Well?
Hey Lamarr, Cruise What About Those Market Based Solutions For The Oil Spill?
- Thread starter thoughtone
- Start date
WELL?
Actually Lamarr, I don't know your thoughts about it. I guess I have to ask Ron Paul to know what you are thinking about it.
well, sometimes its entertaining to see what DC was doing while all this was happening.
Oil-Spill Agency Fetches $13 Billion Amid ‘Cozy’ Ties
May 11 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. agency overseeing offshore drilling safety is also the government’s second-largest money maker, a dual role being probed in hearings on last month’s deadly oil-rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Minerals Management Service generates about $13 billion a year for the U.S. Treasury by partnering with companies such as BP Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. to develop oil and natural gas, trailing only the Internal Revenue Service in revenue.
At the same time, the agency and its 1,700 employees enforce safety rules, suggesting “inherent internal conflicts of interest,” Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said in an e-mail. Menendez and his colleagues on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held the first congressional hearing on the incident today.
Scrutiny of the Interior Department agency intensified following the explosion that killed 11 workers, sank a $365 million drilling rig operated by BP, and triggered an oil spill that threatens Gulf Coast states from Louisiana to Florida.
President Barack Obama’s administration today announced plans to split MMS into one unit to inspect rigs and enforce safety rules and a second to oversee drilling leases and royalty collections.
The division of duties will let “the American people know they have a strong and independent organization holding energy companies accountable,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.
Trend Internationally
“That tends to be the trend internationally, to separate the resource-management agency from the safety and pollution- prevention agency,” Elmer Danenberger, who retired in January after 38 years in offshore regulation at the Interior Department, told the Senate committee today. Splitting the MMS “is something that is probably going to be looked at.”
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, told reporters today that he supports splitting MMS’s revenue and enforcement duties.
The MMS failed to mandate certain safety devices required on offshore rigs in other countries and allowed BP to drill in 5,000 feet of water without requiring a detailed environmental analysis, said Kevin Book, a Washington-based managing director for ClearView Energy Partners LLC, a policy research firm.
“The oil spill is the cost of having a relationship with industry like the one MMS has,” Book said. “MMS by charter is in the business of doing business with industry.”
Lamar McKay, chairman of BP America Inc., testified today along with Steven L. Newman, chief executive officer of rig owner Transocean Ltd., and Tim Probert, president of global business lines at Halliburton Co., which was in charge of cementing the well.
Pointing Fingers
The companies pointed fingers at each other in their testimony.
“Transocean’s blowout preventer failed to operate,” McKay said. The Transocean and Halliburton executives said BP had the lead decision-making role in the project. The executives pledged to cooperate to find the cause.
At least five congressional panels plan hearings on the incident that began April 20. The Energy and Natural Resources hearing was to be followed by a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee session today.
Danenberger recommended an independent commission to review “all aspects” of offshore energy regulation. He defended MMS regulators as “100 percent committed to their safety and pollution prevention mission.”
Sex, Gifts
It’s not the first time the agency’s relationship with the industry it regulates has come under fire. In 2008, Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney found that MMS employees in the division that gathers fees had sex with and accepted gifts from industry contacts while failing to collect almost $200 million due from energy companies.
The allegations led Salazar in September to scrap a program that accepted payment of drilling fees in oil and gas instead of cash, calling it “a blemish” on the department.
The 2008 allegations followed revelations by Devaney in 2006 that MMS failed to include terms in offshore drilling leases that could have generated $10 billion in additional revenue for the government.
The MMS, created in 1982, is “too cozy” with the companies it regulates, said U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican. The relationship discouraged the agency in 2003 from demanding better systems to prevent well blowouts like the one spewing an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, Issa said.
Issa has introduced legislation to separate the MMS from the Interior Department and make it an independent agency like the IRS.
Blowout Preventer
The explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig about 130 miles (209 kilometers) southeast of New Orleans opened leaks 5,000 feet underwater.
BP’s McKay in his testimony pointed to the blowout preventer, a device intended to stanch the well, which failed in the initial phases of the accident. Backup systems such as a dead man’s switch that is supposed to respond when its signal is lost, and remote-controlled underwater robots, have failed to activate the device.
“We were working on the belief that the failsafe, if everything else didn’t hold the pressures, that blowout preventer would close,” David Nagel, executive vice president of BP America, said yesterday in a briefing with reporters.
Exclusion Given
The MMS gave BP a “categorical exclusion” from the National Environmental Policy Act in 2009, which released the company from preparing a detailed environmental assessment for the well. BP’s exploration plan called the prospect of an oil spill “unlikely.”
In a 2000 safety alert, the MMS warned that backup systems to activate blowout preventers were “an essential component” of deepwater drilling. Three years later, a consultant for the MMS said an acoustic system mandated by Norway and Brazil that can be triggered by encoded signals sent through the water, was too costly and untested in the presence of a mud of gas plume.
“It’s not a clear case that they should have mandated the acoustic sensor,” said Kenneth Arnold, an offshore energy consultant based in Houston who helped write a 1990 report on the MMS offshore inspection program.
Federal Lands
If research showed that systems to activate a blowout preventer weren’t foolproof, the MMS should have demanded that the industry spend “hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars” to develop something better in return for access “to these very profitable federal lands,” Issa said.
Even industry allies such as Representative Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, say stricter regulation may be necessary.
“I’m not satisfied with the answers,” he said after meeting BP executives May 4. “Those of us that support offshore drilling have to be open to the possibility that we have to toughen up a bit.”
So the answer is have no regulation.
Thought, I'm in favor of competence and accountability
What the hell does that mean? Who is not in favor of competence and accountability?
Who is going to hold the capitalistic system accountable? You have just fallen off of the logic cliff.
^^^^^^
I think the courts should have a solution for this.
Unless that spill is cleaned up fast, the CEO is going to prison and everyone involved with BP is going to prison.
You'd be surprised the kind of motivation prison puts into people.
No need for government intervention... no legislation, no payouts, no executive orders, no FEMA... just tell BP to clean up the mess or everyone is going to prison.
Unless that spill is cleaned up fast, the CEO is going to prison and everyone involved with BP is going to prison.
You'd be surprised the kind of motivation prison puts into people.
No need for government intervention... no legislation, no payouts, no executive orders, no FEMA... just tell BP to clean up the mess or everyone is going to prison.
You do know the courts are government intervention, don't you?
You do know the courts are government intervention, don't you?
UD, you are patient man!
You do know the courts are government intervention, don't you?
Do you mean judges are nothing more than politicians?
In practice, I would agree, but that is not how courts have to work.
It is the politicizing of the courts that allows corporations to exist and BP employees not to be punished.
Courts don't work in the United States, ask most black men about that.
But, you don't need politicians to have effective courts.
The case, United States of America v. BP Exploration and Production, Inc., which is the subject of the 4.5B settlement was INITIATED by the United States Department of Justice, no
The case, United States of America v. BP Exploration and Production, Inc., which is the subject of the 4.5B settlement was INITIATED by the United States Department of Justice, no
Considering that everyone is affected by the oil spill, everyone should have access to the courts for redress of their greivances and to seek remedy.
But in the United States, only the Federal/State government can practically take multinational corporations to court. And, even under those circumstances, there is almost no jail time, and the fines and fees don't go to the victims, but to the governments.
It is all a scam and that is why these problems persist and it will collapse the entire court system in the United States within our lifetimes.
The courts are losing their credibility with the public.
You know, the judicial system might very well be losing the credibility battle with the public. But, at times, it certainly appears that Ignorance is gaining in stature.
The government does NOT have a monopoly over taking "multinational corporations to court." There were numerous civil suits filed by individuals and businesses -- combined as a class action -- against BP and other responsible parties where the "government" is not in control of the action. There is presentlly pending for court approval a settlement in the class action in the amount of 7.8 BILLION dollars.
The settlement that is the subject of this thread arises out of a "Criminal Case" pursued by the Dept. of Justice, hence, there are "FINES" being assessed -- not individual "DAMAGES." Individual victims are being compensated separately and apart from the criminal case.
What kind of lieyer are you anyway, that doesn't know the difference between criminal and civil law
-- I know, you're not -- you're a fucking pretender
You know, the judicial system might very well be losing the credibility battle with the public. But, at times, it certainly appears that Ignorance is gaining in stature.
The government does NOT have a monopoly over taking "multinational corporations to court." There were numerous civil suits filed by individuals and businesses -- combined as a class action -- against BP and other responsible parties where the "government" is not in control of the action. There is presentlly pending for court approval a settlement in the class action in the amount of 7.8 BILLION dollars.
The settlement that is the subject of this thread arises out of a "Criminal Case" pursued by the Dept. of Justice, hence, there are "FINES" being assessed -- not individual "DAMAGES." Individual victims are being compensated separately and apart from the criminal case.
What kind of lieyer are you anyway, that doesn't know the difference between criminal and civil law
You need to take a look at the Exxon Valdez case if you think multinational oil companies can "lose" in United States courts.
The only ones who get paid from these cases are the lawyers and the government. As always, the actual victims are victimized yet again by the courts.
And, a criminal case against a multinational corporation is a joke. It is rare, really rare that anyone goes to jail when the company stays in business. Just ask the tobacco companies and GM.
When you don't know what the fuck you're talking about -- double-down on the bullshit! <s>Lawyer</s> <u>Lieyer</u> I just wanted to see what he was going to say.
I had no idea he was going to do this...
So the courts that don't work are the solution.
If I didnt see it myself, I would think someone would exaggerating if they described the dialogues with this guy.
^^^^^^
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