It’s approaching 80 days and each day the oil cleanup falls farther behind. The math is simple: More oil comes out of the Deepwater Horizon well each day than we collect. So after 80 days things are worse rather than better. It’s because those in charge have failed to re-assign priorities and assemble enough resources to skim and intercept the oil before it reaches shore. The feds and BP take turns pointing fingers at each other, but both are at fault for the slow-paced response to the original spill. But …
Solving the problem of cleaning up the waters in the Gulf of Mexico may depend not on government, nor on the corporate giant BP, but on innovation and commitment to free enterprise. One promising and persistent example is Mr. Nobu Su of Taiwan, CEO of TMT Corporation. Thursday morning he is to meet with Coast Guard officials in New Orleans to outline this weekend’s trial run of the A Whale, the huge tanker/oil skimmer which Su has brought to America. He says the ship is the long-needed “big answer to …
Pressure from Senator George LeMieux (R, FL) and others has paid off with an emergency federal rule to permit oil cleanup vessels to leave their posts elsewhere along America’s coastline and finally head to the Gulf of Mexico to provide help. The Coast Guard and Environmental Protection Agency are to publish the formal rule tomorrow (June 30), LeMieux announced. Normally, large amounts of ships and equipment are required by law to be kept in standby reserve to handle possible spills in harbors, drilling areas, etc. Those federal dictates have prevented …
After our government claimed that we did not need or could not obtain larger ships to skim the Gulf oil spill, a giant-capacity skimming ship has arrived in U.S. waters. Yet our government has us wondering whether it will permit the ship to join the cleanup effort. The problem is not simply the Jones Act; it’s also that our Environmental Protection Agency may squelch the ability to use this giant ship. The S. S. A-Whale is not like the mere 4,000-barrel-a-day vessels we’ve been using. Its owners say this ship, …
We need all the international help we can get to clean-up the Gulf of Mexico, but an Associated Press account seems to gripe that the help is not free. After almost two months of delay, the U.S. last week agreed that foreign oil spill response vessels (but not other foreign ships) can join the effort. Our official government finding says, “there are an insufficient number of specialized oil skimming vessels in the U.S. to keep pace with the unprecedented levels of oil discharges in the Gulf of Mexico.” Rather than …
Our own government has quietly admitted that America needs foreign help to handle the oil spill — almost two months after pushing that help away. Far more oil could have been intercepted before it fouled the Gulf Coast. So why hasn’t our government apologized? By refusing foreign assistance, we banned both the latest technology and cleanup vessels that far exceed the capacity of America’s oil spill response vessels (OSRV’s). We rejected ships with ten times the capability of the vessels we used instead. In a quiet announcement on June 18, …
Congress is postponing huge issues until after the elections and there’s a danger in that. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) sounded a warning in 2006 when the last big majority shift happened on Capitol Hill, but Congress then returned for a lame duck session: It would be a huge mistake to overlook the potential for damage in the lame duck session. A lame duck session doesn’t sound like anything to worry about, but this lame duck may be a lot more dangerous than people think. We can expect Republicans to try …
President Obama keeps trying to make our electric bills skyrocket. Now he’s seized on the BP fiasco as an excuse to do it. According to Obama, the Gulf of Mexico gusher proves we need billions more to subsidize green energy. That was the President’s claim in his big Pittsburgh speech. He didn’t tell the audience about his previous admission that electric bills will “skyrocket” under his plan. Or that our government continues to block access to immense onshore oil and gas reserves that don’t require the risks of deep-sea drilling. …
Washington’s runaway gusher of spending makes the Deepwater Horizon disaster look small and simple to stop. Congress is debating another irresponsible round of extra spending (although they refuse to call it “son of stimulus”) before they take a Memorial Day break. The measure would add an estimated $84-billion (or perhaps $100-billion) to the deficit. That’s actually good news, because earlier this week they planned to spend $50-billion more, until some Democrats joined Republicans in balking. The bad news is that Congress refuses to adopt a budget that would describe how …
Major players in Washington cheered the latest version of an energy bill, which tries to buy votes with “something for almost everyone.” But beleaguered consumers will get stuck with skyrocketing bills after others feast on new government benefits. We can expect any new “green jobs” to be offset by a larger loss of existing jobs, possibly up to 3-million, depending on details of how the bill’s cap-and-trade system is implemented to tax carbon dioxide emissions.
