Clueless, All Of Them
CNN says that Frustration grows over oil spill
(CNN) — Saying BP has “from day one, frankly not fulfilled the mission it was supposed to fulfill,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar expressed frustration Sunday with the delay in stopping an underwater oil gusher 33 days after an oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico.
“I have no question that BP is throwing everything at the problem,” Salazar said. “Do I have confidence that they know exactly what they’re doing? No.”
But he and other federal officials likened the task to an “Apollo 13” mission.
Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, told reporters that while BP has failed to meet its own schedule for stopping the gusher, their schedule was probably not feasible from the outset given that the tasks involve construction, mobilizing equipment and fabricating devices.
BP’s effort is being directed by their legal department, not engineers. Once you accept that reality everything falls into place. If BP was actually trying to stop the leak, they wouldn’t have had two containment structures built, they would have been working on stopping the leak.
They have the same pipe that is used in the riser available, and could have devised a shut off valve that would be added to the pipe in days, not over a month. The manifold system for the mud has been in place from the beginning, but hasn’t been used at all.
It is long past the time when this operation should have been taken over by someone who actually wants to stop the flow of oil.
