Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and the Crude Economy...

yeah, I am amazed that no one over here stands up and says "I'm mad as hell and I'"m not gonna take it any more. Cut your oil imports by 50% NOW!"

meaning us stupid Americans. We should be taxed 50% and all of it go to public transportation projects and rehabbing cities so people move from suburbs back to downtown. It was amazing what happened when gas shot up to $4.50. I was rooting for 5.50 and mandatory limits.

Tho I also heard there was a sly comment from Opec that said if we did implement gas rationing and cut imports, they'd drop the price of gas to wreak our plans. And I believe it. Crude oil is manipulated in a power game for the most money.

I don't want to start a conspiracy theory thread but who brainwashed us to believe that we all needed oil-fed cars and planes and ships to circumvent the earth so many times a day. We ALL collectively are responsible for this. We have gambled and lost and I am sure this is not the first time. People will still buy gas, buy cars etc etc etc while the Saudis sit in their palaces and count the billions till the wells run dry and we all start walking...then the chaos begins.

P & J Oysters, established 1921, closed down today. My first oyster was a P & J oyster, and we have made many fine meals of P & J product.

They won't be back.

They won't be the last.

Long live P & J Oyster.

quote:

Originally posted by powerbench1:
I don't want to start a conspiracy theory thread but who brainwashed us to believe that we all needed oil-fed cars and planes and ships to circumvent the earth so many times a day. We ALL collectively are responsible for this. We have gambled and lost and I am sure this is not the first time. People will still buy gas, buy cars etc etc etc while the Saudis sit in their palaces and count the billions till the wells run dry and we all start walking...then the chaos begins.

No conspiracy theory from me, but I think it is fair to say that we see the NEED to travel vast distances, largely because we have the ABILITY to travel vast distances. Why do our friends and family live so far away? Well, because they can. Take away the planes and cars and we would live locally. We would live near to where we work. Our friends would be next door, our family around the corner. What a life it would be. The way we do it now is not only stupid, but it is unsustainable.

Stu

quote:

Why the hell the us army have not been in there to stop it begs?

Simply because they don't have the technology or the expertise. All of that rests with the major oil companies.

Doing what they are doing 5,000ft under the ocean is Apollo 11 type stuff - there is no manual in place for this scenario.

As for giving BP the bill - that's fine but I would check the value of your pension plans as a result of this BS rhetoric emanating from Washington.

Cheers

Jim

From what I remember the US military or Coast Guard said that BP was better equipped to handle the problem than they were.

From my reading of the situation all the US originated rhetoric is actually pushing at an open door.

I have not seen any reports saying that BP was trying to avoid its responsibilities.

However when the dust has settled I would not be surprised to see some of the costs pushed back to the other companies involved which are US companies.

All this rhetoric is just so much BS - and this from the state which coined the expression 'shit happens'.Anyone would think that the accident was deliberate!

I don't see the US administration turning down a proportion of tax revenues from the oil companies on the grounds that they shouldn't profit from oil extracted from deep water sites.

Presumably they think that BP could have stopped this leak any time they wished to and are just jerking around to piss people off?

The reality is that everyone is happy to benefit from the oil when it is available to them. Given that BP have openly said that they will pay for the consequences Obama et al should STFU when an unintended accident occurs as a result of technically difficult extraction.

This time of year, the baby shrimp come in from the Gulf of Mexico and into Lake Pontchatrain, where they remain all Summer.

There is no sign of them. I wonder why?

The poor of New Orleans will go to the Lake with poles and nets, and catch food for the week.

So hard luck families feast on seafood over the weekend. It doesn't hurt anyone else, and makes the poorest life a celebration.

It's why we get along with each other ...

That's all over now. People will move away or die off.

Who presumes the right to do this to us?

A way of life is ending in slow motion.

quote:

Originally posted by Svetty:

The reality is that everyone is happy to benefit from the oil when it is available to them. Given that BP have openly said that they will pay for the consequences Obama et al should STFU when an unintended accident occurs as a result of technically difficult extraction.

Well, yes and no ...

On the one hand, I agree that this is very much a case of the chickens coming home to roost vis a vis the insane and seemingly never-ending slavery to oil and other fossil fuels, and the USA is certainly not alone in that.

But BP is not some innocent five-year-old kid who accidentally spilled a glass of milk ... there is a long and well-documented history of gross negligence and cavalier risk in order to maximize profits, which is the raison d'etre of the corporate mandate, further enabled by the evisceration of any meaningful governmental regulation. There is already evidence of cover-ups, censorship of accurate reportage, and lying about just how much oil has been gushing ... at first BP claimed 1,000 barrels a day, but it has shown to be more like 10,000+ barrels a day, and there are internal BP memos betraying their desperate attempts to withhold that true facts.

BP is certainly not alone in this type of corruption ... witness the gross negligence of Massey Energy in the recent mine disaster which killed 29 workers. We see this over and over again with these largely unregulated mega-corporations: compliance with safety regulations, which are on the books but weakly enforced, cuts into profits and, by god, we just can't have that in so-called free-market capitalism!

Investagative reporter Greg Palast put it very well in a recent column about BP:

"Americans want government off our backs ... that is, until a folding crib crushes the skull of our baby, Toyota accelerators speed us to our death, banks blow our savings on gambling sprees and crude oil smothers the Mississippi. Then, suddenly, it's, 'Where was hell was the government? Why didn't the government do something to stop it?'"

This is the new reality: we are ruled by corporatocracy, and it's become a global empire, beholden to no nation. The chickens are coming home to roost, indeed.

Posted by GFFJ, Senior Member, Fri 11 June 2010 22:58:-

Breaking news: I have sold my Volvo 240! I always said that it would be my last car, so keeping in mind this resolution, the Carlton [bicycle] now becomes my main personal transport!

Great news! To grasp this particular nettle is not so easy, and has required a long period of weaning myself off using the car over more than two years, but having only used the car four times [eight journeys, to and from] this year, I concluded that if I could sell then I could manage without ...

It is a liberating feeling to get rid of such a concept as a car, which is probably far more disastrous for the future of the world than the widely feared Nuclear Bomb, for example.

Many more people need to follow similar thoughts, if the current Gulf Of Mexico catastrophe is not to be a continuing risk of growing proportion.

ATB from George

I applaud the reduction of your carbon footprint, George, but I'm sure you understand that this just isn't feasible for most people.

What we really need is the development of affordable non-polluting motor vehicles, and lots of them! Not easy, but necessary.

Dear Fred,

Ner'y a truer post written here IMO.

I can and have arranged to live close enough to my work that even with two foot of snow, I could walk it in thirty minutes. It takes six minutes on a bike, and nearly ten in the car, in the rare event.

I appreciate that not everyone, and I do understand the particular circumstance of a musician, who must play often a great distance from home and long after the last train home, can arrange to live close to work.

But many who could actually do not and sit for an hour or so each way in a car - often more or less stationary in traffic. That is surely bound to change, I would hope anyway, even if there must be many exceptions, including doctors, and many others who necessarily do not have a fixed point of work.

Best wishes from George

Re carbon footprints & non-polluting cars

Go checkout electric cars maintenance cost
Electric cars have leading edge new tech batteries that are both light weight & deliver a lot of power for the weight & size.
Lead/acid batteries as found in all internal combustion engined cars are poor performance & heavy in comparison, to use them in an electric car would effectively give you a car with the performance & weight of a milk float

The downside of these new tech electric car batteries
(a) have an -as yet - non-determined life. Best estimates seem to agree 3 years is about the time to expect a fall off in range & a decline to a defective battery problem in aprx 5 years
(b) cost of replacement now is well into 4 figures. Estimates for replacement vary enormously mainly because at the moment they are not available in commercial quantities. However if & when they are widely available it will still mean replacement costs that seriously question the economics of electric cars.

Glasses Guide (the car trade SH guide manual) was reported in the press this weekend as devaluing electric cars by 90% in five years

Sorry folks, we are gonna need oil wells for the foreseeable future.

I found this posting/comment on a widely available international website

quote:

Obama needs to tell the Nation tonight that he has fired Adm. Allen and replaced him wit Gen. Honore" He also needs to announce that the CEO and members of the Board of Directors of BP have been arrested and are being held at Gitmo and will stand trial in 6 or 7 yrs. like rest of the detainees. He also needs to announce that ALL US TROOPS are being recalled immediately from the middle east and wil be sent to the Gulf coast and Mexican border t save our country. Anything less than this is unacceptable Mr. President....

God bless America and Americans!

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by Mike-B:

Sorry folks, we are gonna need oil wells for the foreseeable future.

Very true. But if we also don't get serious, and quickly, about developing practical, affordable, clean alternative energy sources, which we should have done starting nearly 40 years ago, we will be exactly where we are now 40 years from now, except that we'll be 40 years closer to the end of the planet's finite oil supply.

The main reason for the various problems you describe above with electric cars, batteries, etc. is the symbiosis between greed and shortsightedness ... energy companies, auto makers, etc. have been obstinate in their refusal to make meaningful strides toward alternative clean energy because they are only interested in maximizing their profits at all costs, even at the the cost of the future itself.

For a nation that took little more than 10 years to put humans on the moon, if we had gotten serious about electric cars, etc. 40 years ago, does anyone doubt that we'd have fully functional, practical, affordable electric cars by now?

Instead of taking ever-more obscene salaries and bonuses, and artificially inflating the speculative energy market, how about funneling a significant portion of their profits to develop alternative energy? But no ... we're living in an age of "I'm gonna get mine and then get out, and screw everyone else ... so long, suckers!"

In the 1950s in Britain there was a saying:

"I'm alright, Jack."

Nowadays, this attitude will not do ...

ATB from George

Fred, your response is (IMO) very correct, no disagreements whatsoever.
Maybe I needed to expand somewhat in a subject that has no end.

Most electric cars today are using the advanced battery technology that is commercially available & does not have a price tag that takes it to the same level as the technology NASA used to get those men to the moon. But even if they did use super expensive highly advanced battery cells, the range & speed issues of battery power remains limited condemning all foreseeable electric car types to not much more than city/day use.

Of the alternative automotive power technologies in the pipeline is fuel cell & is probably the most interesting as it gives us the most viable alternative to achieve the range, speed & economy closest to that of petroleum fuels. But it will still need some form of battery cell & again an advanced technology cell will be needed. And like pure electric power, fuel cell comes with a price tag.

The point I was making is that oil dependency as we know it is the easy option to live with. Unless we accept (globally) the cost of travel as we know it is going to take a serious hike up the price scale & that our attitude to independent personal travel has to take a serious 180 degree turn around. And (IMO) that is not going to happen any time soon & the oil dependency situation as we have today will be around for a long time to come.

The challenging areas are too numerous to mention; but just two examples

USA with 4.5% of the worlds population using 25% of the worlds oil production, to a lesser extent the rest of the western world, has to be addressed big time. The US oil use (barrels per year) per capita is only beaten by Canada & significantly miles ahead of them, Saudi Arabia.
Despite what's going on in the gulf, my living & working experience of USA tells me the move to significantly reduce oil dependency is a long long way off. Who will give up the family SUV used for school runs & shopping trips, what about the truck sized pick-up truck culture.

The "wests" established dependency on oil is exactly the same in many respects as the new ways in the emerging countries
China & India has just grown to be able to afford personal motor transport. I have travelled to India for years; its shocking to see the roads that only 10 years ago were jammed with bicycles & tut-tuts, plus a few cars & trucks. These roads are now jammed & choked with the pollution from millions of motorcycles, plus the tut-tuts, cars & trucks & hardly a bicycle to be seen. These people are not going to give up these new freedoms, just as the US will be reluctant to give up the SUV & the 7-litre macho hunting trucks.

The bottom line is, alternative fuels & retaining independent personal travel comes with a price tag that is not only $$$
That's why oil will be around for the foreseeable future.

If everyone got to experience what we are experiencing with this oil spill, things would change quickly.

Oil will be "around" for a long while. Having said that, if there is a significant, sustained economic recovery, the price of oil will help to regulate our behaviour. Guaranteed.

Best,
BBM

Here are a few interesting possibilities the oil spill presents :

1 - If a hurricane strikes, it may rain oil in my neighborhood. Just imagine if that happened to your house. The Gulf of Mexico is quite warm, about 84 degrees Fahrenheit, so many components of the oil spill are more volatile and aromatic than they were in Alaska.

2 - Refineries and power generation plants down here use seawater from the Gulf of Mexico for cooling, and may have to shut down. They didn't have to worry about that in Alaska.

This has the makings of a good science fiction story, if only it weren't so real.

If you reflect on these sorts of possibilities, you have a different reaction than if you speculate about policies. It makes the reality more human, and gives a better sense of tragedy, which is called for here.

BP has a lot to answer for. This is one for the history books.

quote:

Originally posted by mikeeschman:
BP has a lot to answer for.

Sorry Mike, but I beg to differ. It could just as easily been Exxon-Mobile, Chevron or any of the many oil companies drilling in the gulf. BP probably did act irresponsibly, but until we know for sure, maybe no more irresponsibly than all the rest. They all push the envelope in one way or other & but for the grace of god or the flip of a coin could be any one or more of the others.

That crude spectacle in the senate committee this week acting like nothing more than dogs in a bear pit might calm some of the very justifiable anger in the US population, but it does not justify the continual hounding BP any more than it justifies proliferating the finger pointing by some of the oil rigs shareholders or the blow-off valve manufacturer.
Pointing fingers at each other & speculating on who is to blame is not focusing people who should be working together.
Other parties besides BP may finally be found responsible for some aspects of this disaster, lets hope they too are making provision for such a financial event as are BP.

The totally inept public response by BP, & that includes the Chairman after the Obama meeting, does not help.
Moving Hayward out should have been done weeks ago, but apart from not having Hayward's demeanour I don't see what else the new BP front man can fix.

When the investigation is finalised, then we will know who to blame & who will pay.
Then perhaps the senate committee can restore some dignity to themselves & their house & calmly direct the fund management cmpy & advise the house & Obama of the urgent safety & process regulation changes required to be in place before undersea oil exploration is allowed to restart in USA & its international waters.

Yes BP does have a lot to fix, but until we know the outcome of the enquiry, they may not be the only bad guy in this.

Other oil companies could have had the same happen to one of their rigs, but that hasn't happened.

BP is central to this disaster, not some other oil company.

Who did it still counts for something, in this neck of the woods.

The general feeling down here is that the responsible parties have no regard or empathy for their victims.

Things look a bit different from here, on the ground.

I have spoken of the consequences being discussed by the federal and university communities. These possibilities boggle my mind.

This would be the right time to demonstrate sympathy and support.

... and of course, BP did not act alone.

The one note of cheer for me is Obama brokering a settlement framework with BP early on, so more of us might survive this. He stepped right out onto the limb without letting congress get into it, and got us some relief.

I have not had to file a claim. God willing, I never will.