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BP Oil executive
Egregious Citations Issued to BP
By Nathan Yau - Jun 6, 2010 - Data Sources
http://flowingdata.com/2010/06/06/egregious-citations-issued-to-bp/
BP processes about 1.5 million barrels of crude oil per day, across six refineries in the United States. In total, 150 refineries in the United States process just under 18 million barrels per day, so BP processes about 8.5 percent of it. However, as reported by the Center for Public Integrity, 97 percent of the most dangerous violations found by OSHA were on BP properties.
There are several levels of citations. The most dangerous are egregious willful and willful, in that order. Egregious citations are flagrant violations and willful citations are intentional disregard for employee safety and health.
Between June 2007 and February 2010, there were 761 egregious citations issued in total. All but one of them were issued to BP. In the same time period, 69 of the 91 willful citations also belonged to BP.
Most citations for other companies were in the serious category, meaning there was "substantial probability" of death or serious injury. There were 1,521 serious citations issued to non-BP refineries, versus BP's thirty. However, if we take into account barrels of oil processed by the rest, we get an even worse image of BP. Really, it's bad no matter how you look at it:
World's Worst Oil Spills.. infographic
VXX
Scientists skeptical about rush to build sand barriers
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-berms-20100606,0,7544795.story
Louisiana officials demand swift action to block oil, but berms are costly, fragile and potentially harmful.
Dolphins swim in heavily oiled waters off Grand Terre Island as a few boats skim in the pass.
Oil could be seen on the dolphins' fins. (Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles Times / June 5, 2010)
The frenzied response to the BP oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico has featured any number of wing-and-a-prayer options from engineers and elected officials. But the debate over a sand-barrier plan that skeptical scientists are referring to as "The Great Wall of Louisiana" has been the most politically charged.
Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) and angry parish presidents have hammered the Obama administration in past weeks over what they characterize as a glacial federal approval process for the state's plan to construct 128 miles of sand berms, dredging up 102 million cubic yards of seabed in the process, to bolster the state's barrier islands and absorb oil before it reaches sensitive coastal marshes.
The Army Corps of Engineers gave final approval last week to a scaled-down version of the project after rejecting the state's original proposal, which could have cost as much as $950 million and taken as long as nine months to build.
But as Jindal and other politicians celebrate the partial victory, coastal researchers warn that the project can't be built in time to help — even if it had been approved when first proposed last month. And scientists warn that it may have unforeseen consequences.
The berm system could reroute the spill up the Mississippi Delta, and it would be unlikely to survive even a mild storm during the current hurricane season.
It also will absorb the short supplies of sand badly needed for projects to restore the state's coastline, damaged by past hurricanes.
Heavy equipment, including barges and dredge lines, could interfere with nesting season, now at its peak, for protected bird species.
Even Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who ultimately approved the project, was lukewarm in his endorsement.
"There are a lot of doubts whether this is a valid oil spill response technique, given the length of construction and so forth," he said in announcing the first of six berm sites at Scofield Island, west of the Mississippi River. "We are not averse to attempting this as a prototype."
BP, which was ordered by Allen to pick up the estimated $360 million cost of the revised 45-mile-long berm project, washed its hands of the outcome. "The company will not assume liability for unintended consequences," said spokesman Mark Proegler. "We're counting on the government to make the right decisions."
Although the state signed contracts with a dredging firm, BP has yet to provide the funding.
"To date, BP has done a great job in sending us press releases and attorneys, but they haven't sent us any money to dredge," Jindal said Friday. "We are moving ahead without BP. We gave them two choices: They can either send us a check, get out of the way and let us start this work, or they can sign a contract and do it themselves. We are going ahead without them."
The Army Corps of Engineers has located a dredger. "We could see sand by Monday," Jindal said.
Jindal's frenetic pace is part of the state's gamble on the "worth-a-shot" approach to protecting its bays and bayous, 140 miles of which are coated in oil. So far, the state has built a "marsh fringe barrier," made up of sand plugs and small berms, in four coastal parishes, and has filled sea-bottom depressions with sandbags. Workers have strung tall, four-sided Hesco basket barriers in bays and laid more than 750 miles of booms throughout the four-state gulf region.
The use of sand berms to collect oil has been around for some time but has never been employed on this scale. Jindal has been the plan's most vociferous booster.
Louisiana has for decades been fighting a losing battle to reestablish its barrier islands, low-lying sand spits where natural shifting and erosion have been exacerbated by the channelization of the Mississippi and by recent catastrophic hurricanes. The Chandeleur Islands once extended almost to the Mississippi coast but lost 85% of their land mass in Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The looming tropical storm season has some scientists questioning the expenditure of money and resources on an experimental project. Although the berms will be 300 feet wide at their base, tapering to 25 feet at the top, a sand wall is not considered a robust structure.
The berms "will not survive even a low-intensity tropical storm in the northern gulf," said Jack Kindinger, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Coastal and Marine Science Center in St. Petersburg, Fla. "If we have one next week, the berms will be gone. We have to be careful not to do more harm than good."
Kindinger said that the new barriers may increase tidal action in open water, which would boost the salinity in estuaries and alter the lives of marsh plants and wildlife.
In a similar manner, the project could inadvertently drive oil into the Mississippi sound, the Biloxi marshes and Lake Borgne, according to the Army Corps' analysis.
Gregory Stone, director of the Coastal Studies Institute at Louisiana State University, warned that scooping sediment out of the sea bottom could accelerate wave action.
"It's not advisable to go out into shallow water and dredge and not expect potential negative impacts," Stone said. "That's going to increase the energy of the waves."
Such worries prompted the Interior Department to conclude: "We do not think the risks inherent in proceeding without more environmental study and knowledge are acceptable."
Coastal scientists and oceanographers were brought in this week to present their views on the berm proposal to state and federal responders. Many said they were frustrated, wondering why their expertise was not brought to bear sooner.
"You cannot do this without some sort of reasonable quantification as to what will happen," Stone said. " I understand we are in a jam right now, but, good Lord, we have sophisticated computer models that can do this in a matter of weeks.… It's sort of unconscionable that we've gone well over a month without scientific input."
Denise Reed, interim director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Science at the University of New Orleans, said that given the construction timelines, expectations that the berms will stop oil are unrealistic.
"There is a public sense that this is the solution that we need," she said. "I found this proposal extremely difficult to evaluate because it's so idealized and conceptual.… We are not going into it with our eyes wide open."
julie.cart@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
Incredible sinkhole in Guatemala City caused by rains from tropical storm Agatha
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gobiernodeguatemala/
Offshore drilling ban would be a blow to Louisiana economy
By Rebecca Mowbray, The Times-Picayune
May 30, 2010, 10:16PM
Port Fourchon is the launching point for 90 percent of the deepwater activities in the Gulf of Mexico.
To coastal communities and marine-related industries across southern Louisiana, President Barack Obama's announcement Thursday that work at 33 deepwater drilling operations would be suspended immediately was like sealing the region's economic death from the ongoing oil plume gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.
"It's bad enough that we have an oil spill to deal with and the fishermen can't work. Now they're going to take away the oil industry, and we'll have nothing, " said Chett Chiasson, executive director for the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which runs Port Fourchon, the launching point for 90 percent of the deepwater activities in the Gulf of Mexico.
If the rigs stop prospecting for oil, then catering companies stop cooking food for rig workers, boats stop bringing them supplies, mechanics stop servicing the supply boats and so on.
Chiasson predicts the hardest-hit communities will lose jobs that won't easily be recovered.
"This industry should not have to suffer because of one company's horrible mistake, " Chiasson said. "This will cause people to lose their jobs. I have no doubt about it."
The president and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's announcement late last week to halt all deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico "at the first safe stopping point" while the Interior Department figures out what regulatory changes are necessary for offshore oil prospecting seemed designed to reassure the nation that drilling would only proceed in a safe and environmentally sensitive manner.
But to those who work in the offshore industry and in the communities at the epicenter of the spiraling disaster from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and oil leak, it smacked of a lack of understanding of the role that the oil business plays in the Louisiana economy.
In the 2008 presidential election, no coastal parishes except for Orleans supported Obama; last week's offshore drilling announcement only seemed to make his administration even less popular in the oil-affected parishes.
"The president now needs to come down and talk to the offshore industry and reassure us that we're not going to be thrown to the wolves. I think they owe us that, " said Ken Wells, president of the Offshore Marine Service Association. "Our economy around here cannot sustain a collapse of this industry."
Sixteen companies have operations that will be affected by the six-month shutdown, including Shell, Chevron, BP, Marathon, Eni, Petrobras, Hess and LLOG Exploration, a Metairie-based division of Hess.
The Interior Department won't release the names of the wells or locations, saying the information is proprietary.
On Friday, people across the offshore industry were trying to get clarification on exactly what the requirements of the shutdown would be and whether it's really for six months.
On Sunday, the Minerals Management Service issued some additional guidance. That bulletin does not say that the drilling hiatus will be limited to six months; it only says that new permits won't be issued for six months.
The notice also raises the possibility that the shutdowns could affect wells that are in production.
"To obtain approval to conduct an activity in support of existing deepwater production, you must submit your request..." the notice reads. Applications must include a detailed, site-specific risk analysis with discussion about how to handle a loss of well control.
Shell Exploration and Production said it wouldn't have anything to say about how its operations would be affected until this week. Chevron said that it is drilling one well now in the Gulf of Mexico and had planned to drill three others this year. The California company, which has offices in Covington, said Friday it is working with the Interior Department and awaiting specific notice on what it is required to do.
Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret has had a team working to assess the moving target of the economic impact of the rig explosion since late April.
So far, it looks like 22 of the 33 rigs that are affected are off the coast of Louisiana, Moret said, and it's possible that some of the remaining 11 could be rigs that were scheduled to start operations in Louisiana waters in the next few months.
Depending on how the rules shake out, Moret has three scenarios for how bad the moratorium could be for Louisiana's economy.
Within a very short time, Moret believes the state will lose 3,000 to 6,000 direct and indirect jobs.
If the suspensions are maintained, it could rise to 10,000 jobs. And if the moratorium persists while oil prices rise, the state could lose 20,000 jobs over the next 12 to 18 months in the form of lost direct and indirect jobs, and missed job creation opportunities because rising petroleum prices stimulate more energy development.
Since it's unclear what's involved with the shut-downs, it's unclear whether companies will keep their rigs afloat in the Gulf with a skeleton crew or move them to Brazil, which is considered one of the world's biggest deepwater drilling opportunities.
The cost of keeping the rigs idle is significant. BP, for example, was renting the Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible rig from Transocean Ltd. for $500,000 a day before it exploded and sank.
"There's definitely a real risk that some of these rigs could be moved outside of the Gulf of Mexico because of the cost of keeping them idle, the regulatory uncertainty and opportunities in other parts of the world, " Moret said.
Others are convinced that rigs will be floated to foreign waters, and if they're moved, it will take two to three years for the equipment to finish up its new contracts elsewhere and come back.
"The drilling equipment and the rigs, if they know that they can't work for the next six months, they'll re-deploy to the rest of the world. It will be a lot longer than the next six months, " said Otto Candies III, secretary/treasurer of the Des Allemands marine transport company Otto Candies LLC, who called the president's announcement "a knee-jerk reaction."
Candies said his company employs 500 and has a supplier list of 100 companies, so the impact at his company would be wide.
Shane Guidry, chairman and chief executive of Harvey Gulf International Marine LLC in New Orleans, said that his company services all of the deepwater drilling operations in the Gulf. But his company also operates around the world, so it will be affected in several ways.
Harvey Gulf won a three-year contract in February to support Shell Oil's exploration and production work in Alaska, but Guidry said that deal will be scuttled by the moratoriums.
Guidry is convinced that companies will tow their rigs to foreign waters.
Because his company does work in places like Mexico, Trinidad and Brazil, and is interested in expanding to Africa, he'll be able to follow the rigs and retain work, but he said it's Louisiana that loses.
If he sends his boats to Brazil or Africa, he'll need to hire local workers there and re-flag his vessels, which means it won't be easy to bring them back to the Gulf of Mexico in a few years if activity cranks up.
"He has no idea what he's done, " Guidry said of the president. "We'll follow them out of the country. We'll re-deploy boats to other regions. It's really sad."
Those servicing the offshore industry say that deepwater drilling is a lot more fragile than one might think.
After oil prices crashed in 1999, deepwater drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico didn't really get going again until 2004.
Then, with the recession and oil prices crashing in late 2008 and companies' concerns about their ability to raise capital, many drilling plans got put on hold.
With the nation emerging from recession and prices beginning to creep up, companies have only recently begun to initiate new exploration projects. Because drilling in deep water is so expensive, it's very price-sensitive.
Meanwhile, deepwater drilling is the best opportunity in the Gulf of Mexico.
With shallow finds largely tapped out, some 70 percent of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico comes from deepwater or ultra-deep water, meaning depths of 5,000 to 10,000 feet. But planning a new well takes about a year, and with the western Gulf of Mexico lease sale in August being canceled, the moratoriums could deter new operations for years to come.
Actions the Interior Department is taking on offshore drilling
-- Companies must cease drilling all new deepwater wells. Although the term "deepwater" generally means more than 5,000 feet, the directive applies to activities in more than 500 feet of water.
-- Companies that have been approved for an application for a permit to drill, but which have not yet started drilling the well, are prohibited from doing so.
-- MMS will not consider drilling permits for deepwater wells and related activities for six months.
-- Companies must secure the well being drilled "at the next safe opportunity, " and must submit plans to stop operations by Tuesday at 5 p.m. eastern time.
-- The August lease sale for the Gulf of Mexico is canceled. A proposed lease sale off the coast of Virginia is canceled, and proposed exploratory drilling in the Arctic is suspended.
-- Existing deepwater production wells may also be affected. Companies that want to continue existing deepwater production must submit a request to MMS that includes information about the well, safety systems and a "structured risk analysis" about the requested drilling activity. The risk analysis must include discussion about the risks of losing well control specific to that site.
Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it
The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades
A ruptured pipeline burns in a Lagos suburb after an explosion in 2008 which killed at least 100 people. Photograph: George Esiri/Reuters
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell
We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it – the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air.
The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months.
Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. "We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots," said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. "This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months."
That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, according to Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.
In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.
That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today.
On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.
Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. "We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old," said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.
This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: "Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable."
With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution.
"If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention," said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. "This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta."
"The oil companies just ignore it. The lawmakers do not care and people must live with pollution daily. The situation is now worse than it was 30 years ago. Nothing is changing. When I see the efforts that are being made in the US I feel a great sense of sadness at the double standards. What they do in the US or in Europe is very different."
"We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US," said Nnimo Bassey, Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International. "But in Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people's livelihood and environments. The Gulf spill can be seen as a metaphor for what is happening daily in the oilfields of Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
"This has gone on for 50 years in Nigeria. People depend completely on the environment for their drinking water and farming and fishing. They are amazed that the president of the US can be making speeches daily, because in Nigeria people there would not hear a whimper," he said.
It is impossible to know how much oil is spilled in the Niger delta each year because the companies and the government keep that secret. However, two major independent investigations over the past four years suggest that as much is spilled at sea, in the swamps and on land every year as has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico so far.
One report, compiled by WWF UK, the World Conservation Union and representatives from the Nigerian federal government and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, calculated in 2006 that up to 1.5m tons of oil – 50 times the pollution unleashed in the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska – has been spilled in the delta over the past half century. Last year Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9m barrels of oil was spilled and accused the oil companies of a human rights outrage.
According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more than 7,000 spills between 1970 and 2000, and there are 2,000 official major spillages sites, many going back decades, with thousands of smaller ones still waiting to be cleared up. More than 1,000 spill cases have been filed against Shell alone.
Last month Shell admitted to spilling 14,000 tonnes of oil in 2009. The majority, said the company, was lost through two incidents – one in which the company claims that thieves damaged a wellhead at its Odidi field and another where militants bombed the Trans Escravos pipeline.
Shell, which works in partnership with the Nigerian government in the delta, says that 98% of all its oil spills are caused by vandalism, theft or sabotage by militants and only a minimal amount by deteriorating infrastructure. "We had 132 spills last year, as against 175 on average. Safety valves were vandalised; one pipe had 300 illegal taps. We found five explosive devices on one. Sometimes communities do not give us access to clean up the pollution because they can make more money from compensation," said a spokesman.
"We have a full-time oil spill response team. Last year we replaced 197 miles of pipeline and are using every known way to clean up pollution, including microbes. We are committed to cleaning up any spill as fast as possible as soon as and for whatever reason they occur."
These claims are hotly disputed by communities and environmental watchdog groups. They mostly blame the companies' vast network of rusting pipes and storage tanks, corroding pipelines, semi-derelict pumping stations and old wellheads, as well as tankers and vessels cleaning out tanks.
The scale of the pollution is mind-boggling. The government's national oil spill detection and response agency (Nosdra) says that between 1976 and 1996 alone, more than 2.4m barrels contaminated the environment. "Oil spills and the dumping of oil into waterways has been extensive, often poisoning drinking water and destroying vegetation. These incidents have become common due to the lack of laws and enforcement measures within the existing political regime," said a spokesman for Nosdra.
The sense of outrage is widespread. "There are more than 300 spills, major and minor, a year," said Bassey. "It happens all the year round. The whole environment is devastated. The latest revelations highlight the massive difference in the response to oil spills. In Nigeria, both companies and government have come to treat an extraordinary level of oil spills as the norm."
A spokesman for the Stakeholder Democracy Network in Lagos, which works to empower those in communities affected by the oil companies' activities, said: "The response to the spill in the United States should serve as a stiff reminder as to how far spill management in Nigeria has drifted from standards across the world."
Other voices of protest point out that the world has overlooked the scale of the environmental impact. Activist Ben Amunwa, of the London-based oil watch group Platform, said: "Deepwater Horizon may have exceed Exxon Valdez, but within a few years in Nigeria offshore spills from four locations dwarfed the scale of the Exxon Valdez disaster many times over. Estimates put spill volumes in the Niger delta among the worst on the planet, but they do not include the crude oil from waste water and gas flares. Companies such as Shell continue to avoid independent monitoring and keep key data secret."
Worse may be to come. One industry insider, who asked not to be named, said: "Major spills are likely to increase in the coming years as the industry strives to extract oil from increasingly remote and difficult terrains. Future supplies will be offshore, deeper and harder to work. When things go wrong, it will be harder to respond."
Judith Kimerling, a professor of law and policy at the City University of New York and author of Amazon Crude, a book about oil development in Ecuador, said: "Spills, leaks and deliberate discharges are happening in oilfields all over the world and very few people seem to care."
There is an overwhelming sense that the big oil companies act as if they are beyond the law. Bassey said: "What we conclude from the Gulf of Mexico pollution incident is that the oil companies are out of control.
"It is clear that BP has been blocking progressive legislation, both in the US and here. In Nigeria, they have been living above the law. They are now clearly a danger to the planet. The dangers of this happening again and again are high. They must be taken to the international court of justice."
Report: "Junk shot" fails to plug leak in Gulf
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/28/report-junk-shot-fai.html
Videos and stills posted by Pas au-Delà appear to show spectacular events going on in the operation to cut off the flow of oily gunge in the gulf -- possibly a 'junk shot,' where rubber and other materials are forced into the failed blowout preventer in an attempt to plug it.
As you can see, the junk appears not to have remained in place. More from the New York Times. BP's CEO says they'll give the strategy another 48 hours: the next plan is to cut the pipe and cap it with another pipe; and failing that, to place a second blowout preventer atop the failed one.
Safety Suffers During Drilling Boom
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20100524/investigator-warned-mms-2009-about-deepwater-gas-blowouts-gulf-mexico
In 2000, during the heart of the unprecedented deepwater drilling boom, which began in the early 1990s, MMS published a review of gas hydrate research activities, which included this testimony from Dr. Roger Sassen of Texas A&M University — which the investigator's report highlighted — that warns unequivocally about the dangers of a deepwater blowout:
What most concerns me real-time is that the energy industry is moving into deep water of the Gulf of Mexico where gas hydrates form instantaneously in sea-floor experiments...Surprisingly little is known about the geology (water depth distribution, geologic controls, maximum preservation depth in sediments) and geochemistry (compositions and stability realms) of natural gas hydrates in the context of energy industry activities...We simply cannot afford a major accident in the deep waters of the Gulf, and thus have a clear common objective with the MMS.
In giving presentations on natural gas hydrates to the energy industry, I found that knowledge of potential gas hydrate hazards is limited. There is the tendency within the energy industry to decrease time between discovery and production, and to use new and innovative technology, in an effort to decrease costs. At the same time, internal energy company research has been scaled back. These circumstances could potentially increase risk in a relatively unknown environment. Gas hydrate related problems have occurred in deepwater environments elsewhere, but they have
not always been widely publicized.
The financial crisis of 2008 made it inevitable that unemployment would rise sharply through 2009.
It also caused the budget deficit to skyrocket:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/75128/the-stigmatization-bush-blaming
Most voters, of course, don't follow these issues closely enough to gain a detailed understanding of cause and effect. They just tend to notice that unemployment and the budget deficit have risen while President Obama has held office.
Republicans have worked assiduously to blame these conditions on Obama's policies even though they were obviously caused by conditions he inherited. At the same time, they have worked relentlessly to create a social stigma around his efforts to push back. The result of this campaign can be seen in things like Politico's weekend article chastising Obama for blaming his predecessor:
President Barack Obama is trying to ride the wave of anti-incumbency by taking on an unpopular politician steeped in the partisan ways of Washington.
It doesn’t matter that George W. Bush left office 16 months ago.
The White House’s mid-term election strategy is becoming clear – pit the Democrats of 2010 against the Republicans circa 2006, 2008 and 2009, including Bush.
It’s a lot to ask an angry, finicky electorate to sort out. And even if Obama can rightfully make the case that the economy took a turn for the worse under Bush's watch, he's already made it - in 2008 and repeatedly in 2009.
It’s not clear that voters still want to hear it.
The story quotes ten sources commenting on Obama's occassional habit of faulting the Bush administration. Of the ten, eight criticize Obama.
Now, I think it's fine for a story to eschew "balance"when one side is making an unsupportable or hypocritical case. But Obama's case isn't wrong -- it really is true that the economic and budgetary problems we're facing were inherited from the previous administration. What's false is the Republican effort to imply that Obama caused the problems -- an argument that collapses upon the slightest empirical pressure. But somehow the standard here is not what's correct but what's polite, and it's impolite for Obama to blame Bush.
AI
