Politics of the Gulf Oil Spill

[Vraith]

[quote="Zarathustra"] SerScot is exactly right when he says, "Saying the Fed's lacked a rational basis for what they did isn't judicial activism. " Indeed, the law requires that there's a rational basis for the moratorium.

And I say there is a rational basis. Just a couple quick ones:
When the original report people say it's more dangerous to stop than to keep going, that conclusion depends entirely on the supposition that only on this rig were there equipment/policy/inspection/safety procedure...ummm..."irregularities", to be kind.
Everything I've seen says there are nearly identical equipment/policy/inspection/safety procedure "irregularities" for the vast majority of cases...[it's pretty hard to find any real info on this...no ones admitting they use the same stuff, but if you were NOT BP and NOT using it, wouldn't you be shouting it from the rooftops?]

[aliantha]

Everything I read about the oil company execs' testimony before Congress indicated to me that they all use the same safeguards. Which is to say that none of them would have been any more prepared to stop a gusher if the accident had happened to one of *their* wells.

BTW, Deepwater Horizon is uncapped again.

[SerScot]

Vraith,

SerScot is exactly right when he says, "Saying the Fed's lacked a rational basis for what they did isn't judicial activism. " Indeed, the law requires that there's a rational basis for the moratorium.

And I say there is a rational basis. Just a couple quick ones:
When the original report people say it's more dangerous to stop than to keep going, that conclusion depends entirely on the supposition that only on this rig were there equipment/policy/inspection/safety procedure...ummm..."irregularities", to be kind.
Everything I've seen says there are nearly identical equipment/policy/inspection/safety procedure "irregularities" for the vast majority of cases...[it's pretty hard to find any real info on this...no ones admitting they use the same stuff, but if you were NOT BP and NOT using it, wouldn't you be shouting it from the rooftops?]

The Court of Appeals may agree with you. However, the Standard to overturn the grant of Injunction is deferential to the lower court. It will be interesting to see what happens.

[Avatar]

It does seem that the judge should have recused himself. If he stands to gain financially from his own ruling--or to lose money if he rules the other way--I don't see how he can be impartial.

Agreed.

--A

[Zarathustra]

SerScot is exactly right when he says, "Saying the Fed's lacked a rational basis for what they did isn't judicial activism. " Indeed, the law requires that there's a rational basis for the moratorium.

And I say there is a rational basis.

There might very well be ... however, if there is, it wasn't spelled out in the order for the moratorium.

My personal, layperson opinion is that this was an unprecedented event. We've been drilling in the gulf for decades, and never had anything like this happen. The likelihood of it happening again seems very low, given the frequency at which it occurs. From what I've read, it was preventable. It was BP's actions that are to blame. They were trying to save some money. Given the catastrophic consequences of those decisions, I find it extremely unlikely that other companies will be as careless.

Again, from the ruling:

The Report
patently lacks any analysis of the asserted fear of threat of
irreparable injury or safety hazards posed by the thirty-three
permitted rigs also reached by the moratorium. It is incidentspecific
and driven: Deepwater Horizon and BP only. None others.

So even if there is good reason to fear the threat of imminent hazard from the other wells, the report lacked any analysis of that threat. You can't simply point to BP and say, "See!" If the other wells present a threat, you have to prove it based on those wells, and not BP's. Otherwise, what's the point of blaming this on BP if it's merely a systemic threat that can happen to anyone at any time?!? If it's not BP's actions which led to this, then why punish them? If it is BP's fault (something we all agree on), then why punish the others? Why punish the innocent?

the Secretary’s determination that a six-month
moratorium on issuance of new permits and on drilling by the
thirty-three rigs is necessary does not seem to be fact-specific
and refuses to take into measure the safety records of those others
in the Gulf.

In other words, this decision was based on panic and a weak inference from one well to 33 others. I don't see the factual or logical connection between all these wells. But it's not up to me: the report itself failed to spell that out. The President can't just say, "I have a bad feeling about this." There has to be a reason for shutting down wells that--in themselves--show no signs of posing a risk.

There is not one single incident you can find (or so I highly suspect) of anything labelled "judicial activism" which the judge doesn't have a sound legal basis for the decision. Certainly conservatives since the dawn of time have had no hesitation in declaring judges decisions to be judicial activism in spite of the fact that the judgement was rendered in a way that followed laws and legal precidents and established authority.

I'm not responsible for what conservatives have been saying since the dawn of time. You made specific charges, backed up by zero evidence, and I refuted them with the judge's own words. If there is no distinction (in terms of having a sound legal basis for the decision) between "judicial activism" and whatever the opposite is, then what's your basis for sounding this alarm? Your personal opinion? Well, I disagree.

So either there is no such thing as judicial activism at all, or it is yet judicial activism despite having a line of reasoning behind it. Take your pick.

That's quite a narrow either/or. There's a third possibility: this case is NOT judicial activism, despite the possibility that other cases might be judicial activism (even with lines of reasoning behind them). The choice you describe is a false choice ... just because the first choice may be false (i.e. there is such a thing as judicial activism) doesn't mean that this particular case is judicial activism. The fact that you can disprove the claim (which no one made), "Judicial activism is judgement lacking sound reasoning," doesn't prove that a case with sound reasoning (much less this one) is judicial activism. First you'd have to define your criteria, and then show what it is about this particular case that fits that criteria.

[Cybrweez]

Z did a good job of dissecting the law and the case itself, which I haven't seen from anyone else. Just opinion. Good homework Z.

Altho I guess there's an easy way to disprove your assertion that the moratorium had sufficient reason to stop drilling. All someone has to do is show it.

EDIT: sorry, meant to say the moratorium had NO sufficient reason

[Avatar]

What exactly is the definition of judicial activism?

Based on what I remember about past discussions, it's when the judge rules based on their opinion and not the law?

If so, then what legal impediment exists to imposing the moratorium?

(And if so, then what exactly is the argument about activism about here? Whether it exists? Whether judges have been activists? Somebody break it down for me?)

--A

[Rawedge Rim]

From what I gathered, it wasn't necessarily the equipment, or failure thereof that created the explosion, instead it was the failure to follow SOP that created the conditions that allowed the explosion in the first place. An "overpressure" check was performed, and the result indicated a hazardous condition. A second check was performed, which confirmed the first, yet both were overridden in order to hurry along the drilling process. This "overpressure" condition was caused by the presence of large amounts of methane gas, which had to be dealt with before they could go further. This step was skipped, and the result was an explosion, that killed 11 people, and sank the drilling rig.

This does not mean that the other rigs will go up also, it means that safety measures need to be reviewed, and that compliance with said measures must be ensured so that the installed equipment will work as advertised and that we don't get a repeat of what happened with the BP rig.

Shutting down every rig in the Gulf is not the answer.

[aliantha]

Under the scenario you describe, RR, then I agree. If the President had imposed, say, a six-week stand-down to re-emphasize the safety rules and conduct a review to make sure all drillers are following the correct safety procedures, that would make more sense than a total ban. Altho it may take six months to review safety procedures and compliance for all such projects. But if it was meant to be a safety-related shutdown, Obama should have said that.

[Avatar]

See the Brit's have said they're not stopping drilling.

Also see that the cap captured 900,000 gallons in 24 hours, before being knocked off by an underwater robot.

They've put it back.

The current worst-case estimate of what's spewing into the Gulf is about 9.5 million litres a day. Anywhere from 254 million litres to 481 million litres have spilled since the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig.

--A

[sindatur]

So, about the New York Earthquake, I don't recall ever hearing about Earthquakes in that part of the country. Any chance the explosion of the rig, awakened a very long dormant fault line?

[Vraith]

So, about the New York Earthquake, I don't recall ever hearing about Earthquakes in that part of the country. Any chance the explosion of the rig, awakened a very long dormant fault line?

You could turn that into a movie for SyFy channel [after "Stonehenge Apocalypse", I believe anything is possible].

We do get quakes here, though...ordinarily pretty weak and long time between, compared to west coast, of course.

[sindatur]

So, about the New York Earthquake, I don't recall ever hearing about Earthquakes in that part of the country. Any chance the explosion of the rig, awakened a very long dormant fault line?

You could turn that into a movie for SyFy channel [after "Stonehenge Apocalypse", I believe anything is possible].

We do get quakes here, though...ordinarily pretty weak and long time between, compared to west coast, of course.

Oh Lord, I saw a piece of that a week or so ago

[SerScot]

It's the Earth getting ready for the 2012 rampage. Head to China early to get your place on arks, just make sure you fix the stupid code glitch that will not let the engines run unless all the doors are completely sealed.

[aliantha]

It's the Earth getting ready for the 2012 rampage. Head to China early to get your place on arks, just make sure you fix the stupid code glitch that will not let the engines run unless all the doors are completely sealed.

Ah yes, that famous safeguard! We have that here in DC on our subway system, and we have the safest...oh...wait....

[dougkeenan]

Every day I can't help but think this is like a sunbane that lasts years or decades. This place is the only place that understands what that means, even if you may not agree with it! (I've just come to recharge, bicker away.)

[Rawedge Rim]

It's the Earth getting ready for the 2012 rampage. Head to China early to get your place on arks, just make sure you fix the stupid code glitch that will not let the engines run unless all the doors are completely sealed.

Ah yes, that famous safeguard! We have that here in DC on our subway system, and we have the safest...oh...wait....

Just like Westworld, where nothing can go wrooooonnnnngggggg........skrch

[Avatar]

Every day I can't help but think this is like a sunbane that lasts years or decades. This place is the only place that understands what that means, even if you may not agree with it! (I've just come to recharge, bicker away.)

What, the spill? Maybe. A localised one anyway.

--A

[High Lord Tolkien]

abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-crude-mo ... d=11254252

For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP's damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there's one problem -- they're having trouble finding it.
The leak is capped and the spill appears to be shrinking, but where is it going?

Watch 'World News' for the latest coverage on the Gulf oil spill.

At its peak last month, the oil slick was the size of Kansas, but it has been rapidly shrinking, now down to the size of New Hampshire.

Today, ABC News surveyed a marsh area and found none, and even on a flight out to the rig site Sunday with the Coast Guard, there was no oil to be seen.

"That oil is somewhere. It didn't just disappear," said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.

Salvador Cepriano is one of the men searching for crude. Cepriano, a shrimper, has been laying out boom with his boat, but he's found that there's no oil to catch.

"I think it is underneath the water. It's in between the bottom and the top of the water," Cepriano said.

Even the federal government admits that locating the oil has become a problem.

"It is becoming a very elusive bunch of oil for us to find," said National Incident Cmdr. Thad Allen.

Skimmers Pick Up Less Oil

The numbers don't lie: two weeks ago, skimmers picked up about 25,000 barrels of oily water. Last Thursday, they gathered just 200 barrels.

Still, it doesn't mean that all the oil that gushed for weeks is gone. Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.

"[It's] mother nature doing her job," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

The light crude began to deteriorate the moment it escaped at high pressure, and then it was zapped with dispersants to speed the process along. The oil that did make it to the ocean's surface was broken up by 88-degree water, baked by 100-degree sun, eaten by microbes, and whipped apart by wind and waves.


Experts stress that even though there's less and less oil as time goes on, there's still plenty around the spill site. And in the long term, no one knows what the impact of those hundreds of millions of gallons will be, deep in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

[Zarathustra]

I wonder if this news will have any impact on Obama's "stop gulf drilling" commission, or the job-killing moratorium?