Busted!

We knew something didn't smell right...

The ill-fated Deepwater Horizon...

Back in May, just after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe began, The Bliss Index/yours truly - told you in print and on the air that something didn't smell right about a number of issues connected to the Obama Administration's handling of the disaster.

One of the most troubling matters that arose in those dark days following the explosion, blow-out and massive leak was the decision to slap a ban on offshore oil exploration/drilling that was supposedly backed by the consensus of experts in the field.

We now know that the report that led to the moratorium was nothing short of a lie.

According to Politico.com, "The White House rewrote crucial sections of an Interior Department report to suggest an independent group of scientists and engineers supported a six-month ban on offshore oil drilling, the Interior inspector general says in a new report. In the wee hours of the morning of May 27, a staff member to White House energy adviser Carol Browner sent two edited versions of the department report’s executive summary back to Interior. The language had been changed to insinuate the seven-member panel of outside experts – who reviewed a draft of various safety recommendations – endorsed the moratorium, according to the IG report obtained by POLITICO."

Politico continues: "The six-month ban on offshore drilling installed in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill became a major political issue over the summer, as Gulf State lawmakers and industry groups charged the White House with unfairly threatening thousands of jobs."

For all the Obama Administration and its allies say about having "science-based policy," this revelation seems contrary to what they have stated. The truth is that the decision was never based on science but, instead, it was made as part of an agenda that is more interested in outcomes than it is in fact.

From Greenenergyreporter.com: Good for Climate Bill - Carol Browner sees opportunity in crisis...The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could end up being a good thing for the climate bill – or, at least, that’s the storyline that the Obama Administration has started pushing. White House energy czar Carol Browner told Bloomberg this morning that the leaking oil well “is actually heightening people’s interest in energy in this country and in wanting a different energy plan.”

Crisis (mis)management...

"Rough waters are truer tests of leadership. In calm water every ship has a good captain." — Swedish proverb

Since the horrific explosion, fire, collapse and massive leak at the site of British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon well on April 20, the "it can't get any worse" situation has been getting worse - by the minute.

The oil continues to seep, spew and drift with the currents. What was once a Louisiana problem has now moved far enough east to become a Florida problem, and the fear is that the spread could loop around the southern end of the state and be transported to the north along the Eastern Seaboard.

While BP and the federal government struggle to contain and control the leaks (there are at least three at the site), the American public continues to lose confidence in the manner in which the White House is managing the crises at-hand. The president is even losing the confidence of some of his biggest Democratic supporters in Congress. (As some have suggested, this isn't the president's "Katrina," it's his Iran hostage crisis.)

The reason: President Barack Obama (and his team) have failed to own the situation. Instead, it's the other way around.

"Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm." —Publilius Syrus.

A presidential briefing...

The basic rules of crisis management are pretty straight-forward: you've got to understand and manage the "issues" at hand. That means assessment and any immediate/urgently needed response(s); regular and reliable communication; short- and long-term vision/planning; action; and remediation. So far, the country's leadership - the president, the Interior Department, the Minerals Management Service, etc. - have done precious little in any of these areas. Of course, there is probably a great deal of work going on "behind the scenes, " but these efforts are not being communicated, which engenders more frustration, anger and mistrust (and undermines confidence all the way around).

Deepwater Horizon - April 20 (we're now nearing mid-June and things seem to be worsening)...

The early problems are now exacerbated with a number of revelations showing that the administration sat on its hands; made other, less-important matters a priority; and essentially hid the truth (or even misled the public). Some examples:

• From a report in Chron.com: "Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help. It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands. The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston. Now, almost seven weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the Gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered."

"90 percent of a crisis response is communications" – Barbara Reynolds, Center for Disease Control

And still it leaks...

• The White House constantly attacks BP (and Big Oil) but the truth is “BP was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobby dedicated to passing a cap-and-trade bill. As the nation’s largest producer of natural gas, BP saw many ways to profit from climate legislation, notably by persuading Congress to provide subsidies to coal-fired power plants that switched to gas," according to a piece by Timothy Carney in the Washington Examiner. He continues: "Lobbying records also show BP lobbying on Obama’s stimulus bill and Bush’s Wall Street bailout. You can guess the oil giant wasn’t in league with the Cato Institute or Ron Paul on those. BP has more Democratic lobbyists than Republicans. It employs the Podesta Group, co-founded by John Podesta, Obama’s transition director and confidant. Other BP troops on K Street include Michael Berman, a former top aide to Vice President Walter Mondale; Steven Champlin, former executive director of the House Democratic Caucus; and Matthew LaRocco, who worked in Bill Clinton’s Interior Department and whose father was a Democratic congressman.”

"Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it."- Henry Mintzberg, McGill University School of Management, The Nature of Managerial Work, Harper & Row, 1973

President Barack Obama - down by the seaside...

• As noted in a new article in Rolling Stone magazine (via Hot Air), "The administration knew the spill could be far worse than its “best estimate” acknowledged. That same day, the president’s Flow Rate Technical Group – a team of scientists charged with establishing the gusher’s output – announced a new estimate of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels, based on calculations from video of the plume. In fact, according to interviews with team members and scientists familiar with its work, that figure represents the plume group’s minimum estimate. The upper range was not included in their report because scientists analyzing the flow were unable to reach a consensus on how bad it could be. “The upper bound from the plume group, if it had come out, is very high,” says Timothy Crone, a marine geophysicist at Columbia University who has consulted with the government’s team. “That’s why they had resistance internally. We’re talking 100,000 barrels a day.”

"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can't blow a weak trumpet." –Theodore Hesburgh, President, Nortre Dame University, Time, May 1987

BP chief Tony Hayward...

According to that same Rolling Stone article, the president didn't exactly get things moving on the crisis, despite the knowledge that the spill was a worst-case situation.

• "The president himself was occupied elsewhere. After returning from his vacation, Obama spent Monday, April 26th palling around with Derek Jeter and the New York Yankees, congratulating them on their World Series victory. He later took time to chat with the president of Honduras. When he put in a call to Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, it was to talk about tornadoes that had caused damage in that state, with only a brief mention of the oil spill. On Tuesday the 27th, Obama visited a wind-turbine plant in Iowa. Wednesday the 28th, he toured a biofuels refinery in Missouri and talked up financial reform in Quincy, Illinois. He didn’t mention the oil spill or the Gulf. That evening, administration officials received news that – to judge from their subsequent response – scared the shit out of them. 'The following is not public,' a confidential NOAA advisory stressed. 'Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked, resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought. There is no official change in the volume released but the [Coast Guard] is no longer stating that the release rate is 1,000 barrels a day. Instead they are saying that they are preparing for a worst-case release and bringing all assets to bear.' After he was briefed that evening, Obama told his deputies to contact the Pentagon. The following day, Napolitano declared the BP disaster, which was now approaching the size of Puerto Rico, an 'Oil Spill of National Significance' – the designation required to draw on regional resources and to appoint an incident commander to coordinate a federal response. It had taken a full week after Deepwater Horizon exploded for the government to become fully engaged – a critical lapse that allowed the crisis to spiral out of control."

There you have it: what is supposed to pass for crisis management is actually mis-management at the highest levels. A clear vision has not been conveyed to the public; a true assessment has never truly been made and/or shared; priorities are askew; and politics - not problem-solving - are the order of the day.

God help the Gulf.

God help us all.

"The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority." -

Kenneth Blanchard, University of Massachusetts, Schatz, Managing By Influence, (Prentice-Hall, 1986)

Still looking to take names almost two months later...

LATE ADD: This is not how you manage communications in a crisis...

Cleaning up another mess...

Since the explosion, sinking and massive oil spill resulting from British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster more than a month ago, BP and the federal government have been struggling to find a solution to what could become the largest man made disaster – ever.

During the period since the horror first erupted in the Gulf of Mexico, we’ve seen the spill expand to beaches throughout the Gulf. We’ve seen BP downplay the severity – time and again. And we’ve watched the current administration present its biggest example yet that it is a presidency best characterized as “learning on the job.”


Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and President Barack Obama...

For BP’s part, it’s difficult to imagine that a company this big and this experienced did not plan (better) for a “worst-case scenario.” While they’ve continued to bumble on the PR front, their engineers (God love ‘em) have been trying everything and anything to find a “magic bullet.” The first containment dome failed…froze-up. The “big straw” – an effort to suck spewing oil up to nearby ships – didn’t make a dent. “Top kill,” pumping heavy mud into the wellhead in an effort to seal it, didn’t do it. The “junk shot” – trying to stuff debris (including golf balls and old tires) into the hole – worked about as good as you’d imagine something called a “junk shot” would.
While BP has at least been trying every trick in the book – and some that aren’t – the feds have been doing bupkis. (OK, the Coast Guard has been doing their usual stellar job but the administration’s response has been, um, lacking.)

My friend and colleague, Tunku Varadarajan (writing for The Daily Beast), however, feels that it’s wrong to blame Barack Obama: “Writers have been free with their superlatives of calamity, the most common being a likening of the spill to Hurricane Katrina: ‘Obama’s Katrina,’ many have written, glibly judgmental. And going one step further up the ladder of shrillness, Thomas Friedman, the Emperor of Glib, has been imperiously judgmental, calling the spill ‘Obama’s 9/11.’ The oil spill is none of the above. It is not even ‘Obama’s oil spill,’ if by saying so we mean to ascribe culpability to the president. He didn’t run the rigs, or oversee the plans, or grant the licenses to drill, or write the rules that govern the granting of those licenses. He was just president when the bloody thing happened (cf. Bush, 9/11). Not one iota of this sticky mess is Obama’s doing, by any rational calculus of causation.”




Obviously, I agree with Tunku, in that the explosion wasn’t the cause of Obama (or his team), but I also agree with the president’s recent declaration that he’s in charge and, echoing Harry S. Truman, “the buck stops” with him.

Whether it’s now or after the spill is quelled, one of the steps Obama can take to make things better is to cut loose his Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar. It would be unreasonable to expect the president to take blame for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but during Salazar’s time at the helm of Interior (which has been otherwise unremarkable), the Minerals Management Service (MMS) – the federal agency overseeing offshore oil and natural-gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico – “has been cited again for ‘ethical lapses’ that included allowing rig inspectors and others to receive gifts from oil companies.”


The scapegoat, Elizabeth Birnbaum. Acknowledged as a "smart and hardworking administrator," Birnbaum took charge of the MMS two months after the department, part of the Department of the Interior (Ken Salazar, secretary), had already OK'd Deepwater Horizon's operations.

What’s more, Salazar (likely under orders from Rahm “The Godfather” Emanuel) – in an effort to produce a scalp for Congress – dumped one of his own, Elizabeth Birnbaum. According to The Washington Post, “Salazar, a politically savvy former senator from Colorado, responded that he had lost confidence in Elizabeth Birnbaum, the director of the Minerals Management Service, adding that he would soon be making changes. The next morning, Salazar and his deputy secretary David Hayes knocked on Birnbaum's office door and told her they planned to move her to another job; she resigned instead.”


The president checks out oil on a beach pre-cleaned by BP...

According to a report by Sharyl Attkison at CBSNews.com, “Birnbaum's departure was first reported as a "firing." Later, a "resignation." When asked for clarity, President Obama told the press corps today he had no idea.

CBS White House Correspondent Chip Reid: "Did she resign? Was she fired? Was she forced out? And if so, why?"

Obama: "I found out about her resignation today,so I don't know the circumstances in which this occurred."

The incredulous press corps followed up.

Reporter: "How is it that you didn't know about Ms. Birnbaum's resignation/firing before?"

Obama: "Well, you're assuming it was a firing. If it was a resignation, then she would have submitted a letter to Mr. Salazar this morning at a time when I had a whole bunch of other stuff going on... Come on, I don't know. I'm telling you I found out about it this morning. So I don't yet know the circumstances, and Ken Salazar has been in testimony on the Hill."

The Post article goes on to say that “Birnbaum's abrupt departure, coming just 10 months after she had taken the agency's helm, says more about the Obama administration's inability to improve MMS and the industry it regulates than Birnbaum herself. Facing a historically troubled agency, Salazar and his top deputies focused first on promoting easy-to-achieve changes…rather than conducting a broad agency overhaul.”


The mess gets worse...

Finally, when he had a chance to show some form of leadership, Salazar impressed no one as he toured affected areas of the Gulf coast with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and a group of U.S. senators, bragging to reporters that, "We will keep our boot on their [BP’s] neck until the job gets done.” That’s some fine work there, Kenny.

Let’s remember, that for all of Salazar’s big boot pronouncements and subordinate axing, he’s long been a friend of Big Oil. A story in The Nation reminds us that, “Salazar certainly believes in offshore oil drilling, but whether he can be trusted to regulate it is another matter. One wouldn't know it from his recent public statements, but Ken Salazar has long been one of the strongest advocates of offshore oil drilling in Washington. In 2008, as a Democratic Senator from Colorado, he criticized the Bush-Cheney administration for not doing enough to promote offshore drilling. In 2006, Sen. Salazar was the architect of the Gulf of Mexico Economic Security Act, which opened eight million acres of the Gulf to drilling. In 2009, as Interior Secretary, Salazar oversaw his department's lease of 55 million acres of the Gulf for oil and gas drilling.”

The author (no Big Oil-loving conservative) finishes with this viewpoint: “If Obama truly wants to chart a new course in dealing with the BP disaster and accelerating America's transition to a clean energy future, he should start by requesting Ken Salazar's resignation.”

Yes, that’s another way Obama could begin cleaning up this mess.