MSNBC "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" - Transcript

Interview

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OLBERMANN: For more on the so-called integrity testing, as well as the integrity of the blowout preventers, let"s turn now to Congressman Ed Markey, the Democrat of Massachusetts, chairman of the global warming committee. Thank you again for your time tonight, sir.

REP. ED MARKEY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Glad to be here. Thank you.

OLBERMANN: All right, last month, you had asked BP to provide information about the status of that wellbore. What did the company tell you?

MARKEY: Well, right now, I don"t have any answer from them. I mean, the condition of the wellbore, its integrity, the integrity of the seabed around the wellbore, are critical to knowing how safe this procedure is that they are now conducting as an experiment at the bottom of the ocean.

It"s a lot like putting your hand on top of a hose out in the back yard, and the more you keep your hand on the hose, the more pressure it puts on the hose. And if it"s an old hose, it could spring a leak in another part of the hose because of the pressure. That"s what"s happening as this containment dome was put on and all the valves are tightened. So we have to be very careful that we don"t cause a rupture in that well and we don"t cause ruptures, actually, in the seabed around the bottom of that well.

OLBERMANN: That information about the wellbore--did the administration get any of it, do you know?

MARKEY: I don"t know that. But I did ask for it. I believe that Congress should have the information. I believe the American public should have the information. You should have the information. This should be something that is highly transparent because the risks are great.

Obviously, BP continues to try to limit its liability. The quicker it can cap this well, the sooner it limits its liability because it pays per barrel, per day that goes out into the ocean. But we have to make sure that the livability of the gulf is made paramount and that no shortcuts are taken, that the time is given to this procedure so that the law of unintended consequences is not invoked.

OLBERMANN: You heard our guest expert, Bob Cavnar, on this, who"s not convinced that what"s being done now is designed to most rapidly seal off the well, but that the last 24 hours may have been to some degree a diversion designed to, in fact, limit the capacity of outside experts or courts to find out just how much oil was spilled. Do we have any counter to his professional expertise?

MARKEY: Well, I think, ultimately, it is important for us to know whether or not it"s 35,000, 45,000, 55,000 or more barrels per day because the fine, if it"s gross negligence, is $4,300 per barrel per day, and that could total up to $6 billion or $8 billion. Not having actually an accurate measurement ultimately will limit our ability to be able to sure that BP pays the full fine that it should for this damage which it has caused in the Gulf of Mexico.

OLBERMANN: The issue of the new blowout preventers and the fact that now the thought is, Well, maybe these blowout preventers are not going to be any better than the blowout preventer was on Deepwater Horizon to begin with--do you have confidence, based on Secretary Salazar"s memo, that the relief well blowout preventers would be capable of withstanding the pressure of the oil being redirected from the blown-out well?

MARKEY: Well, when Transocean actually conducted their own testing of blowout preventers, it determined that 45 percent of them fail. And so there"s a reason again to be apprehensive, to be cautious as we"re moving forward. Nothing is guaranteed. We can be hopeful, but that"s it. We have no guarantees that any of this is going to work out well, which is why we have to be exceedingly careful that we don"t do more damage as we try to solve this problem.

OLBERMANN: And this, of course, begs the consideration of what to do about possible future problems in the gulf and in other deepwater drilling areas. Once again, the administration has tried for a moratorium on drilling. We"ll see how the courts handle this one. The last one, they stepped on it. Is it necessary to have a moratorium when there are still questions about 45 to 50 percent of the blowout preventers on the deepwater wells?

MARKEY: Lookit, there"s 33 rigs out there. Transocean has 10 of them. Transocean is a Swiss-registered company that works out of the Marshall Islands and had a Norwegian company doing the safety check on the Deepwater Horizon that sank to the bottom of the American Gulf of Mexico. And so we have to be very careful here.

The only thing that"s worse than one rig at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico would be a second one. And that"s why caution is very important and why $100 million was set aside to take care of the people who work on those 33 out of 1,000 manned rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. But those 33 are out in the ultra-deep water. We have to make sure that they"re also ultra-safe.

OLBERMANN: So if the Transocean blowout preventers have improved, then we"re only facing the prospect of two or three more of these, rather than four or five!

MARKEY: We really are in an area that humanity has never been before.

OLBERMANN: Yes.

MARKEY: No person has ever been down that deep in the ocean, 5,000 feet. No experiment like this has ever been conducted before from dispersants to blowout preventers and trying to cap a well at this depth. The one in Mexico, the one in Australia, they were both in shallow water. This is in 5,000 feet of water. And I think that Admiral Allen, Secretary Chu, Marcia McNutt (ph), who is running the USGS, United States Geological Service, are wise in making BP slow down so that we"re very sure each step of the way that we don"t turn this into an even more catastrophic event.

OLBERMANN: See if the Gulf Coast judges agree with you. Congressman Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, as always, great thanks, sir.

MARKEY: Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

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