Barack Obama, USA — oil spill. Sebastian Pinera, Chile — mine disaster. The different responses of these two men to national crises demonstrate how differences in character make either a poor leader or an admirable one.

Barack Obama immediately sought to protect his own political standing by fixing blame elsewhere — he ranted publicly about determining whose “ass to kick.” He stated that the responsibility for solving the problem lay with British Petroleum. Without hesitation, Sebastian Pinera staked his political future on a positive outcome, and assumed personal responsibility for the rescue operation.

Barack Obama initially refused help from all the foreign countries that immediately offered aid. Sebastian Pinera quickly accepted all qualified offers of assistance that poured in from around the world, and effectively integrated all the different players into a well-organed team within two days.

Barack Obama and his wife made a few cosmetic appearances on the Gulf Coast, with busloads of phony “workers” brought in for the photo ops. Sebastian Pinera and his wife spent long hours at the scene of the rescue operation, showing sincere concern for the miners and their families. Pinera stayed on the scene to personally embrace every single one of the rescued miners, even though the entire process took 23 hours.

Barack Obama and all of his administration make no inclusion of spiritual faith in their world view, do nothing to use their prominent positions to rally our country to moral greatness. The Chilean president, all of his people, and all of the trapped miners unashamedly professed their faith in God and their complete dependence on their creator for a positive outcome.

The whole world seems to have noticed the difference. From the Jamaica Gleaner — Lessons from Chile’s mine disaster and rescue:

….a more in-depth examination could be an excellent case study for decision makers in business, non-government organisations as well as for government officials….

During the entire operation, one had a sense of the accountability that existed. Naturally, the president and his minister were in charge. They made it known by their presence; they were at the location throughout the entire rescue period. They had assembled and empowered a competent team who did an excellent job.

From News Blaze — What If the Chilean Mine Disaster Had Taken Place in West Virginia?:

What a wonderful finish to that awful mine crisis in Chile. Thank God all 33 of the miners are safe and sound after 69 harrowing days.

How refreshing to have a “feel good” news story in the headlines for a change, especially here in America where the Obama administration, in concert with Marxists in Congress, manages to generate a daily dose of simply awful news on the economy, unemployment, free speech, the war in Afghanistan and foreign policy in general.

Given this president’s uncanny propensity for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, one wonders what might have happened if the Chilean mine disaster had occurred in, say, West Virginia, rather than Chile?

When you select a leader at the polls, dear readers, do not be fooled by someone who looks good or sounds good when reading a teleprompter. Vote for someone with experience, accomplishment, and above all, character.

In light of the recent oil disaster, this history of offshore drilling is especially fascinating and educational. Click the link below to view the slide show:

The Offshore Industry – Middle-Aged, But Still Learning

The slide show was authored in 2004 (and updated in 2010) by Mike Utt, a civil engineer with a long and globe-spanning career in offshore drilling management.

The Lockerbie bomber may have been freed to buy oil drilling rights in Libya for British Petroleum. Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, who bombed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was freed last year ostensibly because he was dying of cancer. Today he appears to be in good health and is “living in the lap of luxury” in Libya.

Yesterday reports surfaced that British Petroleum influenced the British government so that they could drill for oil in Libya. Apparently no crime is too heinous to be forgiven when oil is at stake. CNN reports:

A group of U.S. lawmakers have called for an investigation into whether BP may have played a role in lobbying for the release of the man convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland….

“Reports have surfaced indicating that a 2007 oil agreement may have influenced the U.K. and Scottish governments’ positions concerning Mr. Megrahi’s release in 2009,” wrote Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey in a letter to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Monday.

Britain and Libya sparred over whether Megrahi should be included in a prisoner transfer agreement the two nations were negotiating. British officials and BP said that the oil giant’s interests — the company was seeking a huge deal to drill for oil in Libya — were a consideration in those negotiations….

…Gadhafi’s son Saif al-Islam Gadhafi told CNN that that Libya pressured the British government to include the convicted terrorist in the prisoner release agreement. Initially, he said, Britain refused to heed Libya’s demands that Megrahi be included in the prisoner release agreement.

“There was no mention of Mr. Megrahi until the British said ‘we are ready to sign but there should be a clause mentioning that Mr. Megrahi is excluded.’ And then we said no,” Gadhafi said. “We were very very angry. It’s not acceptable.”

The London Telegraph casts this as a political attack:

Democratic senators in the US have called for an investigation into BP’s interests in Libya, as they tried to connect the oil group with a deal to free a convicted terrorist….

Frank Lautenberg, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, called for an investigation into whether BP helped to secure the early release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber freed by Scottish authorities last year.

“It is shocking to even contemplate that BP is profiting from the release of a terrorist with the blood of 189 Americans on his hands,” Mr Lautenberg wrote in a letter to the Senate foreign relations committee….

The oil company has faced a series of attacks from US politicians but last night’s was among the most political.

However, it is disingenuous for the London Telegraph to make that characterization, when only a year ago the London Times suggested exactly that reason for freeing the terrorist:

The release of the Lockerbie bomber from prison would liberate Britain’s largest industrial company from a string of problems hampering its $900 million (£546 million) Libyan gas projects, industry sources claimed last night.

BP, the oil giant, signed a deal with Libya in 2007 to explore for gas in the west of the country and offshore. But since then it has faced a string of bureaucratic obstacles, including delays securing official permits and approvals to import equipment through Libyan customs, the sources said….

The close ties between politics and the oil industry in Libya, where 95 per cent of export revenues are from oil and gas, are irrefutable….

Al-Megrahi’s release also comes amid a highly delicate battle for influence over Tripoli between Russia and the West. It is a struggle tied to billions of dollars worth of oil and arms deals, which could shape Europe’s energy security for years to come.

So there you have it, what we have always known — the balance of money and power on the world stage determines what is morally acceptable.

Our writers here at American Daughter have been critical of Obama’s response to the oil disaster. Reader MaryAnne reasonably asks:

Could you please detail exactly what you think Obama should personally do about BP’s complete disregard for the safety of its workers and the destruction of Gulf Coast beaches? I have gone to the trouble of reading some of your past posts and have yet to see you offer one workable solution to any of the problems you address.

I haven’t done this until now, because it doesn’t make any difference what I would have done. The mission of our news magazine is to inform our readers of the capabilities and shortcomings of public figures, so they can make informed decisions about their political activism, financial support, and voting. But such a discussion may offer a useful baseline for comparison, and it certainly is something that I have given a lot of thought. Here’s what I would do if I were president:

1. If I were president, I would immediately assume personal executive responsibility for the response to one of the greatest environmental disasters to face our planet, that happened under United States jurisdiction. I would NEVER abdicate that authority to any profit-motivated corporation. I would use every legal means to force that corporation to finance the clean-up, but I would manage the clean-up myself, by delegating tasks to my government officials.
    
2. The assessment of “guilt, fault, and blame” is only useful if it prevents future mistakes based on “lessons learned.” And technological mistakes usually result from policy driven by wishful thinking rather than scientific data. In this respect, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is almost an exact reprise of the Challenger disaster, in which decision makers ignored the warnings of scientific personnel about the O-ring’s potential failure at freezing temperatures.

   If I were president, I would immediately make it perfectly clear and well understood by the public that the deepwater drilling was promoted during the Clinton administration (the Outer Continental Shelf Deepwater Royalty Relief Act of 1995) without due consideration of disaster contingencies. Our government gave British Petroleum a “categorical exclusion” for the well during the Obama administration. I would do this, not to indulge in partisan finger-pointing at Democrats, but to prevent the root administrative causes and lax safety standards of our own government agencies from being obscured by Democrat partisans throwing up smoke-screens about Dick Cheney’s relationships with the oil industry.
    

3. Within hours of the first phone call notifying the White House of the rig explosion, I would have assembled a crisis team, booked a hotel on the Gulf Coast, and taken the whole team there on location to assume personal positive control of the situation. Within the first twenty-four hours I would have convened an emergency meeting with the governors of the Gulf States. For the entire duration of the crisis, I would not have played one hour of golf, nor done anything else but be the country’s executive.

   To be president of the United States is an honor, and it is an executive position, a management position, and a good executive “rests in action.” A qualified executive does not need the personal recreation of sports or parties to “recharge his batteries.” He draws his strength and energy from his passion for the job, from the personal satisfaction of giving his hands and heart to the cause and knowing he has done his best.
    

4. Upon first being notified of the rig explosion, I would have placed an emergency call to Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I would have decreed, under the executive powers, that she bypass the normal protocols for data calculation and delivery, assemble her best scientists immediately (waking them up if necessary) and get back to me within eighteen hours with her best estimate of the latitude/longitude coordinates of the point above the blown hole where the center of the oil “volcano” was most likely to first breach the ocean surface.

   I would have asked the Gulf State governors to mobilize their National Guards to protect the beaches and wetlands, and asked Congress for emergency funding for same. I would have tasked the Secretary of the Navy to identify some Naval assets in the Gulf for assisting oil containment operations. I would have instructed the Coast Guard to immediately mobilize a fleet of boats on standby, awaiting the NOAA calculations. As soon as the NOAA coordinates were received, I would have had the Coast Guard deploy five widely spaced concentric rings of oil booms around the NOAA-calculated surface point. The containment booms would have been in place within two days, tops. (Those measures would impede, but not prevent, the spread of oil. They would buy time for dredging and bioremediation.)
    

5. I would have ordered dredging to begin immediately to create sand reefs connecting the barrier islands offshore from sensitive wetlands and marshes, to protect the pelican rookeries and sea turtle hatching grounds from contamination. As executive, I would have taken the responsibility for my decision and not hidden behind the requirement for an Environmental Protection Agency impact study that could take months or years.
    
6. Under the authority of the Executive Powers, I would have forbidden British Petroleum or any other agency from using the toxic chemical dispersant Corexit 9500. I would have personally taken the responsibility for ordering the bioremediation of oil-eating microbes, stored in large enough quantities in Texas warehouses.
    
7. With respect to the potential for environmentally friendly solutions, I would have immediately tasked Cornell University’s Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering to recommend plant-based bioremediation. I would have used discretionary grant money for a crash program aimed at the specifics of the Gulf situation.

   I would also have used discretionary grant money to task Louisiana State University’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences to do a systems analysis of the oil spill response, and to quantify risk factors associated with various strategies — chemical dispersant, burn-off, booms, reefs, skimmers, bioremediation via plants or microbes. (I have no doubt that the combination of chemical dispersant and burn-off currently being implemented is the worst possible choice with respect to long-term environmental considerations. It has short-term cosmetic appeal, in that it masks the full dimensions of the disaster, but we will pay a long term price worse than that for DDT.)
    

8. Under the authority of the Executive Powers, I would have suspended the Jones Act, or Merchant Marine Act of 1920, and accepted help from the foreign governments that offered it on DAY ONE — Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

   The fact that Obama deferred his leadership role to British Petroleum is most egregious here:

   Four weeks after the nation’s worst environmental disaster, the Obama administration saw no need to accept offers of state-of-the-art skimmers, miles of boom or technical assistance from nations around the globe with experience fighting oil spills.

   “We’ll let BP decide on what expertise they do need,” State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters on May 19….

9. Under the authority of the Executive Powers, I would have relaxed the oil-to-water ratios required for returning processed ocean water to the Gulf, thereby permitting the immediate deployment of the South Korean-built, Taiwanese-owned, Liberian-flagged ship “A Whale” for oil-skimming in the Gulf. The Obama administration allowed it to languish tied up to the docks in Norfolk, Virginia for weeks.
    
10. If I were president, I would never have limited access to the oil spill damage by the press or by photographers, except to the extent required for their safety. I would have valued our mutual stewardship of our natural resources above any concerns for my political reputation. I do not believe that the American public is a mindless herd of sheep whose perceptions need to be manipulated. I do believe that they are a resourceful and creative force that should be kept FULLY INFORMED and engaged in the solution to this truly earth-changing disaster.
     
11. If I were president, I would never have used phrases like “boot on the neck” or “kick ass.” The empty rhetoric and political grandstanding characteristic of this administration does nothing to solve the problem, and it does nothing to reassure the public that a responsible leader with a thoughtfully reasoned plan is in charge. It is the language of a guttersnipe, not a statesman.
     
12. As for the other part of MaryAnne’s question, what “Obama should personally do about BP’s complete disregard for the safety of its workers,” the remedy, if any, is the province of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration. The president can make clear to Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor, and to David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, his deep personal concern about this matter, and ask them for a study and special report with recommendations. But that is “locking the barn door after the horse is stolen.” It would, however, have serious value with respect to the remaining nearly 4,000 active oil and gas platforms in the Gulf.

And that’s just the first couple of days….

References:

American Daughter — The Executive Orders

LENTA — How to remove oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico? (translated from the Russian)

In case you’re starting to feel insensitve and distant, like Obama wants you to, take a moment to watch the oil volcano. As I understand it, this CAN go on for approximately 35 years.

Live Feed

We are all aware of Obama’s leadership failure regarding the oil disaster. RightChange has summarized with a video:

Tail wag: May Lattanzio of Life on Sleepy Creek

It is time the Obama administration stopped impeding clean up in the Gulf. As the Gulf of Mexico oil spill continues and the cleanup lags, we must begin to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions about the Obama administration — about the lack of prompt action and the continued dalliance. There does not seem to be much that anyone can do to stop the spill except dig a relief well, not due until August, but the Obama administration seems to be intentionally delaying and impeding clean up. Call your Senator and House of Representatives member and tell them the public wants action … not talk or speeches about illegal immigration, energy policy, etc.

First, the Environmental Protection Agency can relax restrictions on the amount of oil in discharged water, currently limited to 15 parts per million. In normal times, this rule sensibly controls the amount of pollution that can be added to relatively clean ocean water. But this is not a normal time and any skimmer working now helps. Various skimmers and tankers (some of them very large) are available that could eliminate most of the oil from seawater, discharging the mostly clean water while storing the oil onboard. While this would clean vast amounts of water efficiently, the EPA is unwilling to grant a temporary waiver of its regulations. The Obama administration seems to be doing this intentionally.

Next, the Obama administration can waive the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from operating in U.S. coastal waters. Many foreign countries (such as the Netherlands and Belgium) have ships and technologies that would greatly advance the cleanup. So far, the Obama administration has refused to waive the restrictions of this law and allow these ships to participate in the effort.

In addition, the federal government can free American-based skimmers. Of the 2,000 skimmers in the U.S. (not subject to the Jones Act or other restrictions), only 400 have been sent to the Gulf. Federal barriers have kept the others on stations elsewhere in case of other oil spills, despite the magnitude of the current crisis. The Coast Guard and the EPA issued a joint temporary rule suspending the regulation on June 29­ — more than 70 days after the spill. It appears the Obama administration intentionally delayed these clean up actions.

The Obama administration can also permit more state and local initiatives. The media endlessly report stories of county and state officials applying federal permits to perform various actions, such as building sand berms around the Louisiana coast. In some cases, they were forbidden from acting. In others there have been extensive delays in obtaining permission.

Whatever his real motivations are, Obama is behaving like a man who wants to see our country crippled and damaged, environmentally and economically.

Matthew Simmons, one of the world’s foremost oil experts and former energy adviser to President George W. Bush, told interviewers that a small-bore nuclear device is now the only option that will stop the Deep Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Simmons believes BP has been withholding the facts of the spill from the American people, and he doesn’t think the company’s planned relief well will work because the well casing is gone and relief wells only work when the hole has a casing in it.

Simmons claims scientists aboard the NOAA ship Thomas Jefferson, America’s largest research vessel, have discovered a lake of very heavy oil 300 to 400 meters wide and 1100 meters below the surface that covers 40 percent of the Gulf of Mexico. Simmons points out that BP’s attempts to stop the leak have either failed or aren’t working well:

• First Attempt: Containment Dome resulted in failure
• Second Attempt: Top Hat resulted in failure
• Third Attempt: Insertion Tube resulted in failure
• Fourth Attempt: Top Kill resulted in failure
• Fifth Attempt: Cut and Cap not working well
• Sixth Attempt: Relief Wells to be completed in late August

According to Simmons, BP’s failures leave only two options: live with 120,000 barrels of oil a day poisoning the Gulf of Mexico and maybe the Atlantic Ocean for the next 25 or 30 years or put a nuclear device down the hole and detonate it.

“[I]t’s an open hole. And the only way we’ll ever put it out is detonating something that will fuse the rock right above the oil column into glass. And the only way that anyone’s ever done that is the four times the Soviets did that in the ’70s with a very small bore nuclear device. So I think that’s now our only option.” –Matthew Simmons

Watch Simmons Says Nuclear Device Only Option to Stop Oil Leak (5:43):

Watch Gulf Oil Spill: Matt Simmons @ MS-NBC: Leak could last 30 years, open hole with no casing in it? (6:17):

Related:

CNN Money — The Gulf Coast oil spill’s Dr. Doom, an Interview by Nin-Hai Tseng

As an oil and gas industry insider, Matt Simmons speaks with a bold voice and makes even bolder predictions. His 2005 book, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, which argued that Saudi Arabia’s oil supplies are way more limited than most people think, raised his profile as an authority on the industry.

For more than 35 years, Simmons has run a Texas-based boutique investment bank, Simmons & Co., which specializes in the energy industry. At times, with his somewhat doom-and -loom-like take on things, there’s a hint of conspiracy theorist in his tone. But it’s hard to ignore that Simmons is deeply connected and has been pretty much right on in the past: When oil was $58 a barrel the year Twilight was released, Simmons predicted prices would be at or above $100 within a few years. By 2008, when Fortune profiled Simmons, the price of crude had hit $147 a barrel.

As a big believer that wind power is the way of the future, Simmons says the era of easy oil is over and that world oil production will eventually fail to meet expected future demands.

These days, Simmons has been weighing in on BP (BP) and the worst oil spill in U.S. history, following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. As BP struggles to permanently stop the gush of oil, Simmons has been warning that the scale of the spill is much bigger and that there’s a larger leak several miles away.

Simmons also thinks that perhaps the only way to seal the gush of oil is by doing what the Soviet Union did decades ago — setting off a bomb deep underground so that the fiery blast will melt the surrounding rock and shut off the spill.

Fortune caught up with Simmons this week to hear his thoughts on the Gulf Coast oil spill, the future of BP and what’s ahead for offshore drilling.

Experts forecast an active hurricane season this year. We know it could disrupt efforts to stop the spill, but how else do you think storms could impact the Gulf Coast?

We’ve got to stop the gusher first. Then we have to deal with the other issues. There’s a lake at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico that’s over 100 miles wide and at least 400 to 500 feet deep of black oil. It’s just staying there. And only the lightest of that is what we’re seeing hitting the shores so far. If a hurricane comes and blows this to shore, it could paint the Gulf Coast black. We should have been pumping this oil out onto other tankers weeks ago.

How do you think the U.S. government should handle this disaster?

I think the government should ask BP to leave the United States and turn its operation over to the military. Put the U.S. Navy in charge. Have all the contractors report to the Navy — the cleanup efforts, the whole nine yards. Because as long as it’s in BP’s hands, they’re going to spin the information as long as they can.

What do you think is in store for the future of BP?

They have about a month before they declare Chapter 11. They’re going to run out of cash from lawsuits, cleanup and other expenses. One really smart thing that Obama did was about three weeks ago he forced BP CEO Tony Hayward to put in writing that BP would pay for every dollar of the cleanup. But there isn’t enough money in the world to clean up the Gulf of Mexico. Once BP realizes the extent of this my guess is that they’ll panic and go into Chapter 11.

There’s currently a ban on new deepwater oil projects for six months to prevent other disasters. What lies ahead for offshore drilling?

First of all, to the industry’s credit, we went 41 years in the United States without an oil spill. In a minor sense, this is what happened to the Challenger. We had so many successful shuttle takeoffs that the space station got kind of casual about this. But this is worse. BP was so certain that there wasn’t any risk that three years ago they thought the insurance industry was ripping them off, so they’re self-insured on this. How stupid! It was the best thing that ever happened to the insurance industry.

How do you think the Gulf Coast oil spill will change the energy business, if at all?

Profoundly. We’re going to have to go back and re-examine all of our regulatory rules and realize the easy stuff is imminent and the rest of the stuff we do is really risky. We have to start questioning whether it’s worth the risk, and do we need to get really serious about developing some alternative energy sources? Now I’m working on a big project in mid-coast Maine called the Ocean Energy Institute, and we’re hoping that within the next year we can actually create 50 megawatt offshore wind turbines — one every five miles a part — and turn that offshore electricity into desalinated sea water and liquid ammonia. It could replace motor gasoline and diesel fuel.

What are the lessons learned from this environmental disaster?

That oil peaked. The easy stuff is over. We have to continue drilling in shallow water, but we probably need to take a deep breath and step back. Until we develop a new generation of equipment that can respond to these accidents, just don’t go into the ultra-deep water and deep formations because it’s just too risky.

or, Converting an Environmental Crisis into an Environmental and Economic Catastrophe.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar altered a signed report submitted by seven experts who had been advisors to Brother O on offshore drilling safety following the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The Chicago-way practitioner added two paragraphs to the final report calling for an immediate halt to drilling operations and a six-month moratorium on permits for new wells being drilled using floating rigs. 

“The experts … involved in crafting the report gave … their recommendation … It was not their decision on the moratorium. It was my decision and the president’s decision to move forward” [with the moratorium. --Ken Salazar

But Salazar submitted the report without notifying the experts that he had added the moratorium recommendation. He then reported to Brother O that the panel of experts had “peer reviewed” his recommendations for the moratorium. 

“None of us actually reviewed the memorandum as it is in the report. What was in the report at the time it was reviewed was quite a bit different in its impact to what there is now. So we wanted to distance ourselves from that recommendation.” –Ken Arnold, one of the seven oil experts

The experts, who had been recommended by the National Academy of Engineering, wrote a letter to Salazar complaining that he had misrepresented their opinions and that the moratorium on drilling was a bad idea for the following reasons:

• Shutting down a rig is much more dangerous than continued drilling; the Deep Well Horizon exploded while being shut down.
• Floating rigs are scarce and in high demand worldwide; they won’t simply sit idle in the Gulf for six months; they will move to the North Sea and West Africa and won’t be back to resume drilling for years. 
• The best and most advanced rigs will leave first, leaving the older and potentially less safe ones operating off of the U.S. coast.

To compound the environmental consequences of the spill, Brother O and Salazar released an altered report to justify an economic shut down to huge parts of the Gulf region. Brother O’s moratorium on deepwater drilling affects 33 platforms, each one employs between 180 and 280 jobs, and each one of those jobs directly supports at least four other industry related jobs. 

The moratorium is hurting the people in the Gulf states. More than 120,000 jobs could be lost in the region if the drilling ban continues. The ban will keep the country dependent on foreign oil, cause energy prices to skyrocket, and add an economic disaster to an environmental crisis.

What is more, in the middle of the unfolding catastrophe, Brother O remains aloof from the clamor of the devastation in the Gulf. Spellbound by a grandiose sense of self-importance, America’s false messiah stands naked before the world, a dithering master of empty platitudes gushing hot air to the dirty, itching ears of the fools who elected him. 

For more information on the altered report and the effects of the moratorium in the Gulf region, see

Washington Examiner — Injunction notes that Obama admin manipulated experts’ opinions in moratorium decision by Joel S. Gehrke Jr.

The Foundry — Jindal vs. Obama: Time to End the Drilling Moratorium by Mike Brownfield

Fox News — Experts Say White House ‘Misrepresented’ Views to Justify Drilling Moratorium