Amid Talk of Privatization, Mexico's State Owned Oil Company Will Start Oil Exploration in the USA

Mexico's state-run oil monopoly, Pemex, confirmed this week their plans to set up a new company to explore for oil and natural gas in the USA and in US territorial waters. Pemex's newly appointed CEO, Emilio Lozoya, said that the unconventional move would help the Mexican oil giant obtain further access to Mexico's domestic supply by introducing it new techniques for offshore drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

The proposal, outlined by Chief Executive Emilio Lozoya in an interview, would push Pemex into complicated drilling techniques where it has no experience. It is a bold move abroad for the inward-looking company, which is the world's fifth-largest crude producer but has never faced competition nor ventured far beyond its borders.

"Pemex will be starting a new company that will work on the shale-gas and shale-oil fields in the U.S. and in the deep-water side of the U.S.," said Mr. Lozoya, a 38-year-old former investment banker tapped last year by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to run the oil giant. "The geology is similar and we can benefit from numerous areas of collaboration with international oil companies."

Potential candidates for Pemex's US energy exploration venture would include Texas' Eagle Ford Shale or New Mexico's Permian Basin- both of which are fairly close to the Mexican border and share a similar topography to northern Mexico.

The announcement comes less than two weeks after Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto postponed a sweeping bill that would overhaul Pemex and allow foreign investment in the state-run monolith, although Nieto made it a point of stopping short of privatization. The 27th article of Mexico's 1917 Constitution states that all natural resources are deemed property of the state. While Nieto or Mexico's congress are unlikely to revise that part of Mexico's constitution, Pemex could offer foreign companies profit-sharing on various projects as an incentive for foreign investment. However, privatization of Pemex could be viewed as a third rail of Mexican politics.

Pemex was formed in 1938 when then-President Lazaro Cardenas expropriated the assets of all foreign oil and privately-held Mexican companies operating in Mexico. Since expropriation, Mexico has become the sixth largest oil producer in the world. Pemex also has a pension and healthcare system that is independent from the rest of Mexico.

However, in recent years Pemex has been plagued by a number of problems including declining output, theft and sabotage by organized crime, obsolete facilities, deadly accidents, little to no safeguards against pollution and overly generous salaries and benefits to redundant bureaucrats. The entity has traditionally invested in a bloated and heavily entrenched workforce instead of constructing new refineries or modernizing facilities. As recently as 2011, gasoline imports to Mexico were at an all-time high as Pemex sought to expand existing refineries instead of building new ones. Despite high revenues thanks to increased oil costs in recent years, Mexico's federal government traditionally collects between 60% and 70% in taxes and revenues from the oil giant.

Although any degree of privatization of Pemex seems unlikely for now, other state-run oil companies in Latin America have managed to partially privatize while the government remains the majority shareholder. In the mid 1990s, Brazil opened up their oil and natural gas deposits to foreign competition, meaning that the former oil monopoly PetroBras [NYSE- PBR; PBRA] would have to submit competitive bids to the government for subsequent leases while allowing PetroBras to form joint ventures with foreign companies. In 2007, Colombia's EcoPetrol [NYSE- EC] was also partially privatized and shares of the company began selling on the stock exchanges in both Bogota and New York.

Nor would Pemex be the first state-run assets in Mexico that were privatized. In the late 1990s, Mexico opened up their national rail network to privatization- Carols Slim's Grupo Mexico [BMV- GMEXICOB] began operation of FerroMex while Kansas City Southern [NYSE- KSU] entered into a joint venture with Grupo Tranportacion Maratimo Mexicano SAB [BVM- TMMA] to form Transportacion Ferroviaria Mexicana until the KCS bought out TMM's share in 2005. By 1998, Mexico's government had started to privatize their airport system, with publicly traded groups like Grupo Aeroportuario del Centro Norte, S.A.B. de C.V [NYSE- OMAB], Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico S.A.B. de CV [NYSE- PAC] and Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, SAB de CV [NYSE- ACR] being awarded concessions to operate the airports throughout the country including those in Monterrey, Cancun and Guadalajara.

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.

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.

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.

1600 Pennsylvania Ave- Stuck on Stupid For Awhile Now

Lieutenant General Russel Honore- Where Are You?

Anybody else remember this guy berating reporters in New Orleans at a press conference shortly after Hurricane Katrina? The briefing was supposed to be about the approaching Hurricane Rita, but the press kept tossing the General questions about the government's response to Katrina.



I won't even pretend to be an informed expert on the caustic layer-cake of issues facing the Gulf Coast region thanks to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill right now, and to be honest, I think that the now-retired Lieutenant General Russel Honore would be the first to tell us he doesn't know that much about subaquatic drilling and extraction. If the President was even halfway serious about wanting to know "whose asses to kick", he should've picked up the phone and given Gen. Honore a call to co-ordinate containment and recovery planning between BP and the feds.

Where is Gen. Honore these days, anyway? Besides the occasional speaking engagement these days, I wonder what he's up to?

Oh look! I found him....wow...that took me all of 20 seconds.

Having said that, I think the cleanup effort could really use somebody with the Lt. General's leadership acumen calling the shots. This is somebody who doesn't have to jet off to attend a concert by Paul McCartney, go to a Barbara Boxer fundraiser or hit the links with Joe Biden [although he could if he wanted to, since Gen. Honore is now retired- NANESB!].

Two months of platitudes, concerts, obfuscation, finger-pointing, solicitation, speeches, mea culpas, photo ops, spin, Potemkin cleanup, golfing, grandstanding, fundraising, bungling, subpoenas, moratoriums, litigation, yachting, press conferences, indecision and feeble attempts to change the subject still hasn't 'plugged the damn hole'. And you know it's bad for the Obama administration when their most loyal and unthinking cheerleaders start ripping him apart for his tepid address from the Oval Office.

As badly botched as the initial response to Katrina was, the public seemed to rally around Gen Honore. He spoke his mind to New Orleans officials, a glib media and even his own men, caring more about outcome than opinion.

Sadly- almost 5 years later, there is no Gen. Honore on the Horizon so far.

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.

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.