What do former President Bill Clinton and Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Georgia) have in common?
Both Clinton and Gingrey are now on record as suggesting that the navy should take over the operation from BP and blow up the well.
The basic idea seems to be that they could drill one or more shafts parallel to the well shaft and about ten feet away and then fill them with high explosive which when detonated would collapse the actual well shaft inward, sealing itself. These parallel shafts would be only about ten feet deep (in contrast to the 10,000 feet that the relief well is being drilled into the rock as we speak.)
I HOPE the reason this was not done is because whatever Clinton and Gingrey may have said, there are technical problems that make it as daunting or as risky as the methods that have been tried (which is possible, because politicians sometimes have been known to make suggestions about things they really don't understand very well.)
However, a disturbing couple of lines pops up if you read today's article (the one on Clinton endorsing the plan.)
There has been some pressure for BP to simply blow up the well, with critics suggesting the company is forgoing that option out of a desire to get as much oil as possible from the rig.
"If we demolish the well using explosives, the investment's gone," former nuclear submarine officer and a visiting scholar on nuclear policy at Columbia University Christopher Brownfield said in a Fox News interview in May. "They lose hundreds of millions of dollars from the drilling of the well, plus no lawmaker in his right mind would allow BP to drill again in that same spot. So basically, it's an all-or-nothing thing with BP: They either keep the well alive, or they lose their whole investment and all the oil that they could potentially get from that well."
IF that is the reason why this has not been done but in fact explosives could have sealed this well much earlier then we should all be disturbed. Disturbed and outraged. I've assumed that the reason BP hasn't yet stopped the leak is because they tried and failed. But if they could have stopped it and instead failed to do so intentionally purely for the purpose of protecting their 'investment' (at whatever cost to those onshore) then that decision would qualify as a crime and they should be made to pay for it.
Eli,
ReplyDeleteI doubt shock and awe is the way to fix a rupture at those depths. They could mess up the geology to the point nobody could fix it. Slow and steady is the way to go. Let's not start second guessing what seems to be the prudent course here.
If you are right, BP will have to deal with the fall out when the truth comes out.
Bill Clinton went along with the Republicans with outsourcing so he has no credibility. I personally think he was drunk when he made that remark at the World Cup. It sounded like a Palin comment.
Could be. Maybe he was wanting to talk about blowing something up because well, he's a guy, there might have been a cute girl, and he's going back to the juvenile way of thinking about how a guy tries to impress a cute girl (while actually doing the opposite.)
ReplyDeleteEli,
ReplyDeleteHe's the father of the bride. None of the bridesmaids are going to give him a second look. Besides, didn't Clinton already have his middle age breakdown?
Clinton's embrace of the Republican's outsourcing policy nearly destroyed this nation. He now wants to destroy its ecology, too? No wonder the Gores were not invited to the wedding.
And what is it with with Hillary these days...besides dealing with her only daughter's bridesella problems? She's allowing Petraeus to circumvent her authority to bring a diplomatic end to the madness in the Middle East.
Did you see his comments at Byrd's funeral? Very revealing. Not revealing about Byrd, but revealing about the way Clinton thinks.
ReplyDeleteDidn't he say something about Byrd having to be KKK to establish his power base and this was acceptable to him?
ReplyDeleteIt's typical Southern political thinking whether you are a Republican or Democrat. Clinton may have had an Ivy League education but he's never strayed far from his roots.
Remember how he threw down the race card in the South Carolina primary when Hillary was running against Obama? Nothing surprises me much about Bill. It makes him vulnerable to manipulation.