I have some good news and some bad news for you.  The good news is that the latest attempt to cap the broken well, one mile down in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, seems to be working.  The bad news is that the Feds said Tuesday that BP  was collecting so much oil that it didn’t have a big enough boat to hold it.

President Barack Obama told NBC News, in an interview aired Tuesday, that he would have fired BP CEO Tony Hayward by now if he worked for him. Brave words.  He hasn’t even had a face-to-face discussion with him yet.

Because Democratic publicity hounds such as strategist and CNN pundit James Carville began yipping at Scooter’s heels for not being tough enough on BP, he is scolding BP, warning the company last week against “nickel and diming” Gulf residents, and appearing in a bunch of televised interviews this week to let American know that he is “furious” about the crisis. Furthermore, the White House is now backing a move to lift all caps on liability oil companies could face for spilling crude.

All this “frustration” is going to be transferred to the oil companies and their consumers in the form of new regulations like the ones revealed Tuesday by the Obama administration as the prerequisite for companies to resume offshore drilling in waters shallower than 500 feet.

The new rules call for more extensive inspection and certification of blowout preventers, the huge devices that are supposed to stop the flow of oil from a damaged well.  A failed blowout preventer is one of the problems in the huge BP spill.

Congressional Democrats met Tuesday, in order to look like they were doing something.  When San Fran Nan came out of the meeting, she declared that they were determined: 

to exploit and enforce the laws that are there; change them if necessary; and pass others to make us stronger in terms of protecting the interest of the taxpayer, the economy, the ecology, the quality of life of the region.

Woo Hoo.  I know the fishermen feel better already.

The industry, and the rest of Americans, could also pay in the form of higher taxes. Senate legislation would increase a per-barrel tax paid by oil companies to 41 cents, up from 8 cents, raising $14 billion over 10 years. The tax is alledgedly in support of a government fund created in 1990 after the Exxon Valdez spill to help fund cleanup projects.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Tuesday that Democrats were raiding the fund to pay for programs not related to oil-spill cleanup.  New revenue raised by the levy “ought to be used to clean up spills,” he said.

Lost or delayed opportunities to drill will also cost the oil companies. Obama proclaimed a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling and cancelled the sale of oil leases off the East Coast and Alaska. He  had also halted shallow-water drilling pending the issuance of the new rules. Those rules could keep rigs off the water for more days or weeks.

The new rules issued Tuesday require a company’s CEO to personally certify that the operator has complied with all regulations, that drilling equipment has been tested and that personnel are properly trained, among other things. They also call for independent verification for a number of systems, particularly blowout preventers.

The shallow part of the Gulf of Mexico provides about 55% of all natural gas produced in the Gulf and about 20% of all the oil. The deepwater region accounts for more than 80% of the oil produced in the Gulf.

The rest of the world has not issued any regulatory clampdowns like those from this administration…yet.

Yesterday, Norway proclaimed that it was “not appropriate” to allow new deepwater drilling until the Deepwater Horizon incident had been fully investigated, but they also turned around and said they would go ahead with plans to award new exploration licenses in their territorial waters next year.

The U.K. said Tuesday it wouldn’t halt drilling in one of the most promising deepwater sites in Europe, the West of Shetland area north of Scotland. Instead, Officials announced plans to double the number of annual environmental inspections of drilling rigs.

Meanwhile, back in the Gulf, BP’s costs for the disaster are growing quickly. Late Tuesday, the company said it would donate net revenue from the oil it is collecting from the well to organizations working on the Gulf cleanup effort.  BP still faces pressure from the Obama Administration to pay out more money, faster, and to move more rapidly to capture oil from its well.

BP is collecting about 15,000 barrels a day from the well now and plans in the next week or so to expand its oil-containment effort by another 5,000 barrels a day, through the use of another vessel already onsite.  They are also bringing in storage vessels from around the globe, including a tanker from the North Sea.

A new estimate of how much oil is flowing from the well is expected to be released from a group of scientists working for the U.S. government later this week.  The flow rate is now being analyzed by scientists looking at  high-resolution video of the leak using a method called particle image velocimetry.  PIV involves observing separate features in the flow from one frame to the next to measure the velocity of the fluid.

While the administration and Congress are in the process of burdening the oil industry with new regulations and taxes to the detriment of them and the American consumer, and Barack Obama is trying to figure out whose *** (expletive deleted) to kick, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has some advice for POTUS:

Please, sir, for the sake of the Gulf residents, reach out to experts who have experience holding oil companies accountable. I suggested a few weeks ago that you start with Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources, led by Commissioner Tom Irwin. Having worked with Tom and his DNR and AGIA team led by Marty Rutherford, I can vouch for their integrity and expertise in dealing with Big Oil and overseeing its developments. We’ve all lived and worked through the Exxon-Valdez spill. They can help you. Give them a call. Or, what the heck, give me a call.

And,[finally], Mr. President, please do not punish the American public with any new energy tax in response to this tragedy. Just because BP and federal regulators screwed up that doesn’t mean the rest of us should get punished with higher taxes at the pump and attached to everything petroleum products touch.

This sounds like very common sense advice to me.  Unfortunately, this over-his-head president, his Chicago-thug  administration, and our Beltway Elite Congress are as far removed from common sense as a drunk is to sobriety.  Speaking of which, they may drive all of America to drink before this regime is out of power.

Sources:  wsj.com, facebook.com