The government wants to add two new rules to offshore oil drilling. One says that offshore oil rigs need to have a spill contingency plan and practice it, and the other is about bore hole cement, maintenance and blowout protectors. Here’s the response from industry shills:
“We cannot have an approval process that creates unpredictable delays that could place at risk the flow of domestic energy in our country,” […]
“While the ongoing important investigations into the Gulf accident are necessary and may lead to new safety measures, requiring industry to navigate a tangled web of new regulations will only lead to increased uncertainty for businesses and consumers and less investment in America’s vast resources in the Gulf”[…]
Imagine if an airline said something like that after, say, the new crew rest rules that came about after last year’s Colgan Air crash in Buffalo.
I think these fuckers need some more regulating.
El Cid
‘You don’t tell us what we can do in your waters — we tell you.’
Ash Can
The oil industry’s
professional assholesspokespeople would whine no matter what steps the government took, no matter how common-sensical or necessary. I can understand that reporters include their drivel in their stories in order to broaden the filler, but it doesn’t mean anyone needs to pay any attention to them.Southern Beale
Here’s someone else who needs regulating. A single trade by Waddell & Reed caused last May’s “flash crash” in which the Dow lost nearly 1,000 points.
Earl
It should be clear to everyone by now that they don’t give a damn about life, water, or anything else beyond their bottom line. It should be common knowledge. It should be.
Psychopaths…
Mike M
And Mary Landrieu would be right there to fillibuster any regulatory bill that managed to clear a Senate subcommittee. There’s a lesson as to voter apathy there, just can’t quite figure out what it is.
Dennis SGMM
As if a few weeks added to the years-long process of bringing a well to production in the Gulf in the interest of avoiding an another catastrophe will suddenly result in 1973-style lines at the gas pump.
Not to worry, ya’ poor little oil companies, I’m confident that Congress can easily be persuaded to vote you some relief on taxes and royalties in return.
El Cid
@Dennis SGMM: Nothing much happened in the Gulf of Mexico. A little oil was spilled, liberals all screamed about it with their scare-mongering, BP fixed it all, and now it’s time to move beyond all that bedwetting to get back to the serious business of drilling holes deep underwater in the ocean so maybe it will work or not or whatever.
El Cid
Also, we’re tired of libruls complaining about what a mess Iraq was, because yes though it was a bit messy for a while, THE SURGE cleaned it all up.
brantl
Of course they need more regulating, if they were getting enough regulation, they wouldn’t be this arrogant.
Southern Beale
Norwegian oil companies manage just fine with these kinds of rules. Are they telling us the dirty fucking socialist herring-eating gai loving socialist abortion loving socialist Scandahooovians can do something red blooded Merkin oil companies can’t?
Heh.
jon
“Unpredictable” and “tangled web” and “uncertainty” just don’t mean the same thing to everyone after a “predictable” accident led to a “sticky mess” that will “certainly” lead to all sorts of problems for years to come.
If they’re truly this concerned about our resources in the Gulf of Mexico making it to market, they wouldn’t want to have them mixed with all the water. It’s not that hard to figure out, is it? As far as I’m concerned, it would be best if those resources just stayed under the ground or seafloor until a new generation of oil companies could replace the current idiotic one.
Dennis SGMM
@jon:
I wouldn’t hold my breath. The history of oil companies is a continuum of greed and high-handed thuggery. As the supply of oil becomes more and more finite I expect to see more – not less – of the same behaviors.
El Cid
Al Gore is a terrorist who pals around with Osama bin Laden.
This is time for pre-emptive detention of global warming activists for their possible associations to Al Qa’ida.
The newer, slightly less jihad-y blowy thingies uppy bin Laden also was moved by the plight of Pakistan’s astoundingly devastating giganto-floods:
Maybe he should be invited to meet with the aid agencies disbursing assistance to help them plan their work. You know, somewhere in the open.
Perhaps he can help by sending suicide bombers to blow up the excess water.
TJ
Heh. They did, after the crash. IIRC, the non-Colgan airlines said that Colgan obviously fucked up, and no new regs were required.
Nick
@Mike M:
It’s not voter apathy, the people of Louisiana WANT he to do that. I don’t think I’ve seen something polled so unpopular as the drilling moratorium was down there.
El Cid
Elizabeth Warren is an evil elitist part of the Soviet nanny-state who is going to make us all into pacifier suckers instead of taking on the financial industry like the individualist Randians we should all be.
If all the damn black homeowners who got free houses from ACORN and Jimmy Carter’s CRA wouldn’t have created fake investment gambling instruments like CDO’s and derivatives based on mortgage securities tranches including subprime mortgages, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Regulate them and then regulate their regulators.
Fuck them.
Zuzu's Petals
A couple of things occur to me.
Hard to see exactly which reg/approval process would cause “unpredictable delays” in the permitting process. Maybe it’s the requirement that certain plans and designs now have “independent and expert review.” But still, I don’t know how that makes the approval timeline less predictable.
As to the requirement for better spill contingency planning, hard to see the API complaining about that, as it seems to merely make mandatory procedures that API itself developed that are now voluntary. Of course I don’t know how much responsibility an individual rig crew is going to have in the case of an oil spill (other than the rare small leak from machinery, etc.)…I mean doesn’t that fall to the oil company itself?
Guess I’ll wait to see what The Oildrum has to say.
Nick
@El Cid: Funny because she’s already fallen out of favor on OpenLeft.
Zuzu's Petals
@Mike M:
These are regulations promulgated under the agency’s rulemaking power. No new bills required. Thankfully.
debbie
Well, there’s this: When The Obama administration announced new prohibitions for airlines when it came to delays, the industry issued alarmist warnings about how this would result in all kinds of delays and (the phrase du jour) fewer choices for the consumer.
New rules: articles.cnn.com/2009-12-21/travel/airline.delay.tarmac.ruling_1_mesaba-airlines-passengers-tarmac?_…
Current numbers: travelweekly.com/article3_ektid220830.aspx
I had heard these numbers for June: 286 flights were delayed by more than 3 hours in June 2009. For June 2010, there were the same number of flights, but only 3 were delayed beyond the regulations.
And there’s this for July:
Seems to me, all we’re seeing lately are empty warnings that never prove out.
rickstersherpa
To get insight into Bin Laden, I really recommend reading Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Towers,” on Bin Laden’s life and work leading up to 9/11. And one of the real troubling things about the guy is that is strategic insight on how to hurt the United States has been extremely accurate. He is not a stupid or crazy man, and his not quite the moral monster that Zaharwi is, although since he works with and goes along with Zaharwi’s worse crimes, he is not far behind.
And yes, I expect McCarthy, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Palin, Savage, Hannity, and Beck to now link all Environmental Groups as possible “material supporters of Terrorism” as the result of remarks like this. Any Greenpeace offices near ground zero will be a sacrilege and the Sierra Club will be on the State Department’s terrorist watch list.
jinxtigr
Huh! You figure it’s an intentional attack, then? Intentionally giving wingnuts cover to hate on climate change and environmental action?
I can see him wanting to get Americans hotly defending the oil companies that are screwing us and wrecking OUR coastlines etc- that’s actually really clever- but the consequences really don’t hit just us.
It’s like getting your next-door neighbor to nuke himself… enjoy your radioactivity…
El Cid
@rickstersherpa: One thing that always puzzled me is the presumption that bin Laden had to be some mysterious evil genius in order to figure out utterly obvious things regarding the US.
El Cid
@jinxtigr: Global warming is a librul plot, and libruls want to impose Shania law, and build that gigantic victory mosque on top of 9/11 graves so that Al Gore can steal our oil.
Svensker
@Southern Beale:
The collectivists bow their snivelling heads and submit to the government-by-thug boot on their necks. The proud American oil companies stand upright, like true humans, their Galtian faces lifted with beautiful arrogance to the sunlit future of production!
Svensker
Oh crap, I said SOCKALIST in 26. Moderation blues.
Zuzu's Petals
@debbie:
Do you happen to know if any of those stats account for scenarios like this?
In other words, a scenario where the flight is not listed as delayed beyond 3 hours, but is instead given a new departure time after returning to the terminal?
Thanks.
Svensker
@El Cid:
Being lectured by Wall Street on personal responsibility makes me bite down so hard on the irony meter that it shatters and I have to spit glass.
debbie
@ Zuzu’s Petals:
I haven’t read of there being any exceptions to the 3-hour delay rule, but I don’t see how they can be held accountable for weather, other than not waiting it out for too long.
According to this, the fines are $27,000+ per passenger. Pretty significant, when you add up the number of passengers per flight.
nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/04road.html
jon
@El Cid: Shania Law? That doesn’t jibe with our Constitution! Never the Twain shall meet, you know.
Zuzu's Petals
@debbie:
Right. I think Patrick Smith’s point was that no matter the reg, there are ways around it, which don’t always work out to the consumer’s benefit.
In this case, the 3-hour rule evidently only applies to tarmac delays. So if the plane returns to the terminal before the 3 hours are up – good weather, bad weather, whatever – it doesn’t count as a violation of the rule. It doesn’t count as an exception because the rule has been obeyed. Hence the possibility of lower numbers for 2010 over 2009. But the result is an even longer real-life delay for passengers.
jon
@Dennis SGMM: I’m not expecting it, either. Greed tends to blur the edges of reasonable thought, and future generations are no less likely to suffer for that as we have.
mclaren
And an excess profits tax. Like the one Eisenhower levied on American corporations back in 1958.
Butch
The spill contingency plans…they’re called SPCC, for spill prevention control and countermeasures (the lack of commas is correct). They’ve been routine for land-based operations for years, and I’ve even worked on them for small transformer stations in the Arizona desert, where a spill of the small quantities of material couldn’t reach surface water under any conceivable scenario, but they were required anyway. It really shows the duplicity if these folks are actually complaining about an SPCC.
Martin
@El Cid:
Yes, all of these irresponsible Americans who fail to deploy their army of lawyers to decipher the 100-page legal mortgage documents prepared by lenders army of lawyers.
Show me one, just one, person that has fully read and fully understands all of the documents they signed to buy a house. I bet you couldn’t find a single person in the entire country – even among lawyers. Harping about personal responsibility in this case is about as useful about demanding that people stop obeying the laws of gravity.
Roger Moore
@debbie:
FTFY.
El Cid
@jon: Everyone knows that the only proper form of justice is the Chuck Norris code.
Roger Moore
@Zuzu’s Petals:
But that’s making the incorrect assumption that all delays are equal. The new rules were a response to a few instances of long tarmac delays by planes that simply weren’t equipped to have passengers stay in them for that long. The passengers wound up being trapped indefinitely in airplanes that had run out of food and drink and had (IIRC) no AC and overflowing toilets. The requirement that planes return to the terminal is supposed to prevent that kind of nightmare scenario. Even if it sometimes results in a longer overall delay, it’s probably better in terms of total passenger suffering.
numbskull
Shoulda nationalized ’em when we had the chance…
Mnemosyne
@Zuzu’s Petals:
It’s not to the consumer’s benefit to be able to get off the plane and find another flight that can get them there quicker? Not to mention, as Roger Moore mentioned, the benefits of working toilets and the ability to buy food at the terminal. I don’t think I’ve been on a single flight in the past two years where they actually stocked enough food on flight for the number of people who wanted to purchase it, which means that if you end up sitting on the tarmac for 4 hours and want something to eat, you’re SOL.
If it comes down to it, I’d rather spend an extra hour or two in the (relative) comfort of the terminal than spend the entire time sitting on the plane with no toilet and no food, especially since that means there would be no toilet and no food for the entire duration of the subsequent flight.
debbie
@ Zuzu’s Petals:
This seems to be true for everything, and not just with the airlines. No matter how carefully a regulation or a law is written, someone figures some way to get around it. Thank you, lawyers!
Also: Thanks, Roger. Much better!
Zuzu's Petals
@Roger Moore:
Yes, I see your point. I was just wondering if the stats account for scenarios like this.
Zuzu's Petals
@Mnemosyne:
I said “not always” to the consumer’s benefit. As in the scenario posited by Patrick Smith.
The scenario you describe (no food, no toilets) is extreme. On the other hand, it seems entirely plausible that there are many planes now returning to the terminal where the benefit is marginal…and those are the stats I’m interested in.
Zuzu's Petals
@debbie:
Yep.
Zuzu's Petals
@Butch:
In this case it appears to be a recommendation developed by API and applied voluntarily in the industry. This rule just makes it mandatory.
RalfW
These oil industry guys need to fly on 19 seat turborpos with two pimply 20-something pilots who slept 5 hours last night in a motel 6. Over and over. Sitting next the the CEOs of ContiNited and DeltWest. In heavy thunderstorms.
Mnemosyne
@Zuzu’s Petals:
It’s actually quite common. As I said, for the past two years every domestic flight I’ve flown on has not had enough food on board for everyone who wanted to purchase it, so I don’t think more food will magically appear if the plane is parked on the tarmac for four hours instead of three.
Patrick Smith is thinking strictly in terms of the time commitment (three hours vs. five hours) when there are a whole lot of comfort factors that also need to be taken into account. If Smith hasn’t flown 6 hours on a plane with a broken lavatory like we did to Hawaii last year, I invite him to do so before he decides that it’s inconsequential and the only consideration should be the minutes on the clock and not the physical comfort of the passengers.
BC
@El Cid:
Does this fucker know that light years is not a measure of time but a measure of distance? This makes as much sense as if he’d said “live within our means rather than 1 billion miles beyond them.”