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Rick's List
Coast Guard Holds Press Conference Addressing Continuing Oil Spill; BP CEO Holds Press Conference Addressing Continuing Oil Spill
Aired May 24, 2010 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: In the next couple of minutes -- heck, maybe in the next couple of seconds, Tony Hayward, the big boss over at BP is going to talk to you directly. The White House maybe wanted to talk to you at the very same time. This is like dueling news conferences. We're taking it live, we're doing the setup, we're getting into it, and here's what else we've got.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SANCHEZ (voice-over): Here is what is making the LIST today.
Forty-eight hours from top kill to try and plug the leak. Alas.
A briefing from the White House is just minutes away.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're not going to help, get the hell out of the way.
This is absolutely ridiculous.
SANCHEZ: Louisianans starting to get angry, as in enough is enough -- meaning top-kill better work. I'll show you what the plan actually is.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm the wife of a man who puts on a military uniform every day.
SANCHEZ: However, she's now caught up in but denying allegations of a sex scandal -- another tea party candidate in trouble.
The man who says he can prove Dick Cheney and George Bush let bin Laden get away joins me live.
The lists you need to know about. Who's today's most intriguing? Who's landed on the list you don't want to be on? Who's making news on Twitter?
It's why I keep a list. Pioneering tomorrow's cutting-edge news -- right now.
(MUSIC)
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SANCHEZ: Boy, this is crazy. Just as we're getting ready to go on the air, one of the Cousteaus we learned is going to be joining us. Brooke Baldwin has been able to make contact with him. Remember, the Cousteaus are the ones who are saying that a lot of this oil that no one has seen before is because it's under the surface.
We just got information, as well, that Tony Hayward, the big boss over at BP, he's about to give a news conference, any moment now. Like, I could be told by my producer in my ear here in this little thing, at any moment, hey u stop talking, go to Tony Hayward.
So -- but, we have -- well, let me take you through what we were originally planning to do at the beginning of this newscast. We're now less than 48 hours, folks, from top kill. Wednesday morning, that will be 35 days since the oil leak began, a mess of concrete is just going to be shot into that leak with the expectation that once and for all, the disaster in the Gulf is going to be dealt with. Fingers are crossed, up and down the coast, in the headquarters of BP, and all the way up to the White House.
Speaking of the White House, we're -- I just told you about Tony -- Tony Hayward is going to be speaking to us at any minute, we're going to be reaching out to Cousteau -- Michel Cousteau. Well, guess what? The White House is giving a briefing at any minute now. We don't know if they're going to hold back until Mr. Hayward is done speaking, or not.
By the way, the Coast Guard admiral, Thad Allen, is going to be giving that news conference. He's the one, as you know, who's been coordinating the government's entire response operation thus far. This is the first time that he'll be doing his briefing from the White House, showing that he's been meeting and talking to White House officials.
And just in, we are hearing that, in fact, the BP exec, Tony Hayward is also going to be coming up to the mike. What we don't know at this point is, exactly what he's going to be saying, since his executives have already been on the air throughout the course of the day.
Now, it is important to note that things are getting tense. Louisiana officials are losing their patience with BP, so is the White House, so are many of you.
Listen to what Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said over the weekend. Quote, "If we find that they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we're going to push them out of the way." Push them out of the way.
All right. Well, we wait for the admiral and I want to show you something. Can we see this animation we made? This is the top kill animation.
You got that, Rog?
All right, here it is. Chad, get in here, I want you to help us out with this thing.
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Coming.
SANCHEZ: All right. You know, as I look at this animation, I'm still a little confused because this doesn't -- a top kill would mean that the cement is coming from the surface of the water and they're dumping it into the leak. But it looks like it's filling in from the sides. Look at this thing right there. Could you -- could you talk to -- do a play-by-play for our viewers?
MYERS: It appears from this animation, and we made this animation and try to make it as accurate as we can, that they're going to attach pipes to the sides of the blow-out preventers. There are valves on the sides. They will attach where that mud will go. That mud is going to try to be so heavy, it's going to stop that artesian- like well that's spewing all this oil and pressure and gas from below.
It's very high pressure down below. They have to make more pressure than it's pushing up by pushing down on it.
SANCHEZ: Interesting.
MYERS: And then when they get it -- when they get the flow stemmed and they get it stopped, then they can pump it with concrete, and make that mud not mud anymore, but put the concrete cap in the well itself. It's not a perfect world.
SANCHEZ: All right. Hold your -- hold your explanation for just a moment because I want to come back to you, because I still have some questions.
But let me bring Brooke Baldwin in, she's on the other side of our new digs here. And what she has -- remember what you and I have been talking about, Chad? We've been talking about the possibility that a lot of this oil has not yet been accounted for because it's underneath the surface. She's talking to Cousteau. Our team has been working on this for a week now. We finally got a hold of the guy.
Brooke, take it away. Take it through what you've learned.
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So I am so thrilled, because Jean-Michel Cousteau, that is Jacques Cousteau's son, who is in the Gulf last week, he's going to -- he'll be joining us on the phone from Fiji at about half an hour.
But I want to show you pictures that his team, this is nonprofit based out of Santa Barbara, California. They're called Ocean Futures. They headed to the Gulf last week because they want to look below the surface of the story, both literally and figuratively here, and they were good enough to give me five pictures.
So, this is the picture you and I are used to seeing, the tentacles of oil, right? The story that's --
SANCHEZ: That's from above.
BALDWIN: -- obvious to the naked eye from above.
SANCHEZ: Right.
BALDWIN: But one of the pictures, take a look, this is below the surface of the water. They went out. They told me about 15 to 30 miles out from the coast of Louisiana, and they took this underwater camera because there's so much you can now see underwater. And you can see sort of the emulsified oil. This is the chunks of oil mixed in with the dispersants.
And I don't know if you can see that -- and that is a fish there. So, they've shared a couple of these pictures because so much of the story is underwater.
SANCHEZ: What do you think of that, Chad? Remember, you and I have been talking about -- obviously, this is just one example. But like this, there could be, you know, who knows, hundreds, thousands.
MYERS: Sure. Of course. There could be a number of explanations and the one that I got from NOAA was that the oil that they believe is under the water, the particles of that oil are so small, they don't have the physical capability of rising all the way to the surface by themselves, because they become atomized, literally. These tiny parcels of oil are down there, but now they're kind of -- you can see that kind of clumping together. And maybe it can get to the top.
SANCHEZ: But my question is, and the question I think a lot of folks at home -- wouldn't you think, Brooke -- are asking is, if you can find that evidence -- show that again, Rog, show that picture again. If you find that there, how many more are like it, how much of that is out there, how long will it be there?
BALDWIN: Right.
SANCHEZ: Will it ever come to this -- in other words, are we going to be dealing with this, Chad, for the next year with globs of oil coming ashore anywhere from Naples to, you know, New Orleans?
MYERS: Do you really say year?
SANCHEZ: More.
MYERS: More.
SANCHEZ: Really?
MYERS: Really. A lot more.
SANCHEZ: So, even if these guys Wednesday morning, as they say go in there and use this top kill and plug this thing, the remnants of this are going to be lasting a long time.
MYERS: Absolutely.
SANCHEZ: And maybe in more serious ways than we know.
MYERS: Governor Jindal now says that the oil has reached 10 miles into his marshes of Louisiana. That's 10 miles of marshes where, you know, the reeds are coming up and the fish are swimming by. Fish are making more fish, and it's the nursery, it's the hatcheries of the Gulf of Mexico. And now, we're -- that oil has marched 10 miles inland, into his marshes, into the Louisiana.
SANCHEZ: All right. Here's what we got. Dawn Wednesday morning, Brooke, Chad, top kill -- drop this thing in the water, hopefully this cement will plug the whole thing up. There's no guarantee that this is going to work, folks.
So, I'm just thinking out loud. Well, what if it doesn't? What then?
Doug Suttles is the COO, chief operation officer, not the CEO, that's Tony Hayward. We're going to be hearing from Tony Hayward live at any moment. But the COO went on all the shows this morning, including AMERICAN MORNING. Here's what he said when he was asked about that.
Take this, Rog.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DOUG SUTTLES, COO FOR EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION, BP: If the top kill procedure doesn't actually work, the next step we'll take is the next containment device, which is a tool we'll place over the top of the riser. And then we still have a number of other options to kill the well. Those include the junk shot technique you've heard about, but there are also techniques where we could but another blow-out preventer on top of the existing one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: Have you ever just taken, like, paper and balled it up, and maybe put some saliva on it, and threw it against the wall to see if it would stick?
MYERS: I've done it with spaghetti.
SANCHEZ: Yes. Doesn't that sound like what we're hearing from BP, when they start taking us through -- well, if that doesn't work, we'll try this, and maybe that will get a little more, and maybe this, and maybe that. And do you just throw your arms up?
MYERS: Well, you know, you've got a -- you've got a car that is broken. You take it to your mechanic, and he replaces the cheapest thing first, and he keeps going and keeps going, and eventually he gets it right and finds out what was really wrong with it. They're doing everything they can. They're doing the easiest thing, not necessarily, you know, the cheapest thing, but they're trying to do the best thing that they can do now. If that doesn't work, OK, let's find something else. Let's find something else.
SANCHEZ: All right. I want to call you back on that animation in a little while.
In the meantime, hey, Brooke. You've got more pictures than just the one you showed us, right?
BALDWIN: Right. I've got four more pictures. So, we'll sprinkle them in throughout the two hours.
SANCHEZ: All right. Well, I look forward to seeing some of those.
BALDWIN: Yes.
SANCHEZ: And in the meantime, I'll look forward to hearing from Mr. Cousteau, as well.
Let's do this. We keep hearing that there is a ton of oil missing in the Gulf and that it might be under the surface. So, Brooke is taking part of that part of the story for us.
And, by the way, CNN was able to go out with our own cameras and we were able to find some examples of this, as well. Not as dramatic as the ones that the Cousteau society is going to be sharing with us. But we have some of those with us, as well.
And, of course, the White House is going to be speaking to you live the any moment. So is Tony Hayward. As this happens, you'll see it live, right here.
Here's the -- here's the shot from the briefing room in the White House. Chad is going to be standing by, so is Brooke.
We're going to be right back in just a moment. Two minutes, folks, and we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SANCHEZ: I know Jon Stewart and some of these people sometimes accuse me of being oversimplifying things. But I really believe that I want to understand what things actually mean. I hate when we in the news business just put up an animation and go -- oh, there you go.
So I've called you back. I want to look at this animation again. I want to understand what the hell is this thing? What are they actually going to do?
Rog, put up the animation and let's have a discussion about it.
As I see it, Chad, is this concrete? Where is it -- all right. I'll tell you what my question is, and then you can fill me in. All right. There's the hole. There's the problem.
MYERS: The first thing they come is mud. They are -- with these little ROVs, they are connecting -- they are connecting this mud to these little injectors on the side.
SANCHEZ: Injected from the sides.
MYERS: Correct.
SANCHEZ: Ah, OK.
MYERS: That is probably -- some of it, is going to get blown out top with the oil. It's just going to keep going, because the oil is coming out.
SANCHEZ: But at some point it solidifies. It hardens.
MYERS: Not the mud.
SANCHEZ: Right.
MYERS: Not the mud. The mud is just there to try to be heavy. It's -- it could be made out of any number of things. It isn't dirt and water.
It's a very heavy and now -- slow it down. See, that was the gas going out. Now, it slowed it. As soon as they get it slowed down to a stop --
SANCHEZ: Right.
MYERS: -- then they inject the concrete, and then that well is dead.
SANCHEZ: And the concrete is injected, literally, from those little injection tubes on the sides of the cylindrical, correct?
MYERS: Correct. Otherwise, they would have to chop the top off of the riser.
SANCHEZ: All right. Let's look at it one more time. We'll watch it together, and you and I can try and explain.
OK. So, there, they kind of stop the flow.
MYERS: Correct.
SANCHEZ: And now boom, inject the cement in from the sides, into that big giant tube, and hopefully it will harden enough and it won't continue to leak.
MYERS: Think of it this way. Let's oversimplify it.
SANCHEZ: OK.
MYERS: I blow up a giant --
SANCHEZ: I like that.
MYERS: I blow up a giant beach ball.
SANCHEZ: Right.
MYERS: And I'm trying to hold it under water.
SANCHEZ: Right. MYERS: But it wants to go up, right, because it's a beach ball. It doesn't want to stay down there.
SANCHEZ: Correct.
MYERS: That's what they're doing. They're taking as much mud as they can and trying to keep that beach ball, which is the natural gas and the oil that's coming out, they're trying to keep it under the water. They're trying to push that oil back down into the well.
As soon as they get it pushed down into the well, and they get that flow stopped, then they concrete it. Then they cement it. And when they cement it, then the well is dead, unusable anymore. But at least the flow is stemmed.
SANCHEZ: And there's the live picture of what this looks like. This is streaming video from 5,000 feet below surface, one mile down. This is what they hope to be able to cap with that top shot or what is it called again? The top --
MYERS: This is a top kill.
SANCHEZ: Top kill.
MYERS: And then there's the junk shot.
SANCHEZ: No, the junk shot comes later.
MYERS: Yes.
SANCHEZ: And this is going to happen first thing Wednesday morning around dawn. If not, late into Tuesday night, but I doubt that.
MYERS: You know, it doesn't matter the time, because there's no light down there from the sun.
SANCHEZ: Right.
MYERS: It's whenever they're ready to do it. It could be 2:00 in the morning, or it can be, you know, 2:00 in the afternoon. It's dark.
SANCHEZ: One problem. And I know a producer is going to kill me because I'm going to do. If this doesn't work, it could make it worse.
MYERS: It could. Because then -- not so much -- well, you're going put a lot of mud, which is poison into the atmosphere and water. But that's --
(CROSSTALK)
SANCHEZ: It could make the exit hole bigger.
MYERS: Possibly. SANCHEZ: And then -- you would have to start all over.
MYERS: Probably not likely. But that's when they're going to cut the top of the thing.
SANCHEZ: Right.
MYERS: And they're going to cut the top off the pipe that used to go up the oil rig. They're going to cut it off and then they're going to try to either clamp it and cap it, or put another blow-out preventer lowered all the way down, clamp it to that pipe, and then your flow is stopped.
SANCHEZ: I'll tell you. To look at this situation is just a wonder why it is that we are now -- by the time they cap this, if they're able to cap it, we will be 37 days into this fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico. That's a long time to finally come up with the one thing they think will be able to solve it.
Do you have any sense, as a scientist yourself, why these plans weren't discussed, put in place, ready to go, and why this seems to me as a layman like trial and error?
MYERS: It -- because the blow-out preventers work so well. In general. This one happened to not work, because they believe that there was a loose fitting on the hydraulic hydraulics. So when this thing was supposed to go boom, stop the oil --
SANCHEZ: Right.
MYERS: -- it didn't have any boom. The hydraulic fluid was gone or was not sufficiently sealed enough to make the tight seal, to stop the oil from coming up.
SANCHEZ: But I'm going to argue with you a little bit.
MYERS: And there's -- there was two threads that should have been tightened, and they weren't tightened.
SANCHEZ: You know I love you like a brother, but do you mind if I argue with you a little bit?
MYERS: No, go ahead.
SANCHEZ: We know damn well that there might have been a battery that they were supposed to replace that they did not replace. We also know from interviews that we've done on this show that they probably weren't as timely and as careful with the testing of that blowout preventer as they should have been.
So -- although I'm sure BP would love us to go on the air and say, most of the time it worked, this time it didn't work, there's a possibility it didn't work because they didn't do the proper maintenance on it or the proper testing on it. To be fair.
MYERS: You're correct. Go Google a leak that happened in 1979 in the Bay of Campeche, which is off the Mexico coast. This thing leaked for nine months.
SANCHEZ: Nine months?
MYERS: So, 37 days, I know we're into it -- but not like that one.
SANCHEZ: Tony Hayward is going to be talking any moment now. You've heard the CEO go on this morning and talk to many folks in the media. Do you expect any news from Tony Hayward? Why would he be calling this impromptu news conference that we're going to be getting any moment now? Do you have any idea, I mean, looking at it from a business standpoint now?
MYERS: No, I think he just needs to reassure the American people because now, the company, it's happened -- you know, days before. But now people are saying, I'm not going to BP to get gas. And I think Tony wants everybody to know, look, we're doing everything we can.
SANCHEZ: All right. Before we go to him, now we understand that the news conference has began at the White House. This is Robert Gibbs. He's going to be introducing Thad Allen, the admiral in the Coast Guard who is the commandant. There he is to his side.
Let's go ahead and dip into this, we'll hear the introduction and we'll hear the White House response on this briefing for the very first time from Thad Allen. Take it, Rog.
ROBERT GIBBS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Thank you very much.
ADM. THAD ALLEN, U.S. COAST GUARD COMMANDANT: Thanks for the opportunity to talk with you here today. I thought I might start out by giving you a little background on the command and control and how oil spills work.
But first let me premise, I would underscore what he said. I'd much rather be in Louisiana Gulf Coast dealing with this problem down here, because I know it's a concern to everybody. And as someone who's worked on this water all of his life, nothing is more disturbing than oil in any water in our country.
The current paradigm for responding to oil spills really dates back to the legislation passed after the Exxon Valdez, Oil Pollution Act of 1990. It mandated a paradigm by which the responsible party or the spiller would be held accountable. It also created an oil spill liability trust fund to fund responses when there was no responsible party or to fund operations and have those funds recoup from the responsible party.
It's premise on the country being divided up into areas with the purpose of developing contingency plans. And we have these areas called captain of the port zones. Those are the Coast Guard commanders that responsible for that area.
They get together with state and local stakeholders and they develop plans to protect the most sensitive areas within those areas. And they're called area contingency plans. There is one for every single part of the coastline of the United States. There is one that covers the Gulf Coast, as well.
When they have to activate a response, the local Coast Guard commander, who's designated the federal on-scene coordinator, coordinates with the state and local government and directs the responsible party in the clean up. If the spill was inland, EPA would be the federal on-scene coordinator. The Coast Guard and the EPA shared that.
This entire framework is called the National Contingency Plan. And it is how we prosecuted oil spills ever since the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. That is way we have been prosecuting this case since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon on the 20th of April. Even advance with the sinking of the drilling unit, we were staging equipment, and there was -- against the scenario, we would have a worst-case spill.
And we started actually mobilizing equipment, salvaging and everything right after the event happened in the 21st of April. So, the command and control structure down there right now is the commanding officer of the Coast Guard in New Orleans as the federal on-scene coordinator for the response. We have elevated that responsibility to Mary Landry. She is in Robert, Louisiana. And she is called an area unified commander. That's when you take one or more of these zones and these areas and you combine them a larger command.
So we have a single command in the Gulf. The commander is Admiral Mary Landry. She is supervising subsections. One is New Orleans, the other one is over in Mobile. And Mobile covers Mississippi, Alabama and the western portion of Florida. There's another command in St. Petersburg, and another one in Key West, and around up the east coast. At this point, they all, for the purpose of this response, report to the area command in Robert, Louisiana.
At a higher level, we have what we call a regional response team. Those are all the federal players that have responsibilities for oil spill response. It will be the Department of Interior, EPA, Coast Guard, NOAA -- and they look at resource requirements across a regional area. Let's say if you had a decision in order to put boom between Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, they would coordinate with regional response team.
If something gets large enough where there's a national issue, about how much boom is in the entire county or where to move dispersants, it will come up to the national response team. And the national response team is the same players except in Washington and the interagency. So for instance, the Coast Guard is on the national response team. We co-chair with EPA, NOAA, commerce, and DOI and so forth. So, there's a way to bring up resource issues or policy issues that cannot be resolved at the lowest level and work those all the way up the chain.
There's also the allowance in the National Contingency Plan that if the resource adjudication process or the coordination becomes complicated and it's complicated in this place, in this case, that there is -- the president has the option of declaring something called a "Spill of National Significance." Again, this is contained in the National Contingency Plan -- and also have the option to designate a national incident commander, which the president and Secretary Napolitano designated me.
Now, this is not a policy. This is a commands and control structure that's actually contained in the code of federal regulations and implements the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. So when you hear us talk about responsible parties or the federal on-scene coordinator, we're actually talking about legal definitions that are derived from statute the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 are contained in 40 CFR 300. So there are actually clear definitions. And I think sometimes we're losing the distinction of what a responsible party and the federal on- scene coordinator are.
And we'd be glad to go through and answer questions related to the spill response, especially as it relates to BP's role as a responsible party and the roles of the federal on-scene coordinator. You can add anything else --
GIBBS: That's a good intro. And we'll start with Mr. Phillip (ph).
QUESTION: Thank you. Thanks for being here, Admiral. Let me start on that point about who's charge and the quality of the response so far. Secretary Salazar said yesterday, referred to BP, if we find that they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately.
What does that mean -- push them out of the way? What more could be done?
ALLEN: Well, I would say that's more of a metaphor. We need to make sure that they execute their responsibilities as a responsible party. And we carry out our responsibilities and be accountable as a federal on-scene coordinators.
This is what we do, if something is going -- if BP is applying resources, there is an operation being conducted, we want it to be done some other way, there should be an order by the federal on-scene, and they comply. And there have been adjustments made all the way along. And if I need to, I call Tony Hayward myself. They're the responsible party, but we have the authority to direct.
QUESTION: So, your role is still to make sure to have this right. Their role is still to be in charge of this operation and the federal government's role is to be in charge of oversight, and that is not going to change?
ALLEN: I think I'd differentiate in change. They're response for the clean-up. How's that affected ultimately, we are accountable from the federal government side to make sure they do it.
The law requires them as a responsible party to play a certain role, to pay for it, to provide equipment and so forth, and particularly with trying to deal with a leak on the bottom of the ocean. They were 5,000 feet down. BP or the private sector, the only ones with a means to deal with it with that problem down there. It's not -- government equipments are not used to do that. So, that's got to be a way where private industry can address the problem with proper oversight by the federal government. I would say it's less of a case of in charge.
QUESTION: Is there -- to this point, though, of whether the government can do more, can it push BP out of the way if it feels like that company is not doing the job? What is your response to that?
ALLEN: Well, to push BP out of the way would raise a question of replace them with what?
QUESTION: Do you think -- do you think that this -- do you think that government right now is doing best it can?
ALLEN: I've been involved with the technical decisions made, especially in relation to deal with the leak, and they are pressing ahead. We're overseeing them. They're exhausting every technical means possible to deal with that leak.
There are a number of solutions and they're doing it on the sequence based on risk. The ultimate solution is going to be to drill a relief well, take the pressure off that well and cap it. That will be sometime in August. We don't to wait that long.
So, we're trying a series of interventions, starting with the insertion tube that evacuate the oil that we can, the top kill shot that will be shot for, I believe, early Wednesday now to try and force mud down the blowup preventer into the well to stop the pressure so it can be sealed.
There's a series of events. They're trying the least risky ones first and moving on down. But we cannot stop. We've got to try every means that are -- every means that we can to stop this leak.
QUESTION: Admiral, you said before -- and you mentioned just now, Mr. Hayward. And you said before that you trust him. Other administration officials don't seem to share that trust. Is there a difference between your view and others in the administration about BP and its CEO?
ALLEN: Oh, I think there may be a difference in how we characterize our interactions with them. You have a case where this problem is going to be solved with a private sector working with the federal government. If you don't have confidence what each party is doing, you don't have the ability to call and speak frankly. And you characterize that as trust, being responsible, having credible, whatever you want. That has to be present for this to be successful.
And it's my responsible as a national incident commander to create those relationships and sure they're maintained. And, just personally, my communications with anybody, including Tony Hayward, I would characterize when I tell him something, he says he understands it, he follows up.
QUESTION: You said as well in response to Ben's question, if BP were to stand out of the way, it raises a question how BP would step in. Mr. Suttles today from BP said it would be within the government's area to step in if they wanted to. What does that mean? Could the government step in? Does it have a capacity to do so?
ALLEN: I heard what he said. I'm not sure what that term really means. I know that to work down there right now, you need remotely operated vehicles, to do very technical work at 5,000 feet. You need equipment and expertise that's not generally within the federal government's capable or capacity. There may be some other way to get it.
But I'm the national incident commander, and right now, the relationship with BP is the way I think we should move forward.
GIBBS: Jake?
OPERATOR: A couple of questions. First of all, if the EPA -- and maybe this is a question for Miss Browner -- but if the EPA says to BP, we don't want you using this dispersant, we think it's too toxic, and BP says, OK, but we don't care, we're going to do what we want to do, anyway. Then what avenue does the federal government have to challenge that?
ALLEN: You want to do the first part? I'll do the second?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'll do the first part.
ALLEN: OK. If we want BP to do something, even if it appears they don't want to do it, they're issued an administrative order by the federal on-scene coordinator that has the affect of law.
QUESTION: But they're not doing it, right?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, there's a series of meetings going on. They started last night. Lisa Jackson is in the area, and there will be a press advisory or I guess a press conference later today as -- what time?
I want to say 4:30 or 4:35, Gulf Coast time. And so, they're trying to understand, are there alternatives available, how rapidly can they be made available, are they, in fact, less toxic. It's just a number of issues that have would be worked through. But as the admiral says, there is a way to stop them, in fact, it's what this discussion is.
QUESTION: Admiral Allen, the governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, has said that on May 2nd, he requested 3 million feet of the absorbent boom, 5 million feet of hard boom, 30 jack-up (INAUDIBLE). So far, all they've gotten is less than 800,000 feet of boom and (INAUDIBLE).
He said a couple weeks ago, he has, the Army Corps of Engineers to approve an emergency plan to set up barriers at islands, and they're still waiting to hear. He seemed very, very frustrated that the federal government was not being responsive to the requests that he had specifically made. ALLEN: I'd like to divide that into two parts, though, the boom and the barrier island if I could. Regarding -- and by the way, I've -- in the last couple days, I've been talking to Governor Jindal every day, trying to fill him in on where we're going and what the status of operations is.
Regarding the boom, our baseline that we started from booming decisions has to do with those are contingency plans that I explained earlier. Within those plans, they identify the most sensitive resources that need to be protected within a particular geographical area and this is based on consultation with the people that are actually responsible for the resources, with the Department of Interior, fish and wildlife, NOAA, and so forth. The plans preexisted to spill. So what we have done is, we said we want everybody to go back and evaluate their contingency plans, and we're going to source the first boom we've got available to cover those areas.
And beginning, since we didn't know where the spill was going to go when it started, and it's omni-directional, in patches, a huge circumference. We've got tire balls. In some places we've got oil coming to shore around Louisiana.
So we have actually sourced boom for a very wide area to meet the minimum requirements for the area contingency plan sensitive areas. If more oil is coming, you identify extra requirements then we are trying to fill those. We thought the most equitable way would be to use the plans the states are approving as the baseline distribution boom.
And we will be on that based on the justification requirements where the oil is coming ashore. So we are doing that, taking care of the area contingency first and additional requests that are coming in, but we are responding to those.
QUESTION: How much boom do you have to put out?
ALLEN: We put out a daily boom report every day, but I think we are well over two million feet deployed. And we have a warehousing -- virtual warehouse set up in Louisiana we distribute to an entire area.
And when we started out, everybody was ordering their own boom. And we had these different areas competing against each other, and bidding up the price in some cases. So we have gone to a centralized distribution system for the entire coast that's coordinated in Robert, Louisiana.
QUESTION: Can you answer my question about the Army Corps of Engineers?
ALLEN: Yes. I'm going to give you my characterization of the army side, and I don't want to give too much detail. The state has applied for a permit that would take a look at establishing a system of barrier islands and boom structures.
The one to the east of the Mississippi River on the Chandelier Islands or Breton sound, the other basically from around Grand Isle over to the west to the east toward the Mississippi river.
The Army Corps of Engineers is evaluating that right now. They're looking at the costs and the schedule, the feasibility, the engineering issues associated with it, where the sediments would come from. You have to deposit them there.
One of the implications of where you remove the sediments from is how high you have to build the booms if you were going to build them, and what is the ecological impact associated with that. They have not finished that review.
What I promised Governor Jindal personally in a conversation is we would start looking at it now. Coast Guard, what do you think about it, we're looking at it in parallel with them.
We need to understand, though, that building a set of barrier islands and booms that large is going to take a very, very long time, six to nine months in some cases, and thinking about the resources associated with that that might be applied elsewhere.
So we're looking at everything having to do with the proposal. I've been in touch frequently with Governor Jindal, and we're trying to drive to a decision we can announce as soon as we can.
QUESTION: Admiral, early on, what kind of reassurances did BP give you about being able to stop this leak quickly?
ALLEN: The discussion is mainly evolved that the technologies being employed are not novel or new. One of the mistakes being made by a lot of folks that don't understand the industry -- and I learned more about it since I started -- is that the procedures to try and stop this blowout or this well down there are the same they would use on land or any place else.
The problem is exacerbated and much more complicated by the fact that it's 5,000 feet below the surface, there is no human access. The only information we have down there is what is derived from remotely operated vehicles or other sensors down there.
So everything we see is a two dimensional video representation of what we can see at any particular time. So instead of going out and putting new hoses onto a well and jamming mud down on the surface, you have to replace the umbilical cord that existed in the riser pipe that was there to begin with and test every section until you're ready for the top-kill shot.
So things going on are absolutely logical, consistent with oil field engineering and practices that are done on land. They're just being done in a place where it hasn't been done in the history of oil drilling before.
QUESTION: I understand that, but what did they give you in terms of a time line as to early on? As to when they thought they could get it capped?
ALLEN: Well, the ultimate time line is August for the release well for the permanent solution.
QUESTION: So they told you that early on? They said we may not be able to do this until August?
ALLEN: They said the ultimate solution is to drill a relief well and cap the current well, and that will be at least 90 days. We're looking at August right now.
In the meantime, a series of sequential steps they have tried. And you saw the collection device that did not work, the insertion tube that appears to be working, to have some effect. And now they're looking at the top-kill or putting under pressure this very, very heavy mud that would stop the column of hydrocarbon so they can seal it.
After that, there are a series of other steps they're considering. These are all laid out. They have been provided to us. Secretary Salazar and Chu have seen them. The dates have slipped to the right in some occasions because the systems are working out as they get deployed to the seabed. But there to be total visibility since they started proposing the way forward.
GIBBS: Dan, if I could add to that, the admiral just mentioned Secretary Chu at the Department of Energy. Understanding that we're talking about oil, though, the Department of Energy's only purview over oil is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
But as a result of the fact that we just happen to have a Nobel Prize-winning physicist on our staff, along with hundreds of other -- others of the brightest minds in all of the world working out of the national laboratories, Secretary Chu has been in the command center and has spent hours on the phone with the scientists from the private sector, as well as with the company, in order to go through a lot of different calculations to set up a process so that this can work, or this has the best chance of working on Wednesday.
QUESTION: So they basically laid out all these different steps. This is what we're going to try first. Then if that doesn't work, we're going to try this. Ultimately August may be the only sure solution.
ALLEN: I think you generally characterize they have four or five what I would call lines of effort. The overarching line of effort is a relief well.
Before that, they have tried the capture devices, piped oil to the top. There were two evolutions of that, and finally the insertion tube is working. The next one is to try and kill the well, as they would say. That's going to be done by inserting a very high-pressure, heavy mud to drive the hydrocarbons down so they can seal it.
If that does not work, they have two options after that. One is to sever the marine riser pipe and put a valve in. They are not doing that first because you don't know how many hydrocarbons will come out and how much oil is being held by the fact that that riser pipe is bent. After that, they could take the lower marine riser package which sits above the blow-out preventer and physically remove it and put another one on top of it. One of those is staged on the DD2, drilling the second relief well out there and is back-up to the current actions they are trying.
So they have a series of events with back-up actions blind them and they're sequentially trying the ones that involve the least risk in that order.
I was out on the rigs last Thursday and went through -- this is my second trip out there. I looked at the blow-out preventer, was briefed on the plans. They make sense, they're going in sequence, and they're dealing with problems that arise.
GIBBS: I would say the relief well is the permanent solution. So even the injection of the heavy mud and the sealing is still going to be -- is done in place for the relief wells, which is the ultimate, more permanent solution.
And Carol reminded me that we instructed them not to simply dryly one, but two relief wells, so that we had some margin on that.
Helen, do you have something? Are you good?
QUESTION: Is there a blame game going on?
ALLEN: If there is, I'm not playing it.
QUESTION: Helen, first and foremost, we are -- we are trying to do everything, as I have said, human and technologically possible to first plug this leak, and, secondly, to deal with what has spilled in both environmental -- the environmental and economic impacts of that oil.
Understanding, as Admiral Allen said, that because of the nature of the dispersants, the currents, the wind, the weather, you know, we are watching where this oil moves, the degree to which it could get into the loop current, and a whole host of other things in order to get a hold of this.
ALLEN: Helen, I didn't mean to be glib.
QUESTION: Is Louisiana still cooperating?
ALLEN: Yes, ma'am. I didn't mean to be glib. Whenever there is oil on the water, nothing good happens. Nobody should be satisfied. And when oil is on the water, it's an insult to the environment, quite frankly.
And we have been working very, very closely with the state of Louisiana. All the states down there have needs that go beyond their contingency plans they would like to see met. And ultimately, it's a matter of adjudicating the resources you have at the time. But we are involved with these folks every day, ma'am.
QUESTION: Very good.
QUESTION: Thank you for being here, Admiral. Clearly plugging the leak is number one at this point. And I do understand, I think we all understand that it's BP that has the expertise and the equipment.
But what exactly is the role of the federal government in plugging the leak? To what degree are you working with, commanding, offering advice, bringing in the best minds? What is the role of the federal government and plugging the leak?
ALLEN: I'd say we're actually defining that as we go, because I've never dealt with a scenario like this. I've been dealing with oil spills for over 30 years. This is an unprecedented, anomalous event.
And as we move forward, we look at how we are going to control the leak, ultimately. It requires BP to say this is a standard industry practice. Before they go forward and do that, they consult with us. We have a veto authority we think we want to do it, keeping in mind they own the means of production.
We ask a lot of hard questions, and I can tell you some of the sessions have been inquisitorial in nature regarding the assumptions they're making on pressure thresholds indeed the pipes, that sort of thing.
GIBBS: Let me reiterate. That's one of the things that the admiral just said. The reason some of that inquisition is taking place is Secretary Chu and others, scientists from the national laboratories, Secretary Chu and others will be going back down to Houston tomorrow and have been working throughout this process on having the best ideas come forward, tried, worked out on paper so that they can be executed to stop this leak.
ALLEN: The term I would use is "due diligence."
QUESTION: You just said, "they own the means of production," but that could change. The government could simply -- the president could simply decide, we now own -- you're going to do the work, but we're going to tell you how to use the people and the equipment here. Isn't that true?
ALLEN: I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. That may be true, but that wouldn't be my recommendation.
QUESTION: Why not? Secretary Salazar says he does not have complete confidence in BP. He says he's not sure they know what they think they're doing.
ALLEN: They have the means of production, they have the logistics in place, they have the ROVs down there. We are jointly operating in their command post out of Houston. Everybody that has a stake in the fight is there. And I am satisfied with the coordination that's going on.
I think Secretary Salazar is right. I think he's probably exhibiting the immense amount of frustration we all feel and we need to keep pressure on them and make sure they are doing their jobs. As it stands right now, at least in my opinion, the means of production is in the BP. They just need to do their job.
QUESTION: When you say the federal government is monitoring what BP is doing, or is the federal government actively involved in plugging the leak?
ALLEN: We are actively involved in the consultations regarding the technical issues related to the strategies provided by BP. They are proffering.
QUESTION: It sounds like you have said that before. They are -- and have you brought in these greatest minds in the business?
ALLEN: Yes.
QUESTION: Are there any assets you would like to have that you do not have? Have you asked for anything that you have not received from the federal government?
ALLEN: No. We have asked for some pretty interesting things. We have C-17s moving booms from Alaska. We're using Navy side scan sonar, using air force planes to deliver dispersants. We have a request for assistance process that was worked out with Assistant Secretary Stockton and our staff.
If it's a really critical need, we go to him, and he will actually seek a verbal order from Secretary Gates to move the defense equipment where it needs to go. So I would say it's working very well. We have access to whatever we need. The question is, the government doesn't have everything we need to solve this problem.
(INAUDIBLE)
ALLEN: The BP strategies are related to the leak controls we have laid out. I think everybody understands that is the logical sequence.
In fact, I've talked to other industry leaders as to triangulation, as we would say in nautical terms. And the feedback I'm getting from these other captains of industry is the sequence of events is the sequence that should be followed in this case.
GIBBS: Helen, if I can say that, I think everybody standing up here, everybody that works over there, including the Oval Office, are we frustrated there is still a hole in the bottom of the ocean leaking oil? You bet.
And he's not going to be satisfied -- he's not going to be satisfied until it's plugged, until we have dealt adequately with what has leaked, both in the water column and on the surface.
QUESTION: Next question. Do you have -- do you have all the authority you need? Could you pick up the phone and call Secretary Gates or the president, if you wanted to? Or do you have that kind of authority? And are you doing that?
ALLEN: Well, not routinely.
(LAUGHTER)
I have all the access I need to do my job, yes, sir.
Chuck?
QUESTION: Admiral, do you have the same sense of satisfaction of what BP is now doing on shore, as this oil is coming in? Can you explain a little bit now, it's sort of a two-pronged disaster. What the federal government is doing there, and BP's role in that? Obviously, the technical stuff is one aspect of it. What role is BP playing on shore?
ALLEN: That's a great question. In fact, there are three fronts. We've got the emissions at the bottom of the ocean. We have where the oil is coming to the surface and trying to fight it as far offshore as we can. You would rather deal with it there before it gets close to shore and how you deal with it when it makes contact with the shore.
And there are three distinct operations that require different types of capable. And we're fighting a three-front basically war at once.
If I were to give you an area where I have had more conversation with BP than any other, it's been on the difference between wholesale and retail. Bp does wholesale really well as far as amassing logistics, getting it into warehouses.
That last mile of retail where you getting the sighting of the oil, you get the boom and coordinate that, that's where the formation has to be tightened up. And I had a conversation with Tony Hayward this weekend about that.
So I would say we have more of a play, need to exert more pressure, and are exerting more pressure where the boom hits the water and trying to deal with resources there.
QUESTION: So they're sort of the first on the clean-up, as well?
ALLEN: We call them shore clean-up assist teams. And they're made up of a combination of federal, state and local contractors, BP representatives. You need almost everybody there to coordinate what's going on. So it's a multifunctional team. And they are staffed by the local federal on-scene coordinator.
QUESTION: The way you said that dealing with the hole, sort of BP has the technical expertise, and you guys have veto power, is the role the same here on the clean-up, or is this a case where the government is sort of pushing BP --
ALLEN: I would say on the shore clean-up side, we have more degrees of freedom and more capable and competency we can bring to bear in a wider is he of authorities that allow us to affect the outcome than on the sea floor, that's true.
QUESTION: Do you have less confidence in BP in how they handled this?
ALLEN: No, I think it's further away from their central business competency. These guys are drilling for oil. This is an oil spill response.
And what has happened, quite frankly, in the last 20 years, the oil pollution act of 1990, we have created an industry in this country called oil spill response organizations, OSROs. We actually created the demand for companies who build oil spill equipment and can be contracted to clean it up.
A lot of work that's been done has been done by these oil spill response organizations. It was anticipated that would be happen, and there would be a reason to capitalize from the market. So we need a lot of folks that are not BP or Coast Guard to do these things. They are contracted under BP paying for it, the paradigm.
And it all has to be coordinated, and that's where there is a larger role for us there.
QUESTION: So BP does not call the shots, essentially, on this.
ALLEN: No, but they're involved in the execution and to the extent there is a problem there, we can bring our authorities to bear, and we do.
GIBBS: Chuck, let me add one other aspect about what the admiral said about what we're also working through, and that is changing the liability law in Congress and lifting that cap, and setting it to a place that would ensure that the economic damages that are currently capped at $75 million for the oil pollution act of 1990 recognize the breadth of this disaster.
QUESTION: Can you comment on the "New York Times" story about whether -- is there a moratorium in place right now on new drilling or not?
GIBBS: Carol is better on that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is. The president has said no new holes.
So what "The Times" appears to be talking about are modifications to existing permits. It is quite routine where you're currently drilling and you need to make a modification, you've encountered something you didn't anticipate, and so you go back in. And it's called a permit, but I think the better way to think about it is that it's a modification to an existing permit.
There are, in addition -- so there's that going on. I think that's what "The Times" is reporting on. There are 23 permits out there for new drilling activities that are not -- have not begun. So what the president said is we're going to stop. Those have been stopped. There were two that were issued shortly after the accident. Those have also been stopped. So all of the deep water permits that were not currently drilling are not going forward at this point in time.
GIBBS: Jonathan?
QUESTION: Two questions. Have you -- you talked about what the alternative would be if BP was moved aside. Have you considered hiring another oil company, like Chevron or an oil spill contractor to take -- to take over day to day response from BP?
ALLEN: When I had the CEO of a large petroleum company and oil- drilling company --
SANCHEZ: All right. We're going to interrupt this news conference that's taking place at the White House because we understand now that the president of BP, the chief operating officer of BP, Tony Hayward, is -- is speaking now. CEO, I should say, not COO.
Let's take that live. Let's dip in, Roger.
(JOINED IN PROGRESS)
QUESTION: Secondly, Mr. Salazar has called this an existential issue for BP. (INAUDIBLE) that a fact?
TONY HAYWARD, PRESIDENT & CEO, BP: We have used dispersants from the beginning that are on the EPA approved list. Everything we do with dispersants is with explicit approval of the EPA, both in terms of dispersant type and the quantity, volume applied over any 24-hour period. And that continues.
QUESTION: And I've asked the question (INAUDIBLE)
HAYWARD: I think this is clearly a major reputation issue for BP. There's no doubt about it. We are doing everything we can to respond in the right way. We are not limiting the resources to applying this. We are trying to do the right thing and we're trying to do it the right way, and we're trying to communicate openly and transparently about everything we have done.
(INAUDIBLE)
HAYWARD: The only rigs we have drilling today are the two ones that are drilling old oil wells. They have undergone a very thorough testing of the blowout preventer over and above that which was promulgated in the MMS in the aftermath of this incident.
I'm going to go now. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your time.
QUESTION: Do you have to go through decontamination like we did? SANCHEZ: And there you see Tony Hayward walking away from the beach. It was an impromptu news conference that suddenly came up. He was addressing several issues.
At the very beginning, I don't know if we can do a rollback on this, but it seemed like he was addressing one of the questions raised by secretary of interior, Ken Salazar, which was, over the weekend, he said, look, if BP can't get the job done, we are going push them out.
Then that was asked of Thad Allen, the admiral, the commandant of the Coast Guard. And he literally told reporters if we push them out, what do we replace them with? What do we have? The expertise is really not in the government's hands. It's seems to be in BP's hands. So it's a catch 22 type of situation.
We have heard a lot of news being made in these news conferences over the last 45 minutes or so. We heard the Obama administration permitted two more deep wells. Those are now gone, and 23 other drilling activities have been stopped as well.
And then there's the question of putting barrier islands off the coast of Louisiana to stop the oil from reaching the shore. Chad is working on a diagram he's putting together for us.
So let's take a break. We'll come back. I want to bring Chad back in, and I'm bringing Brooke Baldwin in because she has information on what may be below the surface. Stay right there. As news is made, we'll bring it to you. This is "RICK'S LIST."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SANCHEZ: All right, welcome back. You heard what Thad Allen had to say. He's the commandant of the Coast Guard.
Let's go now, if we possibly could, to Tony Hayward. This is that interview we did moments ago. He did it on the beach. This is exclusive tape of Tony Hayward on the beach. Let's take it now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HAYWARD: What I will be doing with my team immediately after this is understanding what more we can do to reinforce the defenses on the shoreline.
We have a lot of resources on location. We need to find a way of keeping the oil off the shore. We continue to fight this battle on three fronts -- to eliminate the leak in the subsea, to contain the oil on the surface, and to defend the shoreline.
As I said, it's clear that the defense of the shoreline, at this point, has not been successful. I feel devastated by that, absolutely gutted.
What I can tell you is that we are here for the long haul. We are going to clean every drop of oil off the shore. We will remediate environmental damage, and we will put the Gulf Coast right and back to normality as fast as we can.
There are a lot of people concerned about the longer term impacts of all of this. And today, we have announce add $500 million research program to begin immediately begin studying the impact of this so we can assess what needs to be done to remediate the environmental impact both along the shore and in the further offshore marine environments.
That work will be conducted by the best scientific minds we can bring together. It will be completely independent of BP, and it will help us establish the basis on which we remediate environmental impacts. And we will be here for as long as it takes to remediate any environmental impacts.
And I know reasons of enormous amounts of anger and frustration on the parts of local communities. I share that. This is something I never wanted to see. And we are going to do everything in our power to deal with it as fast as we can and return the societies and communities of the gulf coast to normal as quickly as we can.
And we have put in place a comprehensive claims process to ensure that while people's livelihoods are impacted, they are kept whole economically.
QUESTION: The government is looking into a possible criminal investigation. Have you heard about that and what is your response?
HAYWARD: I think there will be all sorts of investigations following this, quite rightly. And we will deal with them as they come.
(INAUDIBLE)
We worked collaboratively with federal agencies through all this. The relationship on the ground is fantastic, and we continue to do everything we can.
Clearly, I am as devastated as you are by what I have seen here today. And we are going to do everything in our power to prevent more oil coming ashore, and we will clean ever last drop up and we will remediate all of the environmental damage.
(INAUDIBLE)
HAYWARD: There's been a lot of debate and speculation on the accident. I think it's right that we allow the investigations, of which there are many, to proceed, and allow the investigations to draw whatever is the right conclusion. And we are cooperating with the investigations.
I'm going to take two more questions, and then I need to go.
(INAUDIBLE)
HAYWARD: We are working through, in a very rigorous, scientific, and engineering way a series of options to eliminate the leak. They are being assessed from perspective of likelihood of success and the risk around them, so a risk-reward approach. And they are being prioritized.
So thus far, we executed two. One failed, the other has been partially successful in that we are not producing oil and gas to surface.
The third option is the top-kill. And we will be, in all likelihood, in a position to execute that in the middle of the week. It has never been done in 5,000 feet of water.
