Democratic Rep. Ed Markey Doesn't Want to End the Oil Spill
UPDATE

Argh Update: Commenter Waterhouse below seems to have the right of it:

he's not talking about letting oil into the gulf. The collection ships they have hooked up to the new cap are capable of handling up to 80,000 barrels/day. He's talking about opening up the valves from the cap that feed the collection ships. No oil gets into the gulf; all the oil goes into the collection ships, and thus the flow rate is determined.

I hereby retract everything I say below...except the part where I called Congressman Markey an artard. I'll stand by that.

Original Post:
This man has his head up his ass:

Rep. Ed Markey, who has been a vocal critic of BP's response to the gusher, said Sunday that the company could have another motivation for wanting to keep the well capped.

"If the well remains fully shut in until the relief well is completed, we may never have a fully accurate determination of the flow rate from this well. If so, BP -- which has consistently underestimated the flow rate -- might evade billions of dollars of fines," Markey said in a letter to Allen released Sunday.

Using ships on the surface to collect 100 percent of the gushing oil would allow scientists to calculate the flow rate -- a figure that the government would use to determine how much to fine BP, Markey said.

Markey's eye-poppingly stupid recommendation that BP should let the well keep spewing has two fatal flaws. Two obvious fatal flaws.

First, the skimmer ships aren't collecting anywhere near 100 percent of spilled oil. Just letting the well continue to leak will have substantial consequences for wildlife in the Gulf and the economies of the Gulf states. (Hey, what does Markey care about the Gulf? --He's an artard from New England.)

Second, nobody believes that BP is somehow going to escape what's coming to it. President Boot-on-the-Neck has seen and will see to that. So Markey's ridiculous stand in favor of oil spills wouldn't even accomplish anything except killing some animals and some jobs in the Gulf.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 12:15 AM

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