Posted by
Bill Crawford on Saturday, June 12, 2010 10:39:24 PM
The short answer is, maybe. But certainly not now. What this government is doing right now is putting their politicsal interests in front of actually solving this problem, and it is annoyinng as hell to watch.
BP is losing a ton of market share value right now, and more every time Obama opens his mouth on the subject. They need that money to stay alive and solve this problem. The White House is making that more difficult. He is also straining relations with our closest ally (BP is the largest corporation in Great Britain). Watching our President work over Isreal, our second closest ally on the planet, renders all that unsurprising. It is even money at this point that BP will declare Chapter 11 by year's end, primarily to structure a shelter from the oodles of Gulf residents who are presently lawyering up, egged on by Obama's open yap.
When this episode closes, if it turns out that BP used it's influence here to short cut safety procedures that caused this thing, I would sooner buy my gas at Citgo and send the money to Hugo Chavez.
By then, there will be hell to pay all around. Obama, the EPA and their terminal indecisiveness in the early going of this spill will not be something he can blame on George Bush in 2012, although he will certainly try. Obama's inaction, to either help BP solve the problem or take over is one of the fastest ways to take his core voting base and turn mister hand into mister fist. If this is still festering in September and a Gulf hurricane sprays oil on the coast from the air, he may as well have nominated a staunch pro-lifer to the Supreme Court.
Another annoyance: the people I have researched in the industry are astounded that nobody is suggesting to BP or to FEMA to start using the surface pump technology that has worked for many spills in the Mid East region. BP seems to be married to chemical dispersants and to boom sweeps. The latter would have been more effective at the start, provided that they used the oil collection to burn the stuff off, but nobody was open to having the ugly black smoke marring the skyline.
Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way. Obama is a great talker, but he is learning the price of standing up and announcing "the buck stops here", and then thinking his way through the problem like the damned lawyer that he is. I'm reaching the point where I think one of the qualifications for that office should be renouncing any Ivy League law degrees one may have earned in life. Once an ambulance chaser, always an ambulance chaser.
Final note: If I do end up boycotting BP, and I'm betting that may very well happen later this year, I will have to find an alternative. I like their fuel, because it doesn't have any infernal methanol in it. It is a purer octane for the car, and methanol wreaks havoc on the smaller two cycle engines, like in in the weed trimmers and blowers I use to keep my neighbors from knowing how disrespectable I may be.
I won't get started on methanol, save to say it is another uselss federal subsidy that makes fuel less efficient, more expensive and makes many grain foods and the beef animals that live off them more expensive for all of us. It is another episode in a long line of abject EPA stupidity, passed off to us as science. Like NTSB winter additives, added to gas every winter. Every region has a different formula mandate, so there is little regional crossover in availability, creating price increases. Oh, and it lowers mileage. And it is a carcinogen! Who the hell's in charge here?