At this point, who are you going to believe? BP, who stuck to the false “5,000 barrels per day” story forever or the scientists who are reporting other plumes beneath the sea? Is this the type of transparency that Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post was talking about when he praised BP? Unfortunately, this brings us back to the same old problem of Obama failing to take charge of this. Let BP use their expert engineering (however pathetic it may be or sound) to do the deep water drilling to add the relief wells but beyond that, shut them down now.
BP should not be involved in the process of cleanup other than paying the bill. They shouldn’t be telling scientists about the environment when the only thing BP knows is how to kill the environment. They shouldn’t be confiscating tainted clothing that could be used in legal action against BP. How thick is this team at the White House that they can’t get this into their heads? For an arrogant bunch, they sure look like 98 pound weaklings who get sand kicked in their face five times a day for weeks on end.
BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, said it had no evidence of underwater oil clouds. “The oil is on the surface,” he said. “Oil has a specific gravity that’s about half that of water. It wants to get to the surface because of the difference in specific gravity.”Hayward’s assertion flies in the face of studies by scientists at universities in Florida, Georgia and Mississippi, among other institutions, who say they have detected huge underwater plumes of oil, including one 120 metres (400ft) deep about 50 miles from the destroyed rig.
BP’s claim is likely only to further anger environmentalists and the White House, which has grown increasingly suspicious of the company’s claims to be frank and transparent on developments. The president’s environmental adviser and director of the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Carol Browner, has accused BP of misstating the scale of the leak.
“BP has a vested financial interest in downplaying the size of this,” she said on CBS television. “They will pay penalties at the end of the day, a per-barrel per-day penalty.”
Print
