Why Did Obama Wait until Now to Send Team of Scientists to the Gulf ?

[amborin]

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/obama-sends-scientists-to-meet-bp-team/


Obama Sends Scientists to Meet BP Team

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

May 10, 2010

On the eve of Senate hearings examining the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon rig and the unabated release of oil from the damaged seafloor well, President Obama ordered a team of government officials and scientists led by Energy Secretary Steven Chu to head to Houston this week to confer with BP’s brain trust on next steps to stem the unfolding environmental disaster. He also requested that legislation be sent to Congress to toughen and update the law placing caps on damages from such incidents.

President Obama met with a number of Cabinet members and senior staff in the White House Situation Room to review BP’s efforts to stop the oil leak as well as to decide on next steps to ensure all is being done to contain the spread, mitigate the environmental impact and provide assistance to affected states, including individuals, businesses, and communities.

The President asked Secretary Chu to lead a team of top administration officials and government scientists to Houston this week for an extensive dialogue with BP officials to continue to aggressively pursue potential


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snip

.....When does the time come for the Obama administration to exert more control over next steps?

...... I have a strangely parallel sensation to that experienced while watching the administration let Congress muddle along for months on both health and energy legislation before getting more deeply engaged.

snip

Obviously, on the political front, President Obama faces the risk of taking charge of an unfolding disaster with no clear solution. In an e-mail exchange with Joseph Ortiz, an associate professor of geology at Kent State University familiar with ocean-drilling technology, he described the political dilemma this way:

They may be trying to rely on industry expertise as they have stated publicly, but I also suspect that they also have no interest in owning this, and will only do so when they perceive that they are doing more damage to their public perception by not taking command than by doing so.

Here’s the problem. On the environmental front, if the status-quo approach persists, there are quite a few commentators who foresee months of unrelenting oil flows and an epic soiling of Gulf coasts. The Wall Street Journal quoted Nansen Saleri, a Houston-based expert in oil-reservoir management and a former top official at Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company as describing the continuing incident as “a catastrophic failure of risk management.”

snip

1) Is there a point where the Obama administration can, under the law, take more control of efforts to stanch the well flow? (If not, where in the law is that proscribed?)

2) Have the Department of Defense or the Department of Energy’s national laboratories been brought in to consult on the hydraulic, geologic and engineering questions related to plugging or crimping the well pipe? If not, why not?

3) Has anyone asked BP why the relief well has to be drilled down more than 13,000 feet instead of intersecting the well at a shallower depth? Given that it will take at least 60 to 90 days to drill the full depth, that seems a natural question to ask.


http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/how-long-should-bp-remain-in-charge/

[90-percent]

1. Related Thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8303188&mesg_id=8303188

We fixed it all by post 37.

Or was it 73?

-90% Jimmy

:sarcasm:

[amborin]

2. good OP! ghastly to realize BP could stop this today, but won't b/c it would lose $$$$$

[blindpig]

3. A note to the unreccers

You unrec this thread, shame! You mark yourself the enemy of humanity and nature.

k&r