Corporate bungling didn’t begin with BP and the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But every day seems to bring fresh news of BP ineptitude, above and below the water.
This week, President Barack Obama declared war on BP. On Thursday, the Obama administration socked BP with a $69 million bill for recovery costs to date.
Obama made his second visit to the Louisiana coast in a week on Friday. Sensitive to criticism and falling poll numbers that show his cool-in-a-crisis demeanor isn’t playing well, the president offered fighting words.
“I don’t want somebody else bearing the costs of those risks that they took,” Obama said of BP. “I want to make sure that they’re paying for it.”
Speaking of risks, BP CEO Tony Hayward admitted Thursday that the company wasn’t prepared for a blowout a mile deep on the sea floor. “We did not have the tools you would want in your tool kit.”
That might be the understatement of the year. Pending the outcome of Friday’s latest attempt to control the flow of oil from the ruptured well — and it’s not looking good — nothing BP has tried, from domes to deep-sea robots, has worked.
Obama’s sudden engagement in the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history came after he was the target of fighting words from Democratic strategist James Carville.
Carville, who was here April 19 — the day before the disaster began — for the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce meeting, is a Louisiana native. Carville was harshly critical of the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Recently, the New Orleans resident unleashed his venom on Obama.
“They are risking everything by this ‘go along with BP’ strategy they have that seems like, lackadaisical on this,” Carville told CNN. “They seem like they’re inconvenienced by this, this is some giant thing getting in their way and somehow or another, if you let BP handle it, it’ll all go away. It’s not going away. It’s growing out there. It is a disaster of the first magnitude, and they've got to go to Plan B.”
What’s Plan B? The president needs to become BP’s “daddy,” Carville said.
Carville said that when he ran into Hayward in a New Orleans restaurant this week, Hayward said, “You’ve said some harsh things.”
And Hayward has said some dumb things.
nLast weekeend, Hayward told reporters, “I’d like my life back.” That angered many Gulf Coast residents, not to mention the families of the 11 people killed when the oil platform blew up on April 20. He later apologized.
nThree weeks into the spill, Hayward told reporters that the amount of oil was relatively small given the Gulf of Mexico’s size. The U.S. government estimates that up to 46 million gallons of oil has leaked into the Gulf. The oil has reached the shores of four states — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
nHayward said there was no evidence of large underwater plumes of oil in the Gulf. Scientific tests and oily coastlines have proven him wrong.
Hayward said Friday that the spill has cost BP $1 billion to date. He said BP, which made $16 billion last year, can pay whatever it costs to clean this mess up.
But how will BP — and the U.S. government — compensate the thousands in Gulf states whose jobs and ways of life are in jeopardy?
