Over the last 2 months, I've read with great interest all the stories about how the Obama Administration and BP were messing up when it came to failing to purchase enough oil containment boom. Turns out that most of those stories weren't true.
In my latest searches for new news about the results of recent real-world trials of Packgen's boom product, I discovered some new and disturbing info to add to my collection of info about how dishonest this company has been.
They were out to get paid for untested oil containment boom before it had ever been approved in any real-world tests as a satisfactory product. They solicited references and praise from Republican elected officials in Maine, and those officials then portrayed the company as one that was not being treated fairly by BP and the Obama Administration. That portrayal is not accurate and was unfair to both BP and Obama.
Update - The reporter from the Maine paper I've linked to below sent me an email reply after I asked her why we haven't seen an update on the testing last week. She said "I've been calling and gotten no response back from the company yet. I'm curious myself."
Follow me below the fold for more.
I have been keeping up with the stories specifically about Packgen, the Maine company that had the two Republican US Senators and the Maine Governor prostituting themselves for this independent company, apparently because the mother of Packgen's owner has some sway in Republican donor circles in Maine.
Jana Lapoint contributed $1,000 to Olympia Snowe and $2,000 to Susan Collins, according to the Sunlight Foundation.
The Governor produced a video, posted on the company website in support of the business owner, and the Maine Senators wrote a letteron US Senate letterhead to Admiral Thad Allen, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and the NOAA Administrator named Dr Jane Lubchenco and cc'ed the Republican governors in the Gulf to praise Packgen. They claimed that the company "specialize(s) in oil boom material", but of course nothing could be further from the truth. Either they were lying or they were misled by the Packgen owner. This was Packgen's first effort to make boom.
From a NOLA article from May 5th, I found the following post, apparently directly from someone from Packgen!
PACKGEN INC. is a US manufacturer of Oil Containment Boom. We are ready to accept orders. BP will not agree to our payment terms and the State of Louisiana has not returned our calls. Our production capabilities are 90,000 feet per day and we are ready to help.
Had you ever heard that the issue was that BP wouldn't agree to Packgen's payment terms? I hadn't initially heard that. I had heard them moan and complain that they had a great product that just wasn't getting bought, or wasn't getting the trial it deserved.
But it turns out, as I suspected all along, that they apparently wanted BP to pay for the untested product up front, without it even being tested and found to be a valuable product. And of course, they weren't really ready to "accept orders", since it has repeatedly failed quality and effectiveness tests since that post in early May.
"Right now, we're still pitching (to buyers)," he said. "I've funded this up to this point and the bank account is empty. Now I've got to get at the state or federal level and they've got to come through, or the people who want booms from us, they've got to come through, and that's what we are working on right now."
Interest is high in the new product, but Lapoint said he was skeptical of shipping it off without a contract that pays Packgen at least a little cash up front.
From that same NOLA.com article cited above,
The oil giant said Wednesday of its supplies, "BP has a supply of boom and other resources on hand to cover the next seven to ten days of planned response activity, and has put in place a supply chain that should enable it to deliver additional supplies as needs arise."
Of course, if you listened to Louisiana's Governor Bobby Jindal, you would have thought that back in early May, there was a serious, immediate, and ongoing shortage of containment boom, much less than what was needed. Turns out that this was apparently his rightwing spin on reality, and wasn't actually true. It looks like they've consistently been playing catch-up, and they've never had a ton in reserve, but they've had what they've needed.
On May 2, Gov. Jindal requested that federal authorities and BP provide three million feet of absorbent boom, five million feet of hard boom and 30 'jack up' barges. Of that, less than 800,000 feet of hard boom has arrived - less than a fifth of the request. About 140,000 feet of that hard boom is sitting waiting for BP to tell contractors where to take it.
What did Admiral Thad Allen have sent to Jake Tapper, after Tapper whined on behalf of Packgen at a press conference that...
TAPPER: I talked to a guy who runs a company in Maine that offers boom, and he has – he says – the ability to make 90,000 feet of boom a day. High quality. BP came there 2 weeks ago, looked at it, they are doing another audit today. He is very frustrated, he says he has a lot of high quality boom to go and it is taking a long time for BP to get its act together. Don’t you need this boom right now?
This was Allen's colleague's reply below, after did the research that Tapper should have done before he asserted Packgen's complaint in public.
The boom manufactured by Packgen did not pass an initial quality control test. Boom is subjected to great wear and tear when placed in the water and must be frequently tended. In order to retain its effectiveness boom must be of high quality. Once Packgen's boom passes inspection, the company can be considered as a source for supplying boom to the largest oil spill response operation in U.S. history. In the meantime, suitable boom is being identified and obtained quickly and there is currently 459,000 feet of boom stored in the region in addition to the 2.24 million feet deployed.
But because Jindal's whining got lots of airtime, many Americans might have thought that there truly was something despicable about BP's failure to secure enough boom through any means possible. People surely thought that it was better to have boom that might not be wholly adequate, rather than nothing.
And if someone is a Hannity fan, they'd think that Packgen was being unfairly treated.
Lapoint appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show. Hannity -- who declared the situation "frustrating" and said that "the blame goes to BP, and the blame goes to our government" -- demanded to know "why" BP and the Obama administration hadn't bought the boom.
But BP knew that it was untested and a different design than standard containment boom. And therefore it required testing before they'd agree to buy it. This manufacturer tried to create boom with a different design, a design from one of his company's engineers, a design they thought that would be an improvement. Apparently, however, they were too smug in thinking that they knew better than longtime boom manufacturers how to design the boom. They didn't. They made a couple of bigtime errors, and they still haven't gotten BP or the Coast Guard to approve their boom for use, and are still waiting for BP to buy their product.
They acted like they were being subjected to unfair and intense scrutiny that others weren't, but that's not true.
"There were concerns with material and end connectors," LaBrec said. "BP has inspectors who visit facilities and regularly test boom. In addition to testing boom from new suppliers, boom from existing manufacturers is also tested/inspected. The Coast Guard also inspects boom that we purchase from suppliers. It is important because poorly designed boom may not work as intended."
Now, they had a guy who said that their boom was of the highest quality. Of course, he was a hired gun (likely paid tens of thousands of dollars), who examined the boom with a prior design and not in real world circumstances! He'd also never examined oil containment boom in his life before this adventure. He said that it should work best in calm water. He hadn't actually looked at the currently-manufactured boom. It's had to be changed twice to even get a real-world test in the Gulf. He also said that he "wouldn't deploy it deepwater".
In the latest tests done last week, Packgen's boom seems to have failed again.
Oil containment booms tested off the Alabama coast on Wednesday {June 30th} took on water, but fared better in rough water tests on Thursday, according to Jana Lapoint, who sits on the board at Packgen, the local manufacturer hoping to break into the boom market.
This comes from a Lewiston, Maine newspaper. And who is Jana Lapoint? Well, she's a member of the board, yes. But she's also the mother of the owner of the company, and she's a huge contributor to Republican politics in Maine. Somehow they thought she was an unbiased disseminator of information? After two on-site visits from BP where the product failed the quality control tests, they got a trial in the Gulf, and it didn't work well there either! The paid gun quality assurance guy said that it'd work best in calm water, but in the real-life testing done last week, it failed that test, and seemed to fare better in rough water. But that's the report of the mother of the owner of the company. They were supposed to know BP's final determination earlier this week. I suspect that the lack of any public announcement by today is suspicious - no news is bad news for Packgen.
And BP still has boom in warehouses around the Gulf, and plenty in the ocean, and they haven't apparently ever run out with their current providers. Another oil boom manufacturer says that BP is requesting some minor changes now.
In the past two weeks, the oil giant has ordered changes to the boom being manufactured to combat the Gulf spill, said Daniel Root, managing member of Containment Resource, the Bonita Springs-based boom vendor.
The result — dubbed Revision F — incorporates universal connectors to string the boom together, cables wrapped in plastic to prevent fraying the boom material and anchors every 50 feet with logos at the surface for boom layers to find them easily, Root said.
"They were all common sense changes for the better," he said.
A company in Ohio that used to make the machinery to create oil booms got a request early on to start using some of their existing equipment to actually make boom for the Gulf. Within 5 days, they were up and running, and they had a buyer for their product - a company that resells it to BP under an existing contract. It's not like BP is unwilling to buy a quality product to protect the Gulf shores!
Packgen's fable about their difficulties smelled rotten to me from the very start. Like a smart businessman, this manufacturer thought that he could make a product that was going to be in great demand, and so he jumped in with both feet. That was cool and innovative. But in trying to push his product, he's not been honest. He had abetted efforts to mislead about the company's new entry into the marketplace, and he's not honestly described the quality and capabilities of the boom product. They acted like their redesigned product was undeniably better than anything already out there without any evidence to support that contention. They've whined about how badly they've been treated, and in fact, they've gotten special treatment and all kinds of free publicity!
The right-leaning media and rightwing bloggers were aghast that we thought that the sane thing to do in this unprecedented emergency situation was to give this product a trial run after it passed initial quality testing. They thought it was ridiculous to test this product, because it seemed obvious in their black-n-white world that this product was a godsend. Just like they thought that the temporary sand berm islands pushed by Gov Jindal would be a slam dunk, and they thought it was all unfair politics that was delaying the approval to build them - that is, until environmental scientists told them that the berms would do more harm than good.
But I believe that the reason this false meme was promoted by the rightwing is not because the right is so extra-special concerned about the Gulf, much more so than those on the left, but because the right wants to try to smear Obama and all associated with him at every possible opportunity! The false meme was that the left was falling down on the job by delaying the approval and purchase of this boom! They weren't. But that's the message that the right wanted to push, and they successfully pushed it in some ways!
Update - The reporter from the Maine paper I've linked to below sent me an email reply after I asked her why we haven't seen an update on the testing last week. She said "I've been calling and gotten no response back from the company yet. I'm curious myself."
Media Matters for America has done a good job of keeping up with this story, including multiple links.