As Oil Washes on Shore in Alabama and Florida, Yet Another Federal Agency Joins Swarm of Spill Probes -- Who is in Charge?

A child pokes a stick into some oil that came ashore on the beach at Gulf Shores, Ala., on Friday, June 4, 2010. Oil began to be sighted on the beaches as it washed ashore from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Day 69 and oil from the BP Horizon oil well disaster is now washing up on Alabama at Gulf Shores and Florida beaches at Pensacola. These are some of the most beautiful beaches in the Gulf being contaminated by oil which is still leaking from the BP Horizon well as they have not been able to capture all the oil after 69 days. How much is leaking? Who knows as the reports are all over the place since it doesn't seem like anyone is really in charge of this disaster.

The United States has access to over 2,000 skimmers to vacuum up the oil as reported by Senator LeMieux (R-FL) (see right hand column of DfS for his report), but Obama has stated they need to stay where they are at in case of another spill. How stupid is that? How many skimmers does the Obama Administration have in the Gulf? Twenty -- yes that is right 20 out of over 2,000 are all the skimmers that are in the Gulf working to vacuum up the oil. That is not only incompetence but negligence on the part of this Obama Administration.

While we have only 20 skimmers in the Gulf out of over 2,000, Obama is yucking it up at the G-8 conference while oil is now washing ashore in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida.


The question of the day is if he is going to be playing golf this weekend as well -- probably go golfing when he gets back on Sunday from Canada.

When you look at these groups investigating the BP Gulf Oil Disaster, you really do have to ask yourself 'Who is in charge?' Since the Minerals Management Office was lax in safety inspections for BP and other items surrounding this BP oil well, we are not sure that they should be involved in the investigation but maybe should be part of those being investigated. Minerals Management Office might be an agency that should be looked at to be disbanded after their incompetence over the years and scandals surrounding the members of the office.

We believe the idea from former Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA) to have a board similar to the National Transportation and Safety Board is worthy of consideration and the best idea we have heard.

The National Transportation Safety Board was established in 1967 to conduct independent investigations of all civil aviation accidents in the United States and major accidents in the other modes of transportation. It is not part of the Department of Transportation, nor organizationally affiliated with any of DOT's modal agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration. The Safety Board has no regulatory or enforcement powers.

To ensure that Safety Board investigations focus only on improving transportation safety, the Board's analysis of factual information and its determination of probable cause cannot be entered as evidence in a court of law.

When we look at the Obama Commission, we cringe as there are no experts in Petroleum Engineering, but we have people who are against off shore drilling and the oil and gas industry on the Commission. This Presidential Commission looking into the BP Disaster may be one of the worst and most biased ever. Being headed by former Senator Graham of Florida who opposes off shore oil drilling doesn't give us much confidence either. Looks to us like it is a stacked board to get the results that Obama wants.

If it wasn't bad enough with the oil still leaking, we have Interior Secretary Salazar who lied about the results from his committee on off shore drilling. They were to advise President Obama on how to deal with offshore drilling safety after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and are are now accusing his administration of misrepresenting their views to make it appear that they supported a six-month drilling moratorium -- something they actually oppose. See Experts Say White House 'Misrepresented' Views to Justify Drilling Moratorium for more details. That was no 'Misrepresented' it was outright lying by Salazar who should have been fired but since he does the bidding of Obama that won't be happening.

Because of Salazar lying about what previous experts said which a Federal Judge recognized in overturning the moratorium, the Interior Department has no business investigating anything about this BP Deep Horizon Oil Disaster. Salazar is willing to kill the economy of the Gulf Coast with his lies about the experts in order to issue a moratorium. Why does Obama want to kill the economies of Gulf Coast States and drive petroleum companies out of the Gulf with a moratorium? If that question can be answered, the reason for the stalling by Obama and his people on this disaster may also be answered.

At this point in time there is no board or commission that is run by the Obama Administration most Americans would trust. An investigative board should be comprised of people who actually understand oil drilling in the deep water of the Gulf not a bunch of environmentalists who hate oil and gas to start with not to mention offshore drilling.

My home sits several miles from one of the premier petroleum schools in America, Mewbourne School of Petroleum and Geological Engineering at The University of Oklahoma. This school has world renown experts with experience in offshore drilling and a new facility dealing with oil drilling. Will Obama ask OU for advice -- probably not as it is part of Red State America even though President Boren supported Obama at one time.

Either Obama and his Administration are the most inept group ever to be in office or they are stalling on purpose to make sure off shore drilling in the Gulf is curtailed so we can be more dependent on oil from Obama's friends in the Arab world and from George Soros and Petrobaus. The stalling started with not accepting immediate help from foreign countries and other oil companies. Now Obama is only sending 20 out of 2000 skimmers into the Gulf to vacuum the oil to keep it from hitting the beaches which is not working as oil is spreading to more Alabama and Florida due to lack of skimmers. For weeks Obama and his Administration have continually put roadblocks in the way of Governor Jindal who has been trying to save the Louisiana beaches and marshlands. To top everything off when Obama decided to name a Commission, he filled it with a with a group of anti oil and gas production members with no expert petroleum engineers allowed.

These are only a few of the items where Obama and his Administration have been negligent for days on end. There are many more that have made no sense. All of them together add up to negligence on the part of Obama and his Administration -- we would like to see charges of criminal negligence filed but we are not holding our breath.

Read about these Commissions and ask yourself -- WHO IS IN CHARGE?

Yet Another Federal Agency Joins Swarm of Spill Probes

Laura Parker ContributorAOL News

(June 25) -- When a little-known federal agency with just 14 investigators joined the growing list of government probes into the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it renewed cries from the Gulf of Mexico -- and beyond -- that no one seems to be in charge.

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board's sleuthing brings the count of federal investigations to six -- and that's not counting the probes under way by a half-dozen congressional committees. Or the investigation being conducted by Robert Bea, a University of California, Berkeley, engineering professor who has assembled a 66-member team to assist the various investigative efforts. "It's hard to see who's in charge. The answer is: nobody," said Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission's investigation into the 2001 terrorist attacks. "The president can't control Congress. He can't control BP. He can't control the states, which are doing their own investigations. All he can control is what the executive branch is doing."

The inquiry by the chemical safety board, an independent agency, follows those launched by the Justice Department; the Interior Department; the Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service, working jointly; and President Barack Obama's seven-member special commission.

"I would have preferred one central investigation by the federal government, or even one by the executive branch," said Slade Gorton, a two-term Republican senator from Washington state and a member of the 9/11 Commission. Gorton also served on a special panel headed by former Secretary of State James Baker that investigated the 2005 explosion at BP's Texas City refinery that killed 15 workers. The report, published in 2007, harshly criticized BP for lax safety.

"We had 11 members, seven of whom were industrial safety experts," said Gorton, who singles out Obama's presidential commission as lacking in technical expertise. "We had people with no agenda to start with."

Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, thinks the gulf oil spill reinforces the need for an independent investigative agency patterned on the NTSB. This super-agency would investigate not only oil spills, but also other disasters such as the West Virginia coal mine explosion that killed 29 miners last month.

"We've got so many investigations of the spill going on, the public quite rightly can ask, what agendas are at play behind each one of these?" Goelz said. "In the NTSB, we have a model that not only works from a technical standpoint, but one that the various constituencies believe in."Despite the chaos inherent in multiple investigations, however, Hamilton said the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

"You have a better chance of getting to the bottom of things," he said. "You have a better chance of ending up with the whole picture than if you have a single agency doing the whole investigation."

A scorecard to the probes under way so far:

Joint Coast Guard/Minerals Management Service

A public hearing resumes July 19 before a six-member panel of Coast Guard and MMS officials assembled in a New Orleans airport hotel meeting room. Last month, 37 witnesses were called to describe the April 20 explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. In the coming session, the panel will look into the decision-making aboard the rig.

So far, the hearing has produced the clearest picture so far of what happened on the Deepwater Horizon. But the proceedings are not without complications:

Robert Kaluza, one of BP's top officials on the rig, declined to testify, citing his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

In addition, the panel's public questioning of witnesses has come in for criticism from the Interior Department's acting inspector general, Mary Kendall. Because the MMS lacked clear guidelines for conducting accident investigations (they are summed up in a scant five paragraphs of regulations), the Coast Guard's more substantial procedures are guiding the probe. The Coast Guard rules "are comprehensive," Kendall told a House committee, "but in my view, completely backwards, gathering evidence via public hearing, rather than developing evidence to culminate in a public forum.

"The Justice DepartmentAlways wary of competing investigations, where witnesses may give contradictory statements, prosecutors and defense attorneys prefer to work in a more controlled setting. That's not going to happen in this case.

Another potential headache for prosecutors is the MMS's partnership with the Coast Guard in investigating the cause of the disaster -- as well as the MMS's role leading up to the disaster. According to testimony at the joint hearing in Louisiana, the minerals agency approved BP's plan for the well that blew out and failed to ask to see relevant documents that BP was required to provide to the government. The civil investigation is proceeding under the direction of Bruce Gelber, who heads the environmental enforcement section.

Determining how much oil has been spilled is key: Under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, fines could range from $1,000 per barrel of oil spill up to $4,300 per barrel if a federal judge finds that the spill occurred because of gross negligence.

The Presidential Commission

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board took just seven months to investigate the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia over Texas. But the presidential commission examining the oil spill will not meet until mid-July and may not issue a report until next year.

Chaired by former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, a Democrat, and William Reilly, a Republican, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency under the elder President George Bush, the panel is already drawing fire for being more political than neutral.

One panel member, Frances Beinecke, president of the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, has blogged about "America's addiction to oil" and urged a ban on offshore drilling.

Graham, who also served as Florida's governor, worked for years to prevent drilling off Florida's coast.

The Interior Department

Immediately after the spill, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asked a panel of seven scientists to report on drilling safety within 30 days. After the finished 38-page report ended up at the center of the court fight over Obama's six-month drilling moratorium, panel members said Salazar had misinterpreted their report and that they did not argue for a blanket moratorium.

Meanwhile, on May 11, Salazar asked the National Academy of Engineering to help determine the cause of the explosion, fire and spill by providing "a fresh set of eyes." Molly Galvin, an NAE spokeswoman, said the engineers will examine the technology and performance of the Deepwater Horizon's blowout preventer and make recommendations aimed at avoiding future spills. That panel will send an interim report to Salazar and the Coast Guard and the presidential commission in October, and deliver a final report next June.

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board

The tiny agency, with 14 staff investigators, became involved after House Energy Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., asked it to investigate the spill. The board has solid background on BP, having spent nearly two years probing the 2005 explosion at BP's Texas City refinery. In the end it cited cost-cutting, a lax safety culture and production pressure from BP executives as factors in causing the accident. The board also found "striking similarities" between the refinery explosion and a 2006 BP pipeline break at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, that leaked 4,800 barrels.

But the board also lacks cash. Chairman John Bresland warned in a letter to Waxman that the agency had spent $2.5 million investigating Texas City. The Deepwater Horizon investigation presents "an even higher level of cost and complexity," Bresland said.

Source: AOL News