Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

July 18, 2010 By Fausta

Jindal: Oil drilling ban adds insult to injury

At the Washington Post, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal,
Ban on deep-water drilling adds insult to injury (emphasis added):

Even after the well is finally capped, the damage done to our environment, to the Gulf of Mexico, and to our marshes, wetlands and beaches will take years to repair. There is another type of damage from this spill: its human impact. Thousands of lives, businesses and families are reeling.

Against this backdrop, the federal government unwisely chose to add insult to injury by decreeing a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the gulf. This ill-advised and ill-considered moratorium, which a federal judge called “arbitrary” and “capricious,” creates a second disaster for our economy, throwing thousands of hardworking folks out of their jobs and causing real damage to many families. Now this federal policy risks killing 20,000 more jobs and will result in a loss of $65 million to $135 million in wages each month.

To ensure that such a disaster does not happen again, should the federal government increase oversight, or require additional and better equipment or on-site federal inspectors, or even temporarily pause drilling at specific rigs for additional reviews? Of course. Could it? Of course. But by simply stopping all deepwater drilling, federal officials appear more interested in ideology and scoring political points — as they have done with the misguided cap-and-trade legislation — at the expense of Americans who derive their livelihood from the energy industry.

Let’s be clear: This moratorium will do nothing to clean up the Gulf of Mexico, and it is already doing great harm to many hardworking citizens. The effects will extend well beyond Louisiana. Since the moratorium was announced, America has already lost two rigs to foreign countries. More drilling companies are negotiating right now to work elsewhere. Every time we decrease our level of production, we make America more dependent on foreign sources of energy.

Go read it all.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama Tagged With: Bobby Jindal, BP, Fausta's blog, Gulf oil spill, Louisiana

July 7, 2010 By Fausta

AP panics over 27,000 oil wells

The article starts with the title, AP IMPACT: Gulf awash in 27,000 abandoned wells

It deserves a fisking, and indeed, Sweetness & Light fisked:

The full version of this Associated Press article is 2,273 words long. And yet there is no mention anywhere in it of their research uncovering a single abandoned oil well that is currently leaking.

$5 says the guys who wrote the AP article never left their desks, either.

The gist of the AP story is to call for more government bureaucrats and control.

Meanwhile, over at the Gulf, where a real disaster is taking place, Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal today are hosting Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus during a visit to Louisiana

According to Gov. Jindal, well over 300 miles of Louisiana coast is now impacted by the BP oil spill. Not only is the spill affecting Louisiana but the Obama administration has ordered a moratorium on certain Gulf of Mexico rig drilling that is hurting the Louisiana economy and many of families and businesses already hurt by the oil spill.

In Louisiana alone,

over 320,000 people’s livelihoods are tied to the gas and oil industry. In south Louisiana, this industry supports one in every three jobs.

Sending the oil industries abroad by implementing a moratorium only adds to the crisis.

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Filed Under: APDD, Associated Press Deficit Disorder, oil Tagged With: Bobby Jindal, BP, Fausta's blog, Gulf oil spill, Louisiana

June 23, 2010 By Fausta

UPDATED Feds stop dredging off Louisiana VIDEO

You are not going to believe this:
Federal Gov’t Halts Sand Berm Dredging
Nungesser Pleads With President To Allow Work To Continue

The federal government is shutting down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico.

The berms are meant to protect the Louisiana coastline from oil. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department has concerns about where the dredging is being done.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, who was one of the most vocal advocates of the dredging plan, has sent a letter to President Barack Obama, pleading for the work to continue.

Nungesser said the government has asked crews to move the dredging site two more miles farther off the coastline.
…
Nungesser has asked for the dredging to continue for the next seven days, the amount of time it would take to move the dredging operations two miles and out resume work.

Work is scheduled to halt at midnight Wednesday.

The California dredge located off the Chandelier Islands has pumped more than 50,000 cubic yards of material daily to create a sand berm, according to Plaquemines Parish officials.

Nungesser’s letter includes an emotional plea to the president.

“Please don’t let them shut this dredge down,” he wrote. “This requires your immediate attention!”

And So It Goes in Shreveport has video of Nungesser’s plea to Obama:

“Don’t shut down the dredge for seven to ten days. Every day is critical. Did they not see there’s a storm may be coming this way? Every day we can put more berm out there is that much less oil that can get in our marshlands. People of South Louisiana can’t take much more. I mean, here’s the Federal government again kicking us in the teeth. They issued the permit!”

Yesterday Ed Morrissey interviewed Sen. George Le Mieux

Yesterday, Senator George LeMieux told me in an exclusive interview that the Gulf response is still chaotic, with no clear idea of anyone being in charge or having a clear plan.  States have begun bypassing the feds in responding to the spill; in Florida, the state rented skimmers to keep oil from getting to their beaches after the Obama administration dragged their feet on supplying them.  The feds did start building sand berms to keep the oil out of Louisiana wetlands, but late yesterday they blocked those efforts to save the Louisiana coast
…
If the federal government has “concerns” over the location of the dredging, then they should have made that decision immediately.  After all, they have had 64 days now in which to react to the disaster by building these berms themselves.  Governor Bobby Jindal has been shouting about this very issue since almost the first days of the crisis, along with skimmers, boom, and all sorts of other efforts.

Confederate Yankee speculates:

We must ask the obvious question: is the White House purposefully sabotaging emergency efforts to save vital wetlands in order to serve a radical political agenda? Does Obama really think that wrecking rescue efforts to save coastal communities and delicate ecosystems actually makes his cap-and-trade fantasy more palatable?

Don Surber addresses the question, Do they want the Gulf ruined?

Some people are arguing that the Obama administration and President Obama want the shores of the Gulf damaged as much as possible in order to destroy the petroleum industry. They care nothing about the environment. They care about power. Without cheap energy, the economy collapses and a collapsed economy paves the way for socialism.

I don’t buy that.

Never discount the possibility — probability — of incompetence.

Especially when it comes to Harvard lawyers.

UPDATE: This just in, as of 12:25 EDT,
Oil Gushes Unchecked After Problem With Cap

The Coast Guard says BP has been forced to remove a cap that was containing some of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says an underwater robot bumped into the venting system. That sent gas rising through vent that carries warm water down to prevent ice-like crystals from forming in the cap.

Allen says the cap has been removed and crews are checking to see if crystals have formed before putting it back on. In the meantime, a different system is still burning oil on the surface.

Before the problem with the containment cap, it had collected about 700,000 gallons of oil in the previous 24 hours. Another 438,000 gallons was burned.

Meanwhile, here’s the live feed from the oil leak (below the fold):

(more…)

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, idiocy Tagged With: Billy Nungesser, Bobby Jindal, BP, George LeMieux, Gulf oil spill, Louisiana

June 20, 2010 By Fausta

Too bad Bobby Jindal is busy or he would have joined them.

“We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes“, including golf and baseball:
Obama hits golf course with Biden on another hot, humid weekend. Five hours of golf on Saturday, and a baseball game, too, the night before,

Obama attended the Washington Nationals game Friday night wearing a cap for his hometown Chicago White Sox. Sources told the pool reporter that Obama sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and left in the ninth inning, before the White Sox edged out the Nationals 2-1 in the 11th.

Meanwhile, the BP CEO is getting heat for attending a yatch race, even after being

officially relieved of his duties concerning the spill cleanup Friday,

Don Surber has the GOP video,

UPDATE
Larry Kudlow:
BP, the White House and Congress Are All Dirty

What Hayward should at least have done is talk about the progress being made in capping the spill rate, which is gradually going down. To most Americans, and especially those in the Gulf, it’s the spill rate of capture that matters most. Hayward also should have talked about the new BP relief well, which could be up and running in less than a month, to end this disaster. That would be great news for America, and her economy and stock market. Plus, he could have mentioned that BP is hiring thousands of workers to fill new jobs in the cleanup effort.

But Hayward was lawyered to the gills, which doesn’t make anyone happy, including me. And that’s precisely why these congressional show trials leave me bored, tired and depressed.

And oh, by the way, what’s the role of Congress in this catastrophe? What exactly is it doing besides presiding over these show trials? Doesn’t it have oversight authority when it comes to the Minerals Management Service, which utterly failed to regulate the safety of BP’s deep-water drilling operations? Why aren’t more people talking about this?

And why in the world hasn’t Congress suspended the Jones Act, thereby allowing foreign-flag tankers into the Gulf of Mexico area? What is it waiting for? We’re basically two months into this never-ending disaster. The gulf cleanup could have been greatly aided by at least 15 foreign countries that were instead spurned after offering their tankers and other equipment. Why aren’t we accepting these offers of help?

And where, really, is the president in all this? Speaking to the nation from the Oval Office earlier in the week, he failed to declare a Jones Act waiver, and he made no call for a task force of hands-on oilmen from the likes of ExxonMobil and other big oil sisters who actually know what they are doing.

Another problem with Obama’s address was his arrogant announcement that he would inform BP’s CEO “that he is to set aside” an asset amount ($20 billion) for the government-run escrow fund to pay for the spill damages. Trouble is, there are no laws to permit our government to force such financial retribution. Not even a new TARP — at least, not yet. Did someone say nationalization?

The government has no right to interfering with the financial decisions of a private, shareholder-owned corporation. This sounds like GM and Chrysler all over again. Or maybe health insurers, pharmaceuticals, private investment funds and multinational corporations. And it could end up having a serious and chilling effect on corporate investment.

Look, at least BP already agreed to pony up. Why should the government control this? Isn’t this another case of the Obama administration bullying, taxing and regulating business as part of a social agenda to redistribute income and power from private enterprise to government? It’s a war on profits and capital.

Go read it all.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama Tagged With: Bobby Jindal, BP, Fausta's blog, Gulf oil spill

June 18, 2010 By Fausta

Latest Gulf oil spill insanity: Coast Guard stops the barges! VIDEO

Just when you thought the federal government’s incompetence couldn’t get worse, along comes the Coast Guard and stops barges from sucking up the oil:

The President can’t suck it up with a straw, so no one else is allowed to?

BP Oil Spill: Against Gov. Jindal’s Wishes, Crude-Sucking Barges Stopped by Coast Guard
59 Days Into Oil Crisis, Gulf Coast Governors Say Feds Are Failing Them

“The Coast Guard came and shut them down,” Jindal said. “You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, ‘Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil.’”

A Coast Guard representative told ABC News today that it shares the same goal as the governor.

“We are all in this together. The enemy is the oil,” said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dan Lauer.

But the Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.

Louisiana Governor Couldn’t Overrule Coast Guard

The governor said he didn’t have the authority to overrule the Coast Guard’s decision, though he said he tried to reach the White House to raise his concerns.

“They promised us they were going to get it done as quickly as possible,” he said. But “every time you talk to someone different at the Coast Guard, you get a different answer.”

This is fertile ground for conspiracy theories, but hey, you don’t need to go further than downright malfeasance, patronage, and union cronyism:
Obama blocked clean-up of BP oil spill by America’s allies; Failed to issue timely Jones Act waiver

Crucial offers to help clean up BP’s oil spill came “from Belgian, Dutch, and Norwegian firms that . . . possess some of the world’s most advanced oil skimming ships.” But the Obama administration didn’t accept their help, because doing so would require it to do something past presidents have routinely done: waive rules imposed by the Jones Act, a law backed by unions.

“The BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones Act. This is a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation, that requires all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed. So” the U.S. Coast Guard “can’t accept, and therefore don’t ask for, the assistance of high-tech European vessels specifically designed for the task in hand.”

The law itself permits the president to waive these requirements, and such waivers were “granted, promptly, by the Bush administration,” in the aftermath of hurricanes and other emergencies. But Obama refused to do so after the spill, notes David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen. Instead, Obama rejected a Dutch offer to help clean up the spill, noted Voice of America News:

“The Obama administration declined the Dutch offer partly because of the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from certain activities in U.S. waters. During the Hurricane Katrina crisis five years ago, the Bush administration waived the Jones Act in order to facilitate some foreign assistance, but such a waiver was not given in this case.”

“After the Obama administration refused help from the Netherlands, Geert Visser, the consul general for the Netherlands in Houston, told Loren Steffy: ‘Let’s forget about politics; let’s get it done.’” But for Obama, politics always comes first: “The explanation of Obama’s reluctance to seek this remedy is his cozy relationship with labor unions. . . ‘The unions see it [not waiving the act] as … protecting jobs. They hate when the Jones Act gets waived.’”


Can’t forget about politics, because it’s all about politics:

In April 2009, the Obama administration granted BP, a big supporter of Obama, a waiver of environmental regulations.  But after the oil spill, it blocked Louisiana from protecting its coastline against the oil spill by delaying rather than expediting regulatory approval of essential protective measures.  It has also chosen not to use what has been described as “the most effective method” of fighting the spill, a method successfully used in other oil spills.  Democratic strategist James Carville called Obama’s handling of the oil spill “lackadaisical” and “unbelievable” in its “stupidity.”

Obama is now using BP’s oil spill to push the global-warming legislation that BP had lobbied for.  Obama’s global warming legislation expands ethanol subsidies, which cause famine, starvation, and food riots in poor countries by shrinking the food supply.  Ethanol makes gasoline costlier and dirtier, increases ozone pollution, and increases the death toll from smog and air pollution.   Ethanol production also results in deforestation, soil erosion, and water pollution. Subsidies for biofuels like ethanol are a big source of corporate welfare: “BP has lobbied for and profited from subsidies for biofuels . . . that cannot break even without government support.”

And let’s not allow a crisis to go to waste – as Darleen points out,

the Gulf spill also provides yet another serious crisis too good to waste; from perp walking BP execs up to the frontdoor of the White House, to a $20 billion dollar slush fund administered by Obama’s hand-picked Pay Czar.

Meanwhile, back to the Gulf coast,

UPDATE
The press is being kept out of the spill zone.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, government Tagged With: Bobby Jindal, BP, Coast Guard, Fausta's blog, Gulf oil spill, Louisiana, unions

June 15, 2010 By Fausta

While Obama talks, Jindal acts

Tonight President Obama is scheduled to talk on TV about the Gulf oil spill, after he compared the spill to 9/11 and spent four hours working on his golf crisis. You may call it his pet golf moment, if you are so inclined.

Meanwhile, over at the Gulf, after eight long weeks of waiting for the federal government to authorize what’s needed, Gov. Bobby Jindal Orders National Guard to Build Barrier Wall Off Louisiana Shore

In Fort Jackson, La., Jindal has ordered the Guard to start building barrier walls right in the middle of the ocean. The barriers, built nine miles off shore, are intended to keep the oil from reaching the coast by filling the gaps between barrier islands.
…
Today, huge Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters lined up in the air, dropping sandbags one by one into the sea.

“They are lifting up about 7,000 pounds of sandbags,” said 1st Lt. James Tyson Gabler.

Jindal also asks Obama to end the moratorium on the gulf:

Gateway Pundit explains,

Barack Obama’s oil drilling moratorium will cost tens of thousands of American jobs. Oil companies are planning on moving their rigs from the Gulf of Mexico to South America off the coast of Brazil where the government is more friendly to energy corporations.

At Patterico, DRJ notes,

Just over 10 days ago, BP and the Obama Administration authorized the construction of five barrier islands. Hugh Hewitt said that represented 2% of what Jindal wanted. Apparently Jindal has decided to go forward with the remaining 98%.

Kudos to Gov. Jindal for taking the initiative.

I hope the governors of each of the Gulf states also take the initiative and do what is needed.

The White House remains in denial: Dutch say They Could Speed Gulf Oil Recovery with US Permission

Louisiana and The Netherlands have developed strong ties since Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans five years ago. The European nation has developed special expertise in protecting its lower than sea-level land for centuries with a system of dikes. The country, home to the Royal Dutch Shell oil company, also has experience with mitigating oil spills in the North Sea and elsewhere.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs last week rejected the idea that the Jones Act has caused any problem in regard to the Gulf cleanup, but he said the president would provide a waiver if one is needed.

“We are using equipment and vessels from countries like Norway, Canada, The Netherlands,” said Robert Gibbs. “There has not been any problem with this. If there is the need for any type of waiver that would obviously be granted, but we have not had that problem.”
…
Floris Van Hovell says Dutch dredging ships could complete the sand berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the local companies contracted for the work, if allowed to do so.

Question: Why hasn’t the President waived the Jones act? Senator Lemieux of Florida is in the news right now asking exactly that question: “There are over 2,000 ships waiting. Why aren’t they heading to the Gulf?”

In a lighter vein, Scrappleface speculates about tonight’s speech.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, energy, government, oil Tagged With: Bobby Jindal, Fausta's blog, Gulf oil spill, Louisiana

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