Spoke to Joe Carroll, Bloomberg, re the joint Coast Guard and Interior Department investigation, who reports there is a surprise for Transocean. Heretofore, the two BP site managers were under review and refusing to testify. One invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, the other twice has called in sick. Now, five Transocean employees who were on the rig the day of the explosion and fire have been told that they are "parties of interest." This makes the five employees most unhappy, because they have already testified. It also makes their lawyers unhappy and edgy. One lawyer told Joe Carroll that if he had know his client would come under the shadows of a criminal inquiry, he would have not permitted him to testify. The Coast Guard thinking is that the Law of the Sea applies to Deepwater Horizon as if it were a ship. The captain and crew of the ship, the Transocean, cannot transfer responsibility for the vessel or its passengers to a client, such as BP. Therefore, it could be that BP's hasty pushing of Transocean to close down the well site and move the rig (it was expensive by the hour) is not evidence that BP is at fault. Transocean possessed the power to say no. Everyone is getting more lawyers, from BP to Anadarko, from Mitsui to the rig owner Transocean, and now to the service companies Halliburton, Weatherford, M-I Swaco, Dril-Quip, -- and to the BOP manufacturer, Cameron International. A big dragnet. Numerous fall guys other than the under-the-weather BP wellsite leader Donald Vidrine.
Weather Coming.
Two possible tropical cyclone developments in the region, bookends of the rig, both requiring attention to the weekend.
Cameron International Corp.; Weatherford International Ltd.; M-I Swaco; and Dril-Quip Inc.
I still believe there will be made a discovery of sabotage. It still seems likely to me that it was some left-wing nutcase who sabotaged the rig in order to stop deep water drilling once and for all. Since your average liberal isn't smart enough to pull off a trick like that, it means there must have been an ostensibly neutral party, a scientist, one perhaps with gambling debt or a history of financial problems, who accepted a tidy sum in return for blowing up the platform. What isn't evident to me is if and when the investigators stumble on the guilty parties, will the media report it? If it points back to say, Al Gore, or someone of his ilk, will the media report it? Or cover it up?
I'll go out on a limb right now and predict at 100-1 that this will eventually be shown to be an act of sabotage, with Al Gore as the ultimate mastermind. Farfetched, Lou, I hear you say. But would any of you bet your houses on it that I'm wrong?
"One lawyer told Joe Carroll that if he had know his client would come under the shadows of a criminal inquiry, he would have not permitted him to testify."
To have permitted his client to testify before Congress marks that lawyer as grossly incompetent: Under no circumstances tell the Feds anything, ever. They are no man's friend.
Yes, exactly right, and to admit that he may have strategized incorrectly is to open himself up to malpractice, which further tags him as incompetent. If Jabba the Hutt was running things this guy would have already been fed to the Sarlacc.
Fast Money traders were talking since April about the negligence liability. Who on the planet didn't know that lawsuits were coming?????? I mean, even Congressmen, most of whom are lawyers but who have shown a remarkable propensity to actually lose IQ points upon entering the Beltway Zone, must have known that everyone they called to testify would be sued. How the hell did they expect them to answer any questions candidly? Or was the purpose to make political points by showing the witnesses as stonewalling? Who in the 3.2 million US citizens was defending BP? Who? Who were they going to make the political points with? It was the intellectual equivalent of holding hearings on apple pie, motherhood, and the flag.
I will go out on a limb with you Lou, and say it was definetly sabotage, or go one step further and say, terrorism. Not 100% sure about Al Gore. I thought from the beginning it was, because this was too perfect of an accident. The rig fell on the wellhead, no one knew how to stop the leak, no equipment to stop it, and it took forever to get going on stopping it. I wonder if it took so long to come up with a plan, because if a crime investigation was needed, stopping the leak could have destroyed evidence. They whole thing smells very fishy to me.
Old serviceable maxim:
Never attribute to malice that which may be explained by stupidity.
I would like to believe that Greenpeace or SEIU or some such collection of nutjobs did it (Al Gore is way to farfetched if attractive), but what's the likelihood? Apparently there is quite enough evidence of negligence and slip-shod work on the Macondo to explain what happened without resort to conspiracy, sabotage, or terrorism. That evidence would first have to be dispelled to consider anything more purposeful or sinister.
ECO-TERRORISM?
Early on, eco-terrorism seemed like a possibility -- especially because the explosion happened close to, or even on, Earth Day. The explanation that the well was leaking oil and gas still doen't explain what caused the initial explosion.
If you look to who profits from a moratorium in the Gulf, China comes out a winner. China was/is drilling off the coast of Cuba. Sideways drilling would allow it to steal from known reserves (such as gas off Florida) that have been shut down.
However, Corlyss D makes the most sense.
That same negligence, however, extends to negligence to security matters (making it easier to carry off a sabotage) and extends to recordkeeping matters (making it easier to cover up a sabotage). Fat man laboring up the stairs, push him down and make it look like a heart attack.
By the way, I know the Al Gore thing is outrageous and smacks of a whacked-out conspiracy theorist. I don't indulge in that sort of thing very often but for some reason I'm calling it this time, just for fun.
ALMOST ANY CONSPIRACY THEORY IS POSSIBLE.
When you consider the conspiracy of the liberal elements of the Fourth Estate to get Obama elected by ignoring negatives, such as Rev Wright, and when you consider the lengths that Global Warmist have gone in the last decade or so, you can't be cynical enough.
It's hard to imagine that those who blow up MacMansions that are under construction and Hummer dealerships at night so as to not physically harm anyone would also blow up a deep water oil well just to show how bad oil is. However, this could be a case of both malice and stupidity.
The Al Gore link is fascinating. Not because he, personally, could blow anything up besides himself. But for years and years on TV, I remember Gore Vidal mentioning how he hated his cousin. I never understood why. Obviously, he knew something about Al and his side of the family that the public wasn't aware of. The masseuse story is not surprising. Al's excessive use of energy at his own obscenely large houses, private jets, etc. while lecturing us all about conservation is certainly annoying. He's made a fortune, as have others, pushing global warming. Could someone with a huge personal fortune have financed a demolition guy to blow up the Deepwater Horizon in order to advance a green agenda? Well, it can't be taken off the table. [And, if it could, Al would probably eat it].
One problem with the Al Gore theory is that Al's family made its fortune in oil drilling and at one time in the fairly recent past he still held what most of us would consider a fortune in oil stocks. Not sure if he's dumped them or not since then, but it's hard to imagine him biting the hand that once fed him like that.
Lou - Not sure if you're being serious. You know you chose Al because he's so much fun. [Either that or your psychic and he really did do it.]
What makes Al such a big target, besides his size, is that he is the epitome of the 'Do as I say, not as I do' liberal. Of course, he would bite the hand that feeds him. He would also go for the jugular and dine for weeks on the corpse. Who can forget the nauseating Tipper kiss that looked like he was trying to devour her?
Cant tell me the bolded isn't the dominant philosophy in the WH and Interior and EPA and Energy! There's absolutely no political reason those effete elites who know better than everyone else what's good for us to pay any attention whatever to the regional reaction to their perverse draconian treatment. The administration's mindset reminds me of Stalin's treatment of the Ukraine during the famine.
From WSJ Political Diary:
Quote of the Day III
"I love the Mississippi Delta. It's where this erstwhile liberal greenie began her education in real-world conservation -- the kind most often tagged 'community-based.' But the voice of the Delta is missing from the environmental-liberal-administration response to the Gulf oil spill, no matter how loud those Cajuns shout. . . . This is what Bill Maher, pipsqueak of righteousness, had to say about it: 'F*** your jobs. If your job is in some industry that's killing things, maybe you are in the wrong line of work.' Then, he advised the roughnecks to reform their oil-besotted machismo and build offshore windmills in the windless Delta. . . . The International Energy Agency's latest report predicts that even in the midst of a global energy-technology revolution, it will take 40 years for the United States to drop its oil usage by 60 percent. For the next several decades, we will need oil, especially in rural America, where public transportation is not an answer and cattle, hay and fish require big motors to do big jobs" -- speechwriter Joan Chevalier, writing at WashingtonTimes.com.
CORRECTION: "... dine for weeks..." 'Weeks' is an exaggeration.