The Official Oil Spill Thread....

[chargergirl]

$10 says you'll retell that joke. 

At work tomorrow...I can't wait for the groans!

[bull]

Here's a look into how the minds at BP work: http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/bp-spills-coffee/207uj0la

[Brock Samson]

I liked the Face Book Page that suggested plugging the leak with BP Execs.   

[chargerboy69]

I just read this on Drudge, and I have to admit I was surprised  this administration had the balls to do this. Governor Jindal sent out sixteen barges to suck up the oil before reaching shore. For two days they were working great. Then our Federal Government ordered him to stop.  They even sent over the Coast Guard just to make sure he heard them. I am having a hard time grasping why they are working against those trying to clean this mess up, though I have my theories. Wow can not wait until they run my fu%$ing health care.



http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-gov-bobby-jindals-wishes-crude/story?id=10946379

[Todd Wilson]

I just read this on Drudge, and I have to admit I was surprised  this administration had the balls to do this.  Governor Jindal sent out sixteen barges to suck up the oil before reaching shore. For two days they were working great. Then our Federal Government ordered him to stop.  They even sent over the Coast Guard just to make sure he heard them. I am having a hard time grasping why they are working against those trying to clean this mess up, though I have my theories. Wow can not wait until they run my fu%$ing health care.



http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-gov-bobby-jindals-wishes-crude/story?id=10946379

Its a great thing isnt it!


Todd

[Mike DC]

  

I think eventually we will hear a lot more accusatory words about the reported size of the spill in the early days.  

The govt's fumbled response will need a scapegoat (not that BP isn't guilty of bad things).  BP's early lowball figures were done entirely for selfish reasons.  That data helped steer the strategy away from containing the spill and towards dispersing it.  In retrospect we will probably decide that the spill was treated all wrong and the damage worsened because of that.  The govt completely sucks at responding to a crisis even with good data, let alone trying to work with bad data. 

[chargergirl]

I guess we were all to be impressed that the President canceled his trip to see the coast again. His speech is 5 weeks late in its response. I was "impressed" by the grill team telling us on TV that BP was BAD. Didn't do anything to help those in crisis. Didn't change the fact, as stated above, that when folks try to help themselves they are made to stop. Why is that? It can all be charged to BP. Hashed out there...or is it that we are waiting to assure the damage is so bad that we now have a dead ecosystem? When did it become illegal to save ourselves in this country. It will still be billed and recovered. Do we have to "wait and see" then discuss how terrible it is that the shoreline was not protected. Damn BP! No damn those that will not allow us to help ourselves so that they may be overly self righteous in their media coverage. This is not about headlines...this is about saving our livelihoods & keeping as much safe as we can. BTW where are the big dogs that were screaming for help in Haiti? Where are they now when the coast needs them, the center of the country needs them....aah wait...that's not fashionable we are after all Americans and not a third world country.

[Todd Wilson]

I guess we were all to be impressed that the President canceled his trip to see the coast again. His speech is 5 weeks late in its response. I was "impressed" by the grill team telling us on TV that BP was BAD. Didn't do anything to help those in crisis. Didn't change the fact, as stated above, that when folks try to help themselves they are made to stop. Why is that? It can all be charged to BP. Hashed out there...or is it that we are waiting to assure the damage is so bad that we now have a dead ecosystem? When did it become illegal to save ourselves in this country. It will still be billed and recovered. Do we have to "wait and see" then discuss how terrible it is that the shoreline was not protected. Damn BP! No damn those that will not allow us to help ourselves so that they may be overly self righteous in their media coverage. This is not about headlines...this is about saving our livelihoods & keeping as much safe as we can. BTW where are the big dogs that were screaming for help in Haiti? Where are they now when the coast needs them, the center of the country needs them....aah wait...that's not fashionable we are after all Americans and not a third world country.

YUP!  I couldnt agree more with your comment!   The reason why they made folks stop helping themselves is because the current administration doesnt want people to be able to help themselves. They want you to rely on them and they want to tell you what you can and cant do!

I made a comment weeks ago as to why we were not mobilizing National guard and the public to get together and do what they could along the coast  to protect and or help.  Floods come around here in Kansas and people get together and make sandbags and haul them to where they need to be..........


Todd


Todd

[chargerboy69]

They want you to reply on them and they want to tell you what you can and cant do!



Todd

And we have a winner.  That is it exactly. 

[bull]

YUP!  I couldnt agree more with your comment!   The reason why they made folks stop helping themselves is because the current administration doesnt want people to be able to help themselves. They want you to reply on them and they want to tell you what you can and cant do!
Todd

I don't understand what is going on with these people. The Obama admin (State Dept./Hillary Clinton) has refused offers of help at least 21 times from 18 different countries. There have also been offers of help from James Cameron (who knows how to accomplish deep water tasks), the European Maritime Safety Agency, the European Commission's Monitoring and Information Centre, the International Maritime Organization and the Environment Unit of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

http://politifact.com/florida/statements/2010/jun/16/george-lemieux/white-house-refused-international-oil-spill-aid-fl/

We should not be forced to rely on the government to have our needs met. Not only has govt. proven it can't meet our needs it's incapable of listening to what the public wants. They ignored us during the health care debate and I imagine government-run health care (if it ever happens) will go about as smoothly as this oil debacle has gone.

[Mike DC]

  
We oughtta be sitting down with some popcorn for all this.  The actions of the govt's oil spill response during the last couple of months will be analyzed for decades to come.  



If they want the public helpless then they picked a pretty crazy way to go about it.  When you compare the political damage to the "gains" incurred, IMHO this is about as efficient as building a huge glass air-conditioned dome over the USA to deal with global warming.  


I just see a govt that draws no meaningful distinction between hiring a private company to do a job and doing it themselves.  Their chicken farm gets raided by foxes, and the next day they're contracting with those foxes to have the broken henhouse door repaired.  The phrase "conflict of interest" doesn't seem to be in their vocabulary at all. 

I understand that the govt doesn't have the underwater expertise like the drilling industry itself does, but that's not the point.  They should have immediately sought outside data on every major figure they could get.  (I mean, BP gives them an early estimate on the size of the spill, and they just take that figure at face value?)

                       

[chargerboy69]

I don't understand what is going on with these people. The Obama admin (State Dept./Hillary Clinton) has refused offers of help at least 21 times from 18 different countries. There have also been offers of help from James Cameron (who knows how to accomplish deep water tasks), the European Maritime Safety Agency, the European Commission's Monitoring and Information Centre, the International Maritime Organization and the Environment Unit of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

http://politifact.com/florida/statements/2010/jun/16/george-lemieux/white-house-refused-international-oil-spill-aid-fl/

From everything I have heard B.O. will not lift the Jones Act. Which for those unfamiliar with this act it requires ships working in US waters to be run and operated by US crews, and these crews are union crews. Once again the government is putting the needs of their special interest friends ahead of those of the American people. Believe me, I was not a huge a fan of the last administration either, but at least when Katrina hit, within hours Bush dropped the Jones Act to be able to receive assistance from other countries. I guess it is to much to ask the politicians to put the needs of the American people over there own.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704324304575306881766723718.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion

[bull]

From everything I have heard B.O. will not lift the Jones Act. Which for those unfamiliar with this act it requires ships working in US waters to be run and operated by US crews, and these crews are union crews. Once again the government is putting the needs of their special interest friends ahead of those of the American people. Believe me, I was not a huge a fan of the last administration either, but at least when Katrina hit, within hours Bush dropped the Jones Act to be able to receive assistance from other countries. I guess it is to much to ask the politicians to put the needs of the American people over there own.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704324304575306881766723718.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion

Right, I read about that too but like you said there are ways around it in a time of emergency. That's what I don't get. They could have curbed this thing long ago and I'm relatively sure they could have capped the spill long ago. Somehow someone was able to install a flange on that pipe when they first installed it so why can't they do it now? Was there not oil coming out of it when they first drilled it? I assume there's an agenda behind the government's inaction, probably some new environmental power grab I'm sure.

[Todd Wilson]

From everything I have heard B.O. will not lift the Jones Act. Which for those unfamiliar with this act it requires ships working in US waters to be run and operated by US crews, and these crews are union crews. Once again the government is putting the needs of their special interest friends ahead of those of the American people. Believe me, I was not a huge a fan of the last administration either, but at least when Katrina hit, within hours Bush dropped the Jones Act to be able to receive assistance from other countries. I guess it is to much to ask the politicians to put the needs of the American people over there own.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704324304575306881766723718.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion

I assume there's an agenda behind the government's inaction, probably some new environmental power grab I'm sure.

There is a giant agenda to all this. In their eyes the global warming deal is real and getting worse everyday. The oil companies are the enemy. They will push this clean energy deal as far as they can get it. The price of energy is gonna go up like no one can imagine and its starting all because if this problem. They will kill BP before its overwith. That company is done for. The rest of them will have so many regulations and taxes added to them that our price of fuel will be crazy high priced.


Todd

[Mike DC]

From everything I have heard B.O. will not lift the Jones Act. Which for those unfamiliar with this act it requires ships working in US waters to be run and operated by US crews, and these crews are union crews. Once again the government is putting the needs of their special interest friends ahead of those of the American people. Believe me, I was not a huge a fan of the last administration either, but at least when Katrina hit, within hours Bush dropped the Jones Act to be able to receive assistance from other countries. I guess it is to much to ask the politicians to put the needs of the American people over there own.

Yeah, but nobody has ever exactly had to twish Bush's arm to drop a piece of pro-american-worker legislation.  The phrase "never let a crisis go to waste" comes to mind.  
 
-------------------------------------------


I really don't know what the hell is up with this whole cleanup.  It's being epically botched, that much is clear.  Why it's happening is less clear.  

I'm inclined to suspect short-sightedness & incompetence rather than elaborate long-term sinister plans.  Same with the mess they made over Katrina.    

[bull]

I'm inclined to suspect short-sightedness & incompetence rather than elaborate long-term sinister plans.  Same with the mess they made over Katrina.    

Me too but I just can't see how these people can be this stupid. There's a flange right below the break in the pipe. Somebody at some point was there, 5,000 ft below sea, and installed it. How is it they are now incapable of doing it again?

[Beer]

I am two miles from location and will be doing our part soon in the operations.  BP is doing everything possible to stop the leak as well as contain it. 

The Riser is the pipe that goes to the BOP.  The BOP's weigh about 300 tons. The BOP is the safety device that is supposed to close in the well when the blow outs happen.  The BOP failed for one reason or another (could be multiple of things), as well as some of the routine procedural items that failed such as cementing the well in and displaying the 14 ppg mud with seawater 8.3 ppg.  BOPs are tested every two weeks. If they fail the test they are pulled and repaired.  Because the riser was damaged when the Horizon sunk, it creates the challange of reconnecting to the BOP.  Think of this, trying to connecting a pressure washer hose to another that is spraying wide open (what maybe 125 psi?), now try to do it 5000' at the seabed and increase the pressure possible 3-5 times that, and make the bore 22-36" across to cap. That BOP weighs 300 tons, how do you connect to the damaged riser/BOP, UNLOCK it (keep in mind it held the entire rig in place when it went deadship)...that thing is not going to move...and the well head is probably pretty messed up as well, even if they got the BOP off, it would be unlikely they could latch in with a new BOP and shut it in.

During our fire and boat drill today, I met an person who was on the Horizon when it exploded and he got off the rig. He shared parts of his expierences with me, and how it went down compared to how we are training for the same emergency...8 days after the incident he was on another rig working.

The investigation in time will expose the areas we as an oil industry need to improve with.  Many lessons learned will come out and make the industry safer to work in.

While there are issues in the response, coordinating such an effort is not an easy task, and from my first week back on the rig, I assure you everyones heart and soul is into what we are doing and trying to stop the leak, contain the oil, and recover the oil.

[Mike DC]

                              
                               
The seabed leak may not even be the heart of the problem.


I'm a long way from being an "informed" source about any of this.  But I've heard some people familiar with the oil drilling industry saying that based on the series of events so far, they wonder if the entire well has been compromised in a big way.  Like, if they shut off the flow at the seafloor surface, then it will just start gushing out around the sides of the shaft casing and from other places in the seabed.  The whole seabed rock is fractured (naturally) all around that area, and the first several layers of seabed that the BOP sits on aren't even very dense at all.  

That would help explain the recent aborted top-kill attempt with mud, and why they're so hot after the relief well option instead of any more methods of stopping it at the seabed/BOP.  They can poke the relief wells down below the point of shaft damage and stop trying to hold down the flow with this basically wrecked well.  

--------------------------------------


And along this line of thinking, there would not be much point in stopping the flow at the wellhead on the seabed surface if it's just gonna push out farther down in the wellbore.  

The reservoir pressure itself is the engine behind this flow.  If you decrease the flow at one spot (cap the wellhead) then you increase the presure everwhere else (the rest of the wellbore's casing).  At least at the wellhead you're getting all the spilling oil coming from one single spot, which makes it easier to collect with surface ships.  If the oil starts being pushed out of the well's casing pipes way down below the seafloor there's no telling how many smaller oil seeps will start showing up.  Same oil, more trouble.

[Ponch ®]

I think its funny how all these people that 3 months ago would have said that the federal government interfered too much on state's affairs, that the EPA should be done away with, and the ones who chanted "Drill Baby, Drill" a few years ago are now the same ones blaming the government for not doing enough.

[TK73]

I think its funny how all these people that 3 months ago would have said that the federal government interfered too much on state's affairs, that the EPA should be done away with, and the ones who chanted "Drill Baby, Drill" a few years ago are now the same ones blaming the government for not doing enough.

Would you quit being so observant... people like their hypocrisy to be forgotten...

[chargergirl]

I think its funny how all these people that 3 months ago would have said that the federal government interfered too much on state's affairs, that the EPA should be done away with, and the ones who chanted "Drill Baby, Drill" a few years ago are now the same ones blaming the government for not doing enough.

Not quite. The only lack of sight was the fact that we, at least I, felt that regulations were in place to make something like this unlikely. There are...there haven't been many accidents in the last 40 years. It's horrifying when it happens. The grumbling comes from the fact that help was immediately refused on the national level. Local governments that are trying to help themselves are being told to stop by the Coast Guard. They were attempting to put out the same boom that they requested, were ignored, and purchased themselves; government locally. People that may have a better way to do things are being distinctly ignored. The EPA is extremely necessary and doesn't only deal with this type of disaster. There have been occasions here that the EPA fought with the citizens to make right. I still believe in offshore drilling however I DO feel that this disaster is being allowed to become worse than it should be. ONE MORE THING...nobody has said where those oil "balls" were coming from in the keys. It's not BP...so WHO IS IT?

[bull]

I think its funny how all these people that 3 months ago would have said that the federal government interfered too much on state's affairs, that the EPA should be done away with, and the ones who chanted "Drill Baby, Drill" a few years ago are now the same ones blaming the government for not doing enough.

This statement makes no sense at all. There's a difference between interfering with the affairs of businesses and individuals and helping/providing leadership in a crisis. Right now the feds are standing in the way again. The Obama admin goes to work when the public wants it to sit down and shut up and they do the Three Stooges routine when the public needs help and wants action.

[Ponch ®]

I think its funny how all these people that 3 months ago would have said that the federal government interfered too much on state's affairs, that the EPA should be done away with, and the ones who chanted "Drill Baby, Drill" a few years ago are now the same ones blaming the government for not doing enough.

This statement makes no sense at all. There's a difference between interfering with the affairs of businesses and individuals and helping/providing leadership in a crisis. Right now the feds are standing in the way again. The Obama admin goes to work when the public wants it to sit down and shut up and they do the Three Stooges routine when the public needs help and wants action.

yeah, but even then you can't have it both ways. I for one think the less the feds get involved in anything, the better.

[Todd Wilson]

What the gubment should have done was offer BP all the help it could offer.  Ships Planes and Trains..what ever it took to get people or equipment to the site.  They should have got what public they could and national guard to get things ready along the shore. If BP needed equipment that was overseas then a Air Force plane shoulda took right off and go and get it. If other countrys offered equipment to help then they should have jumped on it. Be ready for the worst and hope for the best.

Instead we make threats about keeping our boot on BP's throat  and getting in the way and or stopping clean up. Threats about taxes and expenses added to off shore drilling.  Talks of seizing assets and trying to push a clean energy plan into motion.



Thanks for the update out there Beer!!!!!!!!


Todd

[bull]

yeah, but even then you can't have it both ways. I for one think the less the feds get involved in anything, the better.

They should be involved when people want them involved. People want the National Guard to show up and help a flooded neighborhood. They want their property and lives protected. They want highways and bridges maintained, etc. If the help (or lack thereof) isn't helping it's not help