Thursday, May 20, 2010

Petroleum Prevarications

"BP is a foreign entity. For the last month, intentionally or through gross negligence, it has been attacking the shores of our nation..."
The trouble BP has with escalating its lies over the course of the last month about...
(1) how much oil is leaking; and
(2) how much of the leak they're capturing with a makeshift 4-inch tube...
... is that sooner or later one of those lies will collide with the other one. Take it in reverse order:
2. The Associated Press reports this morning, "BP says a mile-long tube it inserted into a leak on the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico is capturing 210,000 gallons of oil a day, but some is still escaping."
1. But, "the company has long estimated that 210,000 gallons is the total amount that's leaking."
Inasmuch as oil continues to pour out of the wellhead, a BP flack-catcher by the name of Mark Proegler had to admit Thursday,"the tube is not sucking up all the oil." But he refuses to say how much is not being captured.

Now, that's odd, to put it mildly. BP can publicly release estimates of the gallons leaking and the gallons supposedly being recovered, but not the gallons of oil that continue to pour out of the wellhead?

Where's the live feed? For that matter, why does the Obama administration, NOAA, EPA, the Interior Department, and the Coast Guard stand for this?

Reports ProPublica, quoting an ABC news report:

Asked if the White House could compel the company to release the video, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday the decision rests with BP, which controls the tapes. When Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) pressed a top BP executive on the question during congressional hearings Tuesday, she was told the videos are under joint government and industry control at the incident command center in New Orleans, where they are teaming up to orchestrate the spill response.

Reports McClatchy News, a federal OSHA official in New Orleans "deferred to BP" by saying:

“It is not ours to publish,” said Dean Wingo, OSHA’s assistant regional administrator who oversees Louisiana. “We are working with (BP) and encouraging them to post the data so that it is publicly available.”

News flash: BP is a foreign entity. For the last month, intentionally or through gross negligence, it has been attacking the shores of our nation and endangering the health and welfare of millions of Gulf Coast citizens.

As Cynthia Kouril, a diarist at Firedog Lake more or less says, the federal government doesn't need anyone's permission to monitor the attack and gauge the severity of the threat to our republic posed by this foreign entity. Give 'em a Miranda warning and then make BP 'fess up.

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