much differently about deepwater drilling than we did before. i felt better when i read your reassurances on it but then not when i looked into the basis. five of the eight new permits you had had given out before tonight went to companies that contracted with helix well containment group. the fast response system which you have been bragging about is the new containment technology that they have. this week helix revealed themselves that by their own assessment it could take them 17 days to contain a spill. 17 days is the new fast response that we re supposed to feel better with in terms of containing a disaster that has already happened. to me that doesn t feel like a great advance that would justify the type of rash issuing of permits that you ve just done over the last 33 days.
it s like finding out that your best friend thinks he can fly by flapping his arms really fast. is your due diligence just making sure that he does a lot of bicep curls and his arms are in great shape? how can the government be handing out permits to drill on at the rate of one every four days on the premise that drilling is safer when we don t know what happened last night? when the piece of equipment that prevents a blowout from happening in the first place we just found may not work even when used as directed? for weeks now we have been asking those questions on this show. and for weeks, we have been trying to get a good answer to those questions from the interior department. we were told since it s an ongoing investigation, they would have no comment specifically on the blowout preventer matter. we asked them about their whole blowout preventers don t work report seven different ways from sunday, and still no comment. and then this week, some big and unexpected news. look at this.
maintained. it s like finding out that your best friend thinks he can fly by flapping his arms really fast. is your due diligence just making sure that he does a lot of bicep curls and his arms near shape? how can the government be handing out permits to drill on at the rate of one every four days on the premise that drilling is safer when we don t know what happened last night? when the piece of equipment that prevents a blowout from happening in the first place we just found may not work even when used as directed? for weeks now we have been asking those questions on this show. and for weeks, we have been trying to get a good answer to those questions from the interior department. we were told since it s an ongoing investigation, they would have no comment specifically on the blowout preventer matter. we asked them about their whole blowout preventers don t work report seven different ways from sunday, and still no coment. and then this week, some big and unexpected news. look at thi
drilling than we did before. i felt better when i read your reassurances on it but then not when i looked into the basis. five of the eight new permits you had had given out before tonight went to companies that contracted with helix well containment group. the fast response system which you have been bragging about is the new containment technology that they have. this week helix revealed themselves that by their own assessment it could take them 17 days to contain a spill. 17 days is the new fast response that we re supposed to feel better with in terms of containing a disaster that has already happened. to me that doesn t feel like a great advance that would justify the type of rash issuing of permits that you ve just done over the last 33 days. well, these having bnt the rash issuance of permits, as i said. we issued none until the latter part of february. we were strongly criticized for
dragging our heels on not issuing any permits for several months after the lifting of the deepwater drilling moratorium which actually lifted in october, not in february. and the reason we didn t was because the containment capabilities were not yet ready. you re right, 17 days is not fabulous, but 17 days is a lot better than 87 days. which is what it took to contain mccondo well. and from dealing with the containment groups, both the helix group and the other group that s developing containment capabilities, they are going to continue to enhance their capabilities and continue to shorten the response time to potential spills. when you said that changes in the blowout preventers that you changes in what we know about blowout preventers in this recent report were no big deal and didn t really change your thinking in terms of whether or not we should be counting on blowout preventers and what the safety regulations about them should be, that does not square very easily for me with t