BP fails fucking Booming School 101

Booming is a method by which oil spills are contained through the use of booms.

Who among us did not look at the aerial footage of quite small waves lapping quietly over the single broken up lines of orange booms in the Gulf of Mexico and think That's your disaster clean-up plan?

Someone who apparently does know how it should be done explains what she says every oil company and the US Coast Guard already know. There's noises about taking BP off the clean-up now. And that took a month?

h/t Mind of Dan

Update : EPA Considering Banning BP from Gov't Contracts

Over the past 10 years, BP has paid tens of millions of dollars in fines and been implicated in four separate instances of criminal misconduct that could have prompted this far more serious action. Until now, the company's executives and their lawyers have fended off such a penalty by promising that BP would change its ways.

BP is the largest oil and gas producer in the Gulf of Mexico and operates some 22,000 oil and gas wells across United States, many of them on federal lands or waters.

In the past decade environmental accidents at BP facilities have killed at least 26 workers, led to the largest oil spill on Alaska's North Slope and now sullied some of the country's best coastal habitat, along with fishing and tourism economies along the Gulf. "

On May 21 BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told CBS News that "there have been larger spills in the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico has survived".

Anne Drinkwater, President of BP Canada, appeared before the Standing Committee on Natural Resources on May 13th to explain why BP Canada had raised the possibility of getting exemption from some disaster prevention measures should they be allowed to proceed with their three bids to drill in the Canadian Arctic. Drinkwater was not able to answer any technical questions but did admit that the disputed safety measures would be expensive.

Her prepared statement on the Gulf of Mexico spill included the info that :

"Over 1.5 million feet of boom has been installed to contain the spill and protect sensitive coastal areas, with more than a million more feet available."

As the oil laps up onto the Louisiana marshlands tonight, maybe someone should send her the Booming School 101 vid.

Update 2 from Ian in Comments : New York Times

"Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil — and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general’s report to be released this week.

In mid-2008, a minerals agency employee conducted four inspections on drilling platforms when he was also negotiating a job with the drilling company"

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