Oil CEOs Face Congress
Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 5:53PMBy Robert Hune-Kalter-Talk Radio News Service
The CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell Oil Company, and BP America, Inc., the five largest oil companies in the United States, appeared on Capitol Hill Tuesday before members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee fired up by the Gulf Coast oil spill.
Rep. Ed Markey (D-Ma.), the chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, said he expected the members of the respective oil companies to tell the committee that they believed the incident that occurred with the Deepwater Horizon was an isolated incident.
“It is this kind of blind faith, which is ironically the name of an actual rig in the Gulf, that has lead to this kind of disaster,” Markey said.
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) questioned ExxonMobil’s accident response plan because forty pages are dedicated to dealing with media coverage, while only nine represent oil removal. He complimented Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil for being well rehearsed.
“I was struck Mr. Tillerson, you indicated in your testimony, based on the industries extensive experience, you state that what we do know is that when you properly design wells for the range of risk anticipated, follow the established procedures, build in layers of redundancy, properly inspect and maintain equipment, train operators, conduct tests and drills, and focus on safe operations and risk management, tragic incidents like the one we’re witnessing in the Gulf today, should not occur, and I mention that because in today’s [Washington] Post, those exact same words are there, but it’s attributed to Kenneth P. Coen, ExxonMobil’s V.P. of Public and Government Affairs,” said Stupak.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) called for Lamar McKay to resign as CEO of BP America based on what he deemed the poor performance of the company in response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao (R-La.) had harsher words for McKay.
“Mr. Stearns asked Mr. McKay to resign. Well, in the Asian culture we do things differently. During the samurai days we’d just give you a knife and ask you to commit harakiri,” said Cao.
The four companies joining BP at the hearing were in agreement that they could not do any better containing the oil spill than BP. They stressed that an incident like the Deepwater Horizon accident can be prevented if certain measures are followed.
“The information we’ve been able to gather suggests that practices we would not put in place were employed here; For example, the casing design and the mechanical barriers put in place, appear to be different than what we would use,” said John Watson, CEO of Chevron.
McKay said that when the two relief wells are completed in mid-August, the flow of oil should be ceased.
BP To Share Well Containment Technology
by Miles Wolf Tamboli - The Talk Radio News Service
In a press release issued by British gas giant BP Monday, the corporation announced its plans to share information and equipment used in the containment of the Macondo deepwater well with the Marine Well Containment Company, or MWCC, so that it may be shared with all oil and gas companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico.
“We are pleased to announce our plans to join the Marine Well Containment Company and provide the experience and specialized equipment needed to respond to a deepwater well control incident,” said Richard Morrison, BP vice president for Gulf of Mexico operations. “We believe the addition of our recently gained deepwater intervention experience and specialized equipment will be important to the marine well containment system.”
Having just successfully plugged the mile-deep well responsible for leaking almost 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf over the summer, BP has developed a number of new technologies that may aid in containing deepwater wells in the future.
The oil industry and it’s federal regulators - the now-dissolved Minerals Management Service in particular - have become the subject of scrutiny recently, as many in the media have questioned the industry’s ability to safely drill at depths currently being explored.
ExxonMobil, the operators of the MWCC, plan to improve on BP’s newly developed technologies to make deepwater drilling safer, according to the report.