The Next Crisis

The Deepwater Horizon was - and is - the future of deep water drilling. It was an ultra-deepwater dynamic position semi-submersible oil rig. Deep water drilling is the future of hydrocarbon exploitation.

Here is a picture of a similar ultra-deepwater rig - the Deepwater Nautilus under dry tow:

These mammoth ships are the equivalent of the Saturn Vs, Space Shuttles and International Space Station. Designed to work under extreme and uncertain conditions and requiring the highest levels of engineering and brawn to make them successful. These things require the purest combinaiton of American white collar and blue collar skill. It is damned dangerous work. It always has been and it always will be no matter how many rules and regulations you write or procedures you put in place.

Here are the type of rigs is use today:



But what they do is not new; where they do it, in the deep waters of the Gulf, is.

Seventy-seven years of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1933, the first well drilled on state offshore lands was drilled at Creole, LA, approximately, 3,000 ft. off the beach in 12 ft. of water.

In 1947 Kerr McGhee drilled the first well out of sight of land in Ship Shoal Block 52.

In 2001, BP and Exxon announced the largest deepwater oil discovery to date in the Gulf of Mexico, located in 5,640 ft. of water, called Thunder Horse.

In 2002, Marathon and TotalFinaElf marked another milestone for deepwater operations by successfully installing a natural gas pipeline tie in 7,209 ft. of water.

Within the span of these milestones, approximately 4,000 oil platforms and drilling rigs have been erected.

Seventy-seven years. Here's a schematic of the total rigs under operation:



It is unreasonable and simply stupid to be surprised that such endeavors can be subject to total failure and destruction. You'd think that Deepwater Horizon was the first rig attempting to tap into the Earth, only to be snapped in half and pulled into her remorseless blue maw.

A tragic accident, human stupidity, a work of Fate, the manifestation of some enviro-terrorist plot, annular gas migration through the cement sheath, the fruition of an Al Quds in Venezuela training exercise.

As they say, who the fuck knows?

Many, many could bes and now we are told that until we understand what it could be, it must stop. Man must stop. Industry must stop. The rigs anchored up the rivers. The permits cancelled. The roustabouts, the toolpushers, the roughnecks, the mudengineers, the derrickhands, and the engineers are to be laid off, fired, or not hired. Hands must be wrung. Souls searched. Tears shed. Lobbyists deployed. Speeches written. Subpoenas issued. Accusations hurled. Suits filed.

Empty caskets buried.

11 empty caskets. Men lost in the conflagration. Their bodies consumed by fire and water.

Jason Anderson - Toolpusher

Dewey Revette - Driller

Donald Clark - Asst. Driller

Stephen Curtis - Asst. Driller

Dale Burkeen - Crane Operator

Roy Kemp - Derrickhand

Karl Kleppinger - Floorhand

Shane Roshto - Floorhand

Adam Weise - Floorhand

Gordon Jones - Mud Engineer

Blair Manuel - Chemical Engineer

Rest in peace.

Let's remember, too, that 115 people made it off that rig. Most of them will recover and they'll head back out onto some rig and face the same catastrophic risk again.

There have been many accidents, much loss of life, defilement of the environment. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 109 oil platforms and 5 drilling rigs.

According to one report, workers in pursuit of oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico have been dying in accidents at the rate of one every 45 days since the mid-1990s.

And what is President Obama’s reaction?

New exploration and drilling must stop.

Really? For how long?

A transparently political reaction allowing him to avoid meeting his half-assed policy of opening new offshore areas to drilling. If he was truly concerned, he’d call for a moratorium and shutting down of all drilling in the Gulf. The accident has nothing to do with new drilling or exploration. It was a drilling accident, involving existing drilling techniques failing under human action or Earthly force, presumably being put into practice on any other one of those 4,000 platforms glowing yellow on that map above. So the President's initial reaction is like all his other reactions - turn a one time event into a crisis of indeterminate length.

Of course the disaster requires the best forensic response and the cleanup, but a moratorium on new drilling and exploration is irrelevant to the accident. Given the outcomes of all the other crises this country has been through the past two years, it would not be surprising to the complete federal takeover of the oil drilling industry.

The girls running the administration's departments of concern are “frightened.”

"It is of grave concern," David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press. "I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."

Then get the fuck out of the way, Mr. Kennedy. Frightened and mind boggled. Really?

And of course Mother Nature’s priests are creaming their pants over the thought of broad scale destruction of the Louisiana coast.

"It’s quite possible this will end up being worse than the Valdez in terms of environmental impact since it seems like BP will be unable to cap the spill for months. In terms of total quantity of oil released, it seems this will probably fall short of Exxon Valdez. But because of the habitat, the environmental impact will be worse," John Hocevar, oceans campaign director for Greenpeace USA, told MSNBC Thursday.

Or this:

"There are grave environmental concerns which this horrific spill has highlighted," said Bob Deans, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which opposed the policy. "We need a time out on any action to go forward with new offshore drilling because this has obviously raised a bunch of questions. We need a full comprehensive independent investigation."

Hopefully, it will take years to complete the investigation, Mr. Deans thought but didn’t say. Better get moving on those fund raising letters and multi-million dollar ad campaigns excoriating Big Oil and Fat America.

In the world SBD inhabits, the President would stand before the country and announce that 11 good men lost their lives on that platform; 115 others survived because of their training and the hard effort of local fisherman and the USCG; they worked at the forefront of entrepreneurialism and technological prowess to feed our nation's future; their industry is of national strategic importance; and their sacrifice will not be sacrificed to hand wringing, political hackery and bureaucratic immobilization at the hands of the enviro-religious. But we don't have that President. And we don't live in that fantasy world.

What Are They Thinking?

Here’s what their elected representatives think:

Senator Max Baucus 3/25/2010:

Too often, much of late, the last couple three years the mal-distribution of income in America is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America.

Senator Dick Durbin:

Yes, if you’re making over $200,000 a year, you’re going to pay slightly more in taxes. It’s the cost, I think, of having the kind of America we want to have.

Congressman John Dingell:

Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

Here’s what their moral arbiters think:

Al Sharpton – Presidential Emissary to the Black Community:

REV. AL SHARPTON, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: I think that this is — began to transform the country the way the president had promised. This is what he ran on.

GERALDO RIVERA, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Some argue to socialism.

SHARPTON: Well, first of all, then we'd have to say that the American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected President Obama.

Here’s what their talk radio hosts think:

Ed Schultz:

SCHULTZ (30:58, initially responding to caller claiming "virtual war" between Dems and GOP): It is a cultural war that's taking place in America, you're exactly right. And it's being played out over the airwaves of America. And I hope the Democrats now turn to the Fairness Doctrine.It's time now for the Democrats to consider the Fairness Doctrine when you've got Rush Limbaugh out there saying, it's, we've got to defeat these bastards. He is now openly admitting that he is going to work against and campaign against the Republican, against the Democratic Party and campaign against Obama, and he is motivating people with the microphone and he's electioneering. Keep on talking, Rushsky! Hell, maybe I'll get on 600 stations too, or how many you own or whatever.

The fact is, look, it's not a level playing field when it comes to the audio culture of the country. Ownership has its privileges. When you own, I will be honest, if I owned 500 stations, the drugster wouldn't be on any of 'em. And that's just where it's at right now. But maybe we have reached the point where the Congress needs to equal it out. Equal out the audience.

SCHULTZ (32:51): Just keep in mind, there aren't any poor people with microphones.

SCHULTZ (33:56): And so, I think that, you know, hell, if we're going to be socialist, let's be socialist all across the board.

Here's what their celebrities think:

Jim Carrey:

Every construct we’ve built in American life is falling apart. Why? Because of personal greed and ambition. Capitalism without regulation can’t protect us against personal greed.. .

Gosh, then, what are we – the American people - to think?

Orange You Afraid!?

Shutter your windows and bar the doors!

Right wingers are on the march!

From Homeland Security Today:

New Vigilance Needed in Wake of Healthcare Vote
by David Silverberg
Monday, 22 March 2010

Violent domestic extremism poses a real threat. In the wake of the divisive 219-212 House vote passing healthcare reform, authorities need to heighten vigilance against extremist violence against government facilities.

The year-long healthcare debate was emotional and divisive and while the vote may have resolved the issue legislatively the passions it aroused are unlikely to die down soon.

In such an atmosphere extremist violence is a real possibility, particularly directed against government installations or symbols of government authority. Coming on top of a census process that has also been infused with extremist charges, homeland security officials at all levels of government should be especially vigilant against
potential attacks from domestic sources.

Domestic extremist terrorism has long been on the homeland security radar. In 2009 a report by the Office of Intelligence & Analysis in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), titled, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment noted that while there were no specific plots under way, "rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues." These included the election of the first African-American president and the economic downturn. It also reported that extremists were recruiting returning Iraqi war veterans. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano later disavowed the report as having been released prematurely without proper vetting.

More recently, on March 2 the Southern Poverty Law Center released its own report, Rage on the Right , reporting that "The radical right caught fire last year, as broad-based populist anger at political, demographic and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation." According to this report, 363 new "Patriot" groups formed in 2009, with 127 of them being militias and the formation of 136 new anti-immigrant groups.

As though to underscore the volatility of the current situation, yesterday, as the House of Representatives voted on healthcare reform legislation, tens of thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington to demand comprehensive immigration reform, an issue that may prove even more passionate and divisive than healthcare.

While debate is always healthy, violent extremism is not. The use of the color-coded terror alert system has fallen out of favor with the Obama administration, but any casual observer can see that the current situation calls for at least an orange level of alertness.

That's right, we shouldn't raise the alert level to Code Orange because judges are releasing hardened terrorists from custody and the Attorney General wants to try in civil courts here in the United States the ones who aren't released and our border is a collander with a single hole three states wide, but we should do it because a large majority of the country expresses a consistent and growing opposition to the federal government assuming control over 1/6th of the U.S. economy and hiring 16,000 IRS agents to enforce the new powers of the State against its citizens and because those citizens presented themselves in body and spirit and with the most corny of handmade signs outside the house of our constitutional republic to let their representatives know they were opposed.

And the authorities we will site for indicting 65% of the American people and for the federal government ramping up to a hightened risk posture against its own citizens are, first, a discredited DHS report on so-called Right Wing Extremism, expected to increase with an influx of discharged U.S. warriors who apprarently are under the influence of some blood lust not satiated on the immoral battlefields of American imperialism and, second, a discredited report from the hyper-partisan and derelict-from-its-original-mission SPLC that notes the formation of - gasp! - Patriot groups (which curiously may or may not include leftwing 9/11 truther squads) and "anti-immigrant groups," (scare quotes back at ya!) which may actually be anti-illegal alien groups (you know, those pesky rule of law types). Oh, and the racists. Don't forget the innate truth of America which is that most Americans are racists and cowards for not admitting it and are one caffeine buzz away from donning all black outfits and tossing bottles-and-cans-only trash bins through the windows of cop cars.

In any event and regardless of who is in these various groups and their actual numbers of members, a certain segment of our elite believes anyone who protests Hope and Change is suspect and needs active surveillance.

Now that causes SBD to raise his own threat level to Orange.

File It Away

We read Economics of Transition so you don't have to:

What Do Russians Think About Transition?

[INSERT random Russian obscure professors name generator here]

Economics of Transition, Vol. 18, Issue 2, pp. 249-280, April 2010

Abstract:

We use data from the 2006 round of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey to describe perceptions of the Russian population about the transition process and the role of the state compared with that of free markets.

We find that about one-half of the Russian population is disappointed with transition and a large majority is in favour of high state regulation and state provision of goods and services. High demand for government regulation and increased state intervention coexists with a low level of trust in government institutions and recognition of high and rising levels of corruption.

The findings are consistent with the theory developed by Aghion et al. (2009). In an environment with poor social capital, private business imposes negative externalities on the society and society chooses to demand more state regulation and tolerate corruption to reduce these externalities. We also find that individual perceptions of social capital and corruption co-vary with the demand for regulation, as predicted by the theory.

Keep this study for your children; tell them to read it when they are adults and they'll understand their plight a little better.

Senator Ben Nelson: Unprincipled Whore

Excuse me, ma'am?!

Ma'am Barbara Boxer, Chairman, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

"You call it 'Climategate'; I call it 'E-mail-theft-gate."

Settled Science

This Week's Nutshell

WSJ's James Taranto provides this week's "In a Nutshell" on the Obama administration's plans for health care:

The Associated Press reports on what it gently calls a "quirk" in the
so-called stimulus law:

When President Barack Obama increased unemployment benefits as part of his economic stimulus, he also made some Americans ineligible for hundreds of dollars a month in food stamps.

Under the economic recovery plan, laid-off workers have seen a $25 weekly bump in their unemployment checks as part of a broad expansion of benefits for the poor. But the law did not raise the income cap for food stamp eligibility, so the extra money has pushed some people over the limit. Laid-off workers and state officials are only now realizing the quirk, a consequence of pushing a $787 billion, 400-page bill through Congress and into law in three weeks.

And for people hurt by the change, there's no way around it.

This is why it's so important to give these genuises control over our health care right this second!

In this example, the government promises help, delivers that help, then promises more help, delivers that help and in the process makes those people worse off.

So the question is posed: will a gigantic government bureaucracy forcing the provision of health care insurance on an alleged 40-50 million uninsured Americans (more likely ruin the health care insurance now provided by scores of corporate bureaucracies held to the other 255 million Americans?

Another question is posed: given that the government already controls almost half of America's health care spending, and costs are declared to be out of control, then why is giving more power to Washington to set costs going to reduce costs when they already can't control a huge portion of the health care landscape?

And a third question is posed: What will Americans . . . ah, fuck it! Americans elected this Ice Cream Man and there's not a damn thing to be done to stop him. We are a nation of children screaming with delight at hearing the sprightly jingle and pling plong bell and running to the curb to pay three times as much for a frozen treat paid for by mom and dad, and if we don't get out there right away the Ice Cream Man will pass by our house and he might never come back!

Wait, Mr. Ice Cream Man, wait!

Corruption

George Will:

Anyone, said T.S. Eliot, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. And anyone could govern as boldly as his whims decreed, were it not for the skeletal structure that keeps civil society civil -- the rule of law. The Obama administration is bold. It also is careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness.

[...]

The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

Barone's Nutshell

Michael Barone on the Theft of Chrysler:

Think carefully about what’s happening here. The White House, presumably car czar Steven Rattner and deputy Ron Bloom, is seeking to transfer the property of one group of people to another group that is politically favored. In the process, it is setting aside basic property rights in favor of rewarding the United Auto Workers for the support the union has given the Democratic Party. The only possible limit on the White House’s power is the bankruptcy judge, who might not go along.

[..]

Obama’s attitude toward the rule of law is apparent in the words he used to describe what he is looking for in a nominee to replace Justice David Souter. He wants “someone who understands justice is not just about some abstract legal theory,” he said, but someone who has “empathy.” In other words, judges should decide cases so that the right people win, not according to the rule of law.

There Will Be Blood

It's hard to look at this CBO budget projection and not see it as a massive bloodletting.

Ten Gallon Hat Amendment

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,

nor prohibited by it to the States,

are reserved to the States respectively,

or to the people.”

Texas Governor Rick Perry does something we don't hear much of these days. In support of a Texas legislature resolution (HCR 50) in support of states' rights set forth under the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution, he discusses returning to the letter and spirit of the US Constitution. Only rubes, unsophisticates, and potential domestic man-causers of illiberal acts discuss that old, faded unmodern and nonprogressive document.

Perry dons his ten gallon hat and speaks plainly, thusly:

Here in Texas, here in the capitol, we typically spend more time talking about the Texas constitution, but it is definitely time to talk about the U.S. Constitution and the protections it guarantees.

I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country, but, most of all, here in Texas, to reaffirm the states’ rights affirmed through the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Tenth Amendment was enacted by folks who remembered what it was like to be under the thumb of a distant, all-powerful government. Unfortunately, the protections it guarantees have melted away over time.

Since the U.S. Constitution was first ratified, the federal government has slowly, steadily and successfully eroded the notion of state’s rights. The Founding Fathers understood that a one-size-fits-all approach just doesn’t work, especially in a country the size of America, and it certainly doesn’t work for Texas.

Our economic strength, compared to the federal budget mess and other states’ troubles, is evidence that Texans know what’s best for Texas. We’re proof that good things happen when governments lower taxes, reduce spending and encourage private sector growth.

When Washington interferes with our proven approaches, experience tells us what the outcome will be, and it isn’t pretty.

Like the Constitution and the other 26 amendments, the 10th Amendment has been the subject of extended debate, by scholars and lawyers of every sort, but I come down on the side that favors state’s rights over unrestrained federal power.

I believe the Constitution does not empower the federal to override state laws without restraint. I agree with Texas’ 7th governor, Sam Houston, who once said, “Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may.”

We didn’t like oppression then and we certainly don’t like it now.

I believe the federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state.

Texans need to ask themselves a question: do they side with those in Washington who are pursuing this unprecedented expansion of power? Or do they believe in the individual rights and responsibilities laid out in our foundational documents?

Texans need to stand up and be heard, because this state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely.

Returning to the letter and the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, and its essential Tenth Amendment, will free our state and, ultimately, strengthen our Union.

Granted, Governor Perry is up for reelection in 2010, and in some quarters (specifically the cube of an SBD Texan co-worker) he is perceived as an effeminate pussy, but as a consummate pol, he would not stand behind this type of provocative action unless he knew that most of fair majority of Texas voters stood with him. This is good to see because it is healthy for our republic and the elected leaders of these United States to stand up and proclaim on the founding principles and their architecture against Leviathan.

This week, in honor of Texas, SBD will purchase a six pack of Shiner Black Lager (because these are dark times and we need to make use of every little symbol we can).