Louisiana Oil Rig Fire / Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill - Page 7 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Idyllic · 05-27-2010, 03:57 PM

Thank you, ring,

I'm sure I will need a lot more before this is all over. I find it really difficult to even read this thread, I'm no ostrich, but I really wish I could just bury my head in the sand and pretend this never even happened, I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way, it's a damn shame it is.

roachboy · 05-27-2010, 04:14 PM

idyllic: alot of my empathy and sadness---more than that---over this follows from the fact that when i look out my window i see a salt marsh. i am endless fascinated by it, by this type of environment, and i find it unbelievable and entirely unacceptable that this catastrophe has happened, that it continues, that so little has been done to protect the wetlands, so little co-ordination so little concern for any co-ordinated anything-----except on the part of bp's media crisis team. i'm also disgusted with the federal and state governments, but more shocked by the regulatory set-up that's been in place, which made something like this inevitable, from accident to inability to deal with it---even as this particular case remains an accident. so yeah, i feel this even as i live in new england. these places that are being destroyed are special. it's beyond tragic because its entirely unnecessary.

================

ace, i've made my positions clear.

what you call a "tizzy" is nothing more than exasperation at the fact i find myself bothering to engage with someone who simply refuses to do the work required to be taken seriously. it bothers me that against my better judgment i waste my time interacting with you.

as for your pissy ridiculous "questions"....i've already answered them.

to summarize:

i have made it clear what the directions are that the research has taken in this thread.

i have tried to integrate these directions of research through interpretations that in some details have changed as the information i have at hand changes. but the overall line has been clear.

the condition of possibility for this accident was the regulatory regime itself.
i've posted alot of information about how that regime operated.
i've posted information about minerals management. i posted a copy of the lease for the fucking site the deepwater horizon was on that allow anyone who looks, including you if you bothered, to see exactly what bp was exempted from providing.
there's plenty of information--more than enough----to render you're claims in defense of bp meaningless.

moreover, there's material in this thread about bp's history of cutting corners on safety and environmental considerations in the gulf in particular.

and there's ALOT of information about bp not following their own procedures in this particular situation. there's ALOT of information about negligence. and it's all public record. if you bothered to read, you'd see it.

that an accident reflects long-term problems and is ringed round with general and specific problems on bp's part, on halliburtons part and transocean's part does **not** mean that what happened wasn't an accident.
no-one outside of the straw-man machine you seem to have in your brain has said anything other than that.

where the problems of regulatory scheme and bp converge for real is in the 37 days that's passed since the accident. what's happened follows in a straight line from what conditioned or enabled it.

you're stuck on some idiotic claim that bp "had a plan"---that idiotic claim has been demolished over and over by me, by jazz, by jay, by others. there was no plan functionally to deal with problems that could arise with deepwater drilling like this in significant measure because mms did not require bp to generate the scenarios that would have been the basis for developing the technologies and contingency plans that should, obviously, have been in place. period. there is nothing you can say that changes this. the documentation is in the thread.

my politics are clear. i make no secret of them.

i don't have anything else to say.

ring · 05-27-2010, 04:26 PM

Disillusionment is difficult.

Perhaps that's the explanation for the masquerade.

silent_jay · 05-27-2010, 05:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

The only way I can think to respond here is with an extreme example. A local Fire Department has plans in place to protect life and property. A house burns down and there is loss of life - then after the fact you come along and say there was no plan because they did not have a station next door to the house that burned. And, even if there was a station next door with "fool-proof" monitors, sprinklers, etc, the house could still burn and their could still be loss of life. So to me it seems you want things to be risk free, this risk free world is fantasy.

Ace, I've worked in the mining industry before, I know this risk free world doesn't exist, but you don't seem to grasp the concept of relief wells being drilled at the same time as the producing well. To drill the relief well after the fact does nothing, the damage is done, the oil is already in the water at that point, the point of them is to relieve pressure in case of a blow out, hence the name relief well, not relief after the fact wells. Drilling one after the fact isn't a plan, a plan would have been to have one drilled alonside the producing well in the first place, to relieve pressure in case of a blowout.

Comparing it to having a fire station next door is well to use your own term, complete idiocy.

Idyllic · 05-27-2010, 05:21 PM

rb, av, I'm beginning to believe your both beating the same dead horse, just opposite ends, and neither one wants to admit they got the ass, funny thing, it's a two-assed horse, no brain in site regarding bp and this travesty to the environment or it's people, with the government bringing up a sloppy second rear.

roachboy · 05-27-2010, 06:31 PM

i think i have a pretty good bead on how this disaster was possible.

and to tell the truth, alot of it is at the feet of the free marketeers, the neo-liberal set who put regulation in a position of introducing distortions into the otherwise fabulously efficient world dominated by the private sector and profit motives...all a crock of shit really...particularly when the "resource" or "raw material" of a capitalist production process involves myriad stakeholders--and this because the myopic logic of capitalism, with its abstractions and separations, makes it almost impossible for any given firm or sector to deal rationally with the commons absent some regulatory apparatus---which has to be proactive and aggressive as over against the conservative preference of reactive and passive.

i lay alot of the blame for the general conditions that enabled this disaster on the right's doorstep, from their contempt for environmental issues (drill baby drill) to their surreal, ridiculous economic ideology (see above) to the upside-down conception of regulation which is of a piece with it.

and i am beyond sick of conservative obsessing on news cycles as if dominating the next cycle is all that matters and the constant tweaking of the nitwit talking point of the moment around dominating the next news cycle---whence the pathetic, stupid calls for the federal government to swoop in and save everyone even though the entire regulatory apparatus puts the government in the position of having to wait until oil corporations take the initiative---which they never have to do if those corporations provide tickets to peach bowls and access to parties and promises of lucrative jobs in the future to the hopelessly corrupt and ineffectual people who occupy positions within the regulatory system, who are put there by conservatives who see regulation as ineffectual and corrupt anyway...so this is what you get when things go south.

so dont give me this nonsense that ace and i have anything to do with each other. people who think the way he does are responsible for the general conditions that enabled this fiasco in the first place--and now they have the gall to act all outraged because stuff the logic of the system **THEY SET UP** precludes from happening what they're calling for. it'd be hypocritical were most of these people not so fucking stupid.

meanwhile marshes are killed off and ecosystems wiped out and its all boo hoo....which is fine so long as the folk whose politics are responsible for the worst aspects of this disaster dont use the boo hoo to evade the fact of the matter, which is that its **your** way of seeing things that set this up and what you're seeing is the consequence of it, **your** way of seeing things...it's expression, it's result, what it leads to, what it is.

ring · 05-27-2010, 07:02 PM

& also, for the record, Idyllic:

Ace has admitted to posting just to get a rise out of people for his own entertainment.

There is absolutely no comparison.

Idyllic · 05-27-2010, 08:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i think i have a pretty good bead on how this disaster was possible.

which is that its **your** way of seeing things that set this up and what you're seeing is the consequence of it, **your** way of seeing things...it's expression, it's result, what it leads to, what it is.

Thank you rb, I knew you had it in you.... where did you say you lived. I happen to like our way of life, sucky as it can be at times, it's still the U.S.A. the greatest place to live, of course I am bias, as most of the 300 million plus would seem to agree with me and the myriad more that continuously move here, they must be bias too, alas who am I in a sea of patriots, imho.

So the "accident" is our own fault, nice.... and our whining is useless because we voted in the people who are the system we cry about, nice.... why didn't you just say so to begin with, I am sure none of us realized this, as blinded by our self centered, corrupt, capitalism we must be, hummm? You know, I was doing well I thought, in understanding how you appeared to feel, but now I wonder if your whole content wasn’t more of a "I told you so". thumbing your nose at our government.

It is true, I am desperately angry at what I feel is a bunch of bureaucracy and plan old bs too, but I sure as hell don’t want to alter the free market of this nation just to “attempt” to insure the prevention of disasters like this, for in truth, to lose our way of democracy and laissez faire, to me, that would be the greatest travesty of all.

And I am not stupid to believe in my government or the people I elect into it, I would be stupid if I stopped believing in the system that has created my nation, that doesn’t change that they have really let me down here, but we will rally. This “accident” is another painful learning experience, but from it we will grow, together, stronger, because it is what we do in this country, we may fight like siblings, but we all still love this country, at least I do, and I still believe in the American people and the American way of life. Your right, we created it, damn, I never thought I would have to defend an oil spill in the process of defending my country, how did this go here, how can one blame an entire country of people who fundamentally believe in basic freedoms for every individual on earth, and suggest that that freedom alone is our own true corrupter? I must be confused, I'm sure I must be confused, right?

roachboy · 05-28-2010, 03:37 AM

you miss my point i think.

i am tremendously bothered by the way in which the federal government and oil corporations came to interact with each other across the regulatory system. the more i find out about that system the more appalling i find it to be. like i've said, this is the central thing i've found out about for myself in across this thread and it is the main factor that's shaped the situation in general---it is the condition of possibility for some kind of disaster for reasons i've already spelled out---and the regulatory regime has shaped the responses to the disaster from the start. people on the right are blaming the federal government for being trapped in the information flows that were set up in law through this system. and that system is a neoliberal product for the most part, a shining brilliant example of just how bad an idea it is to assume that the private sector knows and the state/regulation introduces distortion, just how bad an idea it is to allow the private sector and profit motives to determine uses within the commons, just how bad an idea conservative economic ideology is.

it's lunacy that deepwater drilling was allowed without a detailed disaster plan and the technologies required to implement it in an ecosystem as valuable (in every sense) as the gulf of mexico. it is lunacy. but it happened. blame minerals management. blame the epa. but mostly blame bp. and for bp blame our collective addiction to oil.

in that respect no-one is terribly righteous since petroleum and its derivatives are everywhere.

the paradox in that is that given the regulatory apparatus, you can't say we were let down. the apparatus ran as it was set up to run. it was legal for minerals management to exempt bp from planning for a disaster. it was legal to exempt bp from the drain on profits that designing the required technologies. it was legal because the regulatory system put oil corporation profits first. and the oil industry paid ALOT of money to get things set up that way. they bought ALOT of political influence.

the oil industry is heavily knit into the economies in louisiana in particular, but along the whole coastal region. they're a big player. so long as the money was rolling in people didnt care so much, did they? it happens everywhere. here's no exception, where i live. it just turns out that this area doesn't have some 4 thousand oil rigs offshore.

an industry goes long enough without a major meltdown and has a political structure bought and paid for and a population ok with whatever to a point so long as they get paid and a regulatory apparatus that's in the interests of the corporations and a kind of routinized corruption in the oversight agencies and maybe it makes sense somehow to start seeing environmental protection as an unnecessary drain on profits or an annoyance so you get mms to exempt you because hell what could happen?

what could happen?

its not good. none of this is good.
but because of the way the game was set up, you aren't in a position to say you are being let down by the way the leak itself has been handled.

on the other hand, and this is different and i've not talked about this because i stupidly thought that clean-up efforts were real and happening in reality---but they're not in the main----this lack of action on cleaning up the spill itself, particularly given its magnitude is unbelievable. tragic. stupid. unnecessary. **that** seems to me a breakdown at **every** level of government in the co-ordination of resources and putting technologies and people into place to protect the coast, protect ecosystems to the greatest possible extent. and that i have no explanation for.

patriotic stuff doesn't work for me, btw. never has, never will.
i don't see this in those terms at all.
i see this as following from routine venal corruption that leans on a petroleum-based model of capitalism that is not sustainable. i think everyone knows its now sustainable but avoids making any hard choices because the money flows, or did, and things seem to operate, or did, and when things get difficult you can always run away into flag waving and abstract statements about freedom and pretend that capitalism isn't at the center of all things american. it's the rigid commitment to the neoliberal version of capitalism that's speeding the plow of fading empire. but that's another story.

=======

btw it appears that there are problems with the pressures in the well...it's apparently not clear that the mud is all the way down because oil and other stuff is leaking into it. so it was suspended overnight. these leaks were called yesterday afternoon by some of the folk who have been following this on the oil drum...which for understanding better than tv will get you to what you're looking at with the live feeds, so what's happening and what's at stake in the process at its various stages, it's a good resource.

on the present state of things:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...kill-oil-spill

again, putting aside thinking about how this was possible and the many problems that have surfaced since, we should all hope this procedure works because if it doesn't we are fucked. the gulf of mexico is already seriously affected, but this could be nothing if the top kill doesn't work. this could go on until august.

august.

unbelievable.

so if you pray this is a time to do it. the next 48 hours.

roachboy · 05-28-2010, 07:18 AM

there are apparently some quite considerable problems with this top kill operation.
but assessing the situation is a problem because it's now obvious that bp has a...um....transparency issue let's say.

this thread on the oil drum is about the most current i've seen:

The Oil Drum | Deepwater Oil Spill - Top Kill Update, Restarting the Mud, and Comment Thread

and is interesting consistently, even as for a layman (and i am one) separating wheat from chaff when everyone is writing in that particular mode of self-assurance that engineers seem to drop into when they're discussing engineering problems. the upside is that there's at least some oil engineers posting. you know, people who've actually worked on rigs and understand the set-up.

there's also a diagram of the blow-out preventer thing that shows where the live feed is originating.

a link to the bp feed, for convenience:

Live video link from the ROV monitoring the damaged riser

aceventura3 · 05-28-2010, 08:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by silent_jay

Ace, I've worked in the mining industry before, I know this risk free world doesn't exist, but you don't seem to grasp the concept of relief wells being drilled at the same time as the producing well. To drill the relief well after the fact does nothing, the damage is done, the oil is already in the water at that point, the point of them is to relieve pressure in case of a blow out, hence the name relief well, not relief after the fact wells. Drilling one after the fact isn't a plan, a plan would have been to have one drilled alonside the producing well in the first place, to relieve pressure in case of a blowout.

Comparing it to having a fire station next door is well to use your own term, complete idiocy.

All you are saying is that you think there was a better plan. After an accident there is always a better plan. It is far to easy for people to say they had no plan or we simply need more regulation, my point is that regardless of the plan, regardless of the level of regulation, bad things can/will happen in a environment were there is risk. Wrongly identifying what we think is the cause will lead to ineffective solutions. So I persist in trying to get people to be specific and clear on this issue.

---------- Post added at 03:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:38 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

===============

ace, i've made my positions clear.

what you call a "tizzy" is nothing more than exasperation at the fact i find myself bothering to engage with someone who simply refuses to do the work required to be taken seriously. it bothers me that against my better judgment i waste my time interacting with you.

as for your pissy ridiculous "questions"....i've already answered them.

to summarize:

i have made it clear what the directions are that the research has taken in this thread.

i have tried to integrate these directions of research through interpretations that in some details have changed as the information i have at hand changes. but the overall line has been clear.

the condition of possibility for this accident was the regulatory regime itself.
i've posted alot of information about how that regime operated.
i've posted information about minerals management. i posted a copy of the lease for the fucking site the deepwater horizon was on that allow anyone who looks, including you if you bothered, to see exactly what bp was exempted from providing.
there's plenty of information--more than enough----to render you're claims in defense of bp meaningless.

I don't defend BP, this illustrates you don't comprehend what is written. My point with BP is that they had a plan, a plan that was approved. BP is at fault here and I would have "fired" them from the very beginning.

Your thoughts on regulation are not clear. Are you suggesting that a different regulatory structure is required, if so what? Are you suggesting inadequate regulation, if so what type of regulation eliminates the possibility of a major oil spill? There are other questions, but I doubt you will respond. In my view what you present would do nothing to prevent or minimize the next disaster, because I don't think you understand the root cause of this one.

Quote:

moreover, there's material in this thread about bp's history of cutting corners on safety and environmental considerations in the gulf in particular.

What does "cutting corners" really mean to you. There is always going to be a point where a "corner" gets cut! The nature of cost/benefit analysis quantifies these trade-offs all the time in all types of markets and in all types of government. Your superficial comments on this subject is problematic to anyone taking the issue seriously.

Quote:

and there's ALOT of information about bp not following their own procedures in this particular situation. there's ALOT of information about negligence. and it's all public record. if you bothered to read, you'd see it.

Humans make judgment calls. In most systems, including oil drilling, the exposure to human judgment error never goes to zero. The real issue is how do we minimize this exposure, and what did BP do in this regard. What did regulators do?

Quote:

that an accident reflects long-term problems and is ringed round with general and specific problems on bp's part, on halliburtons part and transocean's part does **not** mean that what happened wasn't an accident.
no-one outside of the straw-man machine you seem to have in your brain has said anything other than that.

What about industry standards. These companies have been generally supported by the industry and experts regarding their general operational activities. Investigations will reveal what really went wrong, but this could have happened to other companies in the industry.

Quote:

where the problems of regulatory scheme and bp converge for real is in the 37 days that's passed since the accident. what's happened follows in a straight line from what conditioned or enabled it.

you're stuck on some idiotic claim that bp "had a plan"---that idiotic claim has been demolished over and over by me, by jazz, by jay, by others. there was no plan functionally to deal with problems that could arise with deepwater drilling like this in significant measure because mms did not require bp to generate the scenarios that would have been the basis for developing the technologies and contingency plans that should, obviously, have been in place. period. there is nothing you can say that changes this. the documentation is in the thread.

Documents show they had a plan. Their response shows they had a plan. Contracts put in place before the accident shows they had a plan. the President said they had a plan and that every action they have taken in executing their plan was approved by his administration. Sorry if I don't accept you Jazz and Jay saying something different.

---------- Post added at 04:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:56 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by ring

& also, for the record, Idyllic:

Ace has admitted to posting just to get a rise out of people for his own entertainment.

There is absolutely no comparison.

If you think there is no substance in what I present, the answer is simple - ignore what I write. I admit that I should be better and not respond to silliness with silliness, but I am flawed.

silent_jay · 05-28-2010, 08:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

All you are saying is that you think there was a better plan. After an accident there is always a better plan. It is far to easy for people to say they had no plan or we simply need more regulation, my point is that regardless of the plan, regardless of the level of regulation, bad things can/will happen in a environment were there is risk. Wrongly identifying what we think is the cause will lead to ineffective solutions. So I persist in trying to get people to be specific and clear on this issue.

I don't think there was a better plan ace, I know there was a better plan, if you could grasp the concept of relief wells you'd see this too, but this is pointless, you'll just complain for the sake of complaining as I've said before, you're either blind and can't see a relief well after the fact isn't a plan, or you're just trying to entertain yourself, but this is useless and a waste of my time.

roachboy · 05-28-2010, 08:36 AM

ace...all this is about is your childish attempt to force onto me and onto a non-cooperative reality your ridiculous way of framing the questions you ask and/or the issues you pretend to raise.

i've already answered the "point" you "make" about planning multiple times above.
the regulatory arrangement that frames drilling in the ocean needs to fundamentally change. the old conservative-style joke of an arrangement has been shown inadequate in the most basic ways.
there may well have been a file on someone's desk at bp with the title THE PLAN on it, but it was obviously not adapted to deepwater conditions. this has been amply demonstrated through events, documents and testimony, so there's no point in continuing to humor you as if your "point" is serious. it isn't. find something else to obsess about.

would a different regulatory regime prevent accidents? no. but they'd go a whole lot further than this one has in assuring that if there is an accident that there is a plan fitted to the situation. we are 37 days in already, ace. there was functionally speaking no plan to deal with an accident on the deepwater horizon.

=========

meanwhile back in the world of consequence, it appears that something bad happened this morning. maybe. it's hard to know with all the conflicting information, much of which seems geared around stumbling through the day without the story falling apart so that americans can go to sleep on reality for a few days.

frame by frame here:
pas au-delà

intepretive questions on the oil drum.

there's lots and lots of conflicting information flying around. it's a bit of a farce.

ring · 05-28-2010, 08:48 AM

I saved those images.

That did not look good at all.

roachboy · 05-28-2010, 08:51 AM

YouTube - BP Oil Spill Live Feed webcam video May 28, 2010 9:15 AM

a clip of the explosion.
it's really hard to say what's going on in it. except that something blew up. one narrative is that this was the mud getting blown back because something let go in the concrete casing---another is that this was a junk shot. so much dis/conflicting information.

all that's sure is the claims the uscg are making about the oil having stopped are false. even bp is saying as much, and they're hardly a model of transparency.

Baraka_Guru · 05-28-2010, 09:08 AM

Ah, the forces of nature mixed with the meddling of humans....

Cimarron29414 · 05-28-2010, 09:19 AM

Edit: Went to your link and saw the frame by frame. Looks like something bad happened. So, things really can get worse...

roachboy · 05-28-2010, 09:30 AM

yeah, but it's a bit maddening to see that as a clip, then again frame by frame, to read mutually exclusive interpretations on the oil drum (explosion? junk shot?) and see nothing about anything in the press-machinery. this even though the stream is an aspect of alot of press coverage.

i'm left thinking deep things like: "um....what was that?"

like i keep saying, though, we should all hope this works.
the alternatives are really bad.

Cimarron29414 · 05-28-2010, 09:39 AM

Yeah, terms like "The Second Dead Sea" are starting to fill my head. Chilling to the bone.

roachboy · 05-28-2010, 10:07 AM

aceventura3 · 05-28-2010, 10:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

the regulatory arrangement that frames drilling in the ocean needs to fundamentally change. the old conservative-style joke of an arrangement has been shown inadequate in the most basic ways.

You make incredible statements. I simply try to understand them. There is a "old conservative-style" of regulation and a ... what... style of regulation? How are they different? How would this other style of regulation better reduce the risk of catastrophe? How would regulators under this other style be proactive rather than reactive or ahead of technology or experts within the industry being regulated?

Or, was your comment above just a throw-away-statement not to be take seriously?

roachboy · 05-28-2010, 10:15 AM

i've already explained this a dozen times, ace. no more.

Lucifer · 05-28-2010, 10:23 AM

I was going to post this in the "post a random image" thread, but it just seemed more appropriate here:

ring · 05-28-2010, 10:28 AM

The lack of any coordinated clean up efforts is infuriating.

This climate of fear, greed, & secrecy is stultifying,
and the forecast isn't going to change anytime soon.

The empire isn't wearing any clothing.

Baraka_Guru · 05-28-2010, 10:32 AM

Apparently we'll know by Monday whether the mud-pumped junkshot worked.

aceventura3 · 05-28-2010, 10:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i've already explained this a dozen times, ace. no more.

Then give me the post number, so I can read it.

What is the problem with elaborating on the points you make, answering questions, clarifying statements, I in particular, find amazing? For someone who is serious and dismissive of others for a lack of seriousness, should we expect more from you? Everyone makes statements blowing off steam etc, but that is not what you are doing is it?

You have made attacks and charges against me as an individual, at this point I won't relent until you take them back, give up, or justify your position relative to mine.

silent_jay · 05-28-2010, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

You have made attacks and charges against me as an individual, at this point I won't relent until you take them back, give up, or justify your position relative to mine.

If attacks have been made against you, as I said in another thread, report the bloody thing, don't piss and moan about them over and over and play the victim, it gets old quickly, that's what we have a 'report post button' for.

Seems funny though, someone complaining about being 'attacked repeatedly', yet they themselves have admitted to 'posting certain things for the entertainment value', what's the word for someone who does that again?

roachboy · 05-28-2010, 11:14 AM

i'm not sure if this is the same plume that was referenced above (260) or yet another one...but more deepwater oil, in apparently very large amounts:

Quote:

La. scientist locates another vast oil plume in the gulf

By David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 28, 2010; 1:09 PM

A day after scientists reported finding a huge "plume" of oil extending miles east of the leaking BP well, on Friday a Louisiana scientist said his crew had located another vast plume of oily globs, miles in the opposite direction.

James H. Cowan Jr., a professor at Louisiana State University, said his crew on Wednesday found a plume of oil in a section of the gulf 75 miles west of the source of the leak.

Cowan said that his crew sent a remotely controlled submarine into the water, and found it full of oily globules, from the size of a thumbnail to the size of a golf ball. Unlike the plume found east of the leak -- in which the oil was so dissolved that contaminated water appeared clear -- Cowan said the oil at this site was so thick that it covered the lights on the submarine.

"It almost looks like big wet snowflakes, but they're brown and black and oily," Cowan said. The submarine returned to the surface entirely black, he said.

Cowan said that the submarine traveled about 400 feet down, close to the sea floor, and found oil all the way down. Trying to find the edges of the plume, he said the submarine traveled miles from side to side.

"We really never found either end of it," he said. He said he did not know how wide the plume actually was, or how far it stretched away to the west.

Cowan's finding underscores concerns about oil moving under the surface, perhaps because of dispersant chemicals that have broken it up into smaller globules. BP officials have played down the possibility of undersea oil plumes.

This discovery seems to confirm the fears of some scientists that -- because of the depth of the leak and the heavy use of chemical "dispersants" -- this spill was behaving differently than others. Instead of floating on top of the water, it may be moving beneath it.

That would be troubling because it could mean the oil would slip past coastal defenses such as "containment booms" designed to stop it on the surface. Already, scientists and officials in Louisiana have reported finding thick oil washing ashore despite the presence of floating booms.

It would also be a problem for hidden ecosystems deep under the gulf. There, scientists say, the oil could be absorbed by tiny animals and enter a food chain that builds to large, beloved sport-fish like red snapper. It might also glom on to deep-water coral formations, and cover the small animals that make up each piece of coral.

"You're almost like a deer in the headlights when you're watching this. You don't know what to say," Cowan said. He said the oil's threat to undersea ecosystems "is really starting to scare us."

In the discovery described Thursday, scientists aboard a University of South Florida research vessel found an area of dissolved oil east of the leak that is about six miles wide, and extends from the surface down to a depth of about 3,200 feet, said Professor David Hollander.

Hollander said that he believed the plume might have stretched more than 20 miles from the site of a leak on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, where the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank April 22. It has not yet reached Florida.

The plume is clear, with the oil entirely dissolved.

"Here is a situation where, unless you're looking at the chemical fingerprints, [the oil] is absolutely not visible," Hollander said. "It's not some Italian vinaigrette or anything like that. It's absolutely, perfectly clear."

But, Hollander said, even this clear-looking water could contain enough oil to be toxic to small animals at the base of the gulf food chain. He said he was also worried that the oil contains traces of "dispersants," soaplike chemicals sprayed into the oil to break it up.

"You don't want to put soap into a fish tank," Hollander said.

The University of South Florida vessel, the Weatherbird II, used sonar and other devices to sample the water below it. Other scientists have said they have little of the equipment necessary to find oil under the water, leading to debates about whether the underwater plumes were even there.

This week, Mike Utsler, who helps oversee the spill response off the entire Louisiana coast as BP Houma incident commander, said he's focused only on taking oil off the surface. "We don't know there's oil underwater," he said.

William Hogarth, dean of the USF College of Marine Science, said university researchers have sent samples to federal officials for analysis, but it's clear the oil is new because Stanford scientists had sampled the same area a year ago and found no evidence of oil. The Weatherbird II will conduct another tour next week, he said, with different researchers aboard.

"This is not natural seep," he said, adding that scientists will have to study the region for several years in order to properly gauge its impact. "We're talking about probably a three-to-five-year monitoring program to see what happens to food chain."

washingtonpost.com

aceventura3 · 05-28-2010, 11:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by silent_jay

If attacks have been made against you, as I said in another thread, report the bloody thing, don't piss and moan about them over and over and play the victim, it gets old quickly, that's what we have a 'report post button' for.

Seems funny though, someone complaining about being 'attacked repeatedly', yet they themselves have admitted to 'posting certain things for the entertainment value', what's the word for someone who does that again?

My choice is to respond directly. The vast majority of my responses have been questions, asking for clarification.

I am guilty of using humor, am I the only one? Perhaps, you should report me.

roachboy · 05-28-2010, 11:57 AM

folk on the oil drum over the last half hour have been arguing that the explosion this morning wasn't an explosion at all, but rather the remote operating vehicle moving away from the riser, with the debris being kicked up by the thrusters.

it's really hard to say, isn't it?

a little lesson in the opacity of surfaces maybe, the non-transparency of images, that they may "put you there" but they are not necessarily any good at letting you know where "there" is or what's happening....

silent_jay · 05-28-2010, 12:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

My choice is to respond directly. The vast majority of my responses have been questions, asking for clarification.

I am guilty of using humor, am I the only one? Perhaps, you should report me.

Respond directly? You mean by pissing and moaning in multiple threads? Humour and posting things for your own entertainment are two different things ace, but this is just silly, you'll keep complaining about anything and everything, it seems to be what you like to do, you'll ignore facts for your own opinions, it's all just pointless and well, ruining what was otherwise a decent thread about a dreadful situation, actually two threads, as you have the same act going in both.

As for reporting you, I could care less, I'm not the one pissing and moaning in multiple threads about how I was attacked, shall we draw you a picture of how the 'report post' button works? I'm only asking because it seems to be another concept you are unable to grasp, or you just like to complain for complainings sake as I've stated before.

Cimarron29414 · 05-28-2010, 12:02 PM

I guess I can see that. Scale, distance, and velocity are completely distorted in the BP liveasset video. I've been watching it all day. The only thing I've learned is that it is possible to become a bit seasick simply from watching an underwater sub video.

silent_jay · 05-28-2010, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

I guess I can see that. Scale, distance, and velocity are completely distorted in the BP liveasset video. I've been watching it all day. The only thing I've learned is that it is possible to become a bit seasick simply from watching an underwater sub video.

Haha, I know what you mean Cimarron, have to take a break from the feed every now and again.

roachboy · 05-28-2010, 01:11 PM

this isn't good.

Quote:

BP’s Effort to Plug Oil Leak Suspended a Second Time
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

HOUSTON — BP’s renewed efforts at plugging the flow of oil from its runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico stalled again on Friday, as the company suspended pumping operations for the second time in two days, according to a technician involved with the response effort.

In an operation known as a “junk shot,” BP engineers poured pieces of rubber, golf balls and other materials into the crippled blowout preventer, trying to clog the device that sits atop the wellhead. The maneuver was designed to work in conjunction with the continuing “top kill” operation, in which heavy drilling liquids are pumped into the well to counteract the pressure of the gushing oil.

If the efforts succeeded, officials intended to pump cement into the well to seal it. But the company suspended pumping operations at 2:30 a.m. Friday after two junk shot attempts, said the technician, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the efforts.

The suspension of the effort was not announced, and appeared to again contradict statements by company and government officials that suggested the top kill procedure was progressing Friday.

Word that the top kill had been suspended came as President Obama, accompanied by Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, the leader of the government effort, toured the region effected by the largest oil spill in United States history. Mr. Obama walked along a beach dotted with balls of tar in Port Fourchon, La., and met with the parish president, Charlotte Randolph, and with the governors of Alabama, Florida and Louisiana.

In Grand Isle, La., Mr. Obama said that “we don’t know the outcome of the highly complex top kill procedure,” and added that if it was ultimately unsuccessful, experts were ready to intervene with alternative maneuvers.

Standing on the beach with state and local officials, Mr. Obama called the spill “an assault on our shores, the people, our regional economy and on communities like this one.”

“This isn’t just a mess that we’ve got to mop up,” he said. “People are watching their livelihoods wash up on the beach,Mr. Obama said he was ordering an increase in manpower involved in the containment and cleanup effort in the Gulf Coast and sought to reassure area residents that “you are not alone, you will not be abandoned, not left behind.” He added that even after the news media tired of the story, “we are on your side, and we will see this through.”

On ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday, Admiral Allen said the top kill effort was continuing, and that BP engineers had been able “to push the hydrocarbons and the oil down with the mud.”

But the technician working on the effort said later Friday that despite the injections at various pressure levels, engineers had been able to keep less than 10 percent of the injection fluids inside the stack of pipes above the well. He said that was barely an improvement on Wednesday’s results when the operation began and was suspended after 11 hours. BP resumed the pumping effort Thursday evening for about 10 more hours.

“I won’t say progress was zero, but I don’t know if we can round up enough mud to make it work,” the technician said. “Everyone is disappointed at this time.”

Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman, said he would not give “blow-by-blow commentaries.” He added: “The operation is by definition a series of phases of pumping mud and shooting bridging materials and junk and reading pressure gauges. It is going to keep going, perhaps 48 more hours.”

If the top kill and junk shots fail, BP officials planned to try again to place a containment vessel over the leak, which might allow them to capture the oil but would not stop the leak. A previous attempt failed.

Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, said on “Good Morning America” that efforts to plug the well were "going pretty well according to plan."

“Much of the volume you see coming out of the well in the last 36 hours is mud,” he said, referring to live video shots of the oil leak.

While he was optimistic, Mr. Hayward gave the effort a 60 percent to 70 percent chance of success because it had never been tried in water this deep.

At a news conference in Washington on Thursday, Mr. Obama said he was angry and frustrated about the catastrophe, and he shouldered much of the responsibility for the continuing crisis.

“Those who think we were either slow on the response or lacked urgency, don’t know the facts,” Mr. Obama said. “This has been our highest priority.”

But he also blamed BP, which owns the stricken well, and the Bush administration, which he said had fostered a “cozy and sometimes corrupt” relationship between oil companies and regulators at the Minerals Management Service. Earlier Thursday, the chief of the Minerals Management Service for the past 11 months, S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, resigned, less than a week after her boss, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, announced a broad restructuring of the office.

Mr. Salazar on Friday said he would name Bob Abbey, the director of the department’s Bureau of Land Management, as interim director of the scandal-ridden agency responsible for oversight of offshore drilling.

Mr. Abbey, a longtime state and federal lands public lands official will run the agency as it is being dismantled over the next several months. Mr. Salazar announced last week that he intends to break the agency into three parts to handle leasing and oil extraction; safety and environmental oversight; and revenue collection. Currently all those functions are combined, leading to numerous conflicts of interests, with the same group of officials responsible for collecting fees from oil drilling on public lands and offshore while also policing their operations.

Mr. Obama ordered a suspension on Thursday of virtually all current and new offshore oil drilling activity pending a comprehensive safety review, acknowledging that oversight until now had been seriously deficient.

Mr. Obama’s trip Friday to inspect the efforts in Louisiana to stop the leak and clean up after it, will be his second trip to the region since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20. He will also visit with people affected by the spreading slick that has washed ashore over scores of miles of beaches and wetlands.

Even as Mr. Obama acknowledged that his efforts to improve regulation of offshore drilling had fallen short, he said oil and gas from beneath the Gulf, now about 30 percent of total domestic production, would be a part of the nation’s energy supply for years to come.

“It has to be part of an overall energy strategy,” Mr. Obama said. “I mean, we’re still years off and some technological breakthroughs away from being able to operate on purely a clean-energy grid. During that time, we’re going to be using oil. And to the extent that we’re using oil, it makes sense for us to develop our oil and natural gas resources here in the United States and not simply rely on imports.”

In the top kill maneuver, a 30,000-horsepower engine aboard a ship injected heavy drill liquids through two narrow flow lines into the stack of pipes and other equipment above the well to push the escaping oil and gas back down below the sea floor.

As hour after hour passed after the top kill began early Wednesday afternoon, technicians along with millions of television and Internet viewers watched live video images showing that the dark oil escaping into the gulf waters was giving way to a mud-colored plume.

That seemed to be an indication that the heavy liquids known as “drilling mud” were filling the chambers of the blowout preventer, replacing the escaping oil.

Engineers had feared the top kill was risky because the high-pressure mud could have punctured another gaping hole in the pipes, or dislodged debris clogging the blowout preventer and pipes and intensified the flow.

The engineers also said that the problem they encountered was not entirely unexpected, and that they believed that they would ultimately succeed.

Mr. Obama’s action halted planned exploratory wells in the Arctic due to be drilled this summer and planned lease sales off the coast of Virginia and in the Gulf of Mexico. It also halts work on 33 exploratory wells now being drilled in the gulf.

The impact of the new moratorium on offshore drilling remains uncertain. Mr. Obama ordered a halt to new leasing and drilling permits shortly after the spill, but Minerals Management Service officials continued to issue permits for modifications to existing wells and to grant waivers from environmental assessments for other wells.

Shell Oil had been hoping to begin an exploratory drilling project this summer in the Arctic Ocean, which the new restrictions would delay. Senator Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska and a staunch supporter of drilling in the Arctic, said he was frustrated because the decision “will cause more delays and higher costs for domestic oil and gas production to meet the nation’s energy needs.”

“The Gulf of Mexico tragedy has highlighted the need for much stronger oversight and accountability of oil companies working offshore,” Mr. Begich said in a statement. “But Shell has updated its plans at the administration’s request and made significant investments to address the concerns raised by the gulf spill.”

Environmental advocates, however, expressed relief.

“We need to know what happened in the gulf to cause the disaster, so that a similar catastrophe doesn’t befall our Arctic waters,” said William H. Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society.

Admiral Allen on Thursday approved portions of Louisiana’s $350 million plan to use walls of sand in an effort to protect vulnerable sections of coastline.

The approved portion involves a two-mile sand berm to be built off Scofield Island in Plaquemines Parish — one of six projects that the Corps of Engineers has approved out of 24 proposed by Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.

Investigators also continued their efforts to understand what caused the explosion of the rig, which killed 11 workers.

At a hearing Thursday in New Orleans, the highest ranking official on the Deepwater Horizon testified that he had a disagreement with BP officials on the rig before the explosion.

Jimmy Harrell, a manager who was in charge of the rig, owned by Transocean, said he had expressed concern that BP did not plan to conduct a pressure test before sealing the well closed.

It was unclear from Mr. Harrell’s testimony whether the disagreement took place on the day of the explosion or the previous day.

The investigative hearings have grown increasingly combative. Three scheduled witnesses have changed their plans to testify, according to the Coast Guard. Robert Kaluza, a BP official on the rig on the day of the explosion, declined to testify on Thursday by invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

Another top ranking BP official, Donald Vidrine, and James Mansfield, Transocean’s assistant marine engineer on the Deepwater Horizon, both told the Coast Guard that they had medical conditions.

BP?s Effort to Plug Oil Leak Suspended a Second Time - NYTimes.com

in part because when they release pressure on the well all the mud that's been injected gets blown back out again, so it's back to square one. it's possible that something has happened on the riser area as well, but i'm not going to pretend that my speculations concerning what the bp feed is showing are accurate in any way. nor am i going to try to sort through the various interpretations from the oil drum people about it.

what's emerging as a consensus there, and in a couple other places, is that the best and safest bet at this point is probably the relief wells. but that's really really not good. really not good at all.

the feed link again:
Live video link from the ROV monitoring the damaged riser

the oil drum thread that's about today's installment of the top kill show:

The Oil Drum | Deepwater Oil Spill - Top Kill Update, Restarting the Mud, and Comment Thread

yikes.

this is grim business and i think sometimes the scale of it gets to me.
i am constituted as a meat-space person to try to understand things that bother me once avoidance, which is always my first instinct, doesn't work. and it rarely works. though i keep trying it out for short periods of time. anyway, this is reaching a point of being a grind for me. i think i'm taking the evening off. maybe the morning too. no more feed watching for a bit.

aceventura3 · 05-28-2010, 01:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by silent_jay

Respond directly? You mean by pissing and moaning in multiple threads? Humour and posting things for your own entertainment are two different things ace, but this is just silly, you'll keep complaining about anything and everything, it seems to be what you like to do, you'll ignore facts for your own opinions, it's all just pointless and well, ruining what was otherwise a decent thread about a dreadful situation, actually two threads, as you have the same act going in both.

As for reporting you, I could care less, I'm not the one pissing and moaning in multiple threads about how I was attacked, shall we draw you a picture of how the 'report post' button works? I'm only asking because it seems to be another concept you are unable to grasp, or you just like to complain for complainings sake as I've stated before.

What are you doing in this post?

Why do you find it o.k. for you to do what you are doing but wrong if someone else does it?

ring · 05-28-2010, 01:41 PM

Good idea, roach.

I'm going to refill the the bird feeders in the back yard.

silent_jay · 05-28-2010, 02:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

What are you doing in this post?

Why do you find it o.k. for you to do what you are doing but wrong if someone else does it?

What am I doing ace? You going to say I'm 'attacking' you? Show me this percieved attack, should be good for a chuckle. This is pointless, you'll just play the victim card over and over and over again, it's like a broken record, have fun ace, I'm done conversing with you, it's pointless, maybe I'll go watch the grass grow instead.

Ourcrazymodern? · 05-28-2010, 02:56 PM

If enough people say it's pointless discussing/debating, they tend not to be talking about the topic at all. Admittedly, talking about the leak doesn't fix it. That our current president won't be able to start a war over this might make it seem less...wrong...than 9/11, but I don't think it is, in the long run. Economists? Politicians? Bacteria. I haven't volunteered anything useful. I think it's sad we let sharing information come between us in these ways.

roachboy · 05-29-2010, 07:13 AM

operations are ongoing it seems. the speculation from the oil drum is that bp is trying junk shots and mud injections then backing off to see how things worked out, which allows the oil to push the mud and other stuff back out again.

here's the commentary thread at the oil drum, which is still very good:

The Oil Drum | Deepwater Oil Spill - Deciphering The New Activity (Top Kill, Junk Shot, Etc.), Watching the Flows, and a Live Comment Thread

and this post from the comments to this thread written by someone whose screen name is rockman helped me feel like my grip on the top kill process is a little better

Quote:

Ran through all of yesterday’s post late last night. High marks for all including the newbies. I avoided TOD most of Friday…too much like watching paint dry as BP went thru the process. But at my daughter’s baseball game last night I had to offer a very non-technical explanation of the top kill effort and why it was such a difficult job. Perhaps too simplistic for many of the new smarty-pants here but it might be helpful to the newbies. Everyone feel free to judge.

Everyone knows what a water heater looks like. A little more detail: it’s a pressurized tank with an inlet line coming in from the water line to the house. To avoid tank rupture should pressures become excessive there is a “pop off” valve. At a certain pressure (let’s use 80 psi) it pops open and lets the water drain out. Now consider the BOP being the water tank. And our water tank has two pop off vales: one that pops at 80 psi (represents the pressure at the seafloor of around 2,300 psi) and the second that pops open at 400 psi (represents the 10,000 + psi of the wild flow). The objective of the exercise is to make the 400-psi valve pop open (this represents forcing the mud down the casing/drill pipe). So we start pumping in water to the tank (BOP) via the water line (choke line). At 80 psi the valve pops and water starts shooting out (the mud you see flowing out of the BOP/riser). We need to increase the tank pressure to 400 psi to make the second valve open (force the oil/NG back down the hole). So we have to increase the flow rate/pressure of the water line to force more water into the tank than the 80-psi valve is letting out. Of course, as we increase the pressure/inlet rate the water flows faster out of the 80-psi valve.

Obviously only one way to get that 400-psi valve to pop: inject water (drill mud) that much faster than it can leak out the low-pressure valve. Otherwise all the injected water (mud being pumped thru the choke line) will go out the low-pressure valve (BOP/riser). Now lets say we get the flow rate/pressure high enough to pop the 400-psi valve open. Yahoo…success! Sorry not yet. Did I forget to mention that not only did we need to pop that valve open but we need to keep it open long enough to fill up 200 water tanks (filling the csg with mud all the way to the bottom)? And what happens if we let the tank pressure drop? The 400-psi valve closes (the oil/NG forces what mud is in the csg to flow back out).

And there’s BP true dilemma: not only do they have to generate at least 10,000+ psi in the BOP they have to maintain it long enough to push the oil/NG back down 13,000’ of csg. I assume this is the purpose of the junk shot: diminish the leakage rate of the BOP.

it seems that people are watching the feed and posting to this site as thing happen, trading information and interpretations. it's still the best source i've found for both.

apparently bp has stopped drilling one of the relief wells. this without particular explanation.

meanwhile, the rhetorical conflict over the clean-up, such as it is at this point, continues to happen much more quickly than does any actual cleaning up:

Gulf oil spill is public health risk, environmental scientists warn | Environment | The Guardian

roachboy · 05-30-2010, 05:35 AM

you probably know already that the top kill failed.

Quote:

As 'top kill' effort fails, BP must fall back on oil spill containment strategy

By Joel Achenbach and Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 30, 2010; A01

It is the well that will not die.

BP's three-day effort to throttle the leaking gulf oil well with multiple blasts of heavy mud has failed. The attempted "top kill" of the well was abandoned late Saturday afternoon, leaving the huge Macondo field deep beneath the sea floor once again free to pump at least half a million gallons of crude a day into the gulf.

"I can say we tried. But what I can also say is this scares everybody, the fact that we can't make this well stop flowing, or haven't succeeded in that so far," Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said in a late-day news conference.

"There's no silver bullet to stop this leak," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said.

The top kill -- a term most Americans had never heard until it became part of the new national vocabulary along with "blowout preventer," "containment dome" and "junk shot" -- had been seen as the best hope for turning the oil spill into something finite in volume. Now BP must fall back on a containment strategy in the near term, hoping to capture as much oil as possible.

Sitting on the sea floor and awaiting deployment is a new containment dome, what the company calls the Lower Marine Riser Package cap. With robotic submarines, the company will sever the leaking, kinked riser pipe that emerges from the top of the blowout preventer, the five-story-tall contraption on top of the wellhead. Then engineers will guide the LMRP cap onto the pipe. The cap is fitted with a grommet designed to keep out seawater and prevent the formation of slushy methane hydrates that bedeviled an earlier containment dome effort. The cap procedure will take four to seven days, officials say.

"This operation should be able to capture most of the oil," Suttles said. "I want to stress the word 'most,' because it's not a tight, mechanical seal."

After that, the company could place another blowout preventer on top of the existing one. Meanwhile two drilling rigs at the surface continue to drill relief wells. That's a long-term strategy that requires engineers to hit a seven-inch target, the bottom of the leaking well, 3 1/2 miles below the surface of the gulf. The first of the two relief wells to hit the target will send a massive dose of cement to seal the leaking well.

That will not be until August, BP predicts.

Saturday's news was hardly a shock, given the doubts expressed by engineers and even by BP itself about whether it's possible to kill a well 5,000 feet below the surface and accessible only with robotic vehicles. But the gulf was still hoping for good news. After BP executives began the top kill Wednesday, chief executive Tony Hayward said the effort was proceeding as planned. Then the national incident commander, Thad Allen, gave news media interviews Thursday and Friday suggesting that the effort was going well. As he put it, "We'll get this under control."

The well had other ideas. It ceased to spew oil only when it was force-fed the drilling mud. When the pumping stopped, the well returned to form, churning out oil and gas. It was like hitting a Bozo punching dummy -- it goes down, then springs back up. Though some might prefer the analogy of the slasher-movie villain who always comes back for the sequel.

"This well is evil," moaned energy analyst Byron King.

President Obama on Saturday called the calamity in the gulf "as enraging as it is heartbreaking."

As it became apparent that the top kill would not work, coastal residents took stock of the demoralizing situation.

"We're in for a tough time now," said Ed Overton, environmental science professor at Louisiana State University, noting that one saving grace of the spill -- its relatively slow progress toward the coast -- will fade as more and more of the dark slick reaches shore.

Despite BP's and the government's claims of a massive defense effort -- "the battle offshore, we're winning that battle," Suttles said Friday -- far more resources will be required to deal with the coming slick, Overton said.

"We've got to get more vessels. We don't need 1,300, we need 10,000," Overton said. "Now's the time to stop being optimistic and get the assets out there."

John Tesvich, head of the state Oyster Task Force, reacted to the reports from BP with weary fatalism: "For them to say that its success ratio was 60 to 70 percent, for a company that's trying to spin everything as positive as it can, that probably means they knew it wasn't likely to have an effect. And that's what's being borne out now. It now looks likely that this will be an ordeal -- that the oil will be spewing most of the summer."

Wayne Landry, parish council president in Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish, said that local communities are going to take a more aggressive and independent approach to fighting the effects of the spill rather than rely on BP or the federal government. He and other leaders from parishes and counties in Louisiana and Mississippi have organized their own response, what they call the "coastal zone authority for recovery."

He lashed out at BP's decision to use dispersants that Landry and others think have undermined the miles of boom laid out to stop oil on the surface.

"Let's start getting at some of the hard, hurtful truths. We don't know what we're dealing with," Landry said. "It's unacceptable that BP can have this problem, can destroy our marshes, our estuaries, destroy our way of life and at the end of the day can still lie to us about how it's not as bad as anybody thinks. . . . Our people are furious about this."

The measure of the disaster can be seen in maps the government released that show the vast amoeboid-shaped slick that has gradually glommed onto coastal Louisiana as if trying to swallow the Mississippi River delta whole. The slick continues to have many manifestations, from silver sheen to red pancakes to orange emulsion to brown mousse. The fine print will note that scattered tar balls are not visible from the air.

Taking perhaps the starkest view of the events is Matthew R. Simmons, founder of a Houston investment banking firm specializing in the energy industry.

"You have to hire as many supertankers as you can find and pump as much of it into them before hurricane season. Once the hurricane's come, the game is over," Simmons said. "You can take a big tar mop and paint the Gulf Coast black."

The failure of traditional well-killing methods may also heighten the pressure on authorities to try unconventional approaches. Simmons, for example, suggests a military takeover of the whole operation, and possibly even an attempt to seal the well with an explosive device.

Allen, the national incident commander, dismissed the idea.

"My view is since we don't know the condition of that well bore or the casings, I would be cautious about putting any kind of kinetic energy on that well head," Allen said, "because what you may do is create open communication between the reservoir and the sea floor."

washingtonpost.com

and this from the ny times is a kind of analysis i suppose but one of those that talks about things which are said to float about in some american mind. i dont know what that mind is, but i read about it from time to time when i allow judgment to lapse. this time, what's being affected is an american belief in technology, in the idea that it is a kind of deus ex machina

Our Fix-It Faith and the Oil Spill - NYTimes.com

ugh.
the top kill failure is terrible news.
one can only hope that the containment/cleaning up is taken WAY more seriously than it currently appears to be.
my heart goes out to the people along the gulf.

05-27-2010, 03:57 PM	#241 (permalink)
Idyllic Psycho Location: My House	Thank you, ring, I'm sure I will need a lot more before this is all over. I find it really difficult to even read this thread, I'm no ostrich, but I really wish I could just bury my head in the sand and pretend this never even happened, I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way, it's a damn shame it is. __________________ you can tell them all you want but it won't matter until they think it does p.s. I contradict my contradictions, with or without intention, sometimes.

05-27-2010, 04:14 PM	#242 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	idyllic: alot of my empathy and sadness---more than that---over this follows from the fact that when i look out my window i see a salt marsh. i am endless fascinated by it, by this type of environment, and i find it unbelievable and entirely unacceptable that this catastrophe has happened, that it continues, that so little has been done to protect the wetlands, so little co-ordination so little concern for any co-ordinated anything-----except on the part of bp's media crisis team. i'm also disgusted with the federal and state governments, but more shocked by the regulatory set-up that's been in place, which made something like this inevitable, from accident to inability to deal with it---even as this particular case remains an accident. so yeah, i feel this even as i live in new england. these places that are being destroyed are special. it's beyond tragic because its entirely unnecessary. ================ ace, i've made my positions clear. what you call a "tizzy" is nothing more than exasperation at the fact i find myself bothering to engage with someone who simply refuses to do the work required to be taken seriously. it bothers me that against my better judgment i waste my time interacting with you. as for your pissy ridiculous "questions"....i've already answered them. to summarize: i have made it clear what the directions are that the research has taken in this thread. i have tried to integrate these directions of research through interpretations that in some details have changed as the information i have at hand changes. but the overall line has been clear. the condition of possibility for this accident was the regulatory regime itself. i've posted alot of information about how that regime operated. i've posted information about minerals management. i posted a copy of the lease for the fucking site the deepwater horizon was on that allow anyone who looks, including you if you bothered, to see exactly what bp was exempted from providing. there's plenty of information--more than enough----to render you're claims in defense of bp meaningless. moreover, there's material in this thread about bp's history of cutting corners on safety and environmental considerations in the gulf in particular. and there's ALOT of information about bp not following their own procedures in this particular situation. there's ALOT of information about negligence. and it's all public record. if you bothered to read, you'd see it. that an accident reflects long-term problems and is ringed round with general and specific problems on bp's part, on halliburtons part and transocean's part does not mean that what happened wasn't an accident. no-one outside of the straw-man machine you seem to have in your brain has said anything other than that. where the problems of regulatory scheme and bp converge for real is in the 37 days that's passed since the accident. what's happened follows in a straight line from what conditioned or enabled it. you're stuck on some idiotic claim that bp "had a plan"---that idiotic claim has been demolished over and over by me, by jazz, by jay, by others. there was no plan functionally to deal with problems that could arise with deepwater drilling like this in significant measure because mms did not require bp to generate the scenarios that would have been the basis for developing the technologies and contingency plans that should, obviously, have been in place. period. there is nothing you can say that changes this. the documentation is in the thread. my politics are clear. i make no secret of them. i don't have anything else to say. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 05-27-2010 at 04:18 PM..

05-27-2010, 05:21 PM	#245 (permalink)
Idyllic Psycho Location: My House	rb, av, I'm beginning to believe your both beating the same dead horse, just opposite ends, and neither one wants to admit they got the ass, funny thing, it's a two-assed horse, no brain in site regarding bp and this travesty to the environment or it's people, with the government bringing up a sloppy second rear. __________________ you can tell them all you want but it won't matter until they think it does p.s. I contradict my contradictions, with or without intention, sometimes.

05-27-2010, 06:31 PM	#246 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i think i have a pretty good bead on how this disaster was possible. and to tell the truth, alot of it is at the feet of the free marketeers, the neo-liberal set who put regulation in a position of introducing distortions into the otherwise fabulously efficient world dominated by the private sector and profit motives...all a crock of shit really...particularly when the "resource" or "raw material" of a capitalist production process involves myriad stakeholders--and this because the myopic logic of capitalism, with its abstractions and separations, makes it almost impossible for any given firm or sector to deal rationally with the commons absent some regulatory apparatus---which has to be proactive and aggressive as over against the conservative preference of reactive and passive. i lay alot of the blame for the general conditions that enabled this disaster on the right's doorstep, from their contempt for environmental issues (drill baby drill) to their surreal, ridiculous economic ideology (see above) to the upside-down conception of regulation which is of a piece with it. and i am beyond sick of conservative obsessing on news cycles as if dominating the next cycle is all that matters and the constant tweaking of the nitwit talking point of the moment around dominating the next news cycle---whence the pathetic, stupid calls for the federal government to swoop in and save everyone even though the entire regulatory apparatus puts the government in the position of having to wait until oil corporations take the initiative---which they never have to do if those corporations provide tickets to peach bowls and access to parties and promises of lucrative jobs in the future to the hopelessly corrupt and ineffectual people who occupy positions within the regulatory system, who are put there by conservatives who see regulation as ineffectual and corrupt anyway...so this is what you get when things go south. so dont give me this nonsense that ace and i have anything to do with each other. people who think the way he does are responsible for the general conditions that enabled this fiasco in the first place--and now they have the gall to act all outraged because stuff the logic of the system THEY SET UP precludes from happening what they're calling for. it'd be hypocritical were most of these people not so fucking stupid. meanwhile marshes are killed off and ecosystems wiped out and its all boo hoo....which is fine so long as the folk whose politics are responsible for the worst aspects of this disaster dont use the boo hoo to evade the fact of the matter, which is that its your way of seeing things that set this up and what you're seeing is the consequence of it, your way of seeing things...it's expression, it's result, what it leads to, what it is. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 05-27-2010 at 06:36 PM..

05-28-2010, 03:37 AM	#249 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	you miss my point i think. i am tremendously bothered by the way in which the federal government and oil corporations came to interact with each other across the regulatory system. the more i find out about that system the more appalling i find it to be. like i've said, this is the central thing i've found out about for myself in across this thread and it is the main factor that's shaped the situation in general---it is the condition of possibility for some kind of disaster for reasons i've already spelled out---and the regulatory regime has shaped the responses to the disaster from the start. people on the right are blaming the federal government for being trapped in the information flows that were set up in law through this system. and that system is a neoliberal product for the most part, a shining brilliant example of just how bad an idea it is to assume that the private sector knows and the state/regulation introduces distortion, just how bad an idea it is to allow the private sector and profit motives to determine uses within the commons, just how bad an idea conservative economic ideology is. it's lunacy that deepwater drilling was allowed without a detailed disaster plan and the technologies required to implement it in an ecosystem as valuable (in every sense) as the gulf of mexico. it is lunacy. but it happened. blame minerals management. blame the epa. but mostly blame bp. and for bp blame our collective addiction to oil. in that respect no-one is terribly righteous since petroleum and its derivatives are everywhere. the paradox in that is that given the regulatory apparatus, you can't say we were let down. the apparatus ran as it was set up to run. it was legal for minerals management to exempt bp from planning for a disaster. it was legal to exempt bp from the drain on profits that designing the required technologies. it was legal because the regulatory system put oil corporation profits first. and the oil industry paid ALOT of money to get things set up that way. they bought ALOT of political influence. the oil industry is heavily knit into the economies in louisiana in particular, but along the whole coastal region. they're a big player. so long as the money was rolling in people didnt care so much, did they? it happens everywhere. here's no exception, where i live. it just turns out that this area doesn't have some 4 thousand oil rigs offshore. an industry goes long enough without a major meltdown and has a political structure bought and paid for and a population ok with whatever to a point so long as they get paid and a regulatory apparatus that's in the interests of the corporations and a kind of routinized corruption in the oversight agencies and maybe it makes sense somehow to start seeing environmental protection as an unnecessary drain on profits or an annoyance so you get mms to exempt you because hell what could happen? what could happen? its not good. none of this is good. but because of the way the game was set up, you aren't in a position to say you are being let down by the way the leak itself has been handled. on the other hand, and this is different and i've not talked about this because i stupidly thought that clean-up efforts were real and happening in reality---but they're not in the main----this lack of action on cleaning up the spill itself, particularly given its magnitude is unbelievable. tragic. stupid. unnecessary. that seems to me a breakdown at every level of government in the co-ordination of resources and putting technologies and people into place to protect the coast, protect ecosystems to the greatest possible extent. and that i have no explanation for. patriotic stuff doesn't work for me, btw. never has, never will. i don't see this in those terms at all. i see this as following from routine venal corruption that leans on a petroleum-based model of capitalism that is not sustainable. i think everyone knows its now sustainable but avoids making any hard choices because the money flows, or did, and things seem to operate, or did, and when things get difficult you can always run away into flag waving and abstract statements about freedom and pretend that capitalism isn't at the center of all things american. it's the rigid commitment to the neoliberal version of capitalism that's speeding the plow of fading empire. but that's another story. ======= btw it appears that there are problems with the pressures in the well...it's apparently not clear that the mud is all the way down because oil and other stuff is leaking into it. so it was suspended overnight. these leaks were called yesterday afternoon by some of the folk who have been following this on the oil drum...which for understanding better than tv will get you to what you're looking at with the live feeds, so what's happening and what's at stake in the process at its various stages, it's a good resource. on the present state of things: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...kill-oil-spill again, putting aside thinking about how this was possible and the many problems that have surfaced since, we should all hope this procedure works because if it doesn't we are fucked. the gulf of mexico is already seriously affected, but this could be nothing if the top kill doesn't work. this could go on until august. august. unbelievable. so if you pray this is a time to do it. the next 48 hours. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 05-28-2010 at 03:47 AM..

05-27-2010, 04:26 PM	#243 (permalink)
ring ░ Location: ❤	Disillusionment is difficult. Perhaps that's the explanation for the masquerade.

05-27-2010, 07:02 PM	#247 (permalink)
ring ░ Location: ❤	& also, for the record, Idyllic: Ace has admitted to posting just to get a rise out of people for his own entertainment. There is absolutely no comparison.

05-28-2010, 07:18 AM	#250 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	there are apparently some quite considerable problems with this top kill operation. but assessing the situation is a problem because it's now obvious that bp has a...um....transparency issue let's say. this thread on the oil drum is about the most current i've seen: The Oil Drum \| Deepwater Oil Spill - Top Kill Update, Restarting the Mud, and Comment Thread and is interesting consistently, even as for a layman (and i am one) separating wheat from chaff when everyone is writing in that particular mode of self-assurance that engineers seem to drop into when they're discussing engineering problems. the upside is that there's at least some oil engineers posting. you know, people who've actually worked on rigs and understand the set-up. there's also a diagram of the blow-out preventer thing that shows where the live feed is originating. a link to the bp feed, for convenience: Live video link from the ROV monitoring the damaged riser __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-28-2010, 08:36 AM	#253 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	ace...all this is about is your childish attempt to force onto me and onto a non-cooperative reality your ridiculous way of framing the questions you ask and/or the issues you pretend to raise. i've already answered the "point" you "make" about planning multiple times above. the regulatory arrangement that frames drilling in the ocean needs to fundamentally change. the old conservative-style joke of an arrangement has been shown inadequate in the most basic ways. there may well have been a file on someone's desk at bp with the title THE PLAN on it, but it was obviously not adapted to deepwater conditions. this has been amply demonstrated through events, documents and testimony, so there's no point in continuing to humor you as if your "point" is serious. it isn't. find something else to obsess about. would a different regulatory regime prevent accidents? no. but they'd go a whole lot further than this one has in assuring that if there is an accident that there is a plan fitted to the situation. we are 37 days in already, ace. there was functionally speaking no plan to deal with an accident on the deepwater horizon. ========= meanwhile back in the world of consequence, it appears that something bad happened this morning. maybe. it's hard to know with all the conflicting information, much of which seems geared around stumbling through the day without the story falling apart so that americans can go to sleep on reality for a few days. frame by frame here: pas au-delà intepretive questions on the oil drum. there's lots and lots of conflicting information flying around. it's a bit of a farce. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-28-2010, 08:48 AM	#254 (permalink)
ring ░ Location: ❤	I saved those images. That did not look good at all.

05-28-2010, 09:08 AM	#256 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	Ah, the forces of nature mixed with the meddling of humans.... __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

05-28-2010, 09:19 AM	#257 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	Edit: Went to your link and saw the frame by frame. Looks like something bad happened. So, things really can get worse... __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly." Last edited by Cimarron29414; 05-28-2010 at 09:25 AM..

05-28-2010, 09:30 AM	#258 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	yeah, but it's a bit maddening to see that as a clip, then again frame by frame, to read mutually exclusive interpretations on the oil drum (explosion? junk shot?) and see nothing about anything in the press-machinery. this even though the stream is an aspect of alot of press coverage. i'm left thinking deep things like: "um....what was that?" like i keep saying, though, we should all hope this works. the alternatives are really bad. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-28-2010, 09:39 AM	#259 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	Yeah, terms like "The Second Dead Sea" are starting to fill my head. Chilling to the bone. __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

05-28-2010, 10:07 AM	#260 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	22-mile oil plume under Gulf nears rich waters \| New Orleans News, Local News, Breaking News, Weather \| wwltv.com \| Gulf Oil Spill 3 million feet of boom in Gulf, but does it help? \| New Orleans News, Local News, Breaking News, Weather \| wwltv.com \| Gulf Oil Spill __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-28-2010, 10:15 AM	#262 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i've already explained this a dozen times, ace. no more. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-28-2010, 10:23 AM	#263 (permalink)
Lucifer Husband of Seamaiden Location: Nova Scotia	I was going to post this in the "post a random image" thread, but it just seemed more appropriate here: __________________ I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. - Job 30:29 1123, 6536, 5321 Last edited by Lucifer; 06-10-2010 at 08:07 AM..

05-28-2010, 10:28 AM	#264 (permalink)
ring ░ Location: ❤	The lack of any coordinated clean up efforts is infuriating. This climate of fear, greed, & secrecy is stultifying, and the forecast isn't going to change anytime soon. The empire isn't wearing any clothing.

05-28-2010, 10:32 AM	#265 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	Apparently we'll know by Monday whether the mud-pumped junkshot worked. __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

05-28-2010, 11:57 AM	#270 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	folk on the oil drum over the last half hour have been arguing that the explosion this morning wasn't an explosion at all, but rather the remote operating vehicle moving away from the riser, with the debris being kicked up by the thrusters. it's really hard to say, isn't it? a little lesson in the opacity of surfaces maybe, the non-transparency of images, that they may "put you there" but they are not necessarily any good at letting you know where "there" is or what's happening.... __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-28-2010, 12:02 PM	#272 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	I guess I can see that. Scale, distance, and velocity are completely distorted in the BP liveasset video. I've been watching it all day. The only thing I've learned is that it is possible to become a bit seasick simply from watching an underwater sub video. __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

05-28-2010, 01:41 PM	#276 (permalink)
ring ░ Location: ❤	Good idea, roach. I'm going to refill the the bird feeders in the back yard. Last edited by ring; 05-29-2010 at 06:47 AM.. Reason: I know better.

05-28-2010, 02:56 PM	#278 (permalink)
Ourcrazymodern? still, wondering. Location: South Minneapolis, somewhere near the gorgeous gorge	If enough people say it's pointless discussing/debating, they tend not to be talking about the topic at all. Admittedly, talking about the leak doesn't fix it. That our current president won't be able to start a war over this might make it seem less...wrong...than 9/11, but I don't think it is, in the long run. Economists? Politicians? Bacteria. I haven't volunteered anything useful. I think it's sad we let sharing information come between us in these ways. __________________ BE JUST AND FEAR NOT