Closing the Gulf Oil Leak -- Almost There

It's remarkable the way the Obama administration is demanding BP develop back-up plans for its back-up plans. The government is worried about more failures at BP's leaking oil well. It is right for the government to worry about the success of BP's efforts, and thus fair to expect the company to develop alternative plans should something else go wrong.

Ironically, when crafting emergency plans for the entire nation, the government ignores this piece of clear thinking. Unlike BP, at any time the government can declare success. It does exactly that.

Imagine BP declaring its efforts to cap the leaking well were successful while observers were recording the spreading of the oil slick across the Gulf waters. While tar balls are collecting on beaches. But Joe Biden has repeatedly announced the success of the Obama Stimulus Plan. Really? Even though the economy is in dire straits -- painfully evident to all -- Biden and other members of the Obama Administration are claiming we are on the mend. Please.

Who you gonna believe? The Obama Administration or your lying eyes?

BP Sets New Spill Target

Aims to Cap Well by July 27 Earnings; Backup Plans as Obama, Cameron Meet

BP PLC is pushing to fix its runaway Gulf oil well by July 27, possibly weeks before the deadline the company is discussing publicly, in a bid to show investors it has capped its ballooning financial liabilities, according to company officials.

At the same time, BP is readying a series of backup plans in case its current operations go awry. These include connecting the rogue well to existing pipelines in two nearby underwater gas and oil fields, according to company and administration officials.

Much of the additional planning has been pushed by the U.S. government, which has urged BP to develop what one official called the "backup to the backup plan." Both BP and the federal government are concentrating on their next steps, particularly because of uncertainty caused by the imminent hurricane season and the protracted political and financial damage caused by the endless spill.

Both BP and the Coast Guard continue to state publicly they're aiming to have a fix in place in early to mid-August. BP has discussed its backup plans only with administration officials, who in turn have briefed President Barack Obama.

The July 27 target date is the day the company is expected to report second-quarter earnings and will speak to investors. BP also wants to show progress by July 20, the day U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron is scheduled to visit the White House.

"In a perfect world with no interruptions, it's possible to be ready to stop the well between July 20 and July 27," said the head of BP's Gulf Coast restoration unit, managing director Bob Dudley, in an interview. He added that this "perfect case" is threatened by the hurricane season and is "unlikely."

On Wednesday, on a visit to the Discoverer Enterprise, the ship that's collecting oil from the well, Mr. Dudley got word of a nine-day period of clear weather starting Friday, a period that could prove critical to the effort.

BP is drilling two relief wells through which it will pump material designed to seal the leaking well. One is now 12 feet horizontally and 300 feet vertically from the target spot.

Billy Brown, president of Blackhawk Specialty Tools, a BP contractor helping with the relief-well process, said Wednesday the effort is progressing ahead of schedule.

Mindful of prior snafus, BP has quietly crafted backup plans. The first would force spewing oil to a depleted gas field on the ocean floor two miles away. The second would move the oil to an existing underwater oil field nine miles away. Both require laying flow lines, either flexible or hard steel piping, to connect the leaking well to existing wellheads on these older sites.

The engineers described their plans at a seven-hour meeting last week featuring BP engineers and Energy Secretary Steve Chu, held at BP's Houston crisis center. Mr. Chu said he told them: "Force yourself to think each one will fail." In an interview, he added: "We're in new territory full of perils, and nothing is a slam dunk."

BP's Mr. Dudley reviewed Wednesday the company's engineering work with retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who heads the Obama administration's effort.

Flying by helicopter to the ship collecting oil, the two men discussed the backup options. All around the ship, 43 miles offshore, the ocean was tinged orange.

The stakes are huge for BP, which has lost nearly half of its market capitalization since the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig April 20.

The company's board is setting up a "Gulf of Mexico" committee for a few directors to delve deeply into the disaster's safety and financial implications.

When they announce earnings July 27, BP officials hope to provide investors with more information on the estimated liabilities from the Gulf spill.

One official said the company wants to be able to describe the oil spill as finite, not infinite, a moment that would allow it to start calculating the total potential liabilities under U.S. law.

To prepare Prime Minister Cameron to speak with Mr. Obama about one of the U.K.'s largest companies, British Ambassador to the U.S. Nigel Sheinwald last Friday attended BP briefings in Houston and New Orleans and then toured the damaged Florida coast. He also met Coast Guard officials.

Support ships are seen near the Discoverer Enterprise drilling rig, right, as they continue the effort to recover oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill site on July 3, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana.

At Wednesday's trip to the spill site, Mr. Dudley and Adm. Allen evaluated a prospect for controlling the spill—a newly designed cap to replace the leaky one currently directing oil to ships on the surface.

The risk: removing the old cap could exacerbate the spill in the short run.

At the administration's prodding, BP created a new device called an "autonomous subsea dispersant system." Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson told BP to create such a capability to monitor and measure chemicals used underwater to break up the oil. The large volume of dispersants used has concerned scientists and some government officials.

House Panel Notes Gaps In Cleanup Research. Access thousands of business sources not available on the free web. Learn More .In recent days, the company has installed new battery-powered equipment on the ocean floor that will inject dispersant into the flowing well. Typically, the dispersants are controlled by ships on the surface, but they may have to move if storms hit.

Separately, the BP-dominated consortium that operates the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, Alyeska Pipeline Service Co, said Chief Executive Kevin Hostler will retire in September.

Mr. Hostler, a former senior BP executive, had faced accusations from U.S. lawmakers that efforts to cut costs put the integrity of the pipeline at risk.

Joe Biden declares Obama Victory in Iraq

It has been observed that when politicians sense the crowd is moving in a certain direction, they rush to the front of the stampede and then claim they are leading the charge. So it seems to be with the latest on Iraq. We are winning. The Iraqis are winning. They are embracing democracy and capitalism. They are embracing heretofore unknown freedom. In other words, it appears the goals of the Bush Administration are in sight. That development, as astonishing as it has been for Democrats, has spurred Biden to credit Obama for the history-making success.

Biden's Diversion Strategy Joe's 'gaffes' have a political logic.

It's easy to pile on Joe Biden. Vice presidents, after all, acquire reputations in Washington they never really shake. Dick Cheney was Darth Vader, and now Joe Biden is the embarrassing uncle you try to keep away from the microphone.

Neither is entirely fair. Still, when Mr. Biden claims success for a victory won by a surge he and Barack Obama opposed, you wonder what he's up to. When this same genius is then dispatched to counter Mr. Cheney on the weekend talk shows, you wonder what the administration is up to.

Start with Mr. Biden's first whopper: telling CNN's Larry King last week that "one of the great achievements of this administration" may well be a democratic Iraq. "You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government. . . . I've been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences."

Now, many have jumped on Mr. Biden for claiming this as an Obama achievement. Perhaps more striking, however, is that the same Iraqi government that so impresses him today is something he once declared impossible.

That was back during a Democratic presidential debate in 2007, when Mr. Biden told ABC's George Stephanopoulos it was a "fundamental strategic mistake" to believe "there is any possibility in the lifetime of anyone here of having the Iraqis get together, have a unity government in Baghdad that pulls the country together. That will not happen, George."

Now it has not only happened, but it has happened, like all good things in our world, because of Barack Obama.

On substance, it's a line of argument that is hard to make. It's even harder when your attorney general and your national security adviser are out there admitting major policy goofs. And it's harder still when you send a Biden to do a Cheney's job.

That's what happened this weekend, when the White House deployed the sitting vice president to the talk-show circuit after learning that the former vice president would be appearing on ABC's "This Week." In many ways, it was a rerun of a clash back in May, when the White House hastily added a security-and-values speech in an effort to pre-empt a speech Mr. Cheney was delivering the same day.

My former colleagues in the Bush administration cannot understand why any White House would allow a former vice president to define the debate. One explanation is Mr. Cheney's low approval ratings, which may lead the president's advisers to conclude that they can use him as a foil. The danger is that such matchups by their nature diminish a White House while elevating the challenger.

In this case, the debate also plays to Mr. Cheney's strength.

Americans might not buy everything he says. But Mr. Cheney has a clear and consistent view about how to deal with men who want to kill us. Of late, events have helped make the Obama view a little less coherent.

Look at how Mr. Biden danced around the questions about a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. On "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation," Mr. Biden said the president would soon make a decision on what to do—never mind that in November Americans had been led to believe we had a decision when Attorney General Eric Holder announced that KSM and four other operatives would be "brought to New York to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks from where the twin towers once stood."

Plainly, Mr. Biden's interlocutors did not find his answers persuasive. They were, however, probably the best the vice president could do at a time when the administration is publicly walking back Mr. Holder's decision. In an interview in yesterday's New York Times, Mr. Holder set up the U-turn: "I think that I make the final call," he said, "but if the president is not happy with that final call, he has the ability to reverse it."

Ditto for Mr. Biden's efforts to reassure Americans about the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian caught trying to blow up a Northwest flight. Again, he was playing a weak hand.

The same day Mr. Biden's interviews appeared, National Security Adviser James Jones told "Fox News Sunday" the president had not been well served by the Abdulmutallab case, admitting that the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group should have been operational. He promised to "learn from our experiences."

So go ahead and chuckle over Mr. Biden's "gaffes," if you think he was on television to win an argument. But if you think his assignment was to use a Sunday-show duel to deflect attention from the Obama administration's two big backtrackings on terror, you might want to give Joe a little more credit.