E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSA contentious issue emerging in the Gulf oil spill cleanup is the number of skimming vessels in the Gulf – or lack thereof.
According to the Deepwater Horizon Response statistics, there are currently "more than 510" skimmers involved in the ongoing response effort.
But many have criticized BP and the U.S. Coast Guard for not bringing more U.S. – and foreign – skimmers into the region to help.
Some politicians, like Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, have complained that the Jones Act, a 1920 maritime law that promotes U.S. shipping interests, is prohibiting foreign flagged vessels from entering the Gulf of Mexico to help in the cleanup effort.
"Over 20 countries have offered response vessels and expertise to assist in the cleanup of the Gulf, but because of the 1920 Merchant Marine Act, known as the Jones Act, foreign vessels are prohibited from operating within three miles of the U.S. coastline except after going through an extended process for waivers," Hutchinson said at a congressional hearing Wednesday.
However U.S Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, commander of the federal spill response, says that the Jones Act has not impeded foreign flagged ships from helping out. During a briefing Wednesday, Allen said that the Jones Act had not created "inhibitions or constraints" on the cleanup.
During an interview with msnbc.com Tuesday, Coast Guard spokesman Capt. Ron Lebrec noted that while Allen doesn’t believe vessels need a waiver from the Jones Act to help with the spill, regardless, the Coast Guard has established a expedited process if it is determined that waivers are required.
"The Jones Act hasn’t impacted any vessels coming to this response," he said. "And we have taken proactive steps to ensure it does not become an issue."
Click here to read an editorial about the skimming vessels from the Times-Picayune:
Cut red tape and get more skimming vessels to oil spill: An editorial
-- Petra Cahill, msnbc.com
Leave a Comment:
No, it's Obama's agenda that's in the way. From day one he's been playing this disaster like a chess match instead of attacking it with brute force by using every resource available from every corner of the globe. He wants to use oil on the beaches to push his agenda. It's so obvious that anyone short of being totally deaf and blind can see through this. If he were really that concerned about jobs in the Gulf Coast area, he could have preserved the jobs of the fishermen, tourism industry, and offshore oil workers by acting quickly to contain and recover as much oil as possible near the source. Instead he uses the Jones Act as an excuse for environmental holocaust and suck-up to unions. At first I was gullible enough to believe Obama was merely incompetent, but now I wonder if something far more sinister is at work.
Sorry but all of u are wrong. BP has to take responsibility not Obama. He is the president of the US not BP. And we need to turn from big oil before they turn on us. If they havent already.
I think that Obama is holding off the the assistance because he wants this oil mess to get so big that people will turn against the oil business and the oil companies and he can take them over like he did the car industry. He said in the very beginning that he wanted the coal and oil industries put out of business. He sees this as his chance to get rid of oil.
If the Jone's Act is not preventing the ships from coming in, then apparently the Oval Office is. He needs to build the crisis to the point where his blessing can show change!!
Excuses, excuses, excuses, bull@!$%#. The only thing standing the way of the cleanup is sitting in a big, white house in Washington DC and his name is Barack Obama, period. If he spent a third of the time he currently spends looking for someone to blame, on cutting the red tape and helping smooth things out, we would be miles ahead of where we are today. The reason he doesn't is because, he figures if he really takes over and it all goes South for whatever reason, it will cost him and his party of thieves, crooks, and liars, votes in November. He's been in campaign mode since he started and that's not what he's being paid for, he's being paid to be about the people's business. Mr. Obama and every, last politician currently in office needs to GO. That's some change I can get behind.
You are all a bunch of facking racists. I bet you just loved GWB and HIS agenda, which was what???!!! You tell me because I really do not know what the hell he did in 8 years. Did any of you bother to actually read the article? What a bunch of losers you are!! I am just glad that brain dead, money grubbing running mate of John McCain's is not in the White House or anywhere near it. wlockridge sounds just like her!
had to bring race into it didn't you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How many of you people can't read, and how many are just plain old stupid ignorant fools, that is what I want to know. Khop has it it right for a lot of you it is just that you are racists, in that I have no doubt, bu the rest of I have to ask what is your problem, maybe you are all just a bunch of 12 year olds, who get to go online before bed, sure seems that way.
khop and robby - I guess any critisim of this collosal failure of a president makes one a racist - so call me a racist. Hopefully you two will relise hope pitiful you sad little crys of racism are - fact is obama is whiter than I am
It's not the federal governments job to control and clean up this leak if you use the same argument that conservatives used to oppose healthcare. Nowhere in the Constitution are industrial oil spill or environmental remediation ever mentioned.
Conservatives and TEA party members loved the 10th amendment during the recent healthcare debate, didn't you? So tell Jindal and others the same thing -- deal with it the best that they can and sue BP in court to recoup the damages in the best libertarian fashion. Nobody would ever dream of forcing you to live in a overreaching tax and spend nanny state, especially one supervised by a Kenyan Muslim socialist who might not be a legal citizen.
Obmao should return the 20 billion dollars and the publicly apologize to BP in a evening speech for standing in the way of free market capitalism.
Epistemologist:
WOW! Don't want to get in a hammer fight with you! I totally agree with you in saying that the gulf states that have screamed "states rights!" for months and months now seem to be screaming out of the other side of their mouths. For all of their "states rights" rhetoric, I don't hear a single whimper about it now, and probably won't until after this whole debacle is done and over with. If it's one thing I hate, it's people (of any stripe) who complain about something, and then, when an opportunity arises for them to put their complaints into actions, run with their tails tucked between their legs to the person with the most money.
If they can't follow their convictions, what the hell good are they? Nothing worse than a political Janus, wearing one face for some folks, and another for the rest......