They had to wait on permits before they could use the Fire Booms?!...

I had the opportunity to listen in on a conference call hosted by (API) American Petroleum Institute regarding the operations going on at the Deepwater Horizon site…

During that call there was a question asked about reported delays of getting a required Fire Boom to the site right away to attack the oil spill while it was in a more contained area.

The question and responses can be found in the conference call transcript at the Energy Tomorrow blog at 29:42 minutes into the call….

"It has been reported that the government did not have required "Fire Booms" on hand to deal with the initial incident before the slick became so large and could have started oil burning techniques earlier". (from a media report) "If U.S. officials had followed up on a 1994 response plan for a major Gulf oil spill, it is possible that the spill could have been kept under control and far from land."

But if you look at a response to the question at 30:39 into the conference call you find that it took days to get the required permit to actually use the fire boom. "It did take time to get the permit. I was told it took a couple of days to get the permit"...

Are you telling me that while the above fire was being fought for days in the Gulf of Mexico and with required equipment on site and more coming that they had to wait on "Permits" before they could use the Fire Boom?...

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There have been questions asked about the slow response by the Obama administration and in fact FoxNews Chris Wallace took them to task here:

WALLACE: "A number of Louisiana officials are saying that the Obama administration was slow to respond to this crisis. And I want to review the timeline of what has happened here. On April 20th, the explosion of the drilling platform. For days, BP and the Coast Guard say there is no leak. On April 24th, we're told it's leaking 1,000 barrels a day. On April 28th, the estimate is raised to 5,000 barrels a day. It's not until April 29th, nine days after the accident, that the president makes his first statement about what is now called an incident of national significance".

Gotta love Wallace and it's obvious why Obama will not come onto FoxNews and really "Face the Nation" for fear of hard questions without a pass from Wallace...

Or maybe the Obama administration was taking the advice of the President's Chief of Staff when he said "You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
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The Virginia Right blog has info that the Obama administration in fact knew the cause for the explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon rig the first day it happened....
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