Gulf oil spill good for Jack & Stephanie Victory

A friend of the ACR Blog sees two dots connected to the disastrous oil rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. Next, our friend notices that the two dots themselves are connected.

First up, Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner reports:

The Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling company has called for backup.

The company that made the Deepwater Horizon oil rig currently spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico hired a lobbying firm on Monday — the Capitol Hill Consulting Group (CHCG).

According to a CHCG lobbying registration, Transocean’s lobbyists will include: former Democratic congressman Bill Brewster of Oklahoma; former Tom DeLay energy staffer Jack Victory; and Amanda Hill.

Transocean did not have a registered D.C. lobbyist prior to this week. We suppose they need one now. It's just a crazy coincidence that of all the lobbyists in the world, Transocean hires one of our favorites.

Meanwhile, the wife of Jack Victory, Stephanie, is earning some pocket change from the oil spill, too. From the Los Angeles Times:

A basket-like piece of equipment typically filled with sand and used to build military bunkers in Iraq and Afghanistan is being tested along the pristine northern shore of Dauphin Island as the last line of defense against the encroaching gulf oil spill....

This is the first time the baskets have been used in such a way. They were designed as replacement sandbags, filled to the brim with sand and used against flood waters or as bunkers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"My job is to build a structure for the CI agent (polymer) to perform," said Stephanie Victory, CEO of Hesco-USA which makes the baskets. "That structure is in place and we are confident that it will perform."

We're not so sure that Mrs. Victory's job as CEO of Hesco-USA is to make the baskets for the CI polymer agent. In fact, we're skeptical that Hesco-USA makes anything at all. While the company has a small facility in Hammond, La., we believe that all manufacturing is done by HESCO Bastion, Ltd. in the U.K. Hesco-USA is not much more than a lobbying operation headed up by Mrs. Victory, with some marketing efforts mixed in. Oh yeah. Hesco-USA has an assembly facility in Louisiana.

Don't get us wrong. We don't doubt that Transocean needs representation in Washington these days. And any mitigation of the economic/environmental damage done by the oil spill is a good thing. We're just surprised to see both Jack and Stephanie Victory surface like a tarball in this disaster.