The congressional inquiry by Mr. Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Mr. Stupak, a senior member of the panel, has focused on the actions of the various companies and their workers on the day of the accident. Inquiries by other congressional panels have tended to focus more on the actions of regulators or the general policies of the companies.
Separately on Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans jousted on Capitol Hill over how much money oil companies should have to pay for oil-spill damages, but agreed that the current $75 million limit was too low.
BP, which is responsible for stopping and cleaning up the giant spill, has said it would pay "all legitimate claims" from the spill. Some Democrats fear that the company might find a way to avoid some liability.
Speaking to a Senate panel, Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli said the limit should be removed entirely for deepwater drilling, arguing that the government needs to "ensure that there is no arbitrary cap on corporate responsibility for a similar major oil spill."
The agency that oversees the offshore oil industry, the Minerals Management Service, again came in for criticism. On Tuesday the Interior Department's inspector general published a report saying employees at the Lake Charles, La., office of the MMS accepted sporting-event tickets, lunches and other gifts from oil and natural-gas companies. The report also said employees used government computers to view pornography.
It wasn't immediately clear how many MMS staffers were implicated in the inspector general's report, which said that "all of the conduct chronicled in this report occurred prior to 2007." In a written statement, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that some employees cited in the report have resigned, been terminated or been referred for prosecution. He said that any remaining staffers accused of questionable behavior in the inspector general's report would be placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of a personnel review.
On Wednesday, Secretary Salazar is to testify before the House Natural Resources Committee on his plan to overhaul the MMS.
—Ben Casselman, Russell Gold and Siobhan Hughes contributed to this article.
#
00379510 U.S. to Toughen Offshore-Drilling Rules
Obama to Unveil Steps Thursday as Criticism Rises on Handling of Crisis;
'Possibly the Worst Environmental Disaster'
By JONATHAN WEISMAN And JEFFREY BALL The Wall Street Journal, Online Edition, Wednesday, May 26, 2010.
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama, fighting to stay ahead of the political storm over the Gulf oil spill, is expected to announce on Thursday that the government will impose tougher safety requirements and more rigorous inspections on offshore drilling operations.
The steps come at what could be a turning point for Mr. Obama. His administration faces growing criticism that it has done too little, too late in the face of an environmental catastrophe that threatens some of the nation's richest fisheries, popular tourist beaches and, potentially, thousands of jobs in the offshore oil industry.
"This is probably going to be the worst spill we've ever seen, and possibly the worst environmental disaster this country has ever seen," Carol Browner, the president's senior adviser on energy and the environment, said in an interview.
Mr. Obama is scheduled to fly to Louisiana on Friday for his second visit in a month, the latest step in the administration's intensified efforts to show a vigorous response to the disaster.
But the success of the White House effort to prevent political damage depends to a great degree on events it cannot control. Chief among these is whether BP's latest effort to stop the flow—a method of injecting drilling mud and cement known as "top kill"—will work.
BP has said it will attempt the operation today. After initially balking at broadcasting the attempt on its live Internet feed, the firm relented at the request of the president and the administration response team, an administration official said.
Company officials have cautioned the maneuver has never been done in such deep water. The leaking well is a mile below the surface.
If the top kill fails, BP could try again to lower an oil-containing dome over the spewing well, although an earlier effort to use the same tactic failed. Government and BP officials fear the gusher will flow until August, when a relief well is completed to help stanch the flow.
The president plans a speech Thursday, after he receives a Department of Interior report on what led to the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which touched off the oil flow. Mr. Obama is expected to detail changes to offshore-drilling permits.
Administration officials say those changes will include new permitting procedures to ensure rig safety. Additional inspections of the rigs will be required, in part to verify that safety features and environmental precautions accepted during the permitting process were in place.
Those regulatory changes are detailed in a 30-day review ordered by the president last month and due on his desk on Thursday. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is expected to reveal many of the review's recommendations during congressional testimony on Wednesday.
If the oil is still flowing Thursday, Mr. Obama will also address what more can be done. Ms. Browner said the administration was looking at options short of waiting for relief wells.
Mr. Obama's stepped up response comes as political heat is rising. Some critics said the federal government had been too dependent on BP for solutions. Others said the government's response to the challenge of containing the spilled oil had been sluggish and poorly coordinated.
The Republican National Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee criticized Mr. Obama for flying Tuesday to San Francisco to raise money for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) while the oil was still flowing.
Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, a fierce oil-drilling opponent from Florida, called on the president to put the military in charge of the cleanup.
Dan Weiss, an energy specialist at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with White House ties, said he had talked with White House officials about pressing BP to set up an escrow account to ensure timely payments on damages. He suggested $5 billion, roughly BP's first-quarter profits.
Until this week, criticism of the administration response had been relatively restrained in Washington. Republicans allied with the oil industry didn't want to align with Democratic complaints laying the blame on BP, and by extension, with the push for more offshore drilling. Democrats haven't wanted to criticize the president.
The most pointed criticism of the federal response has come from Louisiana's Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal and other officials in his state, so far the hardest-hit by the spill.
# 00379511 Tributes Paid to 11 Victims of Offshore Rig's Explosion
By VANESSA O'CONNELL The Wall Street Journal, Online Edition, Wednesday, May 26, 2010.
JACKSON, MISS.—Words of peace and remembrance were said Tuesday in the name of the 11 workers who died in a blast on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico more than a month ago.
About 1,000 people, mostly survivors of the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon oil rig and family members of the fallen, gathered at the Jackson Convention Center. On a steamy day they heard hymns, said prayers and celebrateed the lives of the workers, far from the site of the blast and its ugly legacy: a giant oil spill that continues to spew into the sea.
Most of the dead had worked for Transocean Ltd., which coordinated the memorial after the final private family memorial was held Saturday in Bay City, Texas.
"Time is the great healer and time belongs to you," said Larry Mills, head of human resources for Transocean, in the opening prayer.
Four of the 11 men had lived in Mississippi, including two, Blair Manuel and Gordon Lewis Jones, who had worked for another company, M-I Swaco, on Transocean's rig.
The room, decorated with the image of a sunset over tranquil seas, also displayed large portraits of the people who died—many wearing casual garb, such as Aaron Dale Burkeen, known as "Bubba," in overalls, and Adam Taylor and Karl Dale Kleppinger Jr. in baseball caps.
Transocean Chief Executive Steven Newman thanked the crew of the Damon Bankston, the supply boat attached to Deepwater Horizon that became a de facto rescue boat as it whisked workers away from the burning rig.
"As the tragedy unfolded, the crew of the Bankston were the first to respond," he said, adding that they acted "courageously" to save the 115 survivors.
Mr. Newman's voice cracked with sadness as he paid tribute to the workers, speaking about each one. He recalled how Donald Clark's widow, Sheila, welcomed the chief executive into her home filled with relatives, and spoke of Donald's love of his two sons and daughters.
"Donald was one of those men who got out of bed every day and gave his heart and his soul to his work," Mr. Newman said.
He said Sheila had described the loss of her husband as "a missing spoke in the family wheel."
Security guards and ushers blocked the public from attending the private, ticketed event.
The podium was surrounded by 11 bronze hard hats, each inscribed with a crew member's name and mounted on a granite block.
Later in the service, with the gospel choir singing, the names of the 11 men were read aloud as the bronze hard hats were removed from the granite pedestals and presented by Mr. Newman to the wives and family of each of the deceased.
Country-music star Trace Adkins spoke to the crowd in a video tribute, saying he knew how hard it was to work on an oil rig because he had done so himself.
#
00379516 Of Politics and Oil
The Washington panic, and the realities of the Gulf Coast spill.
The Wall Street Journal, Online Edition, Wednesday, May 26, 2010.
Environmental disasters have a way of separating the politicians from the serious, and that's certainly true of the Gulf oil spill. It was left this week to Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the federal response, to express an overdue truth: "The government doesn't have everything we need to solve this problem."
In the month since the drilling-rig explosion that led to a catastrophic failure in a BP well, the Obama Administration and Congress have wasted no opportunity to berate BP for not plugging the leak and cleaning up the damage. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who wouldn't know an oil drill from a dental drill, once again rolled out his charming "boot on the neck" of BP metaphor to deflect blame. As if BP wants the leak to continue so it can keep getting trashed by the likes of Mr. Salazar and sued by more trial lawyers.
Congress is midway through some 20 planned show-trials, er, hearings, in which such chemical and drilling experts as Edward Markey of Massachusetts have rapped BP for its inadequate response. Mr. Salazar griped this week that "we are 33 days into this effort, and deadline after deadline has been missed." He then threatened to push BP "out of the way" if it didn't move faster.
Be our guest, Mr. Secretary. Show us what you've got. As Admiral Allen put it succinctly, this disaster is an "unprecedented, anomalous event" for which there is no easy solution. And, as the Commandant made clear, the U.S. government has neither the technology nor the expertise to engineer a fix 5,000 feet below the Gulf surface. Deepwater drilling is the realm of private oil and engineering experts, who, Admiral Allen noted, were currently "exhausting every technical means possible to deal with that leak."
This oil spill is a reminder—unpleasant for a public raised on fabulous technological advancement, and for an Administration engaged in taking over U.S. health-care and Wall Street—that government is not the Wizard of Oz able to solve every problem. It is closer, this time as in most cases, to the Wizard of Id.
Unwilling to admit this reality to the American public, the White House has instead scrambled to appear to know more than it does, most recently unleashing EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to order BP to cease using a "toxic" chemical dispersant that breaks down oil. The frantic Ms. Jackson was quickly obliged to acknowledge that she didn't really know what the toxicity of the dispersant was and had no better ideas, and so she backed down.
This Obama finger-pointing has, if anything, backfired politically. The oil spill was an opportunity for Mr. Obama—who campaigned as someone who likes to wrap his mind around "complex" problems—to remind the country that energy exploration and engineering are not error-free disciplines. The U.S. oil industry has a remarkable safety record, even as it has moved into deeper and deeper water to provide the U.S. with affordable oil. But no industry is accident free, and Mr. Obama could have served the public better by explaining the technical challenges of fixing this deep water leak. His decision to pound on BP for not performing immediate miracles has instead fed the public's expectations that this is like plugging a hole in a swimming pool.
Republicans have also done the nation no favors in their political rush to turn this oil spill into Mr. Obama's "Katrina." In an attempt to tie the disaster to the Administration, they've targeted the Minerals Management Service, suggesting agency bureaucrats weren't tough enough on Big Oil.
Never mind that there is zero evidence so far that this blowout resulted from lax regulation or shoddy practices. Never mind, too, that the GOP is targeting one of the few federal agencies that happens to believe in more domestic energy production.
Sarah Palin also didn't help the cause of public understanding by attacking Mr. Obama as too close to BP because he received campaign contributions from the company. Does she think such frivolous partisanship will further the cause of domestic oil production?
Whatever BP's failures—and they will be thoroughly aired—the company has been brutally clear about the technical challenges of stopping the oil. The company and Admiral Allen said in early May that the best way was to drill a series of relief wells, which could take three months. BP has since contracted the world's engineering experts, who've worked around the clock to speed up that timeline. Still, all of this is untested, and CEO Tony Hayward was at pains to note that the company's latest effort—to use a "top-kill" procedure to stem the leak—had only a 60% to 70% chance of working this week.
What is clear is that no one has a greater incentive than BP to stop the leak. Washington continues to fuss over raising the $75 million federal liability cap for economic damages (empty hotel rooms, lost seafood industry wages), but BP is already on the hook for all the costs of containing and cleaning up the spill. BP estimates the tab has already hit $760 million, nearly double its estimate of two weeks ago.
***
We suppose it is too much to expect today's political class to withhold its game of panic and blame until industry plugs the leak and we learn what really happened and why. But the American people, watching this spectacle while the disaster unfolds, are being given one more reason to doubt the capacities and candor of its political leaders.
