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Samizdata quote of the day Subtracting time needed to get to the area, at 146,000 barrels per day that translates into 9 million barrels that could have been processed since the initial offer was made by the Dutch.
– a commenter here called ‘Willab’ remarking on the belated US decision to accept Dutch assistance in dealing with the BP oil spill.
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That’s about 1.3 million tons. That’s, at the average density of gulf crude, about 105 x 105 x 105 metres.
You could collect that with a few dozen Spanish trawlers, diverted form the pretence of not fishing off Cornwall.
So what’s Obama really up to then?
The fact that the US has not allowed – until now – to let foreign vessels help with the oil cleanup operation does not really square with that “smart diplomacy” we were promised by The One. Of course, because the US is now led by a saint, the MSM outside the West have not mentioned it very much. If Bush/Hitler was still in the job, we’d have never heard the end of it.
To quote a former governor of Alaska, how’s that hopeychange thing workin’ out for ya?
Actually they are tied up in rather ancient knots here. I believe it is called the Jones Act, or something like that, but it ‘protects’ US shipping companies and unions and has been around since perhaps the 20’s or 30’s. Look it up.
Oil not collected is oil not driving down oil prices (and the attendant tax income) through excess supply. Just sayin’.
The Americans have handled it wrong from the start, they should have outright denied that an oil spill had happened and if it had it was fixed, and all that oil washing up onto the shore was nothing to do with them, it’s a policy that seems to be working well for the Egyptians.
Dale: IIUC, Bush temporarily suspended the Jones Act during Katrina, so apparently Obama could have done the same.
Besides, the “environmental considerations” described in the article have nothing to do with Jones.
Dale it is indeed the “Jones Act”. However it limits the shipment of goods and passengers between U.S. ports to American flagged ships. As spilled oil is not normally considered goods, it’s not coming from a U.S. port, I don’t see how it would apply.
The Chinese did something similar during the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 – immediately after the quake hit and the magnitude of damage became known, a bunch of countries immediately offered the Chinese government sniffer dog teams and state-of-the-art search and rescue equipment that the Chinese lacked. These offers were turned down for days, but eventually the offers were accepted. Several days after the quake hit, the foreign rescue teams were finally allowed into the affected area. Needless to say, by that time the vast majority of people trapped under collapsed buildings had perished, and the work that sniffer dogs and the like would have otherwise carried out became redundant.
Why did the Chinese government refuse help from foreign experts? Pride? Paranoia? Both? Any which way, you’d think the US government wouldn’t be so paranoid and/or parochial in a time of disaster. How wrong you’d be.
Neither. I am increasingly leaning towards the purposefully-maintaining-and-prolonging-the-crisis explanation, because it is the only one consistent with facts.
Yes Alisa – days can be explained in terms of pride (or just confusion – although it only took a couple of days for even George Walker Bush to “get his head together” after Katrina). They can not explain a delay of MONTHS to do things like suspend the Jones Act.
Barack Obama and co have tried to take advantage of this accident by making it as bad as they can (for example the obstruction of State government and private efforts to defend the coastline).
It may well have backfired on Obama (as, inspite of the media, the people sense his ill intentions), but the plan was to “never let a crises go to waste”.
I now see that I botched the quote – my comment was about Obama’s government, not the Chinese one.