Lessons Learned: "Unprecendented Twists"

BP and the Bush White House cited "unprecedented disasters" in their investigative reports. Frances Townsend crafted the White House Lessons Learned report after Hurricane Katrina. It's not clear who wrote BP's Harnessing the Lessons of Deepwater Horizon. No one signed the report.

Ms. Townsend does risk management consulting for Baker Botts, a law firm with a history of working for BP. Did she play a role in BP's whitewash? Townsend has the skills, having omitted the hospital with the highest Katrina death toll and not addressing responsibility, methods or performance in evacuating hospital and nursing home patients from dead facilities.

BP submitted a similarly flawed analysis. It cited over 5,000 Vessels of Opportunity. Was that for one week or a shorter period? Consider data from news sources:

2,500 (July 8)
3,200 boats (July 15)
2,400 boats (July 22)
1,400 boats (August 1)

400 boats (August 19)

It should have been called Vessels of Vanishing Opportunity (VoVO).

BP's Lessons Learned report claimed it went from skimming 450,000 bpd to over 1.2 million bpd. Final skimming numbers were a measly 150,000 barrels. Over three months time, BP skimmed one third of its skimming capacity on April 26? That's as laughable as Thad Allen saying skimming had been held up by the need to organize the Vessels of Opportunity program.

Fran Townsend played the American public after Katrina. Did she snooker us twice? Regardless, BP and politicians play the public for fools. Do you buy that BP needs to keep drilling in the deepwater Gulf to fund $20 billion in restitution? If so, it will soon be patriotic to buy BP gasoline.