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-   -   Louisiana Oil Rig Fire / Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (https://thetfp.com/tfp/general-discussion/154159-louisiana-oil-rig-fire-gulf-mexico-oil-spill.html)

aceventura3 07-06-2010 10:58 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy (Post 2803604)
because, ace, the state and corporations on the scale of bp are aspects of the same system. they operate symbiotically. the maintain each other. this is reality. there is no opposition between the private sector and the state. never has been. the state developed as a mechanism for externalization of costs on the one side and production of consent on the other (a governor in the sense of something that limits how fast a motor can go on the one side, a system of social reproduction on the other).

it's about opinion management, really.
control the frame of reference people think through you control their world.

it's bad for bidness when capitalism fucks up so badly that it can't be fixed in an easy peasy way. it's bad for bidness when a crisis persists and the outlines of the actually existing order start to become obvious.
Again, regarding capitalism in this context, I don't get your point. When government and business collude to the detriment of the common good - that is not capitalism, this is more of a centralized command/control type system.

Also, government (Obama administration) has a "fall guy" in BP, or do they? Evidence is mounting that regulators simply failed. Doesn't this hurt the argument for more regulation, given regulators can not handle the responsibilities they currently have? Is the blame everything on BP routine wearing thin? Who is in charge? Who has been in charge from the beginning? Whose failures are really in question in terms of the response to the spill and clean up?

In my view, Obama has been getting a pass on this from the media, why? Are they starting to turn on him?

ring 07-06-2010 11:16 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy (Post 2803604)
the state and corporations on the scale of bp are aspects of the same system. they operate symbiotically. they maintain each other. this is reality. there is no opposition between the private sector and the state. never has been. .
Ace, this is not an Obama creation.
Yes, the current Standard Operating Systems stay in place.

Are you expecting Obama will/can make an FDR move,
given the state of current, & much more complicated political affairs?

What wand do you see magically waving away decades of past decisions
that have placed us where we now stew?

roachboy 07-07-2010 04:22 AM
Quote:
Three Gallons of Oily Water Collected Today, as Oil Hits Louisiana's Lake Pontchatrain
Crude Continues to Flow From BP's Well, as Oil Hits All Five Gulf Coast States
By JEFFREY KOFMAN

July 6, 2010—

Sidelined by the choppy seas that have plagued oil spill cleanup efforts for a week, skimming boats today collected just three gallons of oily water from the entire coasts of Alabama, Mississippi and Florida combined.

Lingering high winds from Hurricane Alex have kept seas rough for days, meaning skimmer boats have been unable to work. The boats have idled at their docks, even as the waves overtopped booms and brought oil further ashore.

Oil Hits All Five Gulf Coast States

On Day 78 of the oil spill crisis, thick, dark oil continues to spew from BP's well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and that oil has now marred all five states along the Gulf Coast, a 550-mile stretch from Texas to Florida.

Tests confirmed today that tar balls found on Texas beaches are from the BP spill.

Oil Reaches Lake Pontchatrain

The oil has even reached Louisiana's Lake Pontchatrain, north of New Orleans, home to some of the best commercial and recreational fishing in the Gulf, and now its waters are all off limits.

Today, fisherman Mike Maggio pulled tar balls from the lake's waters.

"I didn't know what it was," he said, calling it "heartbreaking."

The tar has been blown in by the stiff winds that haven't let up for a week.

Lines of barges have been placed to keep oil out, but it's impossible to seal the huge body of water, really a bay, from the open seas. So far, about 1,700 pounds of oily waste have been collected, but there is plenty more oil that could be coming.

Today, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal again lashed out at what he says has been an inadequate federal response that has rejected local ideas.

"You keep saying no to our plans, what's your plan?" Jindal said.
BP Oil Spill: Oil Hits All Five Gulf Coast States, as Skimming Remains on Hold Due to Wind - ABC News

meanwhile...

aceventura3 07-07-2010 01:45 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ring (Post 2803659)
Ace, this is not an Obama creation.
Yes, the current Standard Operating Systems stay in place.
I have a good memory, and I am amazed by the rhetoric Obama used against the systems and the people in charge of them compared to now.
That is the starting point - understand that most of my rants against Obama is just my way of venting frustration. I just don't like b.s. artists, and he is a master at it.

Quote:
Are you expecting Obama will/can make an FDR move,
given the state of current, & much more complicated political affairs?
I expect a Reagan approach. Use the office to inspire great things, and get out of the way and let it happen. Some consider FDR one of our greatest Presidents, I don't.

Quote:
What wand do you see magically waving away decades of past decisions that have placed us where we now stew?
Assuming, I was Obama, and I actually believed the words that came out of my mouth - I would have made major change in every institution of government. In the context of the spill, he admits his administration acted too slow in changing the culture of the regulatory agencies. If I believed the regulatory agencies were corrupt I would have spent time fixing that before doing a lot of things he has done.

And, if I felt I could not trust BP, the wand I would have waved would have been to "fire" them from plugging the leak and the clean up (simply send them the bill), reinspect all their rigs, and start canceling contracts if their performance was substandard across the board, and move to freeze assets until the matters got resolved. That would have happened in the first week, and at any other point in time if I ever felt they failed to maintain my faith and trust in their performance and ability to get the job done. Otherwise, they would be my partner, we would work as a team, under my leadership, with me being accountable. That's how I roll, perhaps that is not Obama's thing - if not perhaps he should have stayed in academia teaching Constitutional law.

IdeoFunk 07-07-2010 08:21 PM
The more oil spills change, the more they stay the same. [VIDEO]

it's looking more and more like we're months away from still actually stopping this problem.

roachboy 07-08-2010 06:58 AM
so first there's this new factoid:

Quote:
BP Sets New Spill Target
Aims to Cap Well by July 27 Earnings; Backup Plans as Obama, Cameron Meet

By MONICA LANGLEY

BP PLC is pushing to fix its runaway Gulf oil well by July 27, possibly weeks before the deadline the company is discussing publicly, in a bid to show investors it has capped its ballooning financial liabilities, according to company officials.

At the same time, BP is readying a series of backup plans in case its current operations go awry. These include connecting the rogue well to existing pipelines in two nearby underwater gas and oil fields, according to company and administration officials.

Much of the additional planning has been pushed by the U.S. government, which has urged BP to develop what one official called the "backup to the backup plan." Both BP and the federal government are concentrating on their next steps, particularly because of uncertainty caused by the imminent hurricane season and the protracted political and financial damage caused by the endless spill.

Both BP and the Coast Guard continue to state publicly they're aiming to have a fix in place in early to mid-August. BP has discussed its backup plans only with administration officials, who in turn have briefed President Barack Obama.

The July 27 target date is the day the company is expected to report second-quarter earnings and will speak to investors. BP also wants to show progress by July 20, the day U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron is scheduled to visit the White House.

"In a perfect world with no interruptions, it's possible to be ready to stop the well between July 20 and July 27," said the head of BP's Gulf Coast restoration unit, managing director Bob Dudley, in an interview. He added that this "perfect case" is threatened by the hurricane season and is "unlikely."

On Wednesday, on a visit to the Discoverer Enterprise, the ship that's collecting oil from the well, Mr. Dudley got word of a nine-day period of clear weather starting Friday, a period that could prove critical to the effort.

BP is drilling two relief wells through which it will pump material designed to seal the leaking well. One is now 12 feet horizontally and 300 feet vertically from the target spot.

Billy Brown, president of Blackhawk Specialty Tools, a BP contractor helping with the relief-well process, said Wednesday the effort is progressing ahead of schedule.

Mindful of prior snafus, BP has quietly crafted backup plans. The first would force spewing oil to a depleted gas field on the ocean floor two miles away. The second would move the oil to an existing underwater oil field nine miles away. Both require laying flow lines, either flexible or hard steel piping, to connect the leaking well to existing wellheads on these older sites.
Finding Relief

Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon accident, BP began drilling relief wells in hopes of stopping the flow of oil. Click to enlarge graphic and see how the process works.

The engineers described their plans at a seven-hour meeting last week featuring BP engineers and Energy Secretary Steve Chu, held at BP's Houston crisis center. Mr. Chu said he told them: "Force yourself to think each one will fail." In an interview, he added: "We're in new territory full of perils, and nothing is a slam dunk."

BP's Mr. Dudley reviewed Wednesday the company's engineering work with retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who heads the Obama administration's effort.

Flying by helicopter to the ship collecting oil, the two men discussed the backup options. All around the ship, 43 miles offshore, the ocean was tinged orange.

The stakes are huge for BP, which has lost nearly half of its market capitalization since the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig April 20.

The company's board is setting up a "Gulf of Mexico" committee for a few directors to delve deeply into the disaster's safety and financial implications.

When they announce earnings July 27, BP officials hope to provide investors with more information on the estimated liabilities from the Gulf spill.

One official said the company wants to be able to describe the oil spill as finite, not infinite, a moment that would allow it to start calculating the total potential liabilities under U.S. law.

To prepare Prime Minister Cameron to speak with Mr. Obama about one of the U.K.'s largest companies, British Ambassador to the U.S. Nigel Sheinwald last Friday attended BP briefings in Houston and New Orleans and then toured the damaged Florida coast. He also met Coast Guard officials.

Support ships are seen near the Discoverer Enterprise drilling rig, right, as they continue the effort to recover oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill site on July 3, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana.

At Wednesday's trip to the spill site, Mr. Dudley and Adm. Allen evaluated a prospect for controlling the spill—a newly designed cap to replace the leaky one currently directing oil to ships on the surface.

The risk: removing the old cap could exacerbate the spill in the short run.

At the administration's prodding, BP created a new device called an "autonomous subsea dispersant system." Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson told BP to create such a capability to monitor and measure chemicals used underwater to break up the oil. The large volume of dispersants used has concerned scientists and some government officials.

In recent days, the company has installed new battery-powered equipment on the ocean floor that will inject dispersant into the flowing well. Typically, the dispersants are controlled by ships on the surface, but they may have to move if storms hit.

Separately, the BP-dominated consortium that operates the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, Alyeska Pipeline Service Co, said Chief Executive Kevin Hostler will retire in September.

Mr. Hostler, a former senior BP executive, had faced accusations from U.S. lawmakers that efforts to cut costs put the integrity of the pipeline at risk.

A spokesperson for Alyeska couldn't be reached for comment.
—Angel Gonzalez and Guy Chazan contributed to this article.
BP Sets New Spill Target - WSJ.com

which is i suppose a good bit of infotainment to have, the new bp projections concerning what might be the case with the relief well/kill if you put aside reality and all it's nasty changy-ness....

but then in this morning's ny times, lead story front page:

Quote:
Owner of Exploded Rig Is Known for Testing Rules
By BARRY MEIER

Transocean is the world’s largest offshore drilling company, but until its Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April, few Americans outside the energy business had heard of it. It is well known, however, in a number of other countries — for testing local laws and regulations.

Human rights advocates have called for an investigation into Transocean’s recent dealings in Myanmar. They cite its involvement in a drilling project that apparently included a company that is suspected of having ties to two men accused of laundering money for Myanmar’s repressive government, which is under United States trade sanctions.

Transocean has disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission filings that its drilling equipment was shipped by a forwarder through Iran and that until last year it held a stake in a company that did business in Syria. The State Department says Syria and Iran sponsor terrorism.

In Norway, Transocean is the subject of a criminal investigation into possible tax fraud. The company has said in S.E.C. filings that Norwegian officials could assess it about $840 million in taxes and penalties. The filings also said that a final ruling against Transocean could have a “material impact” on the company, which has suffered a drop in its stock price of more than 40 percent since the Gulf of Mexico incident.

And in the United States, a federal bankruptcy judge recently found that one of Transocean’s merger partners had repeatedly abused the legal system to try to avoid potential liability in a pollution case in Louisiana. Transocean is also the target of tax inquiries in the United States and Brazil.

Transocean declined though an outside spokesman to make company officials available for comment. The company said in a statement that it had always acted appropriately and believed that it would prevail in any investigations.

It is not unusual for large multinational companies like Transocean to find themselves in legal or tax controversies around the world and Transocean has noted the issues that face it in public filings. The company’s most significant safety problem overseas involved a 2007 episode in which eight people died off the coast of Scotland when a support vessel capsized while towing a huge chain used to position a Transocean rig. A Norwegian board of inquiry found that missteps by several parties, including Transocean and the support vessel’s owner, had contributed to the incident.

But the company’s practices in the United States and abroad have come under new scrutiny since the oil spill in the gulf. Last week, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, said that the panel would investigate whether Transocean had used its corporate base in Switzerland to exploit United States tax laws.

In its dealings with lawmakers, Transocean has stood its ground. Last month, in response to a demand that Transocean delay a planned distribution to shareholders of $1 billion in dividends, the company declared that paying the dividend “in no way affects Transocean’s ability to meet it legal obligations.”

Transocean has largely blamed BP, the well’s operator, for the spill, describing it as a company that took shortcuts on safety. Transocean has had a long relationship with BP, and for the last two years, BP has been Transocean’s largest single customer, accounting for 12 percent of its $11.5 billion in operating revenue in 2009, public filings show.

Industry analysts said that strong ties between the companies reflected the fact that both had staked their financial futures on pushing oil exploration as far off shore as possible. Transocean, which drills in some 30 countries and employs more than 18,000 people, owns nearly half of the 50 or so deepwater platforms in the world.

“These people are capable and considered the gold standard of deepwater drilling,” said Peter Vig, managing director at RoundRock Capital Management, an energy hedge fund in Dallas.

Transocean’s evolution into the world’s biggest deep-sea driller follows a decade-long acquisition and merger spree.

It began in 1996 when a Texas-based company called Sonat OffshoreDrilling acquired Transocean ASA, then Norway’s largest offshore driller. Three years later, the company, now known as Transocean, shifted its headquarters for tax purposes to the Cayman Islands from Houston, though a vast majority of its executives still work in Houston. In subsequent years, it acquired or merged with other drillers including R&B Falcon, the drilling unit of Schlumberger and GlobalSantaFe. Then, in 2008, for tax purposes, it moved its headquarters again, this time to Switzerland from the Cayman Islands.

The tax investigation in Norway involves how Transocean represented the sale of 12 drilling rigs owned by its Norwegian subsidiary to another company unit, said a spokeswoman for an agency known as Okokrim, which investigates economic and environmental crimes.

The case “raises several important questions regarding the taxation of multinational corporations,” said the spokeswoman, Mie Skarpaas, who declined to discuss the investigation further.

A Norwegian newspaper, Dagens Naeringsliv, reported several years ago that a Transocean rig, while returning from a repair yard in Norway to a drilling site in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, diverted for several hours into British waters. During that time, Transocean transferred ownership of the rig between subsidiaries and later argued that it did not have to pay Norwegian taxes because profits on the transaction had been earned outside the country. The company subsequently settled the case involving that rig.

In 2008, Norway’s highest court ruled that Okokrim and tax authorities could share documents and computer files seized during raids of Transocean and Ernst & Young which was the company’s tax adviser. That ruling also said that at least three people, including two Ernst & Young employees, were under investigation in connection with the episode.

In its statement, Transocean said that its “tax returns are materially correct as filed” and that it “will vigorously defend any claims to the contrary.” A spokesman for Ernst & Young, declined to comment.

In Myanmar, formerly Burma, a Transocean rig was under contract to a Chinese government-controlled oil company, Cnooc, as recently as this spring. Another apparent stakeholder in the drilling site, according to Cnooc, was a Singapore business. That business has been linked to two men identified by the United States Treasury Department in 2008 as major operatives and money launderers for the Myanmar government. At the time, American authorities described both men as longtime heroin traffickers.

Transocean said in a statement that its contract was with Cnooc and did not mention either man. Transocean also said it had not violated the trade sanctions against Myanmar. “No Transocean affiliate that is subject to the U.S. ban has ever done business in Myanmar,” the company said.

In the United States, the recent ruling by a federal bankruptcy court judge involved one of Transocean’s merger partners.

Judge Kevin Gross of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware found in May that the partner, GlobalSantaFe, had entered into a misleading bankruptcy scheme that included the use of shell companies to avoid potential liabilities in an oil pollution case. Judge Gross found the actions so egregious that he ordered GlobalSantaFe and related units to pay $2 million in sanctions to another company involved in the case.

In a statement, Transocean said the issues involving GlobalSantaFe had occurred before their 2007 merger.

Judge Gross did not mention Transocean by name. But in his ruling, he said that GlobalSantaFe and its units were still involved in a “gamesmanship with the judicial system” to thwart potential claims.

Asked about Judge Gross’s ruling, Transocean said, “We are confident we’ll prevail in the remaining legal issues that have yet to be decided.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/bu...ef=global-home

and maybe you wonder....hmm...what's this add up to?

o hey...lookit this:

Quote:
Hayward Sees Abu Dhabi Prince as BP Seeks Support
By Zainab Fattah and Henry Meyer - Jul 7, 2010

BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward said he had a “very good” meeting with Abu Dhabi’s crown prince as analysts said the oil producer may be looking for support from Middle East investors.

Hayward, who spoke to reporters as he left the United Arab Emirates after a 24-hour visit, could be seeking money from sovereign wealth funds after BP incurred billions of dollars in liabilities from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, UBS AG said. The crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is chairman of Mubadala Development Co., an investment arm of the Abu Dhabi Government.

“The option for chasing strategic investors in the Middle East is a sound one,” Saud Masud, the Dubai-based head of Middle East research at UBS AG, said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday. “They have significant capital; then they also invest for the long-term.”

Sovereign wealth funds may be interested in buying BP stock after its price dropped by about half since the start of the worst U.S. oil spill. Hayward last month pledged to set aside $20 billion to compensate the spill’s victims and finance the cleanup. To pay for it, the company halted dividend payments and planned to sell $10 billion in assets across the globe.

BP shares rose 16.55 pence, or 4.8 percent, to 362.05 pence in London, the highest close since June 11.

BP Plc would be willing to sell a 10 percent stake in the company to Abu Dhabi, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an unidentified person with knowledge of the matter.

The Meeting with the crown prince was “very good,” said Hayward as he arrived to board a private jet preparing to depart from Abu Dhabi. “It was a great delight to meet with our long- term partners and friends.”

BP has said it is not looking to issue new equity.

‘Less Pressure’

The London-based oil giant would benefit from attracting new capital by easing the pressure for rapid sales, said Rachel Ziemba, a senior analyst who tracks sovereign wealth funds at Nouriel Roubini’s New-York based Roubini Global Economics.

“Raising capital gives more room for maneuver by putting less pressure for asset sales,” she said by phone from London. “Buyers may demand a discount.”

Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund and Mubadala and the International Petroleum Investment Co. in Abu Dhabi are the most likely to be interested in acquiring a BP stake, Ziemba said.

Abu Dhabi’s sovereign funds hold a combined $500 billion, according to Roubini Global Economics.

‘Makes Sense’

Sovereign funds traditionally “have invested in the European and western markets in large cap names, and when you can pick up BP at 50 percent cheaper than its recent highs, then it makes a lot of sense for both parties,” Masud at UBS said.

Spokesmen for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and the International Petroleum Investment Co. declined to comment on whether Hayward was scheduled to meet officials there. A spokesman for the Qatar Investment Authority also declined to comment.

Hayward has been touring countries where BP has exploration and production operations. He was in Russia last week and in Azerbaijan yesterday before arriving in Abu Dhabi.

BP produces oil in the sheikhdom, where it is a partner with state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., known as Adnoc, in a venture that dates back to the first oil concession granted in the 1930s in what is now the U.A.E.

A Saudi business team, including energy industry investors, is seeking to acquire between 10 percent and 15 percent of BP’s shares and will hold talks with the company, Al Eqtisadiah reported today, without saying where it got the information.

‘Good Buy’

BP is a “good buy” after the drop in the share price, Shokri Ghanem, Libya’s top oil official, said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday. He’s advising Libya’s sovereign wealth fund to take a stake in BP.

The Kuwait Investment Office is in talks with BP about increasing its holding in the company, the Guardian newspaper said on its website on July 4. Kuwait does not plan to increase its stake in BP Plc “for now,” the newspaper Al-Rai said today.

“They are knocking on doors to see who they can get on their side, and countries are looking to see what opportunities there may be,” said PFC Energy Dubai-based analyst Thaddeus Malesa. A quick deal was unlikely as potential buyers would carry out substantial due diligence, he said
Hayward Sees Abu Dhabi Prince as BP Seeks Support - Bloomberg

aside:
Sovereign wealth fund - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

a+b=bp is able to put the infotainment it wants in the outlets it wants when it wants.

proof:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/bu...obal/08bp.html

QED.

hooray free american press.
well fucking done.

meanwhile, a quick assessment of the claims regarding the relief well:

The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Hitting the Well Annulus - and Open Thread

Baraka_Guru 07-08-2010 10:25 AM
Not sure if this bit has come to light here (or in this way) or not, but....

Quote:
In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day.
Recovery effort falls vastly short of BP's promises – washingtonpost.com

Ouch.

roachboy 07-08-2010 10:56 AM
which explains this:

Quote:
Obama Presses BP on Procedures to Recover More Oil
By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — With a weeklong window of favorable weather opening in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration is pressing BP to move quickly on two operations that could double the amount of oil captured from the gushing well.

An oil recovery ship known as the Helix Producer, capable of capturing up to 25,000 barrels a day, has been waiting near the crippled well for more than a week, unable to connect to the well because of high winds and waves from Hurricane Alex.

The weather has also delayed deployment of a new, tighter-fitting cap for the well that not only will be able to capture more of the spewing oil but could potentially shut down all oil releases from the well. Swapping the caps requires disconnecting the well from a recovery ship, the Discoverer Enterprise, potentially increasing the flow of oil by as much as 15,000 barrels a day for two to three days.

The two operations were to have begun a week ago and take place in sequence. The administration now wants BP to move forward with both at the same time to take advantage of a period of seven or eight days of predicted calm weather.

The administration sent BP a letter Thursday asking for details of how the company planned to proceed with attaching the Helix and replacing the cap while minimizing the unimpeded flow of oil during the changeover. The government wants to know how much of the oil BP can skim, burn or disperse during the swap.

Government officials expect a quick answer and plan to decide by Friday how quickly to proceed.

Meanwhile, work is proceeding on two relief wells that offer the promise of permanently killing the well. One of the wells is within 200 feet of the spewing Macondo well, Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who is leading the federal response to the spill, said in a briefing Thursday.

A top BP executive told The Wall Street Journal and NBC on Wednesday that under the most favorable conditions, the well could be killed by July 27, although he cautioned that the weather or technical problems could push that back. The original completion date was mid-August.

A senior administration official dismissed the new date as probably overly optimistic. “It needs to be done in a safe and responsible manner,” the official said, discussing the matter with reporters on condition of anonymity because the official is not designated by the government to speak about the spill. “We don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation of a date.”

“Our timeline is still mid-August,” the official added.

At Thursday’s briefing, Admiral Allen also stuck to the later completion date.

“We are down to the final days and weeks of closing in to a point where we can intercept the wells,” he said. “Our target date remains the middle of August.”

The more immediate plan is to replace the cap and bring in additional vessels to capture oil. When the Helix is on line and the new cap in place, the system will be able to collect as much as 50,000 barrels a day of a flow that is estimated to be as high as 60,000 barrels a day. Additional ships could capture another 30,000 barrels.

The new cap also gives additional flexibility in the case of extreme weather. The new system will allow collection vessels to move on and off station faster if storms blow up.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/us...ef=global-home

beneath all the corporate puffery,

roachboy 07-09-2010 08:10 AM
Quote:
Oil in Hancock marshes
By DONNA MELTON and GEOFF PENDER
WAVELAND — Oily goo coated grass along Jackson Marsh on Thursday as quarter-sized tar patties and oily sheen floated southward with the tide back into the Gulf.

It’s the first Mississippi marsh area to be invaded by the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker said as he surveyed the site with his wife, Gayle.

But also Thursday, officials with the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in east Jackson County reported oily tar and sheen entering marshes there, at Pointe aux Chenes Bay, although the extent of that intrusion was difficult to judge because the waterways are shallow and not easily navigable.

Hancock County District 1 Supervisor David Yarborough and Waveland Mayor Tommy Longo requested in mid-June that the oil disaster command build a sand berm on the north side of Beach Boulevard and silt fencing at the outfall. Both protective measures have been promised, but they’ve seen neither. “It was ignored,” Yarborough said. “Nobody did anything.”

Wicker said he requested an OK from U.S. Coast Cmdr. Jason Merriweather, the state’s deputy incident commander, for immediate permission and funding to implement the local authorities’ plans.

Mississippi’s oil-disaster plan from early on was to spot and fight the oil beyond the barrier islands, and try to prevent it from entering the Mississippi Sound and, more important, any marshlands.

So far that plan has not appeared to work.

Weeks ago oil and tar began landing on barrier islands without being spotted in advance. Gov. Haley Barbour and others said they got a “wakeup call” the BP/Coast Guard command didn’t have enough boats and aircraft looking for oil headed here. BP supplied more boats, and the state and feds stepped up air surveillance.

Soon after, oil and tar began entering the Mississippi Sound, and state leaders appeared surprised to learn the BP operation didn’t have skimmers on hand to help with the state’s plan of keeping it from landing on mainland beaches.

The state is buying and leasing what will be a fleet of 27 skimmers, with the first eight already delivered and more coming online in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, oily tar has been landing on beaches — including some large amounts in the Long Beach-Pass Christian area Wednesday.

Local government leaders in recent weeks have said it appears BP and the federal government is focused on cleaning up after oil hits beaches and marshes and is leaving any protection and prevention up to them.

State Rep. Brandon Jones, D-Pascagoula, said Thursday oil fouling Mississippi marshes is a sign “our response is starting to look like its own little disaster.”

“It’s kind of a results-oriented thing,” Jones said. “Setting up a perimeter around the islands, that sounded great. But then oil comes in one Saturday, and nobody’s there to welcome it, much less to stop it.

“And here we are weeks later, still having discussions about getting skimmers and where they are going to be, and oil washing into marshes. ... It’s one thing not to be ready on Day 1. But it’s a whole other animal not to be ready on Day 70-something.”

Dan Turner, spokesman for Gov. Haley Barbour, said Thursday “resources have been a problem” since early on.

“But second-guessing what has occurred up until now will not get us where we need to be,” Turner said.

“We are contracting to build skimmers, we have leased skimmers and we have people who are trained and ready to go. … One thing we can’t do is throw up our hands and say it’s unavoidable.

“We can go out and try to collect as much as we can, with skimmers … whatever resources we can. The real concern is still capping the well. This is going to be a long-term challenge.”

Longo said oil at Jackson Marsh could easily make its way to the other bayous, streams and lagoons.

“It’s the end-all to a lot of tributaries that meander into Hancock County,” he said. Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Teams were expected to start cleaning the Jackson Marsh soon, but neither Longo or Yarborough knew when that might begin.

Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality spokesman Robbie Wilbur said the oil was confined to the grass just north of the road where the culvert drains, with less than a quarter-acre of oiled vegetation visible.

Water samples were taken, he said.

Wilbur said the marsh would not be cleaned.

“Since it is already damaged, currently this oiled vegetation will be left in place as a barrier in the event additional oiling takes place in the next few days with our current weather predictions and oil forecasts,” Wilbur said.

Response contractors will remove the tar patties floating in the water along the edges of the marsh, he said.

Hancock County has at least a dozen outfalls like Jackson Marsh and many were seeing the same type of contamination, Longo said, though DEQ confirmed oiled vegetation only at the Jackson Marsh location.

“This shouldn’t have happened, but it did,” he said. “We can’t continue to let this happen over and over again.”

Late Thursday afternoon, Longo saw workers putting up the protective fencing in front of Buccaneer State Park and at Jackson Marsh, but he feared it wasn’t being installed correctly. He said it looked as if they used “tomato stakes” to hold the fence up. “As soon as the water hits it, it’s going to knock it down,” he said.

Elsewhere in the county one lone worker with a pressure washer blasted tar balls and patties off Beach Boulevard, which was reopened Thursday afternoon after just one day’s closure.

A release from the DEQ on Wednesday had said the cleanup could take three to five days.

Hancock County Emergency Manager Brian Adam said county supervisors reopened the road Thursday, but portions of it could still be closed during cleanup. Detours are already in place for several sections of the road for construction.

At Lakeshore Drive and Beach Boulevard, near the Silver Slipper Casino, black waves rolled ashore, bringing tar balls and a grassy material onto a few hundred yards of beach.

Though the material looked like oil, it was more likely debris flushed from marsh areas by recent storms, Adam said.

It was still shocking to people to see black water crashing onto a beach already littered with thousands of gooey brown globs of oil.

“Oh my God,” said Jessica Thomas, 31, of Pass Christian, who was snapping pictures with her digital camera while talking to her mother on her cell phone. “Oh my God.”

She stood on the sand in a stretch of tar balls.

Thomas, whose parents live in Waveland, came to the closed beach to find work with a SCAT team after being turned away at the WIN Job Center.

“It makes me want to cry,” she said. “I have a 6-week-old son who will never be able to enjoy this Coast like I did.”

The beach from Nicholson Avenue to Lakeshore Drive in Waveland remained closed Thursday as cleanup crews worked to remove tar balls and other contaminated debris that had begun washing onshore Saturday. Barbour has called for a year-long study by state agencies to examine the economic impact of the BP oil disaster on the state.

The state Institutions of Higher Learning and departments of Employment Security, Environmental Quality, Marine Resources, Revenue and the Mississippi Development Authority and Gulf Coast Business Council will work on the study.

The study is estimated to cost $600,000, funded equally by BP and anticipated grant money from the U.S. Economic Development Administration.

“We need a clear grasp on how this oil spill will impact the state of Mississippi and local communities for years to come,” Barbour said.
Oil in Hancock marshes - Waveland - SunHerald.com

barbour shucking and jiving aside, the simple fact is that there's no concerted response out there directed at keeping the oil away from marshes or for dealing with it once it arrives.

this is entirely baffling to me.

i hope i'm wrong...

roachboy 07-10-2010 06:16 AM
this link takes you to a interactive timeline that allows scrolling through time.
it's useful as an antidote to the fragmentation of the sense of duration that can follow from the flat world of the dominant media (off the edge of attention is off the world altogether) and of a long thread like this one (in the microcosm).

BP oil spill: interactive timeline | Environment | guardian.co.uk

the official volunteer site:

Serve.gov | Gulf Coast Oil Spill: How You Can Help

a rather grim real-time statistics projection website.

Realtime Stats on the Amount of Oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

the conversion which tell us the number of olympic swimming pools that the oil could fill doesnt seem to be updating. it stopped at 171 bad in the old days when only an estimated 661000 bbl or so had leaked. there's a bit over twice that now. so maybe 350?

meanwhile, the weather's apparently good today so bp is starting the process of swapping out the cap on the leaking well for another that's tighter.
here's the plan:

The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Hooking up Helix Producer and Plans for New Cap - and Open Thread


and a lousiana based page that's about gathering local/granular information about the oil and its consequences & directing folk toward resources.

Communities on the Horizon

the organizing is difficult to get one's head around from a distance....

roachboy 07-13-2010 04:07 AM
there's finally some reason for guarded optimism concerning the containment of the oil from the leak itself....

Quote:
BP Says New Well Cap Installed
By HENRY FOUNTAIN and ALAN COWELL

NEW ORLEANS — As BP announced it had successfully attached a new cap on a runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico, the company prepared on Tuesday to test whether the gusher could be stopped completely.

For the duration of the test, which will be a minimum of 6 hours and could extend up to 48 hours,” a BP press release said, the cap will be closed, “effectively shutting in the well.”

“It is expected, although cannot be assured, that no oil will be released to the ocean for the duration of the test. This will not, however, be an indication that flow from the well bore has been permanently stopped,” the press release said.

It noted that the capping system has “never before has been deployed at these depths or under these conditions, and its efficiency and ability to contain the oil and gas cannot be assured.”

Earlier, Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said valves on the cap will be closed and for the first time since the disaster began in late April, the oil should stop leaking.

If the tests on the well show the pressure rising and holding — an indication that the well is intact, with no significant damage to the casing pipe that runs the length of the well bore to 13,000 feet below the sea floor — BP, working with government scientists, could decide to leave the valves closed, effectively shutting off the well like a cap on a soda bottle.

“The best-case scenario is that pressures rise to the point we anticipate they would,” Mr. Suttles said at a briefing on Monday. “We’d likely be able to keep the well shut in.”

On the other hand, the tests could show pressures that are lower than expected, Mr. Suttles said, an indication that the well is damaged. That could mean that oil and gas are leaking into the surrounding rock.

In that case, keeping the cap closed could damage the well further. The valves would have to be reopened, he said, and oil would start escaping from the well again, although much of it, and perhaps eventually all, would be funneled through pipes to surface ships.

A technician with knowledge of the operation said that it was unlikely that the well would be left shut beyond the test period, given the risk that the pressure could eventually cause problems within the well and given that with the new cap BP should soon be able to collect all the oil.

“Do I want to make that bet that there’s sufficient inherent strength in that well path to keep that well contained?” said the technician, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the work. “Why would we take that chance?”

Mr. Suttles said that engineers and scientists would evaluate risks based on the pressure results, and that the various collection systems — which would be shut down during the tests — would be on standby if it were decided to leave the well shut in.

“If we did discover a problem, we could resume containment operations,” he said.

If containment were resumed, either at the end of the test period or later, it would continue until the company could complete the relief well work — by the end of July or August at the earliest. Mr. Suttles said that even if the new cap was kept closed, the relief well work would continue “ultimately to make sure this well can never flow to surface again.”

It appeared that BP’s latest subsea engineering effort proceeded smoothly, with few of the hitches that marred some earlier attempts. Removal of the old, loose-fitting cap went quickly, and clearing the way for the new cap by removing six 50-pound bolts that held a stub of riser pipe was straightforward.

On Monday evening, video from the seafloor showed the cap being lowered onto a connector pipe that had been installed the day before. The cap’s latching mechanism had a sticker on the side that read, “THINK twice, act once!!”

Perhaps learning from previous frustrations, engineers had made plenty of contingency plans, including having another loose-fitting cap on standby in case there were significant setbacks with the tighter-fitting one. Backup tools were available to help get the pipe stub off if the first one, called an overshot tool, did not work. The additional tools were not needed.

Engineers had performed dry runs, on land, of the installation of the cap, a 75-ton assemblage of forged steel, with three hydraulic valves, or rams, that are much like those on the blowout preventer that failed when the blowout occurred April 20. An animated video was produced to show technicians at the well site, 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana, how the work would proceed, to help coordinate the movement of vessels and remotely operated submersibles.

The new cap was attached to the connecting pipe with a hydraulic latching device. Antifreeze was pumped around the latch in an effort to avoid the formation of hydrates, icelike crystals of methane and water that could affect the latching mechanism and that scuttled an earlier containment attempt.

The work crews did encounter minor delays in starting up a new collection system that could divert up to 25,000 barrels of oil a day to a surface ship, the Helix Producer, Mr. Suttles said. That system began operating on Monday, he said, and was expected to reach full capacity over several days.

The work on the new cap began on Saturday, when the old one was removed. That cap had been funneling about 15,000 barrels of oil a day. Since then, oil has been gushing largely unchecked from the top of the well.

If the pressure tests show that the well is damaged and the valves have to be reopened, full containment of the oil would probably not occur for several weeks, until one or two more ships could be brought in to handle more of the flow. That would raise total collection capacity to more than 60,000 barrels a day, the current high-end estimate of the well’s flow rate. Halting the gusher would then await the completion of the first relief well.

Henry Fountain reported from New Orleans, and Alan Cowell from London.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/us...ef=global-home

though there's alot more of this optimism business at the start of the article than there is by the end, and this a function of the pressure testing that is required before the new cap is sealed, testing which may answer the question of whether there is damage further down in the well or not. there's been alot of speculation about this. now i suppose someone will know.

meanwhile, the presidential commission appointed to find out what happened (again) opened hearing and was told about one of those fine rational pushmepullyou dynamics that capitalism can set into motion except of course the outcomes aren't always so great:

Quote:
BP oil spill: Barack Obama's investigation hears of 'friction'

• Commission told Transocean should have shut well
• Inquiry on rig blast starts with effects of disaster


A commission appointed by Barack Obama to uncover the cause of America's worst environmental disaster turned its sights today on the clash of wills between BP and the operator of the doomed Deepwater Horizon rig.

In the high-stakes world of offshore drilling, there was in-built conflict between oil companies, such as BP, and rig operators, such as Transocean, the commission was told on the opening day of public hearings at a New Orleans hotel.

"There is natural friction between safety and caution and meeting schedules," said Larry Dickerson, who is the chief executive of Diamond Offshore Drilling, Transocean's main rival. "Our customers push us."

But he said the rig operator – in this case, Transocean – should have exercised its power to shut down BP's well operation before the blowout. "The drill company is sitting there with its hands on the brake," he said. "They have the responsibility to do that."

With the spill entering its 13th week, BP said it had successfully fitted a tighter cap over the well, a step towards a containment system that could potentially trap all the leaking oil.

The oil company will test the cap and pressures in the well for much of Tuesday, before determining whether it can begin capturing more oil.

Kent Wells, a senior vice-president for BP America, told the hearing it would take two or three days to determine the effectiveness of the seal.

Bob Graham, the former Democratic senator who is co-chair of the commission, opened the hearings by promising to press hard to shed light on oil industry safety practices as well as government oversight. "Was the Deepwater Horizon an oil rig that operated outside the normal standards of safety, or was it representative of other rigs?" he said.

The commission was almost swept off course by the controversy over Obama's efforts to put a stop to new drilling projects in the Gulf. Many are furious at Obama for seeking a six-month ban on new deepwater drilling. The administration issued a new, more limited ban today.

Members of Congress and oil executives argued that the administration had gone too far in restricting drilling, and that the catastrophe in the Gulf was a one-off caused by BP's recklessness. "The Macondo well was a highly unstable and volatile well even before the blow-out," said Steve Scalise, a Republican member of Congress.

However, Cynthia Sarthou of the Gulf Restoration Network noted that Chevron and Exxon had a similar history of safety violations, and Chevron had been fined more than $1.2m in the last 10 years

The commission has until 15 December to produce a definitive account of the causes for the explosion, and offer recommendations to prevent a repeat.

Graham said he would not be satisfied with a nuts-and-bolts explanation. "There is almost a cultural issue in the industry and in the government agencies responsible for monitoring industry," he said.

William Reilly, the commission's other chairman, who was head of the Environmental Protection Agency when the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in Alaska 20 years ago, also promised a far-ranging investigation. "We will follow the facts wherever they lead and determine the cause and the root cause of the event."

Other commission members said today the team had deliberately opted for a softly-softly launch to the investigation, hoping to draw attention to the economic and environmental consequences of the spill.

That approach won over some locals. Sal Sunseri, owner of a century-old oyster firm, appeared at the commission to say his business was facing ruin. "What I am focused on is capping the well … cleaning it up," he said. Determining the causes of the explosion came second.

But members of the public were not so easily satisfied. At the end of the day, dozens lined up to demand BP pay up for business losses, a sweeping ban on oil exploration, and for the governent to undertake largescale restoration projects.

Drew Landry, a fishermen who said he had been turned away when he volunteered to help with the clean-up, brought a guitar to sing a song he wrote about the spill.
BP oil spill: Barack Obama's investigation hears of 'friction' | Environment | The Guardian

so there's a number of conflicts already at play---structural problems that the oil industries and folk who rely on them want minimized---a very real problem of the ongoing disaster and inadequacy of clean-up operations---alot of entirely unanswered questions about the dispersants, where most of the oil is going if its moving around too far beneath the surface to evaporate and what that'll mean---problems that follow from the emphasis on managing appearance (shareholder value uber alles)....folk who want bp to do more than say it's going to pay---people whose lives are fucked up because of this disaster---and bad songs.

of course things aren't so simple for folk affected:

washingtonpost.com

and there's no single trend or narrative to latch onto. is there?

meanwhile, the folk at the oil drum are monitoring the progress of the capping undertakings.

The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Capping Stack Installed - and Open Thread

roachboy 07-13-2010 06:37 AM
later this morning,another press release qualifying the first press release--from bp of course--which was the main source for the earlier news story:

Quote:
No Promises as BP Set to Test if New Cap Stops Oil
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 9:52 a.m. ET

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- After securing a new, tight-fitting cap on top of the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico, BP prepared Tuesday to begin tests to see if it will hold and stop fresh oil from polluting the waters for the first time in nearly three months.

The oil giant expects to know within 48 hours if the new cap, which was affixed Monday after almost three days of painstaking, around-the-clock work a mile below the Gulf's surface, can stanch the flow. The solution is only temporary, but it offers the best hope yet for cutting off the gush of billowing brown oil.

The cap's installation was good news to weary Gulf Coast residents who have warily waited for BP to make good on its promise to clean up the mess. Still, they warned that even if the oil is stopped, the consequences are far from over.

''I think we're going to see oil out in the Gulf of Mexico, roaming around, taking shots at us, for the next year, maybe two,'' Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana's oil-stained Plaquemines Parish, said Monday. ''If you told me today no more oil was coming ashore, we've still got a massive cleanup ahead.''

Starting Tuesday, the cap will be tested and monitored to see if it can withstand pressure from the gushing oil and gas. The tests could last anywhere between six to 48 hours, according to National Incident Commander Thad Allen.

Kent Wells, a senior vice president at the oil giant, made no promises in a Tuesday morning news briefing about whether the cap will work.

''We need to wait and see what the test actually tells us,'' Wells said. ''It's not simple stuff. What we don't want to do is speculate around it.''

The cap will be tested by closing off three separate valves that fit together snugly, choking off the oil from entering the Gulf. BP expects no oil will be released into the ocean during the tests, but remained cautious about the success of the system.

Pipes can be hooked to the cap to funnel oil to collection ships if BP decides the cap can't take the pressure of the gusher, or if low pressure readings indicate oil is leaking from elsewhere in the well.

''The sealing cap system never before has been deployed at these depths or under these conditions, and its efficiency and ability to contain the oil and gas cannot be assured,'' the company said in a statement.

BP will be watching pressure readings. High pressure is good, because it would mean the leak has been contained inside the wellhead machinery. But if readings are lower than expected, that could mean there is another leak elsewhere in the well.

Even if the cap works, the blown-out well must still be plugged. A permanent fix will have to wait until one of two relief wells being drilled reaches the broken well, which will then be plugged up with drilling mud and cement. That may not happen until mid-August.

Even if the flow of oil is choked off while BP works on a permanent fix, the spill has already damaged everything from beach tourism to the fishing industry.

Tony Wood, director of the National Spill Control School at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi said the sloppiest of the oil -- mousse-like brown stuff that has not yet broken down -- will keep washing ashore for several months, with the volume slowly decreasing over time.

He added that hardened tar balls could keep hitting beaches and marshes each time a major storm rolls through for a year or more. Those tar balls are likely trapped for now in the surf zone, gathering behind sand bars just like sea shells.

''It will still be getting on people's feet on the beaches probably a year or two from now,'' Wood said.

But on Monday, the region absorbed a rare piece of good news in the placement of the 150,000-pound cap on top of the gushing leak responsible for so much misery.

Around 6:30 p.m. CDT, live video streams trained on the wellhead showed the cap being slowly lowered into place. BP officials said the device was attached around 7 p.m.

''I'm very hopeful that this cap works and we wake up in the morning and they're catching all the oil. I would be the happiest person around here,'' said Mitch Jurisich, a third generation oysterman from Empire, La., who has been out of work for weeks.

Residents skeptical BP can deliver on its promise to control the spill greeted the news cautiously.

''There's no telling what those crazy suckers are going to do now,'' Ronnie Kenniar said when he heard the cap was placed on the well. The 49-year-old fishermen is now working for BP in the Vessel of Opportunity program, a BP-run operation employing boat owners for odd jobs.

James Pelas, 41, a shrimper who took a break from working on his boat at a marina in Venice, La., said he didn't think the crisis would be over for a long time.

''I ain't excited about it until it's closed off completely,'' he said. ''Oil's scattered all over the place.''

Meanwhile, the Obama administration issued a revised moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling Monday to replace the one that was struck down by the courts as heavy-handed. The new ban, in effect until Nov. 30, does not appear to deviate much from the original moratorium, as it still targets deep-water drilling operators while defining them in a different way.

As of Monday, the 83rd day of the disaster, between 89 million and 176 million gallons of oil had poured into the Gulf, according to government estimates. The spill started April 20 when the Deepwater Horizon rig, leased by BP from Transocean Ltd, exploded and burned, killing 11 workers. It sank two days later.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010...ef=global-home

so they don't know, really.

oil drum again...this time they've got someone who operates one of the rov's posting, answering questions. so it's interesting in a more-than-usually-geeky way:

The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - the 3-ram stack - and open thread

o yeah: and there's a detailed update about the attempt to deal with the leak.

roachboy 07-14-2010 04:10 AM
an interesting piece from today's washington post that outlines many of the central problems pointed to in this compendium of infotainment and interpretations on the fly...the fact that the entire regulatory apparatus around oil is inadequate, the fact that everyone knew and knows it, the fact that neo-liberal know-nothing ideology has played a significant role in allowing nothing to be done to address these basic obvious problems since the last time they became entirely obvious...

Quote:
Lessons from Exxon Valdez spill have gone unheeded

By Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 14, 2010; A01

The story of the last cataclysmic American oil spill has evolved over time into a straightforward tale of cause and effect: In 1989, a hard-drinking skipper ran his tanker aground in Alaska, and Exxon was unable to prevent crude from spreading along hundreds of miles of pristine shoreline.

But the full story of the Exxon Valdez wreck is far more complex, and it offers striking parallels to today's events in the Gulf of Mexico -- including a central role played by a consortium led by British Petroleum, now known as BP.

A commission that investigated the Alaska spill found that oil companies cut corners to maximize profits. Systems intended to prevent disaster failed, and no backups were in place. Regulators were too close to the oil industry and approved woefully inadequate accident response and cleanup plans.

History is repeating, say officials who investigated the Valdez, because the lessons of two decades ago remain unheeded.

"It's disappointing," said 84-year-old Walt Parker, chairman of the Alaska Oil Spill Commission, which made dozens of recommendations for preventing a recurrence. "It's almost as though we had never written the report."

Marine experts predict that the many panels investigating the Deepwater Horizon blowout -- including a presidential commission that began work this week in New Orleans -- will produce reports with numerous findings that could have been cut and pasted from the 20-year-old report written by Parker's commission or another body that examined the Valdez accident. They also fear those findings may have no more impact than the Valdez conclusions have.

In the immediate aftermath of the Alaska spill, as in the gulf, there was confusion over who was in charge -- oil companies or government officials. Federal authorities eventually asserted themselves but lacked the equipment and personnel to stem the damage. Storms slowed the response and spread contamination. Cleanup technology was old and ineffective. Environmentalists questioned the toxicity of dispersants and asked whether oil companies were using chemicals to hide damage.

The vast Alaska containment effort recovered only a fraction of the millions of gallons of oil dumped into Prince William Sound.

The players in the Alaskan drama also look familiar. Although Exxon owned the Valdez tanker, it was not responsible for the flawed emergency response plan and did not lead initial containment efforts. Those jobs fell to the Alyeska Pipeline Service, a consortium operating the Trans Alaska Pipeline System.

The consortium's controlling partner was British Petroleum. British Petroleum also supplied the consortium's top executive, who later resigned under pressure. "BP called the shots," said Tom Lakosh, an oil spill researcher.

The Alaskan commission concluded that cost-cutting by Alyeska contributed to the disaster, just as critics allege that BP's focus on profits contributed to the gulf spill.

"British Petroleum's leadership essentially was 'asleep at the switch,' " the commission's report concluded.

BP spokesman Steve Rinehart declined to discuss the company's role in the Valdez response, saying that Alyeska is an independent organization that "works for an owner's committee."

"We will actually have very little to say about the Exxon Valdez oil spill," Rinehart said. "In general terms, there were many lessons learned from the Prince William Sound spill, and improvements in response planning and technology were one of them."

Exxon Mobil spokesman Alan Jeffers declined to comment on how British Petroleum and regulators responded to the Valdez accident. But he said it was a "real turning point" at Exxon, which now makes safety a central corporate value.

To be sure, the two spills are different: The 1989 incident was caused by a grounded tanker, not a well blowout and a months-long gusher of crude. And the millions of gallons released in Alaska have been surpassed by the amount of crude swirling in the gulf. But experts said the many similarities eclipse the differences.

"It's so frustrating," said Zygmunt Plater, who worked for the commission and is now a professor at Boston College Law School. "The lessons weren't met."
'Waiting to happen'

On March 23, 1989, Riki Ott, a marine biologist, was speaking to the annual Alyeska Pipeline safety banquet at the Valdez Civic Center. The discussion turned to the threat of a major oil spill.

"Gentlemen," she said, "it's not a matter of 'what if,' but when."

About an hour later, just past midnight, the Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef on Alaska's south coast, rupturing eight of its 11 cargo tanks and dumping at least 11 million gallons of crude into the sound. The 990-foot-long ship had just left the Alyeska terminal in Valdez, headed toward Long Beach, Calif.

Over the next few months, the oil spread across 1,200 miles of Alaska coastline, destroying ecosystems and livelihoods.

Investigations determined that Capt. Joseph Hazelwood had been drinking earlier and was not on the bridge when the vessel strayed into the reef. He was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of negligently discharging oil.

Two months after the spill, Alaska's governor appointed a commission to study the accident. It concluded that the disaster was "the result of the gradual degradation of oversight and safety practices."

The spill "was not an isolated, freak occurrence, but simply one result of policies, habits and practices that for nearly two decades have infused the nation's maritime oil transportation system with increasing levels of risk. The Exxon Valdez was an accident waiting to happen," the report said.

Rules then in place called for the British Petroleum-led consortium to handle the initial spill response. But its actions were unexpectedly slow and ineffectual, the report said. A 126-foot barge cited in plans as the centerpiece of any response was not loaded with the proper equipment, resulting in hours of delay.

Alyeska spokesman Matt Carle said the consortium does not challenge the commission's findings but stressed the many safety improvements made in and around Prince William Sound.

The U.S. Coast Guard and other government agencies proved "utterly incapable" of containing the oil, the commission said. Contingency plans amounted to "toothless tigers," and the equipment shortages and slow responses made a catastrophe inevitable, the report said.

Exxon eventually took control of the response effort, working with the Coast Guard and Alaskan authorities.

That mirrors the early days of the BP spill, when it was unclear who was in charge. It quickly became apparent that only BP had the submersible robots and other equipment needed to operate at the drilling site, a mile below the surface.

Studies suggested that the Alaska spill could have been reduced or eliminated by building in redundant protection: in that case, by equipping tankers with double hulls or double bottoms. A lack of redundancy has emerged as a critical problem in the gulf, where the failure of the Deepwater Horizon's blowout preventer -- designed to instantly seal a well -- has left BP with few alternatives.

Alyeska was found by the Alaska commission to have a long history of poor management and cost-cutting that contributed to the accident. One state official wrote that Alyeska "has proven that they will not take any major corrective action unless forced by the regulatory agencies." Those complaints echo allegations made last month by Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) and Bart Stupak (Mich.), who questioned whether BP repeatedly chose risky procedures to save time and reduce costs.

The congressmen wrote in a letter to the oil company that "BP appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure."
'Never again'

When the Alaska commission examined response plans approved before the accident, they found a "serious gap" between the spill size that companies said they could contain and their true capacity, which was "ridiculously low." Records showed that, as a number of response plans were being developed in Alaska, government reviewers had penciled expletives in the margins, described them as "garbage" and "shoddy," and recommended that authorities "consider prosecution."

One review of equipment listed in an Alyeska contingency plan in the 1970s found that of 170 pieces of apparatus itemized, 137 were broken or missing. A drill exercise found an outdated list of emergency contacts. At the time, the report concluded, the consortium "was not a model of preparedness."

That echoes the findings of a congressional inquiry into BP's spill response plan for the gulf, which asserted that the company could contain and clean up a spill much larger than today's. Investigators found that the gulf plans also discussed the need to protect walruses, which aren't found in the region, and listed the phone number of a long-dead marine expert.

The commission found that the "primitive" equipment available for oil recovery in Alaska -- primarily boom lines and surface skimmers -- represented ineffective methods that had not advanced for at least 20 years. The commission called on the federal government to fund a research and development effort to improve recovery techniques.

"Equipment and techniques should be tested well in advance of a spill," the report said.

Today in the gulf, the same types of equipment and technology used in Prince William Sound are at work. There is no research effort on the scale sought by the commission. "Never again should the spiller be in charge of a major spill" response, the report said.

As if foreseeing the gulf disaster, the commission said that focusing too closely on the individual details of the tanker accident would be counterproductive because "the next great spill is likely to have some other cause completely."

The report also gave a hint of what might lie ahead. In Alaska, the environmental and economic damage from the spill was followed by increased alcoholism, depression, anxiety, domestic violence and child suicides.

Another report prepared in 1989, this one for President George H.W. Bush, also recommended strengthening government preparedness, clarifying lines of authority and improving cleanup technology. The report was prepared by a team co-chaired by William K. Reilly, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency.

Now, Reilly co-chairs the commission looking into the BP spill for President Obama. It is expected to issue its report by January.
washingtonpost.com

meanwhile, the capping operations are delayed, following on the logic of the more cautious bp press release from yesterday, which is of course the prompt for a more cautious restatement---er, article---from reuters.

BP faces delay in shutting off new well cap | Environment | guardian.co.uk

so they announced with great fanfare the operation to swap out the cap without having factored in testing to see if the well could stand the increased pressure. i dont fault them for this actually (not knowing the information) i merely don't understand the press strategy. but whatever. reality is that we are 85 days into a disaster that could have been prevented in theory--or at least its consequences mitigated---had different people with different ideologies been in power since the 1980s.

of course conservatives have their eye on what's really important here: where the obamas are going or vacation:

BP oil spill: Michelle Obama urges US holidaymakers to support Gulf coast | World news | The Guardian

aceventura3 07-14-2010 12:15 PM
From the article cited above:

Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy (Post 2805539)
The story of the last cataclysmic American oil spill has evolved over time into a straightforward tale of cause and effect: In 1989, a hard-drinking skipper ran his tanker aground in Alaska, and Exxon was unable to prevent crude from spreading along hundreds of miles of pristine shoreline.

But the full story of the Exxon Valdez wreck is far more complex, and it offers striking parallels to today's events in the Gulf of Mexico -- including a central role played by a consortium led by British Petroleum, now known as BP.

A commission that investigated the Alaska spill found that oil companies cut corners to maximize profits. Systems intended to prevent disaster failed, and no backups were in place. Regulators were too close to the oil industry and approved woefully inadequate accident response and cleanup plans.

Read more: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/newrepl...#ixzz0tgme3gBn
What happened:

Quote:
How did the accident happen?
The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the accident and determined that the probable causes of the grounding were:

1. The failure of the third mate to properly maneuver the vessel, possibly due to fatigue and excessive workload;
2. The failure of the master to provide a proper navigation watch, possibly due to impairment from alcohol;
3. The failure of Exxon Shipping Company to supervise the master and provide a rested and sufficient crew for the Exxon Valdez;
4. The failure of the U.S. Coast Guard to provide an effective vessel traffic system
5. The lack of effective pilot and escort services.
Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council -

What they did:

Quote:
Since that time, several significant improvements have been made in oil spill prevention and response planning.

• The U.S. Coast Guard now monitors fully laden tankers via satellite as they pass through Valdez Narrows, cruise by Bligh Island, and exit Prince William Sound at Hinchinbrook Entrance. In 1989, the Coast Guard watched the tankers only through Valdez Narrows and Valdez Arm.

• Two escort vessels accompany each tanker while passing through the entire sound. They not only watch over the tankers, but are capable of assisting them in the event of an emergency, such as a loss of power or loss of rudder control. Ten years ago, there was only one escort vessel through Valdez Narrows. (link to SERVS web site)

• Specially trained marine pilots, with considerable experience in Prince William Sound, board tankers from their new pilot station at Bligh Reef and are aboard the ship for 25 miles out of the 70-mile transit through the Sound. Weather criteria for safe navigation are firmly established.

• Congress enacted legislation requiring that all tankers in Prince William Sound be double-hulled by the year 2015. It is estimated that if the Exxon Valdez had had a double-hull structure, the amount of the spill would have been reduced by more than half. There are presently three double-hulled and twelve double-bottomed tankers moving oil through Prince William Sound. Phillips Alaska Inc. is constructing two new double-hulled tankers the first of which, the Polar Endeavor, began service in July 2001.

•Contingency planning for oil spills in Prince William Sound must now include a scenario for a spill of 12.6 million gallons. Drills are held in the sound each year.

•The combined ability of skimming systems to remove oil from the water is now 10 times greater than it was in 1989, with equipment in place capable of recovering over 300,000 barrels of oil in 72 hours.

•Even if oil could have been skimmed up in 1989, there was no place to put the oil-water mix. Today, seven barges are available with a capacity to hold 818,000 barrels of recovered oil.

•There are now 40 miles of containment boom in Prince William Sound, seven times the amount available at the time of the Exxon Valdez spill.

•Dispersants are now stockpiled for use and systems are in place to apply them from helicopters, airplanes, and boats.
Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council -

The situation in the Gulf is very different than the Exxon Valdez spill. And, no matter what the regulatory environment is, human error can be at the root cause of the next event. The vague and common cry of...they cut corners...is simplistic. At this stage of the game we should expect more from people researching and commenting on the Gulf spill professionally. We should expect more from the press.

roachboy 07-14-2010 12:46 PM
ace...as usual you miss the point. you are again arguing the same point you always find yourself having to argue, which is that the explosion was an accident as if there is an argument about that. you seem to have some kind of Problem dealing with the fact that the regulatory system and industry standards---not to speak of practices---are all inadequate. THAT'S THE POINT OF THE ARTICLE, ACE. that's been one of the main points throughout the thread as well. and this from all political sides. the only viewpoint arguing against this, really, is you. and the infotainment you cherry pick that allows you to once again repeat the obvious.

the problem is not the explosion--it's the obvious lack of preparedness for a possible problem that was enabled by the regulatory apparatus, by industry, by the cozy relations between the two, all of which was enabled by neo-liberal delirium concerning the rationality of market relations. these problems were obvious after the valdez disaster. outlining them was the central point of the report. it was ignored by people who imagined profits more important than anything else---people like you, ace.

and now you in particular still can't deal with the reality of the situation so you shuck and jive...meanwhile, out there in the world, you're in alignment with haley barbour. fine company you keep.

meanwhile, as the oil keeps blasting unchecked from the leak area...

Quote:
U.S. officials called for halting 'integrity test' of BP oil well

By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 14, 2010; 3:27 PM

So is it go or no go? Shut down the gulf oil well, or let it keep gushing?

Government officials were conferring Wednesday with BP executives and engineers about whether, and how, to proceed with the all-important "integrity test" that could temporarily shut down the well and could potentially throttle the flow permanently.

BP had planned to close valves and vents on the well's new cap Tuesday, clamping the flow entirely, and allowing engineers to observe what happens to pressures in the well. The government, however, called time out.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu and U.S. Geological Survey Director Marcia McNutt are among the government scientists in Houston trying to get more information from BP before the oil company proceeds. There has been persistent concern during the gulf crisis that the well bore is damaged. The pressure test could create leaks in the well's casing below the gulf floor, sending oil and gas into the rock formation or up through the mud into the gulf.

But the test also could bring a high reward: If the well can handle the high pressures, BP could leave the well "shut in" and it would not further pollute the gulf.

"Our basic position was, if you can give us the answers we need . . . then go ahead," an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions with BP, told the Associated Press. Until then, "they can't go forward."

With the test possibly imminent, BP paused in its effort to drill the first relief well, which is only four feet away, laterally, from the so-called Macondo well that blew out April 20 and caused an explosion on the rig Deepwater Horizon, killing 11 workers on the drill deck. The decision to halt work on the relief well was precautionary, because the pressure test could potentially cause hydrocarbons to flow into the new hole, BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said Wednesday.

Work on the relief well will resume when the test is over, he said. The drilling of a second relief well had already been stopped, pending results of the first relief well.

Wells gave only a broad explanation for the test delay, saying that scientists wanted to review the operation further to ensure that it produced unambiguous results and would "minimize risk." Pressed for details on the perceived risks, Wells said that it's one thing if the pressures are relieved deep in the well -- oil and gas escaping into the rock formation far below the gulf floor, in other words -- but "it's a more difficult situation" if the hydrocarbons escape higher up.

Chu played a key role in putting an end to the "top kill" procedure in late May because of the possibility that pressurized mud could cause a lateral blowout in the well below the gulf floor. A persistent concern for months has been that damage to the well could create additional leaks, greatly complicating efforts to kill the well.

The decision to delay the test was made by federal authorities and BP officials Tuesday afternoon, Wells said. But the delay was not announced until retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad W. Allen, the national incident commander, and BP put out news releases late Tuesday -- continuing a pattern in which officials have waited many hours to inform the public of what is happening in the gulf. In late May, for example, officials waited almost a day to reveal that they had suspended the top-kill effort, and the news media continued to report, inaccurately, that mud was being pumped into the well.

As a result of discussions among government scientists and BP officials, Allen said in the Tuesday night news release, "we decided that the process may benefit from additional analysis that will be performed tonight and tomorrow."

The best-case scenario for the test would be that it halts the spewing of the well. But the well could fail the test -- and the gusher would return.

Federal authorities and BP engineers wanted to see the test create a steady increase in well pressure. This would suggest that the Macondo well is intact, and that oil and gas are not leaking into the surrounding mud and rock formations below the gulf floor.

If the pressure readings were too low, BP's technicians would abandon the test and, using robotic submersibles, reopen the valves.

The test would take at least two days. If authorities determine that the well can remain closed -- "shut in," to use the oil industry terminology -- then Macondo would no longer pollute the gulf, and ships would stop collecting or burning oil and gas.

Before work was temporarily halted, the relief well was getting close. It's four feet laterally from Macondo, with about 150 feet more to drill vertically until the interception. But the target is narrow -- a steel casing slightly less than 10 inches wide, with a seven-inch pipe inside. The final stages are painstaking, and BP and the government still say the "bottom kill" is not likely to take place until August.

The new "3 ram capping stack" was lowered without a hitch onto the reconfigured blowout preventer Monday night. A new surface ship, the Helix Producer, was also connected to the well via the "kill line" on the blowout preventer, and by Tuesday morning was siphoning about 12,000 barrels (504,000 gallons) of oil a day, Wells said. About 8,000 barrels (336,000 gallons) a day have been siphoned and burned through the surface rig Q4000.

Those containment efforts will be halted if the integrity test goes forward, Wells said.

The possibility of shutting in the well from the top was raised by BP in the past few weeks. The oil company has expressed concern many times about trying to seal the well from the top, citing fears about the condition of the well below the gulf floor. During the top kill attempt in May, the well was taking as much mud as engineers were pumping into it. It was not clear whether the mud was leaking into the rock formations or shooting out the cracks and openings in the pipe above the blowout preventer. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Wells said BP had become increasingly confident that the mud had flowed out the top. He did not elaborate.

During a conference call Monday, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles was asked why the new sealing cap and the shut-in strategy had not been attempted earlier. He defended the company's strategy, saying that certain steps could be taken only after engineers had gathered information about the well. A major concern all along was to avoid anything to make the situation worse, he said.

"The problem is, I've had to take these steps to learn the things I've learned," he said. "Without taking those steps, it's unlikely that I would have known what I know now."
washingtonpost.com

but it was just an accident and accidents happen.

aceventura3 07-14-2010 01:27 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy (Post 2805646)
ace...as usual you miss the point. you are again arguing the same point you always find yourself having to argue, which is that the explosion was an accident as if there is an argument about that. you seem to have some kind of Problem dealing with the fact that the regulatory system and industry standards---not to speak of practices---are all inadequate. THAT'S THE POINT OF THE ARTICLE, ACE. that's been one of the main points throughout the thread as well. and this from all political sides. the only viewpoint arguing against this, really, is you. and the infotainment you cherry pick that allows you to once again repeat the obvious.

No you miss the point.

The nature of regulatory systems is one of inadequacy. This has always been true and always will be true. It is your fantasy and the fantasy of those you cite if you folks think that there can be some regulatory system that can prevent the next event, human error or not. Systems being regulated forever will get more complicated, regulations are responsive. Your focus is far too narrow as usual. Step outside the box and think!

Ourcrazymodern? 07-14-2010 01:57 PM
I miss the point. All boxes are black on the inside when they're closed.

Regulatory systems try to compensate for inadequacies, but require compliance. Individuals remain the only means to our ends, & you know how we are...fragmented (necessarily), confused (by complexity), distracted (by irrelevancies).

The ability to do a thing does not confer the right, right? Doing it right might. I have the feeling that those who decided to cut corners for $ were too inside the box.

aceventura3 07-14-2010 02:04 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ourcrazymodern? (Post 2805680)
I miss the point. All boxes are black on the inside when they're closed.

Regulatory systems try to compensate for inadequacies, but require compliance. Individuals remain the only means to our ends, & you know how we are...fragmented (necessarily), confused (by complexity), distracted (by irrelevancies).

The ability to do a thing does not confer the right, right? Doing it right might. I have the feeling that those who decided to cut corners for $ were too inside the box.
What about stupidity?

Cutting corners for money??? What is cutting corners to save money going to cost BP? What did cutting corners to save money cost Exxon? What did taking on excessive risk for money cost Lehman Bros. or AIG?

Again this ...cutting corners to save money... line is overly simplistic. If new regulations are to be based on this faulty reasoning, perhaps it is obvious why regulatory systems fail.

roachboy 07-14-2010 02:47 PM
who the hell apart from you is talking about a regulatory system that eliminates the space for human error? no-one, ace.
that is your projection. either that or you have reading comprehension issues.

the same ridiculous circle again and again---the problem is that this regulatory system placed all response development in the hands of oil corporations. in a catastrophic situation, the result of that has been 85 days worth of fucking obvious--there is no coherent containment, there is no coherent strategy to deal with the oil---spray dispersants on it the toxicity of which is not known in enormous amounts so people on shore won't see the oil?---in short there is no back-up and there is no organization that could bring together a back-up in the event of a failure. and this is a state of affairs that follows from the reactive nature of regulation, from the all-too-cozy relation between regulators and the industry being regulated and from the profit-seeking tactic of firms like bp and exxon (for example)...all these taken together.

and THAT was a central conclusion from the exxon valdez report, THAT is a main conclusion in the book i cited on the second or third page of this thread about the 40-year long oil spill in california (which is still the best crash course in the baroque formation that is te regulation of the oil industry in the united states) and THAT is the conclusion that most analysts have come to about the deepwater horizon disaster.

this has nothing---at all---to do with the straw man that regulation is supposed to eliminate human error.
and it is not the simplistic move that you make to isolate corporate cost cutting from context and then complain about isolating corporate cost-cutting from context. in a different regulatory environment, it'd be unremarkable. combined with the existing regulatory environment it can---and has---resulted in disaster.

yours is a politically motivated straw man of course: following your "logic" any regulation of drilling would be stalinist (rather a metaphysical variant of stalinism, a stalinism you get from the stalinist propaganda, but taken as Trurth by people like yourself) and doomed to fail. because you assign it an arbitrary objective, an unmeetable, stupid objective and then say whaddya mean, regulation can't stop that....

but it's a straw man ace. it's been a straw man every time you've repeated it.

i like the fact that there's discussion in this thread, but can we move on to something more interesting that debating your straw man?

roachboy 07-15-2010 03:41 AM
this is an unfortunate development:

Quote:
Oil leak in choke line delays start of latest test by BP

By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 15, 2010; A15

A new piece of equipment designed to control the gushing Gulf of Mexico oil well sprung its own leak Wednesday night, the latest setback to BP's efforts to put an end to the environmental disaster.

BP said that the leak in what is known as the choke line could be repaired and that its effort to close the damaged well, and shut down the flow of oil permanently, would resume. But video streams from the seafloor showed a chaotic plume of oil and gas continuing to surge from one of the outlets on the 75-ton cap installed earlier this week.

It was unclear late Wednesday whether the leak would be a momentary hitch in the much-anticipated "integrity test" on the well, or if it would put the operation in grave peril. But the plumbing failure showed once again that nothing has come easy in the long campaign to kill the Macondo well, which blew out April 20 and destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig, killing 11 workers.



Federal officials green-lighted the test after a 24-hour delay, during which government scientists and outside experts demanded more information from BP about possible hazards posed by stopping the flow of the well. They are concerned that a spike in pressure as the flow is clamped could blow oil and gas out of the casing of the well and into the geological formations. Throughout the crisis, engineers have feared the possibility that efforts to fix the problem could make it worse.

Such concerns ultimately did not dissuade authorities from going forward with what could be a high-reward maneuver. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad W. Allen, the national incident commander, said that, notwithstanding the concerns of scientists, he is "gung ho" about the test.

"It will be terrific news if we can shut in the well," Allen said, adding, however, "I don't want to get anyone's hopes up."

Once BP engineers closed the main chimney on the new "capping stack" installed atop the well Monday night, that left oil and gas surging from two other ports. The protocol developed by BP and approved by federal authorities called for quickly closing one, known as the kill line, then very gradually reducing the flow from the choke line until the well flows no more.


The company said Wednesday night in a statement that the leak in the choke line "has been isolated and will be repaired prior to starting the test."

Federal officials and BP engineers are anxiously observing what happens to pressures in the well. A steady increase in pressure as the flow is reduced would be a strong sign that the Macondo well, drilled by the now-sunken rig Deepwater Horizon, is physically intact, and that oil and gas are not leaking into the surrounding mud and rock formations below the gulf floor.

Robotic submersibles are scrutinizing the muddy gulf floor and the base of the blowout preventer for signs of oil or gas rising from below. Scientists are also using seismic and sonar instruments to monitor any possible movement of hydrocarbons in the rock formations surrounding the well.

If the well can handle the high pressures, BP could leave the well shut in, and it would not further pollute the gulf.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs discussed the hazards of the test Wednesday.

"If the structural integrity of the well bore isn't strong, what you'll get is oil . . . coming out into the strata," he said. That could mean leaks "from multiple points on the seafloor."

If the pressure readings are too low, BP will abandon the test. The well will be reopened and gush anew. BP would then resume trying to capture as much leaking oil as possible, using lines to surface ships and a new "top hat" on the gusher, while continuing to drill a relief well that could kill Macondo with mud and cement.

With the test imminent, BP paused Wednesday in its effort to drill the first relief well, which is only four feet away, laterally, from the Macondo well, which blew out April 20, killing 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon. The decision to halt work on the relief well was a precautionary move to ensure that hydrocarbons don't surge into the new hole from the Macondo well during the integrity test, BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said Wednesday. Work on the relief well will resume when the test ends, he said. The drilling of a second relief well had already been suspended, pending results of the first relief well.

The final run-up to the integrity test highlighted the awkward relationship between BP and the federal government. The government has authority for all major decisions in the spill response, but BP has the technological expertise for the deep-water engineering. BP had planned to proceed with the test Tuesday, but federal scientists called time out, asking for more assurances that the oil company had thought through what might go wrong.

The decision to postpone the test for 24 hours was made Tuesday afternoon, but that decision was not announced until Allen and BP put out news releases late Tuesday -- continuing a pattern in which officials have waited many hours to inform the public of what is happening in the gulf. In late May, for example, officials waited almost a day to reveal that they had suspended the "top-kill" effort to clog the well with heavy drilling mud.

Allen said Wednesday that during the top kill the well pressure never surpassed 6,000 pounds per square inch of pressure. That befuddled engineers, who did not know where the mud, furiously pumped into the blowout preventer from surface ships, was going. They wondered if it was flowing through breaches in the well casing into the geological formation. The other possibility was far more benign: All the mud may have spewed out the top of the well through cracks and openings in the collapsed riser pipe.

"We've never been comfortable with what the 6000 psi meant during the top kill," Allen said.

He has said that, if all goes right, the pressure in the well during the integrity test will rise to about 8,000 or 9,000 pounds per square inch and stay there.

The test is officially slated to last 48 hours. Only at that point, Allen said, will officials decide how to proceed with the Macondo well.

aceventura3 07-15-2010 06:35 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy (Post 2805697)
who the hell apart from you is talking about a regulatory system that eliminates the space for human error? no-one, ace.
that is your projection. either that or you have reading comprehension issues.

the same ridiculous circle again and again---the problem is that this regulatory system placed all response development in the hands of oil corporations.
That last line is a pure and simple lie.

Quote:
in a catastrophic situation, the result of that has been 85 days worth of fucking obvious--there is no coherent containment, there is no coherent strategy to deal with the oil---spray dispersants on it the toxicity of which is not known in enormous amounts so people on shore won't see the oil?---in short there is no back-up and there is no organization that could bring together a back-up in the event of a failure. and this is a state of affairs that follows from the reactive nature of regulation, from the all-too-cozy relation between regulators and the industry being regulated and from the profit-seeking tactic of firms like bp and exxon (for example)...all these taken together.
You continue to fail to outline an alternative.

The profit seeking tactic you outline is contradictory to the facts. Profit maximization would be best achieve from avoiding spills of this nature and having plans and resources in place to minimize damages. You fail to see beyond your superficial ideology regarding some nefarious capitalist profit motive.

Quote:
and THAT was a central conclusion from the exxon valdez report, THAT is a main conclusion in the book i cited on the second or third page of this thread about the 40-year long oil spill in california (which is still the best crash course in the baroque formation that is te regulation of the oil industry in the united states) and THAT is the conclusion that most analysts have come to about the deepwater horizon disaster.
Perhaps those conclusions are wrong.

Quote:
this has nothing---at all---to do with the straw man that regulation is supposed to eliminate human error.
Stupidity is different than an error, which are different from an accident, etc.

Quote:
and it is not the simplistic move that you make to isolate corporate cost cutting from context and then complain about isolating corporate cost-cutting from context. in a different regulatory environment, it'd be unremarkable. combined with the existing regulatory environment it can---and has---resulted in disaster.
The obvious flaw in your views on "neo-conservatism" as it applies to capitalism is that you think the people who run corporations (hence corporations) think different or have different rational or irrational behaviors than you or anyone else.

Quote:
yours is a politically motivated straw man of course: following your "logic" any regulation of drilling would be stalinist (rather a metaphysical variant of stalinism, a stalinism you get from the stalinist propaganda, but taken as Trurth by people like yourself) and doomed to fail. because you assign it an arbitrary objective, an unmeetable, stupid objective and then say whaddya mean, regulation can't stop that....

but it's a straw man ace. it's been a straw man every time you've repeated it.

i like the fact that there's discussion in this thread, but can we move on to something more interesting that debating your straw man?
You don't even get the simplest and foundational components of my full argument on the issue of regulation, so your comment here has no value.

roachboy 07-15-2010 06:54 AM
here's a post from the oil drum that explains in more detail what can be pieced together about the leak in the choke line.

The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Starting the Testing Program - and Open Thread


and a proposal to use the mississippi river itself to push oil away from the coastline.
i am not in a position to comment on the pragmatic aspects of this, but i quite like the idea aesthetically:

Restoration and Resilience Let The River Run Through It: Harnessing the Mississippi to Save Louisiana's Wetlands from the Oil Spill - Blogs & Podcasts - Environmental Defense Fund


meanwhile, the regional economic situation around new orleans doesn't look good, but it's the case that the bp disaster is but one explanatory factor amongst several.

Quote:
Avondale Shipyard closure expected to have broad impact on regional economy
Published: Thursday, July 15, 2010, 6:53 AM
Updated: Thursday, July 15, 2010, 8:40 AM
Rebecca Mowbray, The Times-Picayune

The year started so bright, with the New Orleans Saints winning the Super Bowl and the feeling that the New Orleans area had moved beyond its post-Katrina nightmare to the cusp of a better future.
Avondale Shipyard AerialsView full sizeEliot Kamenitz, The Times-PicayuneThe Avondale Shipyard, photographed Wednesday, will be closing by 2013.

But now, with the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, the ban on oil exploration, the last space shuttle external fuel tank rolling off the assembly line at Michoud Assembly Center, layoffs at University of New Orleans, and on Tuesday, the Avondale Shipyard announcing that it would cease production by 2013, eliminating 5,000 well-paying jobs, the outlook for the New Orleans area economy suddenly feels grim.

To University of New Orleans economist Janet Speyrer, the idea that the state's largest manufacturing employer could just pick up and leave, after all the other bad news, was almost unimaginable. "It took my breath away," Speyrer said.

Indeed, on Wednesday economists around the state were calculating the damage and political leaders were wincing at blown budgets while economic developers were brainstorming new pitches and re-uses for the shipyard site along the Mississippi River on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish.

No matter how you look at it, the loss of 5,000 jobs at Avondale is enormous.

Avondale singlehandedly represents about 1 percent of the about 520,000 jobs in the seven-parish New Orleans metropolitan statistical area. It's 15 percent of the area's 33,600 manufacturing jobs, Speyrer said, and it's more than half of the area's 9,300 jobs in the transportation, equipment and manufacturing category.

Given that the area's manufacturing sector is so small, Speyrer said, it will be challenging for Avondale workers to find other jobs that use their skills, opening the possibility that they will leave the area.

To understand how big a hit it is, Loren Scott, professor emeritus of economics at Louisiana State University, said just imagine what big news it would be if a new employer creating 5,000 jobs were moving into the economy, and then picture it in reverse.

"You'll be getting some very serious licks to the New Orleans economy," said Scott, who keeps having to revise his 2011 and 2012 forecasts for the state's economy downward because of the oil disaster, drilling moratorium and plans for winding down Avondale by 2013.
Enlarge Dinah Rogers, The Times-Picayune CHRIS GRANGER / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE Employees of Northrop Grumman gather outside of Quick Stop at the end of their shift on Wednesday, July 14, 2010. Co-owner Tauy Nguyen said her store has been there for about 18 years and said she will close if Northrop Grumman closes. She said about 100 percent of her business comes from people who work at the plant. Avondale Shipyard Closing in 2013 gallery (13 photos)

While the New Orleans area rate has been hovering at about 6 percent -- nearly four percentage points below the national economy -- Scott expects unemployment in the New Orleans to rise to something closer to the national rate.

The average wage at Avondale is $62,000, which can support a lot of restaurant meals, clothing, car and home purchases. Meanwhile, the shipyard itself may order other parts or supplies from other businesses in the region, diminishing their economic activity when it leaves.

Ivan Miestchovich, director of the Institute for Economic Development and Real Estate Research at UNO, noted that the housing market follows the job market. "You take that many jobs out of the economy in a period of two to three years, there's no way around it, you damage the housing market," he said. Job growth in the New Orleans area has been flat since 2008.

For every million dollars that would have been spent on ships at Avondale, Speyrer said, another $825,000 will be lost elsewhere in the local economy and more than 13 jobs will be lost.

Scott hasn't crunched the numbers yet, but he said he believes there will be two indirect jobs lost for every one Avondale job, meaning that the New Orleans area will lose 15,000 jobs.

State and local governments will also take a hit. For every $1 of earnings that the state loses, Scott said, Louisiana loses seven cents from its budget. That means the 5,000 direct jobs at Avondale alone will cost the state $22 million. When indirect jobs are added, Scott believes the total hit will be about $50 million to state coffers.

Scott said his LSU colleague Jim Richardson estimates that local governments lose 5.4 cents for every dollar of lost wages. That means that they would take an $18 million hit before the multiplier effect, which would make it about $40 million.

"The rock is being dropped into the pond in the New Orleans MSA(metropolitan statistical area)," Scott said. "The ripples will go out to Shreveport, but they'll be less strong there."

Bob Brown, managing director of the Business Council of New Orleans & the River Region, a private association of the largest businesses in the region, said that business council members are extremely concerned about Northrup Grumman Corp.'s decision to close Avondale and the notion that Lockheed Martin Corp. probably won't be able to continue using Michoud. But they think it's more productive to concentrate on being "courageous, nimble and imaginative" in coming up with new uses for the sites, Brown said.

"As far as Avondale is concerned, the die is cast. I am not sure that it is a wise use of energy to try to keep Northrup Grumman there. I think the same may be true of Lockheed Martin and the Constellation program," Brown said.

With the departure of two major employers against the anxiety of seeing oil-soaked pelicans and Anderson Cooper broadcasting oil glum on CNN while standing in front of the iconic Crescent City Connection bridge, some wonder whether the pall will make it harder to recruit people and businesses to the region.

But Mark Arend, editor of Site Selection magazine, said that businesses are more sophisticated than that. Companies won't worry about decisions to pull up stakes by businesses in other industries, he said of Avondale and Michoud. And unless a busiAvondness prospect is in the seafood processing business, potential corporate relocations probably won't be deterred by the oil plume in the Gulf.

"I don't necessarily see it as a barrier to additional investment. A company looks at an area for a lot of different reasons," Arend said.

Indeed, Michael Hecht, president and chief executive of the economic development group Greater New Orleans Inc., said that he believes that the Avondale and Michoud facilities have vibrant reuse potential that could ultimately help the New Orleans area diversify its economy. And GNO Inc. is doing studies right now to try to capture the "brand impact" of the oil spill on New Orleans so it can come up with a strategy to counteract it.

While economic damage is undeniable, Hecht said he's trying to look forward. "There's a reason why they call economics the dismal science," he said.


Rebecca Mowbray can be reached at rmowbray@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3417.[
http://www.nola.com/business/index.s...sure_expe.html

but bp is saying that the choke line is fixed:
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-sp...sting_new.html

we'll see...

http://www.bp.com/sectionbodycopy.do...tentId=7063636

MSD 07-15-2010 03:39 PM
Quote:
You outline is contradictory to the facts. Profit maximization would be best achieve from avoiding spills of this nature and having plans and resources in place to minimize damages. You fail to see beyond your superficial ideology regarding some nefarious capitalist profit motive.
When was the last time that a company returned maximum profit from doing the right thing? My best answer would be the Tylenol Murders. Perhaps you can give me a more recent example?
Quote:
The obvious flaw in your views on "neo-conservatism" as it applies to capitalism is that you think the people who run corporations (hence corporations) think different or have different rational or irrational behaviors than you or anyone else.
Is Your Boss a Psychopath? | Fast Company

Ourcrazymodern? 07-15-2010 04:10 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3 (Post 2805681)
What about stupidity?

Cutting corners for money??? What is cutting corners to save money going to cost BP? What did cutting corners to save money cost Exxon? What did taking on excessive risk for money cost Lehman Bros. or AIG?

Again this ...cutting corners to save money... line is overly simplistic. If new regulations are to be based on this faulty reasoning, perhaps it is obvious why regulatory systems fail.
So I'm a goat. Explain it to me. Also, please, explain how ^ doesn't abrogate your argument that greed was not to blame. I naively think that ongoing regulations might more forcefully take this into account.

Stupid sidebar: "If we don't get caught, it's not against the law."

The_Jazz 07-15-2010 04:25 PM
ace, stating that AIG's problems were caused by "cutting corners" just shows that you're incredibly ignorant of the facts surround that particular corporation's problems. They cut no corners and violated none of their internal guidelines.

roachboy 07-16-2010 03:09 AM
this is good. finally something good, if temporary:

Quote:
BP stops oil leak in Gulf of Mexico for first time since April

Gush of oil stopped for the first time in three months – but Obama administration warns cap might only be a temporary fix


* Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
* The Guardian, Friday 16 July 2010

The gush of oil from BP's spewing well in the Gulf of Mexico was stopped for the first time in three months yesterday, raising hopes that it could be sealed off for good.

The Obama administration immediately warned that a cap sealing off the well might only be a temporary fix. "We're encouraged by this development, but this isn't over," said Thad Allen, the US Coast Guard commander.

But for the first time in 87 days, it appeared last night that BP had control over the well.

The company said it would have to monitor the cap holding back the oil in a series of pressure tests every six hours for the next 48 hours, before it could be certain the well would hold.

It also cautioned that the final solution remained a relief well, still some weeks away.

"I am very excited that there's no oil in the Gulf of Mexico," Kent Wells, a senior vice-president for BP, said in a conference call. "But we just started the test and I don't want to create a false sense of excitement."

Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said engineers would be checking carefully to make sure no oil was escaping from the well from previously undiscovered leaks.

If that is the case, engineers would remove the cap and ramp up their containment operation from the well.

The flow of oil was cut off yesterday evening as engineers began shutting off a series of valves around the well, a process that took about two hours.

For the first time, video from BP's live feed on the ocean floor showed no sign of crude billowing out of the crippled well.

But with BP's runaway well now responsible for the worst oil spill in history, economic and environmental devastation stretching across four US states, and the lessons learned from several earlier failed attempts to plug the gusher, any sense of celebration was seen as much too premature.

The disaster began when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April, killing 11 workers.

Barack Obama, who has suffered withering criticism for his handling of the disaster, was cautious. "I think it is a positive sign, we're still in the testing phase," he told reporters at the White House.

The new cap is at best a temporary solution. Allen said engineers might reopen the seal and collect the flow of oil, though he noted that a new improved containment facility would reduce the amount of crude fouling the Gulf. "It remains likely that we will return to the containment process using this new stacking cap connected to the risers," he said.

BP hopes it can prevent the flow of any more oil into the Gulf until it manages to intercept the well and seal it off permanently with heavy drilling mud and cement some time in August. Suttles told CNN the relief well was about 4ft away.

But the BP executive also acknowledged that the Gulf would be feeling the effects of the spill for some time – a thought voiced by several others. "This is like the very early stages of a bone marrow transplant," Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who is leading a congressional investigation into the environmental effects of the spill told CNN. "There is still a possibility that the well cannot, in fact, take this pressure, but we are all hoping and praying that it will."

Even if the well does hold, BP and the Obama administration acknowledge there will be tar balls washing up on the beaches of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida for months.

Cleansing sensitive Louisiana wetlands of oil could take several more months if not years, and marine biologists have warned that it could be decades before the full impact of the oil, and the dispersants used to break up the slick, is fully understood.

Aside from the cost to BP, which has spent more than $3bn (£2bn) on the cleanup, seen its share price plummet and had to set aside $20bn, the spill has caused widespread economic harm across the Gulf. Vast areas of water remain closed to fishing and there has been a rash of hotel cancellations during the school holiday season.

"This body has lost a lot of blood," Norm Coleman, a former Republican senator told CNN. "This is good news but that doesn't mean that the pressure is off."

Yesterday's success followed days of uncertainty about how the sealing cap would perform, and whether it could stop the oil without blowing a new hole in the well.

The administration put a 24-hour hold on BP's plans while it reviewed the risks of the operation.
BP stops oil leak in Gulf of Mexico for first time since April | Environment | The Guardian

you can find articles that say the same basic thing most anywhere.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...prss=rss_print
the underlying problem with the cap move is that the test results remain ambiguous--so it's not obvious whether increasing the pressure at the leak is generating any problems further down the well.
but folk remain "cautiously optimistic"
whatever.
what's more to the point is that for the past 12 hour for the first time in 85 days or so (i've lost count) the massive leak at macondo is not shooting oil into the gulf of mexico.




more cost cutting consequences for the industry with bp in the midst of it shucking an jiving:
BP troubles deepen with Buncefield verdict | Business | The Guardian

no causal connections of course.
mere coincidence.

MSD 07-16-2010 05:12 AM
Q4000 shows nothing from the two sea floor spots they're monitoring, Enterprise 2 shows what might be oil going up or might just be compression artifacts in the dim light. Looks promising.

Jove 07-16-2010 05:52 AM
I was preventing myself from commenting on thread until the problem was temporary fixed, but I have to thank RoachBoy and various other users for posting an incredible amount of links about the situation. I am now sort of well informed on this unfortunate situation.

aceventura3 07-16-2010 11:19 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by MSD (Post 2805937)
When was the last time that a company returned maximum profit from doing the right thing? My best answer would be the Tylenol Murders. Perhaps you can give me a more recent example?
I don't know what you mean by "the right thing", but from my point of view the "wrong thing" never pays off in the long run.

I think the percentage of psychopaths or stupid people in management mirrors that in the general population. I have never seen a true correlation to good old common sense and people being promoted into jobs with more and more responsibilities, have you?

---------- Post added at 07:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:57 PM ----------

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ourcrazymodern? (Post 2805948)
So I'm a goat. Explain it to me. Also, please, explain how ^ doesn't abrogate your argument that greed was not to blame. I naively think that ongoing regulations might more forcefully take this into account.

Stupid sidebar: "If we don't get caught, it's not against the law."
Rather than a goat, let's be one of the three little pigs.

Headline day one:

Mr. Pig saves company $1,000,000 by building the new building out of straw. Some say he is a genius, one of his competitors says he is just stupid. Regulators signed off on his new stronger designs, and gives Mr. Pig a Certificate, which Mr. Pig framed and hung on his wall.

Headline Day two:

Building made of straw destroyed by wolf, who huff and puffed and blew it down, costing Mr. Pig's company $1,000,000,000. The company faces bankruptcy. Congressional hearings are scheduled. Regulators release reports showing Mr. Pigs history of regulatory violations. Mr. Pig cut corners for money says everyone in the media and acedemia. One of Mr. Pig's competitors states he was plain stupid and that it has been common practice not to use straw for many years in the industry.

Headline Day three:

New regulations implemented to prevent taking short cuts to save money. Mr. Pig re-builds using sticks. The use of sticks saves Mr. Pig $500,000. Some say Mr. Pig is a genious, one of his competitors says he is plain stupid - that everyone knows in the industry that bricks have to be used. Regulators signed off on his new stronger designs, and gives Mr. Pig a Certificate, which Mr. Pig framed and hung on his wall.

In other news Mr. Pigs competitors gain market share and announce record profits - citing the value of long-term planning and the value of doing things correctly from the start. New President to propose to taxes to "spread it around a bit" meaning profits. Protesters plan boycotts chanting " stop greedy capitalist pigs"

Headline Day four:

You know the rest of the story

---------- Post added at 07:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:15 PM ----------

Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Jazz (Post 2805950)
ace, stating that AIG's problems were caused by "cutting corners" just shows that you're incredibly ignorant of the facts surround that particular corporation's problems. They cut no corners and violated none of their internal guidelines.
Is that what I said?

roachboy 07-16-2010 04:09 PM
my my what an edifying story. capitalist cheerleaders sound just like jesus. it's amazing.

anyway, the latest at the moment isn't that different from the latest before--which for once is a good thing. despite continued protestations that everyone should remain cautiously optimistic or avoid optimism altogether, the cap is holding and there's still no more oil blasting into the gulf.

Cheers as Gulf oil spill is capped at last | Environment | The Guardian

this is not the endgame--bp continues to gamble on the notion that the relief wells will work. this is not a given of course (of course because, well, we're 87 days into a research project and assume that there's been some kind of learning curve)...

of course this isn't over in other ways as well. for example: what happens if bp gets bought out. or if it decides to declare bankruptcy? some of these questions at least are on the table in a serious way:

BP May Saddle Asset Buyers With Suits as Claims Rise - Bloomberg

but you see from reading this that there are a number of scenarios being tossed about and that they appear mutually exclusive. so long as the number is even of course.

if you scroll through the comments at the trusty but odd oil drum site here:

The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Results as the Testing Begins - and Open Thread

you find lots of speculation about bp misleading people, which seems to me to follow from their remarkably botched (but nonetheless still operative) attempts to manage the information spill into the gulf of dominant media, which clearly alarmed them more than that pesky oil did for a while until things reached such a pass that this inversion of the world itself became a problem. you know. anyway, in almost all the press reports that talk to regular folk you get a percentage who thinks the cap is another bp spin attempt. credibility goes away much more easily than it comes back. o those captains of industry and their steely grip on the Higher Rationality of Profit-seeking..what have they done to themselves in this case?

Idyllic 07-16-2010 07:01 PM
I don't recall Jesus talking about capitalism, or pigs for that matter, but I am interested as to how you came up with this new paradigm in your efforts to negate anything remotely kindred to capitalism, interesting analogy, to say the least, please start a new thread as to Jesus and capitalism, I am interested to be enlightened by your wisdom on the matter, or at the minimum your apparently evolved perspective of humanity that embraces, what exactly, and demoralizes, to quite a degree, that which has come before it and that which has at the most minute, helped to create the possibilities of human interactions beyond hunter-gathers?

Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy (Post 2806254)
my my what an edifying story. capitalist cheerleaders sound just like Jesus. it's amazing.
just curious and all.... I never realized Jesus was a capitalist, hmmm. Oh, wait you were talking about James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, not Jesus, or maybe it was any other "Golden Rule" do unto others stuff, It was just easier to assimilate cheerleaders of capitalism with Jesus and all that, as most of the capitalist nations have many "christians" at least this is the perception you are creating.... did you do that with intention? Anyway I will be watching for that thread roachboy.

+++++++

I am very, very happy to hear they have been able to stop the flow for now! Finally, maybe now (at least while this "fix" is working) we can focus on cleaning this mess up and preventing it from happening again. We can do the things necessary to focus and work towards that goal now, cleaning up and rescuing not only the humans who are suffering but all the animals and the environment itself, what a mess.

MSD 07-16-2010 07:07 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3 (Post 2806185)
I think the percentage of psychopaths or stupid people in management mirrors that in the general population. I have never seen a true correlation to good old common sense and people being promoted into jobs with more and more responsibilities, have you?
My experience has been that those who disregard compassion and what we know as morality are the ones who rise to the top.

roachboy 07-17-2010 08:11 AM
idyllic..i was talking about the rhetoric of the parable. if you'd like i can certainly put up a thread about rhetoric and can spend perhaps a few passably fun minutes of my life ridiculing the form...or not as the mood strikes, this being far from anything i actually care about, the penchant for the novelists who created jesus as a character to have him speak in little edifying tales....but i am quite sure that you wouldn't play along. so i'd be just wasting my time. but reassure me that there's fun to be had and perhaps i'll reconsider. thanks.


----

meanwhile out in the gulf of mexico:

Quote:
Coast Guard officials battle oil 'blob' from Houma command post
Published: Saturday, July 17, 2010, 10:10 AM Updated: Saturday, July 17, 2010, 10:20 AM
Michelle Krupa, The Times-Picayune Michelle Krupa, The Times-Picayune

Inside a sprawling command post in southern Louisiana, The Blob is everywhere.
Blob.jpgAP Photo/University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Beth WatsonU.S. Coast Guard Capt. Roger Lafierriere briefs commanders last week at the Incident Command Post in Houma.

It stains the many maps tacked to white walls. Computer monitors beam satellite images of it floating in the Gulf of Mexico, a magenta mass that looks more like an island than the colossal oil slick that it is. It sometimes changes shape on these screens, or breaks off into bits and pieces, but The Blob itself never vanishes.

Coast Guard Capt. Roger Laferriere oversees this command center, coordinating the unprecedented cleanup of oil off of the Louisiana coast. There are other posts like it in Mobile, Ala., and Miami, but none has more manpower, equipment -- or more of The Blob, as Laferriere and his staff have christened their enemy -- than this base inside what once was a BP training facility for offshore oil production.

On any given day, some 40,000 people are working all along the Gulf Coast to track where the oil is headed, lay protective boom, skim what they can and clean shorelines; nearly half of them are under what is known as the Houma Incident Command Post.

Some are analysts who sit in darkened rooms at the BP warehouse, feeding satellite data into computerized maps that show where the oil is moving, what marshes have already been boomed and what areas skimmers are toiling.

Others -- many of them shrimpers and fishermen turned cleanup contractors -- work out of quaint docks converted into "forward operating bases," hitting the water after sunup to do the hands-on tasks necessary to contain and clear the oil. There's displaced boom to be repositioned. Torn boom to be picked up, brought to shore and repaired. Absorbent boom soaked through on one side that must be turned or swapped out.

The spilling may have stopped at least for now, but their work goes on. Before a new cap fitted onto the busted wellhead corked the leak this past week, anywhere from 92 million to 184 million gallons of oil had gushed into the sea. Somehow, it's got to be cleaned up.

Leading that effort for the Louisiana coastline is Laferriere, a man of boundless energy and confidence who holds a degree in environmental science and has worked any number of oil spills big and small -- from Exxon Valdez to the post-Hurricane Katrina spills that dumped more than 8 million gallons.

Securing the leak does little to change his mission over the next weeks and months. "Even given that," he says, "we've still got a lot of oil on the water. We're going to continue to push forward until all the oil is removed and the people of Louisiana can get back to their way of life. We're going to be here until the end."

Laferriere's job is to not only coordinate efforts on the ground, but to meet with parish presidents, city councilmen and mayors, to answer their many questions, and to fend off criticism that not enough has been done to stop and capture the crude.

"Not enough" is something he's heard a lot since arriving in Louisiana on May 22, almost a month to the day after the Deepwater Horizon explosion. It may be a complaint that there's not enough boom, or not enough skimmers, or not enough boots on the ground to pitch in.

And so he's made it his job to explain to anyone who will listen just how this all works -- which methods clean the most oil fastest and the many obstacles out there to getting the job done. One day it could be a thundercloud that shuts down work. The next, high waves that prevent vessels from skimming. Or a full moon that makes sea states even more challenging.

Coast Guard Capt. Meredith Austin is Laferriere's No. 2 and runs the daily operations of the command center.

"Normally when you do an oil spill response, you have a release of oil ... but at some point in the near term, the source stops and then you know: This is what I'm fighting. You've got to skim as much as you can and burn as much as you can, do protective booming and clean up what's on the beach. This one, you're doing that every day but you don't know when it's going to end" once and for all, she says. "We get up every day and say, 'Who's the enemy today? What does the blob of oil look like today? Let's go attack it.'"

The surface slick from the oil covered 2,700 square miles on Thursday -- down sharply from its peak on June 14 but still an area slightly larger than Delaware, says Hans Graber, who has been tracking its movements via satellite imagery from the University of Miami's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing. Although the heart of the slick has fluctuated with weather and the amount of oil coming out of the seafloor, Graber says 44,000 square miles of the Gulf have seen significant amounts of oil pass through.

Even if the cap holds and no more oil spills, Coast Guard officials say cleaning what's left of the oil offshore could take anywhere from several weeks to several months. Long-term restoration of soiled marshes and other affected areas could take years, depending on the extent of damage.

Barring bad weather, which itself can be a regular occurrence, the command post routine rarely changes: Mornings start with spotter flights to get a sense of where the oil is on any given day. While much of it remains amassed near the wellhead, other so-called streamers and ribbons have broken off and made their way into inlets such as Barataria Bay, forcing crews to constantly monitor the moving oil and shift resources as necessary.

Data integration teams update computerized maps to depict where the slick has spread and to help operations managers in Houma communicate with nine forward operating bases scattered across the coastal parishes to determine where skimmers and boom-tenders should focus their efforts. Weather forecasters keep an eye on storms and tides, to help decide whether it's an optimal day to burn some of the oil closest to the explosion site or use chemical dispersants to break it up.

It's a complicated effort that can be set off course merely by big waves or high winds. To understand how and why, consider the three primary ways the oil is removed from the water's surface.

The first is skimming, and the Coast Guard has deployed a combination of vessels all across the Gulf Coast to help with the task. Closer to the source of the spill itself are some 19 to 23 Weir skimmers, which draw oil up through suction pumps and into tanks. Smaller skimmers, including ones that use drums to absorb the oil and others equipped with squeegee-like devices, work in shallow waters closer to shore. In all, nearly 600 skimmers are deployed in the response, although national incident commander Thad Allen said this week that the Coast Guard was on pace to almost double that number. Some of the vessels can remove up to 8,000 barrels -- or some 336,000 gallons of oil and water mix -- a day.

The challenge is this: While some of the spilled oil is a thick, black mass, much of it is sheen, and sheen is too thin for skimmers to be able to collect. Even near the source of the spill, the oil is only about a tenth of a millimeter thick, Laferriere says, meaning vessels equipped with booms must first surround the oil and tow it into a thicker pool that can be sucked up.

If the tides kick up because of a full moon or bad weather, the booms can't properly tow the oil and skimming is useless.

"Six feet of water, we can't skim," Laferriere says, likening the effort to trying to capture oil being sloshed like water in a washing machine.

A second cleanup method -- burning the oil -- is unsustainable if waves reach just 2 feet high, again because the oil must be towed into a thicker pile in order to catch fire. Even the slightest wave action can keep too much water splashing onto the oil, making it unlikely to ignite.

The more controversial use of chemical dispersants, which are dropped from crop-duster type aircraft and help break up the oil so it can biodegrade, can potentially disperse hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil at a time, the Coast Guard estimates. But if winds reach 20 knots, those operations are ceased because gusts could carry the chemicals away from their intended target.

Some combination of these three techniques have been used to purge the oil from the Gulf since the spill began on April 20. More than 30 million gallons of oily water have been removed from the surface, and another 10 million-plus gallons have been burned. More than 1.8 million gallons of dispersants have been dropped, and the Coast Guard estimates that with every gallon of chemicals used, up to 20 gallons of oil may be disseminated.

Laferriere is explaining all of this one recent day at the Houma command post, as he paces a cavernous room dubbed the fish bowl. The walls hold maps of the Louisiana coast, all showing The Blob colored red. Under a label that reads "Weather Forecast," graphics are hung depicting tide patterns, winds, and tropical storm warnings and watches. Other maps show scheduled overflights to drop dispersants.

Operational planning happens here, where dozens of men and women -- some Coast Guard employees, other BP workers, other contract specialists (such as mapping experts from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) come together each day to develop a strategy that is passed to field branches in places such as Cocodrie, La. The fishing village two hours south of New Orleans has been transformed from a fisherman's paradise into a warehouse for oil removal equipment, like much of the Louisiana coast.

At the CoCo Marina, the dock is blanketed with row after row of orange hard boom and softer absorbent boom, some awaiting repair or cleaning, other pieces ready to be ferried to oil-tinged marshes and bays. Anchors that hold the protective barriers into place are piled near dozens of blue buoy balls.

Luke LeBlanc is 43 and used to spend days shrimping the many bays in and around Cocodrie. His job now is to help clean those waters. He's up every morning at 4 and over to the CoCo Marina, where he signs in and gets his orders for the day. Then he heads out in an airboat to check boom and, if necessary, help stretch and anchor it to protect the canals.

"It's the same thing pretty much every day," he says. "Sometimes it's shifted. Sometimes it's busted. Sometimes it's on the bank. Sometimes the anchor's gone, and you've got to go find it. It's been a nonstop battle just maintaining. And then sometimes you maintain and the oil moves to a different area and you've got to start all over again."

"Heartbreaking," he calls his daily trips down canals now lined with barges stacked high with all the tools needed to face down an environmental catastrophe.

"There are certain days you go out there and you want to just put your head down and cry, but you can't. You've got to deal with it and get it cleaned up. As much as you want to point the finger and blame and get mad and relieve some frustration, that's not solving the problem."

Despite that, much finger-pointing has ensued, especially from local Louisiana politicians frustrated with what they saw early on as a lethargic response on behalf of the government and BP.

At one point, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser and others questioned why more equipment seemed to be sitting on docks rather than in the water. But even Nungesser, who just last month told a congressional panel, "I have spent more time fighting the officials of BP and the Coast Guard than fighting the oil," says the cleanup effort has improved.

"In the last two weeks we have made unbelievable progress," Nungesser says.

But the most significant step forward may be the 75-ton metal cap now in place at the bottom of the ocean.

"It's somewhat a sense of relief knowing, hopefully, that every bit of oil we pick up from here on out will be a little less that's going to be out there, as opposed to picking up less than was being spilled and losing ground on a daily basis," Nungesser says. "It's a great feeling."
Coast Guard officials battle oil 'blob' from Houma command post | NOLA.com

Idyllic 07-18-2010 08:52 PM
Well, seepage found. :(

Quote:
The U.S. official in charge of the oil spill response said late Sunday that a seep has been detected near the recently capped Gulf well. He ordered BP to do more tests.

"Given the current observations from the test, including the detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head, monitoring of the seabed is of paramount importance," retired U.S. Coast Admiral Thad Allen said in a letter to Bob Dudley, BP chief managing director.


The letter stopped just short of demanding BP open the valves that have sealed off the well since Thursday, the first time since the well's April 20 explosion that oil has not spewed into the Gulf of Mexcio.

"I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed," Allen wrote in the letter.

A BP spokesman said the company is reviewing the letter and "continuing to work very closely with the government," reports the Wall Street Journal.

Earlier Sunday, BP's chief operating officer Doug Suttles told reporters that the new capping stack could remain shut until a relief well permanently plugs the well with mud and cement in August.

"The results continue to look encouraging," Suttles said." We just need to be careful about predicting how long it will go. If we did see a problem we may have to initiate flow."

BP has been testing the well's pressure to see if it remains physically intact. Before it started, it said pressure above 8,000 psi (pounds per square inch) would indicate integrity but below 6,000 would suggest leakage from the casing onto the seafloor.

The well's pressure level was up to 6,778 psi (pounds per square inch) inside the well's new cap and is building at about 2 psi an hour, Suttles said. He attributed the pressure level to a depleting reservoir and said no problems had been found.

"No one wants to see any more oil flow into the Gulf. We are hopeful that we will be able to continue the integrity test until we get to kill" or plug the well, Suttles said. "Right now we don't have a target to return the well to flow."

Allen said Saturday in a statement that BP and government officials decided to extend the integrity testing on the Macondo Well, initially slated to end after 48 hours, for another 24 hours
http://"http://content.usatoday.com/...eping-crude/1"

patience is a virtue, one this disastrous incident/accident is truly testing, but faith insists (for me) that we must recover for not only ourselves but our children and our childrens', children, the environment alone deserves our best efforts. The world is still watching, at the very least I am watching and waiting until I can go home and pick up tar balls again from my beaches.... the panhandle is my home, the marsh is my home, the Gulf is my home. I live in hope... and the future, because that is the way I grew up and what I was taught, hope and substance and action. I hope the substance in the actions of those who can do something to fix, repair, clean, reduce, the oils damage to the environment and the people of the Gulf are doing the best they can. I thank all those who are working for this singular purpose in the restoration of the gulf and its shorelines and the end of this disaster. I send my prayers to those along the Gulf, may they find some sort of, I don't know, but something which will bond them together and help them to survive this and grow not only stronger but more resolved in the protection of their cultures and lives.

Jimmy Buffett Concert Draws Crowd on Oil Coast - CBS News

^^was a nice moment of what was and what will be again... wish I had been there. It takes a lot to down the southern fisherman mentality, et al the "beachers", we are used to setbacks, but we still keep fishing and singing and enjoying to the best we can. I miss my home.

roachboy 07-19-2010 06:26 AM
idyllic: i've said this before, but there's a level of empathy for you and other folk who live on the coast that's affected by this fiasco that runs at a level deeper than the differences we may have in terms of how each interprets the fiasco itself, how one explains it and from that how one imagines what should be altered because of it. my place looks out over a salt marsh. i see it in the morning; i watch the sunset over it every night. i'm really fascinated by it. i cannot imagine how i would react to tarballs rolling into the grasses...worse than the beach to my mind anyway (btw--is it true where you are that localities are "dealing with" oil that washes up by bulldozing it under the sand? there are lots of reports from lousiana and alabama of that happening...)

so i kinda understand.
of course i don't entirely because i'm not in it.
but i do kinda understand where you're coming from, what you're saying, why you say it as you do.

====

here's the letter that thad allen wrote bp:

Quote:
Dear Mr. Dudley,

My letter to you on July 16, 2010 extended the Well Integrity Test period contingent upon the completion of seismic surveys, robust monitoring for indications of leakage, and acoustic testing by the NOAA vessel PISCES in the immediate vicinity of the well head. Given the current observations from the test, including the detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head, monitoring of the seabed is of paramount importance during the test period. As a continued condition of the test, you are required to provide as a top priority access and coordination for the monitoring systems, which include seismic and sonar surface ships and subsea ROV and acoustic systems. When seeps are detected, you are directed to marshal resources, quickly investigate, and report findings to the government in no more than four hours. I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed.

As the National Incident Commander, I must remain abreast of the status of your source control efforts. Now that source control has evolved into a period beyond the expected 48 hour interval of the Well Integrity Test, I am requiring that you provide me a written update within 24 hours of your intentions going forward. I remain concerned that all potential options to eliminate the discharge of oil be pursued with utmost speed until I can be assured that no additional oil will spill from the Macondo Well.

You may use your letter of 9 July as a basis for your update. Specifically, you must provide me your latest containment plan and schedule in the event that the Well Integrity Test is suspended, the status and completion timelines for all containment options currently under development, and details of any other viable source control options including hydraulic control that you are
considering. You should highlight any points at which progress along one option will be impacted by resource trade-offs to achieve progress along another option. Include options for and impacts of continued twice-a day seismic testing versus once a day testing.

As you develop the plans above, note that the primary method of securing the source is the relief well and this effort takes precedence. Therefore, I direct you to provide a detailed plan for the final stages of the relief well that specifically addresses the interaction of this schedule and any other activity that may potentially delay relief well completion.

Have your representative provide results on the monitoring efforts and source control requirements described above during today’s BP and Government Science Team call at 8:00 PM CDT.

Sincerely,

THAD W. ALLEN
link to a copy ("original") and commentary courtesy of the oil drum:
The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - (Breaking) Anonymous Official Expresses Concern about Seeps and Pressure (and Open Thread 2)

the basic lines of debate amongst the oil people who post to TOD (death in german btw..i just noticed that) separates folk who are concerned about seep as over against people who think that the seep is being generated by the ROVs which are carrying out the pressure tests. fact is that there's no way to know which is the source and that explains the demand for more extensive monitoring.

i'd also direct attention to the posts by someone called "rovman"---he positions himself as having operated these vehicles for many years and so is able to decipher the imagery better than most i think. a persistent issue from the spectator position: the feeds from the leak area we can watch but not see in a sense because the feeds are at best thin on context.

btw this isn't a criticism.

it's simply the nature of the beast. and because that's the case, there's a basic level of indeterminacy in the meanings of what's being seen, far more indeterminacy than is customary (if television footage, for example, is edited to support a particular interpretive or political line that is being read by a given talking head, there is manipulation of the viewership but no indeterminacy. television is geared around erasing indeterminacy---but i think that's largely unwitting. i mean, no-one sets out to do it. it's a side-effect) it appears that in a community like TOD you get a version of what seems always to happen: folk muster their technical understanding around positions which are a priori. so folk who think that the bubbles and elevated methane levels are caused by the rovs themselves are inclined one way, and those who think about the same phenomena as maybe problematic are inclined another.

so it's a matter of predisposition.

TOD is obviously a kind of mystery-science theater operation, in that they are watching the same infotainment that you and i have access to, but watch it a little better because of the technical backgrounds that are brought to bear on the data.

but keep in mind that there's a very considerable gap separating the data we in the public have access to and the data that's "proprietary"...because, well, this is "private"...but i digress.


a couple other articles from different sources that elaborate on what idyllic posted and/or on allen's letter:

BP oil cap may not have stopped leak | Environment | guardian.co.uk
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/us...ef=global-home


here is a piece that steps back a little and provides more context, more data that dovetails with the general explanation for this fiasco that's been developed not only here but in most places outside the confines of the dwindling drill baby drill set:

The well is capped. But what else lurks below the surface for BP? | Business | The Observer

aceventura3 07-19-2010 07:50 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by MSD (Post 2806306)
My experience has been that those who disregard compassion and what we know as morality are the ones who rise to the top.
Interesting.

When I think of compassion, I think of it in terms of first having the ability and willingness to actually do something otherwise compassion is without meaning or real value - so me having compassion for someone I can not help is wasted. Second, I think of it in terms of being directed to a specific person or group. So in my view a CEO who acts in a manner to protect the wealth and well being of those who work or invest in his company is compassionate. The alternative would be for his to act in a manner that weakens and diminishes the value actually hurting those he/she was entrusted to protect. Comparable to a pride of lions - true compassion requires hard choices and occasional the good of the group may be more important than the good of an individual. Also, a lion can not show compassion for its prey. I see this the opposite of the way you do, and I find our perspectives very interesting.

roachboy 07-19-2010 01:01 PM
right. looking out for shareholder profits is compassion.

here's another little bit about compassion capitalist-style or what can happen when the captains of industry exercise their particular type of shareholder-oriented compassion in the context of imperial north-south relations and so without those pesky distorting regulations to direct that compassion impulse in other ways:

Baird: We Don't Hear About Africa's Oil Spills - Newsweek

or this:

Apocalypse Now ... Niger Delta?s oil exploitation tragedy - Herald Scotland | News | World News

or this, for the reference tree at the bottom:

Environmental issues in the Niger Delta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



meanwhile there's some reports that say the well is leaking both near the top and seeping a couple miles away. it's all still nebulous and it's not clear who's saying what quite yet...but if it turns out that these problems are serious, it'll mean that the oil will start heading back into the gulf again and it is meet, apparently, that it be a representative of the federal government and not bp who takes the news cycle hit for announcing it.

or so the interpretations run.

The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - White House Press Secretary Gibbs Confirms "Ruptured Oil Well Leaking from Top" and a Seep Two Miles Away (and Open Thread 2)

things are still unfolding.
i hope this turns out to be a false alarm.

aceventura3 07-19-2010 01:27 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy (Post 2806961)
right. looking out for shareholder profits is compassion.
If you were the CEO of a bio-tech firm on the verge on a major medical break-through one that would benefit millions of people - compassion in your world would be what? Would you work to make sure your company had the financial stability and strenght to see the potential break-through become a reality? Would you simply give away your company funds to the poor and dissolve the company? What is the compassionate action? Should there be a realization that through profit there can be further investment, or should there be pretense the human beings will risk capital for good without the possibility of some form of reward?

Perhaps you would be better served by not espousing you anti-capitalist musing unless you have the balls to back them up.

ring 07-19-2010 01:40 PM
Ace:
The Lions & Wolves & other Critters you reference, are not small-medium-large
business owners in the human capitalist arena.

If you were one of these critters you so admire, you couldn't debate so disingenuously.

....................................................................................................................

Thanks roach for the newest links.
The idea of the Macondo well being sorely compromised & unstable,
is something we all hold our collective breath about.

Yikes.

Post-script. Ace, I don't have testicles. What do you suggest I back up my claims with?

roachboy 07-19-2010 02:05 PM
this is a digression.

i have a friend who started and runs a biotech firm. among the drugs that firm produces are anti-malarial drugs which are designed in a way to get around acquired immunities to older anti-malarial drugs. the bulk of the market for them can't afford them. the firms doesn't stop producing them because, contrary to your one-dimensional view, there's more than one ethical decision involved and there's more than one way to approach them. and these questions aren't always easy.

so you know, i have another friend who's head clinician for a different biotech firm. i have other who work trying to get anti retro-viral drugs into parts of east africa without them all disappearing between the port of entry and the clinics where they're destined. folk at several points in this sort of chain of production and distribution that is the result of **political choices** particular to the united states about the way in which medicines are produced and by extension funded.

and one thing is sure--none of these people are as blind as you are about the particularities of the american system. none of them imagine this is the only way of doing things.

there are multiple ways to balance economic and ethical questions. there are multiple conflicts that emerge as well. everyone who is involved with this production thinks about them from time to time. the folk in the production side tell me that most of their days are spent on purely technical matters. the ceo types consider them frame matters---so they wrestle with them but in ways that are shaped by having to work within a system that they see as both given and distorted. the folk who are really confronted with all the complexity of this overall system of drug production and distribution are my friends who are working on the ground in sub-saharan africa.

but that confrontation involves complexity and nuance.

i wonder if it is possible to be an ethical subject at all if you cannot deal with ugly realities. because ugly realities are often consequences of actions. there is a problem for anything like ethical action if you cannot deal with consequences of actions. so i wonder, ace, if your aversion to complexity makes you entirely incapable of ethical action. i mean in principle. i don't know how you roll in meat-space. i assume like everyone you're way more complicated there than you come across on this board.

for example it is possible to defend oil production without having to vaporize the reality of the niger river delta. it is possible to make arguments about the relation of captialist forms of production to something approximating ethics that are not routed through milton friedman.

it is possible to think about how to align capitalist forms of production with even stakeholder interests not to mention ethical questions that extend beyond the circulation of capital--because like it or not capitalist production operates in a wider social context. for example the deepwater horizon disaster happened in the gulf of mexico, remember? the gulf is other than than the circulation of capital.

if all that matters is the circulation of capital, why should a firm like bp give a shit about what happens in the gulf of mexico?

but what happens if all that matters is the circulation of capital? well, one thing that happens is the sort of thing that's happening in the niger river delta.

so you might think that the niger river delta points to a the centrality of political arrangements in shaping what economic actors are and are not responsible for. so there is no ethical content to corporate actions. there is adaptation to particular frameworks and that's it.

i have a husky to walk.


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