Recovery effort falls vastly short of BP's promises

From the Washington Post courtesy of Eschaton:

In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day.

The disparity between what BP promised in its March 24 filing with federal regulators and the amount of oil recovered since the April 20 explosion underscores what some officials and environmental groups call a misleading numbers game that has led to widespread confusion about the extent of the spill and the progress of the recovery.

"It's clear they overreached," said John F. Young Jr., council chairman in Louisiana's Jefferson Parish. "I think the federal government should have at the very least picked up a phone and started asking some questions and challenged them about the accuracy of that number and tested the veracity of that claim."

And

Meanwhile, BP also kept revising its estimate of the amount of oil leaking into the gulf. In the early days after the spill, BP and federal officials placed the daily flow rate from the ruptured rig at 1,000 barrels a day, and then raised it to 5,000 barrels a day. In late May, a group of scientists charged by the government with estimating the flow said the rate was 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day. And in June, the official estimated rate jumped to 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day.

Because of these changing numbers and wide ranges, the amount of uncollected oil might be as low as 1.1 million barrels or as high as 4 million barrels.

Earthjustice, which has joined with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups to sue the federal government over BP's response plan, warns that because these estimates continue to climb, the spillage numbers could go higher.

Earthjustice also says spill damage is being obscured by misleading numbers.

More here.

Full disclosure: I live in Jefferson Parish, so Young, as council chairman, represents me. And I fully agree with him, which probably has very little to do with the fact that I live in his parish, and probably has much more to do with the fact that I'm extraordinarily aware that Washington has for many years been seized by a strange and solemn deference toward corporations, one that trusts them to do what's best for America, indeed, one that believes that what corporations do is, by definition, always best for America.

It is no surprise at all that BP's figures for Gulf catastrophe were completely unchallenged by the federal government. After all, what corporations do is what's best for America. Why would anyone challenge them?

The reality is that corporations do what's best for themselves, which may or may not be good for the country, depending on the circumstances. Currently, BP is in major CYA mode, which is why they're lying right to our faces. This may very well end up being a good strategy for the oil giant: by the time thousands of liability lawsuits make it to court, what BP knew, and when they knew it, will be a major point of contention--"no one could have possibly expected it to be this bad..." Unfortunately, what's good for the corporation, this time, is most decidedly not what's good for America.

Like the environmentalist organization says in the excerpt above, such lies make it difficult to know the extent of environmental damage. If we don't know how bad it is, it becomes that much more difficult to fix. That's why Obama needs to completely take over. Just kick BP out. I mean, retain them as consultants and whatnot, and subpoena all relevant documents, but it is utterly obvious at this point that they have an agenda that runs counter to the nation's. BP can no longer have any say in this matter.

Does the President have the balls to oppose the Washington pro-corporate consensus? Is he even inclined to do so?

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