"British Petroleum"

The political fallout from the BP spill continues, with President Obama continuing to make shamefully populist attacks repeatedly using an archaic name for the American Oil Company (Amoco merged with BP in 1998, the resulting multinational is no more "British" than it is "American") to stir up international discord. The fact that the operators of the drilling rig, Halliburton and Transocean, are both US companies is getting lost behind the attacks on the "foreign" owner - which employs twice as many people in the US as in the UK.

The latest version is that Tony Hayward, Chief Executive of BP, "wouldn't be working for [Obama] after any of those statements". Because political interference in private companies is a sign, nay a hallmark, of free and capitalist societies. Obama has tried to tell the company what it can do with the money it's earned, and paid taxes on, and now he's trying to tell it who it can and cannot employ. In between golf games.

Yes, it's understandable that the POTUS is angry. This is a disaster. A dozen people died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion and many citizens on the Gulf Coast are being harmed by the leaking well. It's also understandable why he's lashing out: he can do nothing about this and feels impotent - there is literally nothing that the US government can do about this leak. Understandable doesn't make it acceptable, however, and this sort of divisive rhetoric is ugly.

One one side, we have the world's foremost experts in undersea drilling and oil leak capping, who have been working night and day to fix an unprecedented problem. Over a month ago, they had crews working around the clock to weld together a funnel to catch the oil. Trouble is, it started "icing up" with hydrate crystals. Then came the "top hat". Then a "top kill" attempt failed. Finally, the latest cap has had some success, learning from the previous difficulties (e.g. using methanol to prevent hydrate build-up). It's not over yet, but it's clear that these people have been working hard and when Plan A failed, they tried Plan B, and so on until something finally gets results.

On the other side, we have politicians threatening to "push BP aside" because they've been missing "deadline after deadline". Doesn't that sound like the most incompetent manager you've ever worked for? Pulling dates out of his arse and demanding that everything is fixed by then, then shouting and screaming when reality fails to comply. Just who would they be replaced with? A large committee who will order the oil to stop flowing by fiat? These political lightweights have been implying corruption and attacking the finances of a company which has volunteered to pay (so far) 20x the statutory maximum liability - what bastards they must be! Now someone who's visited the area three times is trying to sack someone who a) doesn't work for him and b) has been dealing with this 24/7 for a month and a half, on the grounds that he was looking forward to the problem being solved, instead of looking back for someone to blame.

I'm disappointed, though sadly not surprised, that Obama is still relying on hollow soundbites and words instead of actions. That political points-scoring works well as a candidate, but not as President. "Yes we can"? No, it's clear you can't. A leader would have immediately and unconditionally offered whatever support could be useful and saved any recriminations for later. The priority isn't making BP look bad, or making yourself look good, it's stopping the oil leak.

If you're not part of that solution, you're part of the problem.

- KoW

KC-X and the Sky-high Cost of Sky-high Fuel

EADS' (Airbus' parent company's) annual report, about a week ago, contained an interesting note that slipped by many observers. It caught Lord Mandelson's attention and got a bit more ink, but still was largely ignored. That note was that EADS has pulled out of the KC-X bidding.

There's quite a story behind that, and I shall tell it as well I can remember.

The KC-X is the replacement for the old - ancient - KC-135 Stratotankers, the US military's air-to-air refuelling capability and key to global operations. They were adapted from Boeing's 707 airframe - the forerunner of the 747s, 767s and 777s that we see at airports today - and built in the 1950s and 1960s. The youngest ones are 45 years old, and some a decade more than that!

The story of the bidding process is rather unusual. The USAF issued the RFP (i.e. call for bids) in January 2007. The process began in an unusual way by stressing that this was an urgent requirement, and that delays in procurement would put lives in jeopardy. The two bids submitted were from EADS/Northrop-Grumman using a version of the Airbus A330 to be assembled in Alabama using US workers and imported parts, and from Boeing with a modified 767.

A mere 13 months after the bidding process began, in February 2008, the selection was made: EADS/NG had won. Again, in an unusual move, the USAF made a point at the press conference that, due to the age of the equipment being replaced, delays would cost lives - a not-too-subtle warning. This didn't seem to bother Boeing, though, who filed an appeal against the decision. That appeal was upheld in June 2008, bidding re-opened in July following the forced resignation of the head of the USAF - and then the project was put on hold in September. A year later, September 2009, bidding started again.

The project, particularly the un-selection and reopening of bids, has been dogged by allegations of jingoism amongst the US players: a feeling that letting a foreign company win would be unAmerican. This, despite the fact that Northrop-Grumman is at least as American as Boeing, that a significant proportion of the work would be undertaken by Americans in America, and that Boeing were - in 2003 - accused of corruption and stripped of $1bn of government contracts.

EADS has apparently realised that the deck was stacked against it, and pulled out in March this year, leaving this whole sorry mess as nothing but a historical note. KC-X is still on the drawing board. The US is still flying the creaking half-century-old tankers it was trying to replace. The UK MoD is trying to buy a couple of those rusty old KC-135s, refitted for electronic battlefield surveillance - the RC-135 'Rivet Joint'.

Hey, if you wanted a happy ending, you should have gone to a "massage parlour".

- KoW

For Want of a Nail...

US news this morning is that Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat has gone to the Republicans (h/t Guido).

I'm not sure what to make of this. I've considered myself right-wing. Tory in the UK and, yet, Democrat in the US. I thought Bill Clinton was great, and disliked both Bushes. But for the last couple of years, I've been less convinced... Al Gore going off on an eco-trip, Hillary and Obama's campaigns, a general leftward shift of both parties, the bail-outs and healthcare row...

Losing this seat means that the Democrats no longer have a majority of 60 in the Senate. This, in turn, means that they no longer have a "filibuster-proof" majority to force through legislation. Without that, they need support from the Republicans or Independents to get President Obama's healthcare plans enacted. And to get that support, they will probably have to compromise on the details - or risk the plans being delayed and derailed.

And therein lie some of my doubts. Healthcare in the US seems, except at the very top, to be a shambles. Millions of people, apparently, have no insurance and hence little or no access to healthcare. Private ambulances, billing people for emergency treatment, hospitals and insurers gaming the system... the US definitely isn't a place to get sick. Something needs to be done.

But I'm not sure Obamacare is the right something - and it looks like it's got a lot of troubles now.

- KoW