Hurricane Isaac Makes Landfall in Louisiana Ahead of Katrina Anniversary

Michael DeMocker, The Times-Picayune photo

Evacuation orders were lifted along much of the Gulf coast on Thursday after the considerably weaker but slower-moving Hurricane Issac moved inland in the run-up to the seven year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall.

There was some concern about the possible impact on New Orleans, which is still recovering from Katrina some 7 years later, but the Big Easy was spared a direct hit from Isaac as the storm made landfall twice, coming ashore southeast of New Orleans in Plaquemines Parish for the second time. The storm continued north from there, continually losing strength as it made its way into Arkansas.

While pumps and levees in the Crescent City held up during the city's latest brush with Isaac, suburban and rural areas just outside of New Orleans were hit with flooding as rain from the slow-moving storm overwhelmed neaby bayous.

Earlier in the week, a strengthening Isaac had sideswiped Haiti and the Dominican Republic and forecasters put the hurricane on a trajectory to hit the Florida Gulf Coast around the same time as the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL. Governors Bobby Jindal or Louisiana, Phil Bryant of Mississippi and Robert Bentley of Alabama had pre-emptively declared States of Emergency in the coastal regions of their respective states ahead of Isaac's arrival. The three governors- all Republicans- also cancelled their scheduled visits to the GOP convention to attend to the neccesary disaster prepeartions and cleanup.

Although Isaac was relatively mild compared to other hurricanes that came ashore from the Gulf Coast in recent years, the Cat 1 hurricane still caused widespread problems- particularly in Louisiana. As many as 820,000 residents were without electricity on Thursday- some 39% of the state's population.

ExxonMobil Announces Significant Oil Find in Gulf of Mexico After Chaotic OPEC Meeting in Vienna

Oil giant ExxonMobil [NYSE- XOM] announced on Wednesday a major discovery in the Gulf of Mexico that could yield as much as 700 million barrels of oil.

Exxon began exploratory drilling at the Hadrian prospect in 2009. The company had finished two wells at the site, located about 250 miles off the Louisiana coast in 7,000 feet of water, and had a rig on location and an approved permit to drill a new well when operations were halted due to the temporary moratorium after the BP oil spill last year.

In March, federal regulators signed off on Exxon's revised permit to drill the new well in the Keathley Canyon area of the Gulf, the company's first approved under the new regulatory regime put in place after last year's spill. The new well extends about 23,000 feet below the sea surface, and the rig is continuing to drill deeper, said company spokesman Patrick McGinn.

"We estimate a recoverable resource of more than 700 million barrels of oil equivalent combined in our Keathley Canyon blocks," Steve Greenlee, president of ExxonMobil Exploration Company, said in a statement. "This is one of the largest discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico in the last decade. More than 85 percent of the resource is oil with additional upside potential."

The announcement came on the same day as a surprise announcement from the OPEC meetings in Vienna that the member states would leave production levels unchanged, causing a jump in oil prices.

OPEC officials said that because of a policy deadlock, the group will maintain present output ceilings with the option of meeting within the next three months to consider a hike.

"We are unable to reach consensus to ... raise our production," OPEC Secretary General Abdullah Al-Badri told reporters, in comments reflecting unusual tensions in the 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Saudi oil minister Ali Naimi called it "one of the worst meetings, we've ever had," while analysts covering OPEC for more than 20 years said they could not remember any other time that the normally closed group had admitted to such divisions in its ranks.

Some even saw the abortive meeting as a harbinger of demise for the organization, which produces more than a third of the world's petroleum.

"OPEC is ... on the point of break-up," said Marc Ostwald of Monument Securities. "A broader perspective is that the post World War II world order is fracturing in a spectacular fashion, be it the EU/Eurozone, the World Bank/IMF, (or) OPEC."

Other experts were less outspoken but agreed Wednesday's outcome would weaken the image of OPEC as a major regulator of oil markets.

The news caught markets by surprise, sending oil prices sharply higher. Benchmark crude for July delivery was up $1.25 to $100.34 per barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after trading lower ahead of the OPEC meeting.

Saudi Arabia and other influential Gulf nations had pushed to increase production ceilings to calm markets and ease concerns that crude was overpriced for consumer nations struggling with their economies. Those opposed were led by Iran, the second-strongest producer within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Oil minister Rafael Ramirez of Venezuela- like Iran, a price hawk - said there was a "very tight" discussion in OPEC, in comments to his nation's state media. Any production increase "could cause a collapse of our price," he added.

While the Saudis and the Iranians are frequently at loggerheads over pricing, past meetings normally fell in behind Saudi Arabia, which produces the lion's share of OPEC output. But this time, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry combined with major political and economic uncertainties to lead to deadlock.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Algeria and Qatar were reportedly in favor of production increases while Iran, Venezuela, Angola, Ecuador and Iraq were opposed.

President Obama Spends Weekend in Panama City, FL- Local Democrat Congressman Hardest hit

President Obama and the First Family spent part of this weekend down visiting some of the beaches along the Florida panhandle in an effort to encourage visitors to vacation along the Gulf Coast after the BP Deepwater Horizon spill.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama started their Panama City Beach vacation talking with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Panama City Mayor Scott Clemons, Panama City Beach Mayor Gayle Oberst, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, hotel manager Lee Ann Leonard, charter boat Capt. Gary Jarvis and restaurant owner Carolyn Holman.

Obama said he would dedicate most of his time in the region to listening, and at the end of the roundtable discussion he said he had learned firsthand how the oil spill has damaged the Panhandle’s economy...[snip]

Obama said he and his family — his daughter Sasha and the family dog, Bo, were along for the trip; his other daughter, Malia, is at camp — are visiting in hopes of attracting public attention to all the region has to offer

Apparently absent from the list of people Obama met with was the current Democrat Congressman who's district includes Panama City. Representative Allen Boyd (FL-2) was nowhere to be seen- the Panama City News Herald makes no mention of Boyd being present for Obama's visit and neither Boyd's campaign website or his official House of Representatives homepage make any mention of the Commander in Chief's weekend stopover as of Tuesday night. [You'd think that would be pretty newsworthy, wouldn't you? -NANESB!]

This seems to be keeping with a theme of Democrats who want to get elected, re-elected or run for a different office not wanting to be seen in the same ZIP code as Obama lately.

Unfortunately for Boyd, avoiding Obama didn't really help his numbers at all. The non-partisan Cook Political Report updated the statuses of 10 different Congressional races today- all of them favoring the GOP to some extent. Among them- Boyd's district , which went from 'Leaning Democrat' to 'Toss Up'.

Obviously, I don't live in the district and Charlie Cook changing FL-2 to a 'tossup' so soon after Obama's Panama City visit could be a coincidence, but those seem less and less likely in an election year. Apparently dodging the President for one weekend isn't enough to make your constituents forget that you voted for Cap & Trade and 0bamacare.

BP Begins Static Kill Procedure on Deepwater Horizon Well

Crews have been steadily pumping drilling mud into the undersea gusher over the last few days in a bid to permanently seal the blown out well at the DeepWater Horizon site.

The process seems to be working so far and crews will start pumping cement into the well over the next few days while an 18,000 foot relief well is being drilled. The relief well would intersect with the blown out well, but work on that has to wait until concrete is added to the plug. The concrete could also take at least a day to dry and settle.

Elsewhere, NOAA officials had reported that as much as 70% of the oil that spilled from the Deepwater Horizon site has been burned, skimmed, collected, dispersed or naturally dissolved. The report also states that the estimated amount of oil remaining in the Gulf would still be about 5 times worse than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William sound.

Some researchers have criticized the report as being incomplete and overly optimistic, though.

"This is just way too neat," said Larry McKinney, director of the Texas A&M University research center on the Gulf of Mexico. "How can you even do this at this point? There's a lot of oil still floating out there."

"This is a shaky report. The more I read it, the less satisfied I am with the thoroughness of the presentation," Florida State University oceanography professor Ian MacDonald told The Associated Press. "There are sweeping assumptions here."

The report comes after inconsistencies in BP and government estimates in exactly how much oil was pouring from the ruptured well site on a daily basis and even more inconsistencies on the length of the NOAA report. The NOAA initially said there was a more comprehensive 200 page report, but then retracted that and released a 10-page report.

Not Another Gulf Coast Update!- A Whale A Bust?; Undersea Gusher Capped...Sort Of; Michelle Obama "Come Visit the Gulf While I Fly off to Maine"

*TMT's A Whale has suspended testing in the Gulf, claiming that BP used too many dispersants in the area for it pick up oil effectively. The tanker-turned-super-skimmer had undergone testing on rough seas through Independence day with inconclusive results before officially being declared a bust last week.

The owner of TMT, Nobu Su, emphasised that his company absorbed the US$160,000 cost of re-fitting and testing the vessel. Su said he plans on continuing to test and develop the A Whale so it could be used in future oil spills (remember- the A Whale wasn't refitted until a few weeks after the Deepwater Horizon sunk).

*Scene commander and Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said that the cap BP had placed on the undersea oil well late last week was holding up well and that traces of oil were actually coming from seepage at a pair of dormant oil wells about two miles away.

Over the past few days, since a 75-ton cap was placed over the mile-deep well to keep the oil bottled up inside, BP and government engineers have been watching closely to see whether the well would hold tight or show signs of rupturing under the pressure. A rupture could cause a bigger and harder-to-control disaster.

Allen has granted BP repeated 24-hour extensions to keep the cap in place, as long as the company monitors the well scrupulously.

*BP announced that it was selling oilfields and other major assets in the USA, Canada and Egypt to Houston-based Apache Corporation [NYSE: APA] for US$7 billion to put towards a $20 compensation fund the Obama Administration pressured them into creating.

*First Lady Michelle Obama paid a three hour visit to the Gulf Coast region at Pensacola, FL last week, urging people to visit some of the unaffected regions who's economy depends on tourism. She then got an ice cream cone and promptly took off for Acadia National Park in Maine where she and the First Family were spending the weekend.

A second visit, this time along Mississippi's gulf coast to christen a Coast Guard Cutter, is in the works.

* A Louisiana State University study indicates that President Obama's moratorium on drilling could cost the reigon an estimated 8,000 jobs, $500 million in wages and $2.1 billion in economic activity over 6 months if the moratorium is to stay in place. The US 5th Circut Court of Appeals overturned the Interior Department's moratorium on offshore drilling before a second one was issued earlier this month.

Gulf Update: Try Try Again- 2nd Moratorium Put in Place; BP to Replace Cap; Oil Rigs Begin Exit; Gulf's Vietnamese Fishermen's Uncertain Future

*BUMPED & UPDATED- 7/12* Fresh after getting overruled by the 5th Circuit Court, the Obama administration and Interior Department issued a second, more comprehensive drilling ban on Monday afternoon.

President Barack Obama had halted drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet (152.4 meters) to give a presidential commission time to study improvements in the safety of offshore operations. U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman cited legal flaws in the original moratorium in a June 22 ruling, and last week a three- judge appeals court panel denied the administration’s request to place a hold on Feldman’s ruling.

The new moratorium will last until Nov. 30, or until Salazar finds that “drilling operations can proceed safely,” according to the statement.

[snip] “When every single resource available is being deployed to combat this one spill, what would we do if there were another?” Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in a statement today. “The only thing worse than one rig at the bottom of the Gulf would be two.”

No, Congressman Markey. The only thing worse than a second sub-sea oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico would be the Obama Administration's response to it.

Exit question, good NANESB! readers- and I've asked myself this a number of times on a number of ancillary issues, but nowhere have I seen it more evident than the Gulf Coast response. If Obama had set out to singlehandedly destroy the economies of the Gulf-coast states, what would he do differently?

Engineers are working on replacing the old cap on the gushing undersea well at the Deepwater Horizon site that was thought to be containing less than half the oil coming out. The new system, along with the use of a containment vessel on the surface will capture an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 barrels per day- as much as twice what the old cap was capturing. The newer system was designed so that it could be assembled and disassembled more quickly in the event of a hurricane or stormy seas. However, the oil will gush unabated in the time it takes between removing the old cap and placing the new cap on.

*The Sea of Syrah is reporting that thanks to the ongoing moratorium, a number of rigs are starting to depart the Gulf of Mexico for elsewhere. Diamond Offshore Drilling [NYSE: DO] announced that their Ocean Endeavor rig will be leaving the Gulf of Mexico and heading for Egyptian waters effective immediately. Some of these rigs might wind up heading off the Brazilian shore, where Petrobras is looking to drill in the offshore Campos Basin. Interestingly, one of President Obama's wealthiest backers during the 2008 Presidential campaign, none other than George Soros himself, is heavily invested in PetroBras as well.

There's also the theory that President Obama is doing what he can to undercut offshore drilling in America in an attempt to have cap and trade passed and increase government subsidies for 'green' energy, part of his pet legislative agenda. Seriously...every time I hear about him touring a factory, it's for electric cars, solar panels or somebody who makes batteries for hybrids.

*The Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and Mississippi saw an influx of Vietnamese immigrants after the fall of Saigon- many of them staying on to work as fishermen. Today, there's a community of about 40,000 Vietnamese living along the Gulf Coast- many of them having already worked as fishermen in Vietnam continuing to do so in America.

Almost all of them are out of a job now.

Tom Huynh arrived as a war refugee. Eventually, he found his niche in tuna and escolar fishing, earning enough money to buy a house, help three brothers and sisters through college and become a mini-employment agency for the men of his hometown of Phan Thiet — his five deck hands are from there, and they cut a colorful swath on the water, decked out in matching purple Louisiana State University T-shirts.

Huynh has little to do these days so he drives two hours every few days to maintain Morning Glory, his 75-foot vessel. “Some days I wake up and I think I’m still on the boat,” he says through an interpreter. “I miss what I do. That’s all.”

Similar problems have surfaced in Mississippi, where a coalition has been formed to help nearly 5,000 Vietnamese-Americans, only about 10 percent are now believed to be working. One of the group’s goals is to get financial institutions to defer bank notes and mortgages

Some are hoping that BP will hire them to aid in the cleanup, but others have fallen prey to ambulance chasers who have signed off on paying 50% of any settlements received to attorneys. There are also those newly arrived from Vietnam who are having a difficult time navigating the claims process because of the language barrier.

There can be only one possible explanation for this: President Obama hates Asians, apparently.

Obama Administration Offshore Moratorium Struck Down AGAIN; Taiwanese Super-Skimmer 'A Whale' Begins Testing

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans rejected the federal government's request to reinstate a moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday afternoon. The three judge panel voted 2-1 against the moratorium, stating that Interior Secretary head Ken Salazar failed to make the case that his original stay was necessary.

"The secretary has failed to demonstrate a likelihood of irreparable injury if the stay is not granted; he has made no showing that there is any likelihood that drilling activities will be resumed pending appeal," the decision read

This may actually be a moot point, since the Interior Department or another agency can issue another moratorium or injunction- or tie up the permit and renewal process with so much red tape that one might as well be in effect. I'm sure the two judges that voted will have their financial records scrutinized like Martin Feldman's were when he issued the original injunction a few weeks ago. Again, I cordially invite these same dedicated internet sleuths to let me know when they devote their energies to finding the 'jobs created or saved' thanks to Obama's stimulus....or whether or not the dissenting judge was heavily invested in carbon offset schemes.



The first round of tests were deemed 'inconclusive' thanks to rough waters over the Independence Day weekend, but the Taiwanese bulk-freighter-turned-superskimmer A Whale is slated to undergo another week of testing around the Deepwater Horizon site. Taiwanese Maritime Transport owner Nobu Su announced that if successful, he's prepared to retrofit a second freighter dubbed the B Whale to assist in the cleanup efforts. Su and TMT (which apparently is in the middle of re-branding itself as Today Makes Tomorrow) are still awaiting approval from the US Coast Guard and EPA- if they decline Su's offer, he won't get compensated for the retrofit and voyage to the Gulf of Mexico [Personally, besides not wanting to see all those roughnecks and rig workers out of a job, I hope the A Whale proves effective- NANESB!].

The vessel was rebuilt in Portugal after the BP Deepwater Horizon sinking and first arrived in Norfolk VA.

A Whale of A Gulf Coast Update- Massive Skimmer Moves from Virginia to Gulf; Alex Playing Havoc With Cleanup; What's in a Name?

[AP/Patrick Semansky]

The newest weapon being deployed against the Deepwater Horizon oil spill dropped anchor in Boothville, LA on Wednesday. A massive Taiwanese owned, Liberian-flagged vessel arrived at the mouth of the Mississippi River earlier today that could remove as much as 500,000 barrels of oil per day from the Gulf of Mexico. TMT's A-Whale, which was built in South Korea as an oil tanker and refitted as a skimmer in Portugal earlier this month, was in Norfolk, VA last weekend where it underwent cursory examination by Coast Guard officials and the EPA.

Edward Overton, a professor emeritus from Louisiana State University, was among the visitors at the port where the A Whale was berthed. He called the current cleanup inadequate.

"It is absolutely gigantic. It's unbelievable. We need this ship,” he told TMT executives in Norfolk. “That oil is already contaminating our shoreline.”

The contaminated water is brought in through a dozen slits on the bow, where the oil and contaminants are separated and the cleaner water is discharged back out into the Gulf. However, the EPA has taken issue with the fact that the discharged water won't be 100% clean and needs to sign off on the quality of the treated water going back.

There is also the matter of the Jones Act, which has proven to be a major obstacle for foreign offers of assistance since the Deepwater Horizon sunk, is still in full effect. US Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen insisted that the Jones Act wasn't that big an obstacle, since it didn't hinder vessels operating three miles or more offshore. While this is true, this would hinder the foreign-flagged vessel's ability to resupply and return to shore during the cleanup unless there was an explicit waiver of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (the original name of the Jones Act).

[By the way, did you know that the A Whale, the Jones Act and the 80,000 or so feet of containment boom from a Maine company are "talking points" of the vast right-wing conspiracy? You see- the president of the Maine company sent Scott Brown a $500 donation back in January, so he's obviously in on it. Oh...and some commentor on a liberal blog says LaPointe's mom gave a few hundred dollars to ultra-right wing zealot Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe over the last decade, so they're in on it. And while Mother Jones concedes that President Bush quickly lifted the Jones act in the wake of Katrina, it was only to help his Big Oil buddies move product out of damaged refineries in Southern Louisiana. Because removing a bunch of volatile and unstable chemicals and materials from industrial facilites damaged by hurricanes benefits nobody but Republicans and oil companies, apparently -NANESB!]

Elsewhere, cleanup efforts were halted because of the approach of Hurricane Alex. While the center of the storm made landfall in Northern Mexico, the outer reaches of the storm were expected to whip through the Deepwater Horizon site along with some of the coastline where cleanup efforts were under way. There was also the chance that Alex could've changed direction and moved closer towards the affected areas of Louisiana, Alabama or Mississippi. Hurricane Alex briefly gained in strength to a Category 2 storm when making landfall in a relatively sparsely area of Tamaulipas state in Northern Mexico, some 130 miles south of Brownsville, TX.

The aftermath of the oil spill took a more partisan turn when House Democrats nixed Republican Congressman Steve Scalise's (LA-1) proposed trip to fly 10 lawmakers down to the Gulf Coast to see the damaged coastal areas firsthand. The Republican Congressmen invited by Scalise wanted to use their office's spending allowance, but Democrats claim that the ever-so-effective Department of Homeland Security would not approve official visits to disaster areas (which constitute much of the Gulf Coast) and ask that trips be organized through jurisdictional committees in order to avoid having to cater to 'a ton of individual lawmakers'. Interesting how the House Democrats have magically discovered fiscal responsibility now instead of when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was using the US Military to chauffeur around her family and running up a $101,000 bar tab. All of Louisiana's coastal Parishes are represented in Congress by Republicans.

Shortly after Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal ordered the National Guard to begin construction on some artificial barrier islands to prevent to oil from reaching further inland, the Governor's efforts at oil abatement were thwarted by the Coast Guard themselves when they ordered the shutdown of oil vacuuming barges while they were inspected for fire-extinguishers and life vests. A few days later, the dredging effort was ordered halted by the Interior Department saying that the rock, dirt and ballast for the artificial barriers were being dredged up in an environmentally sensitive area. A state official stressed that the dredging had been taking place within the original federal permit area at the north end of the Chandaleurs all month.

Another measure the Interior Department has taken in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is to change the name of the Mineral Management Services.

Yes. Really....

The agency formerly known as the Mineral Management Services will now be referred to as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOMRE). The name change was effective June 18, 2010.

Not Another Gulf Coast Update: New Orleans Judge Strikes Down Moratorium.

President Obama's brilliant stratagem of screwing the pooch on Afghanistan and McChrystal to distract from his screwing the pooch on the Federal response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has worked for all of one day.

A New Orleans federal judge struck down President Obama's 6-month moratorium on offshore drilling on Tuesday. Almost immediately, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said he would issue a new ban on offshore drilling, claiming the new moratorium would be more detailed and justify the White House's original moratorium.

Almost as soon as the ruling was issued, some intrepid Internet gumshoes discovered the New Orleans judge who overturned the moratorium owned some $15,000 worth of shares in Transocean, LTD [NYSE: RIG] and another $15,000 in shares and notes from Hercules Offshore, Inc [NASDAQ: HERO], ATP Oil & Gas [NASDAQ: ATPG] and Parker Dilling [NYSE: PKD]. I guess this is supposed to get me worked up into some sort of spittle flecked self-righteous outrage, but if you stop and think about it, just about anybody who's invested in most 401(k), IRAs or mutual funds is invested to some degree with 'big oil'. I'd be interested in seeing the same online sleuths track down where that $787 billion in stimulus spending all went.

Meanwhile, the roughnecks and rig workers who are now out of work thanks to the moratorium are trying to find employment elsewhere. Many of the tens of thousands of idle rig workers are heading to Grand Isle and Venice, LA as part of the cleanup effort. The securities firm Raymond James estimates that as many as 50,000 jobs associated with Gulf Coast drilling and that the moratorium could last ell into 2011.

The cap capturing some of the oil gushing from the ruptured pipeline was accidentally bumped by a deep sea submersible the other day. Crews operating the submersible by remote control were able to put another cap on after 10 hours of work.

Obama's Unilateral Cowboy Diplomacy and Go-It-Alone Approach in the Gulf of Mexico

Hmm.... isn't this the exact sort of thing he campaigned against?

WASHINGTON (AFP)— More than 20 countries, from Canada to Japan, have offered assistance to the United States over the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, very little of which has been accepted, the State Department has said

Among the 22 nations offering assistance include the Netherlands, Canada, Norway, Qatar, Ireland, Japan, Croatia, Mexico, South Korea, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Spain, the UK and China. Many of these offers were through the United Nations' International Maritime Organization, which has sent out bulletins to all 169 member nations regarding the spill.

While few offers have been outright rejected, most offers from foreign nations and companies are reportedly "still under consideration" by the State Department.

So far more than 13,500 feet of boom from Mexico, 10,000 feet (2 miles) of boom from Canada, skimmers and a trio of sweeping arm systems from Holland and 8 skimmers as well as more boom from Norway have been accepted.

Don't think it's just foreign outfits that have been rebuffed by the State Department, tho'. An Auburn, ME packaging company that has already manufactured some 80,000 feet of containment boom over the last month was also initally rebuffed by BP and the Feds.

As badly as the Bush Administration bungled the immediate post-Katrina response, he did temporarily waive the Jones Act that placed restrictions on shipping along the US coast for foreign-flagged vessels (also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920). It has taken the Obama Administration more than 7 weeks to announce any sort of waiver or easement of the Merchant Marine Act.

Economic Recovery, Obama Style!

I have to say that in my experience so far, part of the 'Obama Economy' apparently involves my making the acquaintance of some 'Help Wanted' ads and job opening posted online- at least when I'm not bouncing from temp job to temp job.

While some folks have me pegged as an anti-government extremist (I was in the same ZIP code as a Tea Party, after all), as a veteran of the United States Army, it's not completely unheard of for me to draw a paycheck from Uncle Sam.

So mostly out of curiosity, I was going through the USA Jobs website to see what kind of openings they had- in alot of places, the government seems to be the only place that's hiring. It seems there are a number of openings that were posted this month with the Department of the Interior's Mineral Management Service- the agency that's (theoretically) responsible for inspecting offshore oil rigs.

As it turns out, there were a number of openings with the MMS. The job? Offshore Operations and Safety Inspector. The listing is pretty ambiguous on how many positions are available, but there's this quote from the USA Jobs page:

Multiple Vacancies in various District Office Locations: Jefferson, LA, Houma, LA, Lake Charles, LA, Lafayette, LA, Clute, TX.

Yes....all these openings seem to be along the Gulf of Mexico for some reason. Go figure. This must be those 'Jobs saved or created' that Obama was talking about in his State of the Union address.

Gulf Coast Update- Obama Speechifies (Vuvuzelas Nowhere Around When You Need Them); Moratorium Questioned; Jindal Orders Offshore Barriers Set Up

New Barak Petrolium BP Logo.

I came in towards the end of the President's platitude-laden address to the nation earlier tonight, which in a nutshell came off as a sales pitch for Cap & Trade and the ever-elusive (and I suspect heavily subsidized) 'Green Jobs'. This was one of the least convincing sales pitches for that particular steaming turd, I might add. And if you think I'm being harsh on the President, you should probably listen to some of his loudest cheerleaders in the Mainstream Media [about the only time I'd advocate intentionally being within earshot of the voice of Chris Matthews or Keith Olberman- NANESB!].

So....if I'm getting this straight, some 60 days later the President's solution to solve the problem of all that oil that's still gushing out of that ruptured well some 5000 feet undersea is to further burden already struggling American businesses, consumers and households with across-the-board energy price increases and just kind of hope that these 'Green Jobs' and alternate forms of energy will magically appear. I guess more government regulators are needed to accept gifts from oil companies, watch porn while on the clock or show up under the influence of methamphetamines.

The Gulf Coast economy received another blow when Obama ordered a 6-month moratorium on offshore drilling. Besides the already-devastated fishing industry along Louisiana the moratorium has closed down the other offshore rigs and platforms along with some of the small businesses that specialize in running supplies and personnel out to them. Earlier this week, Gulf Coast lawmakers asked for an end to the moratorium only to be rebuffed by the Administration.

In Louisiana, Gov. Jindal ordered the National Guard to begin constructing offshore barrier walls to prevent even more oil from reaching further inland, The walls will be constructed to fill in gaps between the barrier islands an estimated 9 miles off the coast.

Oil Containment operations resumed at the Deepwater Horizon site after one of the ships was struck by lightning. The strike ignited a fire on the Discoverer Enterprise drillship owned by Transocean, although operations were able to resume after about 5 hours.

Meth, Porn Use, Cronyism Alleged in Interior Dept. Report of Offshore Drilling Regulators- Memorial Held for 11 Rig Workers Lost at Sea

Remember that explosion that resulted in the collapse of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, along with the deaths of at least 11 rig workers? Well....the oil is still gushing out, Obama administration officials are holding press conferences for the purpose of reminding everybody that BP is culpable while we're finding out about things like this in the dysfunctional Minerals Management Services.

WASHINGTON -- Staff members at an agency that oversees offshore drilling accepted tickets to sports events, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies and used government computers to view pornography, according to an Interior Department report alleging a culture of cronyism between regulators and the industry.

In at least one case, an inspector for the Minerals Management Service admitted using crystal methamphetamine and said he might have been under the influence of the drug the next day at work, according to the report by the acting inspector general of the Interior Department.

The report cites a variety of violations of federal regulations and ethics rules at the agency's Louisiana office. Previous inspector general investigations have focused on inappropriate behavior by the royalty-collection staff in the agency's Denver office.

I'm guessing the Obama Administration's answer to this will be to hire more inspectors to look at porn, accept gifts from the people they're supposed to regulate and report for work high on methamphetamines. Somehow more government always seems to be the answer.

Elsewhere, a memorial for the 11 Deepwater Horizon workers killed was held in Jackson, MS earlier today. At the end of the ceremony, a ship bell chimed 11 times and the families were given 11 symbolic hard hats. Transocean has set up a condolences page for visitors to leave a message. The missing and presumed dead include:
Roy Wyatt Kemp, Blair Manuel, Dewey Revette, Shane Roshto, Jason Anderson, Aaron Dale Burkeen, Donald Clark, Stephen Curtis, Karl Kleppinger, Adam Weise and Gordon Jones.

[hat tip: Eat it or Wear it]

Oil Slick From Collapsed Offshore Rig Expected to Reach Shore

(Examiner.com)

Oil from a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico has already reached some outlying and marshes along the coast of Louisiana this weekend.

The spill began to spread after the April 20 explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon offshore platform that killed 11 workers before the rig collapsed and sunk below the surface. The Deepwater Horizon rig was located 50 miles offshore from Louisiana, and the wellhead was approximately 5000 feet below the water's surface. Completed in 2001 by South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries, owned by Transocean Limited [NYSE: RIG] and leased to British Petroleum [NYSE: BP], the Deepwater Horizon sank nearly 48 hours after the initial explosion. The cause of the April 20th explosion is unknown and still under investigation and BP is attempting to cap the leak at the source, although earlier efforts with a submersible have proven unsuccessful.

President Obama took time out of his busy schedule of browbeating Wall Street, complaining about his critics and celebrating himself to reassure the public that he would use every tool at his Administration's disposal to....do something or other....I dunno- to be honest, it's getting to the point where I just start drifting off and daydreaming that I'm being served Cuba Libres poolside by some voluptuous Christina Hendricks look-alike whenever I hear the president drone on speak. And not to dogpile on the man or anything, but isn't he like a week or so too late on this?

The spill was approaching some 80 miles in length last week and is expected to have a devastating long term effect on the Gulf Coast's economy over the next few years, stifling or killing off the tourism and fishing industries until the slick is cleaned up.