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While I don't know the participants in this meeting, from all indications this is exactly the kind of outside consideration this situation, and many others, requires. This group should have been welcomed into the White House or at least an appropriate location nearby. Every major national problem of an extended nature warrants the views and expert backgrounds of those outside the regular channels, the usual suspects, who are assembled to, in many cases, paper over problems to a later date. This is a big nation with a wealth of intelligence and talent. Lets open some doors.
Perhaps the most unfortunate statement uttered by President Obama in all of this is \"BP is in charge\" (this was echoed by his spokesperson in repeated occasions, if I recall correctly). BP cannot be in charge of correcting what is an international disaster. BP continues to be in charge of stopping the leak, but we, the American people and government, MUST be in charge of BP and deciding when and if they should be fired and moved quickly out of the scene or off to the side.
Cameron is not, shall we say, very good at PR. He seems to have tin ear for controversial statements and he doesn't know much about \"the public\". For example, it is not hard to understand that BPs efforts have been, in fact, developed in parallel, with one ready to follow when plan H, I or J fails. That's not the problem. The appearance of a dumber than dumb series of mistakes and restarts is JUST an appearance, not the whole story. Those impressions will quickly fade, especially when the massive flow is greatly reduced and then stopped.
The problem is manifold. 1. Did they move quickly enough in the early days and actually treat this as a major disaster, rather than the minor event it was being portrayed as being by their CEO? 2. Did they select the right set of options, in the proper order? 3. Have they brought enough efforts to bear, worthy of a war time crisis, so that the options can be implemented in succession with maximum speed (they will answer yes, but that doesn't settle the issue). 4. Was BP moving, in any way, to preserve its flow of oil, and profits, as a higher priority than stopping the leak? Were decisions influenced, in the first weeks, by caution over damage to the field? 5. How were the various options considered and who made the decisions, and why, about the order of implementation? 6. Did they have substantial information that the blow out prevent equipment might fail and did they decide to proceed anyway? 7. Why have procedures for stopping blow outs at this depth not been tested and proven to work? To save money?
From the sequence as made available to the public, the top kill and the junk shot were pretty much standard oil field procedure, on dry land or at more shallow depth, to stop a blow out. It seemed to take a very long time to put those actions into place. Had BP been getting great direction from our government, working with consulting engineers hired by the government for this occasion, it seems possible that later options might have been tried sooner.
Overall, this disaster has been made far worse by the under reporting of the potential amount of oil leaking. By playing down the massive size of the blow out, BP bought itself extra time to try to stop the flow and make itself look like a corporate good guy. This is similar to a report in the first hours of the event made on NPR during Katrina (which most likely echoed an AP story) that \"New Orleans dodged a bullet\" with the landfall of the hurricane. Lives were lost because of those early news stories on Katrina and millions of gallons of oil have flowed into the sea, without proper response, because BP played down the importance of this event.
Obama came to office promising change. Do they, in his administration, know how to bring about change? You can't operate with business as usual. You can't do things the way they have always been done in Washington. You can't, as presidential advisers and speech writers, give him the wrong words to say. Most importantly, as President, he needs to know when to overrule his staff and move out in front of a problem.
BP is not in charge of this disaster and they are not in charge of the our ocean and our environment. No one questions the dedication and hard work of those who are out at sea trying to stop this thing. What matters revolves around a question of leadership and implementation. We need more people with the experience and nerve of people like Cameron, with better PR skills, to step up and make a contribution. Instead, we get the usual suspects trying, once again, to prove that everything is okay, everything will be fine and the world will be put back in order before breakfast. It seems we are learning nothing from the financial collapses of 2000 and 2008 and the many other long running problems that come and go without being resolved.
Doug Terry
6.5.10
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