The BP Oil Spill and Obama's ability to spin and do nothing else

[Nimrod]

I take it most of you have seen the oil spill in the golf coast? Caused by a Transocean oil rig blowing up killing 11 people. BP owned the license to the well, so is responsible.

BP standards for 'Beyond petroleum' and is a multinational company with share holders all over the US and UK, Its headquartered in the UK.

On American TV at the moment, Obama has been shouting about how he would fire the head of BP, and how BP are 100% responsible and how there British and its all our fault.
The truth? BP arent 100% responsible, the rednecks operating the oil rig and Transocean who owned and run the rig are at least resposible, but as they are an American company Obama has excused them. Though BP has kindly offered to pay for EVERYTHING and is hiring thounsands of local people and hundreds of planes and boats and boom for the shoreline, at no cost to the American people. The bill is already over a billion, and BP is still happy to pay.

Yet for some odd reason, Obama who realized he cant do a thing to help because him and his goverment don't have any of the tools or resources to do so, instead spends all day speaking to local rednecks and shouting abuse at BP and makes clear to people its a British company. I mean, why does BP put up with this, they are only legally liable for 75 million in costs, yet they have already spent a billion without question.

Now Captain useless Obama is trying to force legal action to stop BP pay its shareholders there quarty holdings which is around 7 billion. Investors and pension funds rely on that payout, and it doesnt effect the spill or fix up of the Golf Oil spill yet Obama is for no apprant reason other than hes useless at anything which isnt PR is trying to block that pay out. Why go out of his way to target investors and shareholders?

Then another guy in the Whitehouse goes on about how if you hear a 'BRITISH ACCENT' from a spokesman from BP, dont believe it as it will be lies. The Union flag being burnt in the streets of America (which Americans complain about when there flag is burnt in the middle east - So why on earth are they doing it). Why on earth are the UK on the attacking end? Again, American part of the business, American workers yet the British are to blame. One again has to wonder, if BP was an American company the US goverment wouldnt be attacking them so much, its crap treatment of a foreign company and frankly unfair treatment.

Also the CEO of BP has been attacked by the media for comments he said like "I want my life back", the media fail to let you know the context it was said in. He was referring to how this has changed lifes and how he wants to work full out to get the work complete so everyone including himself can have there lifes back. It wasnt meant in a bad way, properly wasnt the best thing to say with these stupid media companies around, but the CEO is an engineer, not a public relations master like Obama is. the CEO actually understands and does something about the spill, wheres all Obama does is focus on ratings.

End of rant, Overall Comment: Obama is the biggest failure ever

Comments or Opinions?

 

[Trebor]

Frankly I feel America failed us (and some of the British so called authorities who agreed with them) when they went on about our whole NHS infrastructure. Though I can't paint every American with the same brush as it's one massive country. However people will obviously react to what's being said in the media etc and obviously that will reflect on the country as a whole. I honestly thought Obama being brought in to office was a good thing. But the way he's being portrayed right now is down right ugly. For now I'm just keeping abrest with the situation and not getting worked up over who's blaming who and what not. A terrible accident occured, people have lost lives and others are trying to sort it out. Perhaps there should be less finger pointing and more action taking place.

 

[NemVitzh]

On American TV at the moment, Obama has been shouting about how he would fire the head of BP, and how BP are 100% responsible and how there British and its all our fault.

Obama has been very calm. I've heard nothing but criticism about that. Americans want him to get angry. So if he's angry, that's why. I know it's stupid, but that's how politics work.

 

[Icharus_Falling]

Exxon was 100% responsible for the cleanup of its big spill in alaska. It borrowed money from the government at the time and is still paying it back.

What exactly would you have the government do? supposedly all attempts at closing the leak have failed, and the only way to stop it is to drill relief wells that will take 90 days. BP doesnt seem to give a shit about anything but trying to siphon what they can for profit.

BP will pay every dollar it takes to fix this if they want to continue to sell products on the american market.

As far as all this youve seen in the media, i've never seen any of that. I live on the coast of the gulf of mexico, so its all thats on the news here. i havent heard a single mention of britain, as it doesnt matter at all where the company headquarters are. BP is a worldwide company. they would be responsible for their mess no matter where theyre located.

there certainly isnt any flag burning, thats ridiculous.

i think you might be seeing quite a bit of media sensationalism and taking it a bit too seriously. the only thing we care about here on the gulf coast is stopping this before it ruins our ecosystem.

for a while, we were very angry at BP for the "miscalculations" they had about the amount of crude being spilt. they said it was 5000 barrels per day, when independent calculations put it closer to 70000 barrels. now BP is claiming to siphon 5000 barrels per day from the tiny bit they can capture for profit!

either they purposely lied about the oil spill, or theyre incompetent at determining the scope of the disaster. which is better?

 

[Nimrod]

You are aware the capturing is not done for profit, its actually done you know, to STOP more of it going into the ocean. Ii you would rather they stop capture and leave it for 90 days until the relief wells are done, I'm sure that would be much much much worse.

However, the side effect does mean theres oil being captured, which might as well go to good use, like powering the energy hungry 4x4 drivers in America. BP has already stated only profit made on oil captured will go straight back into the clean up operation so what the hell is wrong with that? Again, what other clever idea do people have to do with the oil?

When I stated shouting, I wasnt clear. I didnt mean Obama phsyically shouted at the top of his voice, but hes going to interviews with NBC and other media companies going on about how the head of BP should be sacked, BP is wrong blah blah

You know what, the American government cant do it themselves (otherwise they would have done by now), so why not just be thankful that BP is doing more than they should to help.

 

[Icharus_Falling]

the only thing the government could possibly do is hire an oil company to fix the problem. ONLY an oil company is going to have the equipment and expertise necessary.

do you honestly think any government has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of specialized machinery and trained personnel sitting around waiting for an oil spill to happen? of course the american government cant do it themselves. nor could any government. i dont know what magical entities you think exist to come in and save the day.

the only government thats offered a solution to deep water well leaks is russia, and they just throw a nuke at it.

 

[Nimrod]

the only thing the government could possibly do is hire an oil company to fix the problem. ONLY an oil company is going to have the equipment and expertise necessary.

do you honestly think any government has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of specialized machinery and trained personnel sitting around waiting for an oil spill to happen? of course the american government cant do it themselves. nor could any government. i dont know what magical entities you think exist to come in and save the day.

the only government thats offered a solution to deep water well leaks is russia, and they just throw a nuke at it.

Hence my point, they should be thankful for BP's help instead of slamming it, because they cant do it themselves.

 

[Icharus_Falling]

Are you joking? I find it hard to believe that you would say that as a true and rational thought.

All day I've been trying to think of an analogy to illustrate my opinion of your reply and the best I could come up with is this:

Lets say you and a relative are sitting in your house. Someone walks in and shoots your relative in the head. Would you thank him if he started to wipe some of the brains off the wall?

There are many thing to be aggressively critical about, and downright angry over, regarding how BP is handling this. The main one, and its a big one, is that for 50 years the oil companies have been telling us that these rigs are incredibly safe and foolproof. The pitch has always been that if something breaks, we can fix it quickly and with minimal collateral damage.

They made the world think they had it under control when they clearly don't. They should have solutions for these contingencies before they ever began operation. They just recently (52 days in now) started cutting and pinching pipes. They could've done that within the first week. This raises serious concerns about the other thousands of rigs out there operating as this is happening. No one has any fucking clue. And BP is catching all the shit for that because they're who it happened to.

They had fail-safe mechanisms in place that were in such a state of disrepair they didnt even begin to function. Its not that the cutoff switches tried and failed, they didnt even activate! A multi-billion dollar mega-corporation has no excuse for not maintaining minimal safety measurements, like changing the fucking batteries (seriously), or ignoring the week previous when huge chunks of gaskets and seals were coming up through the pipelines. They claim this rig was one of the most technologically advanced rigs in existence, one of only a handful capable of drilling this deep, yet they are sloppy with its standard maintenance?

Why do you think BP is so righteous and blameless anyway? Is it just because they're a British corporation? Do you think we would be less critical if it was an American oil company?


They're still a faceless oil company that squeezes you and everyone else for every penny they can. The price and availablility of oil determines the price of everything from milk to steel. Anything that has to be moved from one place to another. Gas prices have soared over the past few years, yet oil companies have been posting the highest profits in the history of civilization. They deserve no sympathy. Especially when they want to cry about spending money.

 

[Nimrod]

Replied in quote:

All day I've been trying to think of an analogy to illustrate my opinion of your reply and the best I could come up with is this:

Lets say you and a relative are sitting in your house. Someone walks in and shoots your relative in the head. Would you thank him if he started to wipe some of the brains off the wall?

> If I had ask them to shoot my relative in the head so I could have the money owned by the relative, I would be most pleased if they could help with the tidy up of the brains from the wall (All in analogy of the fact Americas (and in fact most peoples) need for oil is so high)

There are many thing to be aggressively critical about, and downright angry over, regarding how BP is handling this. The main one, and its a big one, is that for 50 years the oil companies have been telling us that these rigs are incredibly safe and foolproof. The pitch has always been that if something breaks, we can fix it quickly and with minimal collateral damage.

> I don't think anyone could have expected so many systems to fail which led to this, this is a one off (otherwise it would have happened tons of times before)

They made the world think they had it under control when they clearly don't. They should have solutions for these contingencies before they ever began operation. They just recently (52 days in now) started cutting and pinching pipes. They could've done that within the first week. This raises serious concerns about the other thousands of rigs out there operating as this is happening. No one has any fucking clue. And BP is catching all the shit for that because they're who it happened to.

> As far as looking at the available material, worked started back then on different approachs, like closing the blow out preventer. I'm sure no one sat on there arses, they had a list of ways to fix it and had to put them in some order with how successful and possible it is to do.

They had fail-safe mechanisms in place that were in such a state of disrepair they didnt even begin to function. Its not that the cutoff switches tried and failed, they didnt even activate! A multi-billion dollar mega-corporation has no excuse for not maintaining minimal safety measurements, like changing the fucking batteries (seriously), or ignoring the week previous when huge chunks of gaskets and seals were coming up through the pipelines. They claim this rig was one of the most technologically advanced rigs in existence, one of only a handful capable of drilling this deep, yet they are sloppy with its standard maintenance?

> Indeed there is no excuse, but sadly thats Transocean equipment. Who are currently doing nothing to help out.

Why do you think BP is so righteous and blameless anyway? Is it just because they're a British corporation? Do you think we would be less critical if it was an American oil company?

> I don't think BT is so righteous, but at the same time I believe there getting a lot of abuse for trying there best. And yes I honestly think Americans would be less critical if it was an American company, by far.

They're still a faceless oil company that squeezes you and everyone else for every penny they can. The price and availablility of oil determines the price of everything from milk to steel. Anything that has to be moved from one place to another. Gas prices have soared over the past few years, yet oil companies have been posting the highest profits in the history of civilization. They deserve no sympathy. Especially when they want to cry about spending money.

> Difficult to answer, but from what I've seen, Transcean and other oil and gas companies have got away free of responsibility. If anything, everyone is to blame for being so hungry for oil.

 

[Dark Scyth]

So, Obama is blaming BP (which happens to be located in the UK, headquarters anyways), so you feel the need to blame the US 100%, even though you just said that its wrong to blame the UK 100%? Obvously there are to many interwoven links that tie into this problem to be blaming, instead of everyone being a jackass and blaming "someone" why don't they just think of a solution to fix it instead (talking about governments.etc). What happened with the oil spill basically fell under the catagory "Shit happens" no one expected this, nothing even close to this happens everyday, a rare occurrence that needs to be fixed instead of bitching about it.