Gulf oil spill: There's no 'I' in 'response team'

Mr. Hayward,

We The Concerned hope things weren't too bad for you and your colleagues in front of Congress this week. We imagine an oil disaster is stressful enough without having to answer a bunch of questions in the middle of everything, especially when most of the answers are sitting so far beneath the sea.

As far as The Concerned is concerned, instead of grilling you about what went wrong, Congress should have been asking you what it can do to help you end this crisis. First things first; they can always grill you later. We're not sure this is even the problem, but maybe it's time the feds waive all those regulations complicating the recovery process? It's not like your company isn't letting them know it needs lots of help.

We've noticed that the online home of the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command has put out a call for suggestions to stop the leak. Asking the general public for ideas! We can't believe Congress didn't get that hint. Were they waiting for the Deepwater Horizon to register at Lowe's or Home Depot or something? It just seems so desperate to us.

We were only mildly worried when this whole thing started because we figured the response team was full of experienced, qualified petroleum engineers and deepwater specialists from companies and governments all over the world. But we're really concerned now because your team seems to have exhausted all of its ideas, and the public is being reminded that this entire operation (like maybe every oil or gas well) is one massive experiment.

Today we learned that even Hollywood is getting involved in the public experiment. Actor Kevin Costner and his brother are donating special oil recovery equipment, and director James Cameron offered up some of his own manned submarines.

The latest solution to the leak we've heard is sending shredded tires and golf balls into the broken blowout preventer, an operation known as a "junk shot," and then sealing it off with heavy drilling mud, then concrete. We don't know if you've heard, but Alaska is full of junk you might be able to use. Residents of the Mat-Su Valley would love to donate all the arson bait, abandoned cars and assorted clutter at "The Butte," and residents of more remote areas would love to get rid of all those old, military chemical dumps. If you set up some donation centers, you'd have all the junk you'd need in no time. But we're not petroleum engineers, so we're not even sure a bullet-riddled refrigerator would help much.

We've also heard that hair works really well for soaking up spilled oil. We're not sure you know it or not, but Alaskans tend to get rather hairy during the winter. Since spring's already here in many areas of the state, it's a prime time for harvest. But since federal officials have also said the hair-filled booms won't be deployed, it'd probably be better for the massive public-relations spill you're dealing with if all of your company's directors and executives shaved their heads. Since you all look like you've recently had haircuts, it doesn't seem like it would help with the oil very much, but the gesture would certainly look like atonement.