to this degree.

Anyone notice how he was trying to redirect the blame: “Contracted Rig” is the first clue.
BP’s safety record is a sham, they are proud of what they do right up until there is a problem. The “trust us” is BS.
I understand that they are in it for profit, but when they say the have the solution for any unanticipated problem and don’t they are lying, they know and so do we.
We get it: there is no such thing as Clean Coal, obtaining Natural Gas using Fracking has unintended and dangerous consequences, Oil Exploration and Retrival at depths where man cannot go is Very Dangerous. If these guys want cover, then they have to play by rules, not their own rules, but regulatory rules.

George Will needs to learn about wind power facts and bird kill rates before misquoting again. Buildings kill 550 million, then power lines 130 million, then cats 100 million then automobiles at 80 million, pestcides kill 57 million and wind turbines kill 0.0285 million birds per year in the U.S.A.
per Wallace P. Erickson, et al, in Bird Conservation Implementation and Itergration in the Americas, 2002.

Tapper I was reading an article – ‘NASA Tests Hair-Raising Technique To Clean Up Oil Spills’ ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 1998)
- 25,000 pounds of hair in nylon collection bags may be sufficient to adsorb 170,000 gallons of spilled oil. Preliminary tests show that a gallon of oil can be adsorbed in less than two minutes with McCrory’s method.
- Also watched online how – Lisa Gautier & Paul Stamets Response to SF Oil Spill- DAY 1 in San Francisco in 2007 using this method.
- To bad there wasn’t a way to coordinated a national campaign to see if there was a way to use this method to see if it would help now along the coast?

A small earthquake that could close the hole !!!
Shoot a conical cylinder under the terrain , it is auto unscrew (or open) and auto explosive, so it create a small earthquake that could close the hole. It is not sure, depend from the strong of explosion and from tube resistance. Only a local explosion !!!

Classic: minimize the possibility of problems and the certainty of your technology when lobbying for offshore drilling, then emphasize the obvious inherent difficulties to deflect blame after something goes wrong.

It’s human nature to push the envelope, break the rules, ignore what you don’t want to see.
The problem is, we can’t afford to do that when this is the outcome.
DO YOU GET IT LINDSEY GRAHAM??

If an individual (even accidentally) were to spill a barrel worth of oil or gas into a waterway almost anywhere, they would face felon charges and jail time, as well as be bankrupted by the related fines. The Supreme Court just reaffirmed their (horrible) position that basically is corporations are people. If we are going to treat large multinational corporations like people, then BP should face the same penalty, and Lamar McKay, et al should be looking at no less than a few years in prison.

GOOD TO SEE OBAMA’S LEADERSHIP IN THIS
It is good to see the President not just flying over to survey the damage, but actually being there on land to see for himself in the affected areas. I hope this incident puts finally to rest the hard right superficial slogan of “drill, baby, drill.” No true friend of humanity and the environment would ever say that.
This incident calls for strong AND decisive action from many fronts–from the President, Congress, state and local governments.
1.The president must remain connected to the people’s problems in the devasted areas.
2.There must be no delay or margin of error in federal emergency services for the affected areas. This requires constant monitoring.
3.The President must insist on full recovery from the oil company for the damages done by the spill. Alaska Exxon Valdez was not completely cleaned up. This time, the President must insist on full and complete clean up and recovery at oil company expense.
4.Congress must devise and impose new and more stringent regulation for oil, gas and coal exploration and drilling. 5.It is about time to impose an indefinite morotorium on coastal and off-shore drilling until a better technology exists to ensure no margin of error at all. All and coal companies must be stopped from saving money money at workers and people’s expenses. The standard is higher in Europe where oil companies were forced to use better technologies. Here in America, corrupt politicians are in the pocket of oil companies. Remember the deregulation of the Bush/Cheney years.
6.This is the time for a comprehensive energy policy and legislation. No more excuses.

If you build a structure in an area prone to earthquakes, there are worst case scenario standards that must be followed, the same for bridges, tunnels, power plants, chemical factories, etc. It is impossible to believe that when harvesting highly flamable oil, a worst case scenario would not be considered, addressed and suitable remedies required and in place. This is a continuing example of capitalist greed putting the public at risk. Only this time, it is the public’s finances, their health and the planet; a trifecta of disasters. In the next weeks and months, just watch, all the red state politicians and right wing mouthpieces will shift the blame to the government out of lap of big oil.

these people should be hauled into the town square and ripped limb from limb. maybe executives wouldnt be as cavalier with public safety if they had to actually pay for their actions.

Let’s use BP America Chairman and President Lamar McKay to plug the gusher!

This is stupid – of course it’s hard to do. I’m not so concerned that BP pays a fine; that’s really not the point.
They are liable for all the damage their negligence has caused – they must compensate as costs are incurred, not after 20 years of litigation – and they can not be allowed to just declare bankruptcy, sell their assets to exxon and walk away.

Thanks Republicans, for propagating the meme that we can trash the environment with no real consequences. To bad we can’t force you to go clean up the mess.

Here we go again; another tentacle of the corporate oligarchy that is too big too fail but can kill us or harm us catastrophically when it inevitably does.
What we are seeing now is just more of the cumulative effect of the relentless deregulation of all branches of our economy.
Wall St, Health Care, the housing market, the mining disaster, this oil rig disaster – each and every one of them is a shining example of the non-sustainability of corporations allowed to run roughshod over every facet of our lives even as they steal every last cent on their way out the door.
For 40 years the energy business has done everything in it’s power to keep a strangle hold on every means of energy production and to aggressively squash any attempts to get us on renewable sources of energy.
This is what happens when corporations are allowed to monitor themselves. The CEO of BP says this is too hard to fix, then what the hell were they doing drilling that way in the first place?
And it isn’t like they couldn’t have foreseen this – it happened last year in Australia, and Halliburton was there then too.
Of course they knew it was possible – but the money is sooooo good…..
The big question is: when’s the next time-bomb left by the Bush misAdministration going to go off?

Let the Republican Oil Bigs pay for this mess.

Look at the list of contributors.
4 Cougars with uniquely american teeth. Frankly, it blows the whole article for me.
A few real people in the contributors list would suggest that it might be a ‘real’ news piece.
As it is, it looks like a template piece fronted by fashion plate heads.
Whatever.

Should have thought of that before you drilled that hole, Lamar.

As I understand it, BP fought rules that would have required it to install a safety device that would have allowed it to remotely cap the well. The Bush administration allowed them to avoid the rule. If that is the case, it should not matter how difficult and expensive the operation to cap the well is – BP, get it done!

This is what happens when BP Chairman Hayward’s severe cost-reduction drive over the past three years eliminates the top tier employees with all the experience. The investigation of BP should look into the number of severance packages handed to employees over 50.

When you put more pressure above the well than the pressure from the well the leak stops. Dump million of tons of boulders and chunks of concrete; to fill the bowl the well sets in. Then layers of sand and gravel 5 gallon bags 50 feet thick. Then boulders and concrete 50 feet thick dispersing pressure. Then repeating layers tell the leak stops the a few hundred feet more layers. Then encase with 50 feet of concrete feet. This isn’t rocket science. Some body needs to stop this and it looks like the fox is watching the hen-house. Save Florida before it is to late.