Secretary Steven Chu of the Department of Energy and Secretary Ken Salazar of the Department of Interior traveled to Houston, Texas, earlier this week to meet with scientists, industry officials and engineers. They were sent by President Barack Obama to seek solutions to the oil-spill disaster. Their mission? Containment of the oil spill.According to Salazar, “This is a vital national priority and we cannot and will not rest until BP has capped the well and controlled the spill.â€
Blowout Preventers are designed to shut off the flow of oil and gas, and the BOP on the Deepwater Horizon failed to trigger. The team in Houston, composed of experts from both inside and outside government, is working to figure out what caused this malfunction.
The team members will work together in using cutting-edge technology to determine what exactly is happening inside the BOP. They seek innovative approaches in which they can protect the Gulf Coast and control the major oil spill. Some of these technologies include analyzing the fluid flows, using high-powered supercomputers to take images and samples of the seafloor and measuring the pressure in the blowout preventer stack.
“Putting our best scientific minds together with BP’s deepwater drilling engineers will enable these dedicated professionals to examine every feasible means and practical solution to this environmental crisis in the Gulf of Mexico,” Chu said.
can the leaks be imploded?
Government continues to be excellent at making excuses, excellent at making promises of what it will do now and in the future, and, generally of closing the barn door after the horses have run off.
Until government is run by professionals rather than political appointees doing temporary duty, and until a strong civil service based entirely on merit and performance is created, we can expect disasters — 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Panic of 2008, and the Deepwater Horizon aftermath — to be met by nothing more than excuses, blame-shifting, and promises.
Professional management would have been prepared for such a possibility. the US Government was not.