Louisiana Oil Rig Fire / Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
 

Last night a relatively new deep-water oil rig went up in flames. Looks like it's still burning, and no one is quite sure when the flames will subside.

A news article about the disaster:
Deepwater Horizon oil rig fire leaves 11 missing | World news | guardian.co.uk

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...-cnd-popup.jpg

Between this and the recent coal mine disaster in West Virginia, it looks like America is having a difficult time with extracting their fossil fuels safely. Interesting that this coincides with Obama's recent push for an increase off-shore drilling. Do you think that his plan will be thwarted by safety concerns?

No, when was the last time you can recall a rig blowing up? Its not that common. According to this story from 5 years ago, there were 4,000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Who knows how many now?

For the record, all 11 workers were found safe in a raft.

Meh, not a big deal, at least looking at the big picture it isn't. Accidents happen, I wouldn't correlate any incidents together. Oil rigs are relatively safe, I'm not worried about anything.

The Mexican Gov't operates a bunch of these rigs. If they can do it without any serious safety failures I'd guess the rigs are pretty safe.

Where'd you read/hear that?

I keep reading they're still missing.

have you noticed how it still seems to happen that lousy news is released on friday afternoon?

Deepwater Horizon oil rig sinks, sparking pollution fears | World news | guardian.co.uk

there's a clip of some impressive if grim footage of burning smoking oil rig and fireboats if you chase the link.

This is a nasty mix of loss of human life and being on the verge of widespread environmental disaster.

It's rather disheartening.

ABC posted this article about an hour ago-

Story

Wish that were accurate, Tully.
They've found 2 leaks, totaling 42,000 gallons/day.
42,000 Gallons Per Day May Be Gushing Out of Well - NYTimes.com

Yeah I saw these reported this morning, very depressing.

We've gotta get off "oil comsumption" and soon. It's not going to get easier or cheaper and the timer "rang" a long while ago saying we need to develop alternatives.

I fear for the entire environment in the Gulf (no one likes to swim in that water any more, let alone sea life existing there that's gonna be safe to eat and Yes....worse yet is the fact that 11 people are missing and their families probably know these folks are dead.)

All for Big Oil.

When will it End?

Gulf Oil Spill Covers More Than 1,800 Square Miles - NYTimes.com

this keeps getting uglier.
i don't find myself with much to say about it at this point, but am interested in how things unfold...

i recall seeing alot of clips of robot submarines sealing leaks from oil rigs and wondering: are these from commercials produced for trade shows by robot submarines manufacturers or footage of what's happening off louisiana?

now the answer is a bit easier to determine.


Deepwater Horizon oil spill could be set on fire | World news | guardian.co.uk


off-shore drilling for oil.
great idea.

not intended as a political statement but as why off shore drilling isn't going away

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Q...-oil_thumb.png

taken from CARPE DIEM

NASA has supplied a picture of the oil spill.

http://s.ngeo.com/wpf/media-live/pho...87_600x450.jpg

Crazy image. Thanks for sharing it!

Deepwater Horizon: oil slick threatens coast | Environment | guardian.co.uk


this is a map of the rhode-island sized slick as of this morning.

o yeah, they've found a third leak.

and it's reached the mouth of the mississippi.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...s-us-coastline

The Guardian has an informative interactive map. It looks pretty grim.

According to the sources gathered on Wikipedia, the spill is looking like this:

• Up to 1,000 barrels of oil a day (1.84 litres/second) (original estimate)
• 5,000 barrels/day (April 28 estimate by the NOAA)
• 5,000 to 10,000 barrels/day (other sources using satellite imagery)

The slick covers an estimated 6,000 square miles as of April 30. So it's bigger than Connecticut now.

To compare, the Exxon Valdez oil spill was 250,000 barrels and covered 1,300 square miles.


They're saying that it could take up to three months to drill a secondary line to the main bore hole to install a valve to stop the spill. However, they're trying to capture as much of it as they can through various means. But considering just how much oil is being (and has been) pumping into the ocean, it all looks quite grim.

it's hard to write anything about this for me anyway.
i live next to a salt marsh and spend way too much of my time thinking about the marsh. it's astonishing the level of complexity in salt marshes and they're all delicate systems and terribly difficult to clean of oil i would expect. for some reason this daily proximity to such a system of systems makes tracking the deepwater horizon disaster really disheartening.


this blog seems pretty comprehensive and is updated quite regularly:

Gulf oil spill: latest updates | Environment | guardian.co.uk


note sarah palin's important contribution to this:

@SarahPalinUSA Having worked/lived thru Exxon oil spill,my family&I understand Gulf residents' fears.Our prayers r w/u.

uh huh.

Drill baby Drill!!!

I first heard about this story when it broke on CBC Radio. The host there was speaking with the naval commander in charge of managing the disaster. Most of the questions focused around the lost workers, the cause of the fire, and the overall logistics of extinguishing the fire and capping the well. There were one or two questions asked about the risk to surrounding wildlife, to which the most pertinent concern appeared to be if the rig's two large reserves for diesel fuel had ruptured.

Everything I heard about this in the beginning was saying this wasn't going to be a big deal, now look at it. Was BP just lying? Or are were they really this oblivious to the stakes? How can a company be allowed to take such huge risks and not even have simple fail-safes in place in case of a disaster?

New Orleans has been the one city in the US I've always wanted to visit, and I was so excited to get some time off work to road trip down there come beginning of June..... so much for enjoying the beaches and swimming in the ocean......

Here's another interactive map from The Guardian.

It shows what's at stake in terms of the wildlife in the area. It includes a visual indicator of the expected size of the spill later today.

Deepwater Horizon: species under threat | Environment | guardian.co.uk


Here's an interesting bit:

According to this environmental lawyer, the likely reason why this disaster happened was due to deregulation during the Bush administration that allows companies like BP to forgo such things as what they call an "acoustic switch." This is something that could have prevented this from happening.

Basically, this could be a case of BP cutting corners to save money--a company with record profits.


The WSJ reported on it here: WSJ - Leaking Oil Well Lacked Safeguard Device

It's worth a look; WSJ includes a graphic demonstrating it.

This just makes me sick. I swam in the Gulf of Mexico nearly ever day. My marriage certificate says, location of marriage: Gulf of Mexico, I have avoided reading this for fear it would cause me depression, I should have continued, it does.

this is the first funny thing i've heard about the gulf situation:

Rush Limbaugh: Oil Spill Is Natural - Justin Gardner - Political Pulse - True/Slant

(this above is a summary from slate that i couldn't link to directly...the link goes to the source story)

I saw something from our friend Mr. Limbaugh that suggested the "accident" was likely ecoterrorism, a deliberate act by environmentalists.

Has someone blamed it on the gays yet?

I would have very little difficulty assigning blame for this to the ELF/ALF/Whale-Wars crowd. This is, after all, the bunch that regards setting SUV dealerships on fire as a valid way to protest SUV-induced air pollution (while forgetting the pollution created by burning the damned things), and releases captive-bred minks into the Engliosh countryside (where they aren't native and have proceeded to eat their way through an empire's worth of songbirds, amphibians, the local -native- weasels, etc.) Protesting deep-water oil drilling by causing a huge and catastrophic oil spill would be just about their speed: destructive, spiteful, expensive, ill-advised, and totally contrary to their stated goals.

There's just one small problem. If this incident was the result of an act of terrorism, it was a very well-planned operation, with excellent intelligence and control of information, executed by what would have been a -very- small number of very competent operatives who knew how to keep their mouths shut.

As anyone who's ever encountered any of the Earth First!/ELF/Whale-Wars crowd knows, these people are idiots. Morons. Most of them are too water-headed to even realise that burning an SUV causes pollution, worse pollution and more of it than the vehicle would have generated over its' entire operating life. Watch one episode of "Whale Wars" and you'll wonder how they even manage to tie their shoes in the morning, much less keep a ship running (especially since various people in charge of navigation don't trust and won't use technology...like compasses and maps...). And as for keeping quiet? For these idiots, acts of complete environmental stupidity (see burning SUVs) is something to brag about. They've never kept their mouths shut, ever, and have bragged about each of their custom-built environmental catastrophes as if it was a great blow for Mother Earth.

There is simply no way that bunch of stumblefucks, or anyone remotely close to them, carried this off. If it -was- manmade, you're looking for operational security and competence on the level of a national intelligence/counter-intelligence outfit (Mossad, MI-6, GIGN), military special operations forces, or one of the nastier private mercenary firms (doubt Xe/Blackwater could pull it off, but Executive Outcomes or Sandline Int'l would be a good bet if they're still around).

ALF just a'int got those kinda chops. They're vicious anti-human little shits with genocidal delusions, but they're not in the league you'd need to be to pull off an attack like this and get away clean.

dunedan: what on earth are you talking about?

here's what we know: limbaugh was blah blah blahing this "theory" last week.

and we also now know that you've watched some television program that has made you into an Expert on environmental activist groups, an Expertise that i for one accord all the respect it deserves...because nothing speaks more directly to the credibility of this type of "analysis" than does the moniker "anti-human".....

but anyway, beyond the confines of the dissociative counter-reality of the ultra-right, who's talking about any "terrorist" action?

is there any actual, you know, proof?

so how about you drill baby drill into that evidence & show us what you've found....

RB:

Read my fucking post. Just read the Goddamned thing for once. Carefully. From front to back. It's not long, it won't be difficult for an intellectual maven such as yourself. Pay careful attention to the repeated presence of the word "if."

I never said it was a terrorist attack. I don't think it was. My point was that RUSH IS FULL OF SHIT AND HERE'S WHY.

Jesus fucking Christ...

ah. mea culpa. sometimes even the more alert of us flip things around.

*Handshake*

No worries, mate.

Truly "Obama's Katrina"?
 

So, one can't help but see the media coverage of the oil spill. There are some in the media who have said the federal government did not react fast enough. The pundits' have gone so far as to call this "Obama's Katrina." Obviously, this is typical tit-for-tat bickering. There have been two types of media coverage so far. The left seems to blame BP. The right seems to blame Obama. But who knows? Drawing parallels to Bush's Katrina: the right media said the slow response was primarily based on slow requests at the state and local level. The left said it was the Bush administration. So, it's the same people arguing the opposite side of the coin - big surprise.

What is your initial take on this event?

Mine? Well, I do wonder why the first federal press conference on the matter was Thursday. From what I can tell, that was the day that the resources of the federal government were activated. The oil had traveled 50 of the 53 miles it needed to travel to hit the coast by then. Since then, it seems the government has been mobilizing every boat in the fleet to help. But why wait until then? So, it does have the appearance of a slow response.

So, what do you think the fallout will be? Will the administration lose favor with the environmentalists when the inevitable images of oily dead birds and fish land on the front pages? What are "reasonable" preparations (at the corporate and federal) for this type of endeavor? How do you see the politics(as opposed to the reality) of this event affecting the future of oil drilling? Has it suddenly become politically unpopular to get our own oil? Is it unfair to have other nations risk this disaster on their shores for our benefit and not be willing to risk our own coastline?

Ooo - neat idea, moving the conversation into Politics. I'm disappointed with the cleanup efforts. I haven't thought to blame the disaster or its inadequate cleanup efforts on Obama.

Here's a parallel conversation on the politics: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted-...s-katrina.html

it appears that cheney's energy task force decided that the automatic off-switches were too expensive and that bp didn't have to install them.

Leaking Oil Well Lacked Safeguard Device - WSJ.com


i can't really imagine caring what the right is trying to do with this disaster to play it to some kind of advantage to itself. they'll float the "obama's katrina" meme, see if it sticks. if it does, they'll work it. if it doesn't they'll move onto something else.




but out in reality, this is really not good:

a short prognostication about the damage:
The Worst-Case Economic Scenario for the Oil Spill The Washington Independent

If anyone wants "someone to name" in the blame of the oil slick disaster, I think it's clearly BP's Fault.

This is copied from above post.
The U.S. considered requiring a remote-controlled shut-off mechanism several years ago, but drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, according to the agency overseeing offshore drilling. The agency, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, says it decided the remote device wasn't needed because rigs had other back-up plans to cut off a well.

The U.K., where BP is headquartered, doesn't require the use of acoustic triggers.

2nd Edit Added: The U.K. probably would have required the remote trigger devices if that seowop was sitting a few miles off the coast of the U.K.

roachboy,

I believe your characterization sentence is a bit different than the contents of the article you supplied. From your article:

There are multiple systems in place, including an automatic shutoff valve. The one that they didn't install was a remote control shutoff valve, a third sort of safety device. So automatic ones were required and an automatic one was in place. Regardless, your contribution does call in to question how much safety is required on something so important? Double redundancy, triple? Whatever they had clearly was not enough.

Let's put it this way. This was a predictable event (the oil reaching the shore) with a reasonable amount of time to react. All measures being used right now to prevent oil from reaching the shore could have been started 5 or 6 days before they did. So, the real question is whether political criticism is justified?

this is a really interesting blog post via mit press.

http://mitpress.typepad.com/mitpress...roduction.html

the main text is from this guy:

here's one of the main points..it's a little long, but i think it explains a whole lot about the way in which the spill unfolded, particularly in the first few days.


it's probably simplistic to blame any single element in this chain of unfortunate arrangements around an unfortunate reality, which is drilling in the ocean at all, one which is the obvious condition of possibility for the *really* unfortunate reality in the gulf at the moment.

but the basic point above is that the regulatory system relies on industry self-reporting: so the delay in undertaking a government response is due to the way bp chose to deal with the situation---both at the level of "crisis management" in terms of brand protection (the "green" oil producer would have this sort of "problem" under control right away as a function of their "deep and abiding" committment to the Environment (tm)) and at another level, which is how that brand-protection intersected with what bp knew at the corporate level as that intersected with what bp (and others) knew on site---and when they knew it.

fact is that the oversight, such as it is, presupposed that bp was in a position to know what was happening. they didn't for about a week, right? and then a few days after that, they asked for help from the government, which acted reasonably quickly. so the canard about katrina seems wholly misplaced.

there's more but i gots to go.


[[i moved a couple sentences around at the start of this to smooth it out after i deleted the earlier post about the same blog]]

updated images of the oil approaching the louisiana coast:

Deepwater Horizon oil spill threatens Louisiana Gulf coast | Environment | guardian.co.uk

i confess to having some trouble looking at these.

The conservative spin machine has really gone off the rails with this.

A sampling of sound bites I've heard:

- This is Obama's Katrina (wut?)

- Environmental radicals sabotaged the pipeline to make a political stance

- Obama administration WANTED a crisis like this

- This is good for Obama because he's so anti-oil (even though he just opened off shore drilling and ran on a pro-drilling platform)

Reading the bits coming from scientists and academics regarding the impact of the oil and the continuing problems of its still spewing into the ocean (the rate at which it spews, and how long it might take to stop it), I have a rather frightening sense that they're coming to a consensus, whether consciously or not:

This is likely become the greatest environmental disaster in American history.

We're not nearly as alarmed as we should be, probably because it's happening in slow motion.


And now for some updates, of varying significance:

Gulf of Mexico oil spill: one of three leaks capped - Telegraph

Texas Governor calls Louisiana oil spill 'act of God' - Telegraph

more conservative spin. first a kinda hilarious argument from rick perry, governor of the backward state of texas:

Rick Perry: Oil spill may be 'act of God' - Jake Sherman - POLITICO.com

so don't "give in to a knee jerk reaction" to what is possibly the worst environmental disaster in us history and rethink the drill drill drill approach.
this is god's fault.

the national review makes a similar argument, but adds in cost-effectiveness as an extra bon-bon.

http://article.nationalreview.com/43...ng/the-editors

so yeah. the right is still on its knees in front of the oil industry.

While it may have been an act of God which caused the spill (which is sort of a legal term for a nature event causing the damage as opposed to human error), that does not change the fact that man was entirely unprepared and sluggish in containing the damage the act of God could(will) cause - which is the egregious part. We have a moral obligation to have safety/containment measures in place for something like this. This event has certainly exposed to me the cavalier approach that man has taken in underwater drilling. I still believe that collecting this oil is necessary, but I can't believe they didn't have a system, a backup system, and a backup's backup for instantly capping a pipe at the ocean floor.

this piece from the washington post may explain some of the specific lack of preparedness around this bp site. it was exempted from safety reviews undertaken by interior thanks to bp lobbying efforts. the safety reports that were issued presupposed that what has happened was impossible. best to look at the linked article because it contains links to supplementary materials.

washingtonpost.com

You know, the more I think about this the more it pisses me off. If I want to move an electrical outlet in my house 1 inch to the right, I have to go get a permit. An inspector comes to my house and looks at the site and my plans. I have to have the work performed by a licensed professional. Then, the inspector returns and makes certain that the work meets regulations. That's for me, my house, my risk.

This is the fucking Gulf of Mexico. 50 million people, a trillion pieces of wildlife.



And another thing: didn't they pull 11 people of this rig? Why do we have to speculate what happened? Can't we waterboard those guys and find out?

I have read this article, many others, I have listened to experts and those used as experts by the media. This is a complex issue and the underlying idea that BP used lobbying efforts to misdirect or to hide environmental risks of rig failure is overly simplistic. BP has no financial incentive to operate an off-shore rig with an unacceptable level of risk. This event was an accident, unforeseen and as a result the exposure to damage was under-estimated. The regulatory agency has no incentive to expose the Gulf of Mexico to catastrophic oil spills and I believe the people working there do the best they can. There are lessons to be learned here, but over-reacting and being judgmental on motives is unfortunate. It would be nice to live in a world with no risks and no accidents but we don't.

ace---i'm busy at the moment, but have a look at the post i put up above that references a blog from mit press: there's an interesting and useful overview of the regulatory regime that frames oil drilling in general that talks specifically about the processes that are referenced again in the post article. it provides a bit of context that i found useful.

You did not include: of the 11% who think Elvis is alive, there is a guy who voted for Nixon once who thinks Elvis was on the rig and partly to blame.:rolleyes:

So, MSNBC interviews someone and all of a sudden that person in your mind is the "conservative spin machine". Why not call it the "MSNBC spin machine", it seems their only goal is to try and make conservatives look bad - don't you see that for what it is?

Ace,

My point is this. It's been, what?, 14 days or so? They constructed some box with a funnel and a pipe on it to put over the hole and route the oil to a ship. Why didn't they have that built and sitting under a tarp in Mobile Alabama - ready to be shipped to the gulf on a moment's notice? Why did it take 7 days to even start to build such a safety measure? That's my problem with this whole thing - you have to figure shit like that out BEFORE you drill, not after the spill.

Everyone agrees. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to say they should have had it all figured out. We are talking about relatively new techniques - I can not excuse what happened and I agree they should have planned better and used at least one more redundant fail-safe. The folks at BP are saying the same thing internally. I am simply not ready to conclude that BP has not been acting in good faith.

---------- Post added at 07:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:54 PM ----------

I understand the context and I will add that the people actually in the business know more about the business than those charged with regulating the business. This is and will always be a fundamental weakness with regulation, hence there has to be an element of "self regulation". The key in my opinion is understanding when the incentive to do what is right is greater than the incentive to do what is wrong. Self-regulation in this regard is paramount to markets functioning efficiently. Regulators will never be able to over-see every action taken, they will always generally be reactionary. Those behind the sources you cite don't seem to acknowledge that.

Except the person who pushed this was former FEMA chief Michael "Heck of a Job" Brown on Fox News. Fox news didn't call him out on it. This was a clear attempt at spin endorsed by fox and friends.

I assume this is the quote you refer to:

Former FEMA Director Michael Brown on Obama's Response to Oil Spill - Neil Cavuto | Your World - FOXNews.com

And here is the WH response:

And here is MSNBC interview:


Reading what he said compared to the spin is interesting and I bet our conclusions differ - but one thing we know is that Brown got fired by Bush. And my point was that liberal glob on to stuff and make more of it than it is. Brown is one man with his own views.

{added} Just for the record, Covuto, in my opinion is fair with conservative leanings, and as I see the interview, Covuto did not take Brown's charge seriously, nor do I. Perhaps, conservatives can actually see things for what they are. Here is the entire interview:


{added} I am listening to Covuto now, responding to the inaccurate spin from the WH, interesting.

even the national review is backing away from the drill baby drill insouciance about the consequences the bidness of amurica is bidness line of the head-in-the-oil-saturated-sand conservative set. but here we have a milton friedman *defense* of the lax regulatory scenario that allowed *both* the deepwater horizon disaster and---worse---the inability to control the spills or to manage effectively a clean-up.

no-one would say that the accident itself was a result of an a priori situation (were that the case, there'd be no accident, just an unfolding of the consequences of a situation set up in advance)...problems arise from the ways in which the context was amenable to manipulation by bp for its own financial advantage at the expense of--well as it's turned out the gulf of mexico.

the line that "business knows business better than regulators know business" seems to me lunacy in this context. business as milton freidman defined it is the extraction of profits for shareholders. the only environmental protections that follow logically from that are the barest minimum to conform with legal and technical requirements---anything more would impact on vital shareholder profits. and uncle milton went on to argue that for a bidness to go further and try to actually be responsible for the resources that they plunder---erm use----in a more-than-bidness kinda way is both outside the competence of bidness and also unethical. for milton freidman anyway. whom no-one in their right mind takes seriously in 2010 as a philosopher of bidness.

you could, were you to for some reason find it amusing to play along with the uncle milty game, argue that it is **Exactly** for the reasons he outlines that extensive and ongoing regulation of business aimed at protecting not only natural resources (a yucky capitalist phrase) but also the environment from which they come that stewards one way or another these resources and contexts (bidness ain't great at context) from a non-business viewpoint would be necessary to compensate for the boundedness of a business rationality.

markets are obviously neither rational or equitable left to themselves and no-one in their right mind believes that firms will provide adequate environmental protections if ways around having to do it can be found (in the interest of vital shareholder profits of course)---i mean if you want proof just look at the colossal environmental disaster this thread is about and to the increasingly clear history of bp acting all milty friedmany about its responsibilities to plan for contigencies. and it's still ongoing, this disaster.

the disaster is largely is not a direct result of the accident itself. it's a result of the inability of british petroleum to manage the situation, which is a result of its not having planned for it, which is a result of their manoevering a pliant, pro-petroleum industry regulatory apparatus to exempt them from having to plan for it.

The demand for oil is very real and no person I have ever heard from supports drilling without balancing the trade offs between the risks and benefits. If you know a person who has taken such a stance, please share.

This assessment is superficial. BP is motivated to make a profit or to maximize price for its product after costs - so BP will act to increase price and lower costs. We all know this. Given what we know, we have regulators, regulations, laws, taxation and other consequences for unacceptable behavior by companies like BP. It is obvious that BP's interests can conflict with "our" interests. I don't get your point? BP is going to do what they do - but so what? "We" need to do what we need to do! No one is taking a position of having no regulation.

It is either true or it is not. Regulation is the context. Again I don't get your point. There is a reason "regulation" is responsive. If you don't agree, please share your thoughts on the issue.

I interpret Friedman differently and your interpretation here is not understandable to me. All market participants have roles, is your point that they don't, or is it that you just don't want there to be a profit motive?

I am assuming you have no respect of the work of Friedman, is that correct? If so, what view in contradiction to his do you support? Friedman is by far the economist I most respect. I re-read his book Free to Choose every couple of years. My first exposure to him was in college in 1983, and it changed the way I view the world, economically, politically and socially. I will take this as serious as you want to take it.

I love how ace jumps to some imagined MSNBC story as the source of my "conservative spin". I was actually referring to (in part) Michael Brown's interview on CNN (where Anderson Cooper nailed him to the wall).

Sorry that I can not read your mind. And, I don't watch CNN (check my comments on CNN, there is a thread somewhere on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC). But, what I posted is not imagined - so what is your point? What i posted are not even my words, they are direct sources. The WH spin was a lie, why can't you see that? MSNBC is late to the party as usual and only seems to be motivated by turning everything into a big grand conservative conspiracy. MSNBC is better than the Comedy Channel, and I take it as serious.

I don't watch MSNBC. They don't speak for me.

And Brown's comments didn't need to be spun....they were blatant lies/falsities that anyone with a brain could see for what they were

I'm with you Cimarron -- this is a serious environmental disaster with far-reaching economic and social effects. BP should be held seriously liable and absolutely punished for their negligence, both in having only one back-up shut-off valve and for their slow reaction time.

The real problem is that there is little incentive to build in multiple shut-off valves and to fully account for the risk of spills. Government is there to hold people and companies accountable for their actions as they pertain to the greater good.

BP, then, must be held accountable for this massive spill, so that other oil-drilling corporations recognize that the price of an accident is greater than risky profits, at which point they will find ways to make profit less risky.

Mike Brown is an ordinary citizen who got canned for doing a bad job during a national catastrophe and is trying to restore his personal reputation by pointing fingers. He is not acting as a spokesperson for a party.

Honestly, I thought Cavuto did a good job interviewing him and don't understand Gibbs' reaction. Cavuto just let the moron talk and hang himself. A good interviewer doesn't interject personal opinion or analysis of the interview during the interview. Of course, we have all forgotten what real journalism looks like. Brown's words are an adequate example of his idiocy, I don't need Cavuto, Gibbs, or Williams to enforce that fact.

I wouldn't say I would blame Obama, but I do blame the EPA & the Coast Guard for not having some type of dome on stand-by within 1000 miles. They should have been able to have it on-site within 3 days.

And I don't 'blame' BP, unless they did cut corners on safety and the number of safeguards to prevent something like this. Accidents will happen, but they should be prepared and know what to do to stop it from becomming worse.

I would also blame the users of gas and oil, this is one of those things that subsidizes the true costs of gasoline. When gas went over $3 or $4, shipping companies added surcharges, yet the federal government and other clean-up organizations will spend millions on this (and BP won't pay for all of it), and the price of gas in Ohio won't go up or get taxed any more. The Federal income tax might have to go up or some other programs will get cut, but actually buying gas won't be impacted by this event. I wonder if having the beaches in the gulf damaged for a few years will change people's minds though.

*And even though I haven't been here for the past few days, it was because I got a new laptop, not because I am the person The_Dunedan talks about... I get sea sick. However, I had a good laugh about that conspiracy therory when the person called into Rush's show. It doesn't matter if there is no proof, and I would think it would be very hard for someone like James Bond to take a motor boat 50 miles off the coast at night, get onto the rig, place explosives on critical parts, leave, and then motor away.

right. it's all a great big abstraction.



edit: this footage is obviously of one of the submarines that's being used to try to deal with the leak. the first 1:30 appears to be taken up with checking on something with the device that's to do the sealing, which has a strangely anthropomorphic end to it, something like a mannerist fountain. i find these accidental design choices interesting and distracting dont you? anyway there's an edit at 1:37 seconds and from there on the submarine is at one of the 3 leaks. since the footage is from an attempt to position something with reference to the leak and not of it you have to focus on the background of the images to process what you're seeing. it's an interesting experience to watch this because of the movement through and then maybe away from seeing this as an abstraction.

but of course a corporate person must needs protect that corporate person's image.

From Air, BP?s Chief Sees Progress in Containing Spill - NYTimes.com

this seems very much a privatized george w bush flight over new orleans, doesn't it?

more on the regulatory background for this mess, if regulatory you want to call it. this piece from today's wall st journal is about the minerals management service, a fine bunch of republican-instituted fellows who essentially tell the oil companies that it would be nice to be safe but don't do anything about practices that aren't....and cheerlead for "energy independence"---the way these missions get squared is by way of monitoring industry records about amounts of oil extracted and getting royalty payments. well, the other way they're squared is across a seemingly endless supply of handjobs for oil corporations. but read on:

U.S. Oil Regulator Ceded Safety Oversight to Drillers - WSJ.com

I am intrigued by those, now after the fact, making charges against "regulators" for relying on the "industry" to help or to fully craft regulation. If I could interact with someone making those charges and willing to answer direct questions, I would start with the following:

Given continuing emerging technology that is often developed through industry R&D that has not been/can not be fully tried and tested in operational conditions before implementation, how would you develop safety/fail-safe regulations covering all contingencies without input from the "industry"?

For everyone else, again, BP has/had no incentive to waste millions of gallons of oil through an oil spill in the gulf, nor incur compensatory and potential punitive damages that will put their on going operations across the globe at risk. No one has yet to offer any hard proof that BP and any regulator failed to act in good faith.

i only have a couple minutes (i have to be somewhere)....so am wondering: with a spill of this magnitude and potential for damage (and i hope it remains potential--i really hope the dome works) what difference does the attitude of bp make?

accidents happen..i don't think anyone is arguing except perhaps as an inversion of your characterizations of what people are arguing or saying, so as a straw man, that regulation can prevent accidents. but regulation can and should require that adequate contingency plans be in place to deal with them. it is self-evident that those plans were not in place in the gulf and that a significant explanation for that was the series of exemptions that bo got for itself in general and this facility in particular---which were only possible in the context of the long-standing relation of regulatory bodies to oil concerns that relies WAY too much on self-reporting.

Ace,

You keep calling this hindsight, but they are touting this device as having worked in 400-500 feet, but untested in 5K feet. So clearly, at the conceptual level, they didn't just figure out this funnel/straw technique. There's no reason why this device could not have already existed and already been tested at 5K feet - because that's where the oil is! The fact that they already had this technique but they didn't have it built or tested for this depth means that they did NOT act in good faith to prepare for every possible scenario. Looks to me like they put ALL of their faith in 1 singular dead man switch at the ocean floor. That's pretty crappy.

I'm a pro-capitalism, anti-big government guy. But, there was obviously some pathetic disaster plans created for these deep wells. Do I fully understand who developed and approved those plans? Nope. Am I willing to allocate a percentage of responsibility to BP/Feds? Nope. But common sense shows that BP didn't do all they could, and every indication is because they were lazy, naive, or...frugal. With so much at stake, it's immoral to be any of those things.

The oil is nothing, the dameage it does to the BP brand will cost more than the loss of this much oil.

But the regulators needed to ensure that safety proticols were being followed (they were within 200 miles of the US coast, so they were in US waters), and they should have had this dome structure on the move to the site the next day after they realized it was leaking oil, and before the robots got there. It seems like they put all of the hopes on the robots, and then when those didn't work, then they started moving the dome.

Some of the criticisms in the material cited in this thread seem to suggest that the safety protocol where inadequate (not in dispute by me) because, one reason given, the "industry" is largely involved in crafting the safety protocols. The latter is what I dispute. What I have been posting has had more to do with that question than anything else here.

In the paper this morning, I read an article that drew a more apt comparison: This is the oil industry's "Chernobyl."

---------- Post added at 10:13 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:10 AM ----------

Oh, and more bad news: The dome they are using to attempt to contain the spill has failed. It became clogged with crystallized gas....

The Great Beyond: Giant dome fails to fix Deepwater Horizon oil disaster

Gulf oil spill: plugging the leak | News | guardian.co.uk

there is something so massively irresponsible about engaging in drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean if the firm that's doing the drilling has neither the technology nor the understanding required to build the technology necessary to contain damage that's caused if something goes wrong. and things do go wrong. even in an all milty freidmanny alternate universe, things will go wrong.

so basically at this point there are no ideas as to what to do.
i hope i'm understanding this wrong.
but that's what it looks like.

You mean besides the "junk plug"?

the junk plug.
take tires and golfballs
scrunch them all together.
shoot them at the hole one mile below the surface of the ocean.

and there's this:
Plan B to plug Gulf oil leak: the junk shot

Junk plug. Apparently Beavis and Butthead are running BP research.

I can't believe there isn't some cylindrical robot that can "crawl" in the pipe and then expand to the diameter of the pipe, thus plugging it off. Man has been plugging tubes with cylidrically shaped objects for millenia. It doesn't seem that difficult. I'm sure some nerds at MIT are whipping one up as we speak. Of course, the robotic pipe plug would have been nice to have say, three weeks ago. Yeah, yeah. Hindsight and all that.

---------- Post added at 03:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:32 PM ----------

12 times faster!?!? Yeah, that sounds like a great, low risk idea. Let's move on to that one. And I thought the funnel/pipe was a bit kooky.

Wonder why you can't take some sort of heat source to the crystallized methane and melt it off - have the robot take, I don't know, some sort of flare or high heat light down there. It seems that it is a finite amount that must be removed and then the box thingy is back in business.

Should US nuke the BP oil spill - like the Russians used to | News & Politics | News & Comment | The First Post

http://media.gamerevolution.com/imag...e-fish.jpg.jpg

1550 nuclear bombs on the wall, 1550 nuclear bombs, drop one down, blow it to hell, 1549 nuclear bombs on the wall...

I don't know what is sadder, that this might be the best option or that nobody can come up with something to stop this leak.

Actually, a tactical (sub-kiloton) nuke shot might not be a bad idea. The intense heat and pressure (locally) would "weld" the leak shut by melting and glassifying the seabed, and due to the extreme depth and pressures at the leak site very little radiation and zero fallout would even be measurable at the surface. Experience in the 50s and 60s would seem to indicate also that radioactive particle contamination at those depths would be slight, and would consist mostly of fragments of the munition casing itself along with a fine layer of radioactive seabed material which would be quickly sedimented over, especially in the particle-rich waters off the Mississippi delta. Given that nobody's pulling any three-eyed fish out of Bikini Atoll or any of the other submarine test-shot sites (mostly shallow-water) and that this spill has the destructive potential (in economic terms at very least) of an actual atom-bomb attack on a major city, something like what the Russians are suggesting might not be a bad idea.

I thought about this too. It would be akin to cauterizing a wound. However, what happens if it doesn't work and it just makes the hole bigger? Also what is the effect on our food supply that comes from that region?

Yes, the Russians did it in the middle of a desert, and they weren't sure it would even work.

Detonating a nuke for something like this on the sea bed sounds like a bad idea to me. It seems like a huge risk considering the minimal amount of control you have over the situation and the environment.

If something goes wrong, it would seem to me that it would go very, very wrong.

There is a reason why BP wanted to use the "container" before trying the "junk shot". My assumption is that the "container" would have made it easier to salvage oil or to get the well into production sooner. We can make jokes about the high tech compared to the low tech solutions, but the irony is that when we talk about being irresponsible using the high tech solution before using what will actually work is probably the best argument against BP in this whole thing.

i wasn't making a joke, ace. i actually hoped the giant funnel would work and was disappointed when all that pesky methane turned up to spoil things.

a nuke? that this is on the table is an indication that things are reaching a space of desperation, yes? does that seem plausible?

More than plausible, sadly. When I said this could have the economic impact of an atomic bombing, I wasn't kidding. The Gulf Coast produces a huge proportion of the seafood consumed in the US and around the world, and an appropriate percentage of the local economy is tied to this. Likewise tourism, which will not simply suffer but cease to exist if the beaches are covered in oil and the fishing sucks. The Gulf is looking at tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue, work, etc. At this point, almost anything is better than doing nothing at all: If you don't fight the bear, it's going to eat you. If you -do- fight the bear, it might still eat you...but you also might live. That's where the Gulf is right now; deciding whether to fight the bear.

I'm willing to believe it's plausible—desperate, but plausible.

How fucked up is it that the least bad option is a nuclear weapon? What's the old addage? "Piss-poor planning makes for piss-poor performance"? Or something like that.

Proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance.

We're lookin' at you guys, BP, Transocean...

Are they still dumping the oil-dispersant chemicals?

This is scary nasty.

Dispersant 'may make Deepwater Horizon oil spill more toxic' | Environment | The Guardian

Thanks, Dunedan. *Click*Select*Save As*

Given the Congressional hearings today and the lack of progress it makes me wonder why BP is still in charge. At some point the US government should say enough is enough and take control of the matter. If a house is burning you don't let the homeowner make the decisions. Poor planning blame, poor performance blame, etc. is not important at this time, it isn't going to help. If we think BP is best equipped to handle this and they can't or do more harm than good, at what point is it more a commentary on us rather than BP?

Why don't they just jetison the warp core? It's got as good'a chance as any?

---------- Post added at 12:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:33 PM ----------

The trouble is, we've got a patient lying on the ER bed bleeding to death and the doctors are standing over him arguing over who didn't read the chart. Stop the fucking bleeding, I don't care who does it.

Right. BP is responsible for the problem. BP has not been able to fix it. BP still doesn't know if their latest plan will work. The oil dispersant may be causing more problems. And we keep looking at BP??? I know accidents happen and I will defend those charged wrongly with bad motivations when it may not be true, but ability to get a job done is something different. We should bring in a team that can get the job done. Why hasn't that been done?

well, ace, the problem may well be that outside a comic book there is no team that can just swoop in and deal with this.
that is the problem, yes?
well that and drilling a mile down without planning for contingencies because it's cost effective not to and besides the regulatory system allows tons of latitude for encouraging happy petroleum corporation shareholders and not so much in the way of forcing corporations like bp to have a viable plan which would include developing and testing the required technologies BEFORE the drill baby drill got underway---it's totally irresponsible. but so long as nothing Really Bad happened its a kind of routinized irresponsibility of the sort that goes on every day yes? but now something Really Bad has happened and this underlying fabric of irresponsibility is evident.

but there we are.
it'd be nice if there were super heroes who could just Deal With This.
anyone got the number of the mayor of Gotham City? i hear he's connected...

No. There are people who specialize in certain activity and there are those who have experiences that may not be found within BP. Also, there may be people within BP who have the experience and expertise who may not have the clout needed to direct activities. I look at where behavioral incentives are, and to select a group or firm with a sole incentive of stopping the leak fast regardless of cost is our best option at this point in my view. Comic books aside, there are people who can respond under great pressure and get the job done when others can not.

We see this issue in different ways, that is clear. All I suggest is that government and our regulators let BP do what they did. If BP acted irresponsibly so did our government, and there we have the false sense of security offered by "regulation" and a glaring weakness in the system.

Bad things happen everyday, true. Every contingency can not be planned for and we respond to the best of our ability. We live in a world of risk, this is a known. I don't get your point.

I believe in heroes, it is sad if you don't

I'm sorry, Ace, but exactly who within the Federal government do you expect to have the expertise to deal with this situation? And I've heard of exactly *zero* private contractors saying that they have the ability to respond better. Maybe I've missed that, so please let me know who's saying that they're better able to find a solution.

roachboy's point is that there's no one else, private sector or public, that's stepped forward with viable solutions. If they haven't, their voices haven't made it my ears. Apparently they have to yours. If they haven't, well, then you're talking about comic book heroes.

Oil Spill Hearings Kick Off the Blame Game | Mother Jones

kate shepard, who wrote the above, is tweeting from the hearings:

Kate Sheppard (kate_sheppard) on Twitter

here's another annotated feed from the hearings:

Gulf oil spill hearing - live blog | Richard Adams | World news | guardian.co.uk

It is not clear if you have been following the entire exchange on the issue of "regulators" or not, but to me it is clear that "regulators" rely on the expertise from the industry they regulate. In my view "regulators" are generally going to be responsive rather than proactive. Given my view described, at some point and I think we have past the point our government or "regulators" have to take a lead role in responding to an event. At the end of the day BP may or may not exist as we know it today, but the rest of us have to deal with the consequences. Therefore "we" need to take control. If I was in charge of the government, I would take control of this situation and hire a team of people who could solve this problem. I would stop looking at BP and listening to excuses. I would take accountability. You seem to be able to understand Roach's point of view, even if you don't agree, why don't you understand mine? In my view, Roach's point of view is theoretical or academic, mine more roll-up your sleeves and...

http://www.bondiband.com/images/014.JPG

uh right ace. you're a pragmatist in that market-as-metaphysics kinda way. but i don't wanna talk about that again.

this is interesting:
Gulf oil spill hearing - live blog | Richard Adams | World news | guardian.co.uk

for those who aren't keeping track at home, this from this afternoon's senate hearings.
emphasis added.

No, it is not interesting. The hearings are political grand standing. We need people to lead and get the leak stopped.

I have to agree that these Senate hearings feel premature. It's been a long time since I watch a government hearing and thought, "Now we're getting somewhere!"

rb -

So the well was capped with cement. The cement didn't hold and the BOP didn't hold? This is sort of besides the point but, why would they cap a well which is capable of producing so much oil? In your readings, have you found the reason for capping it?

I would agree it wouldn't be particularly interesting if this were the only oil well in the ocean and will be the only oil rig in the ocean.

Does the government even have technology to deal with this type of a problem? There is a reason we explored the moon before we explored the bottom of the ocean....

ace, so you imagine that the entirety of british petroleum, the entirety of halliburton and transocean and all the ships at sea are stalled out, idled, waiting around for the half dozen talking heads who are testifying before the senate to finish?

what on earth are you talking about?

all this manly man roll-up-yer-sleeves-and-get-in-there-and sort this puppy out bluster is kinda funny. i mean, you're posting in a messageboard. if you're so sure that there are Hero Figures out there who haven't been consulted---o i dunno, maybe one of the x-men--then why don't you stop posting stuff go hop in your car and drive to louisiana and start bossing some people around? i'm sure that the folk from bp would be relieved. "o thank christ he's here." they'd say.

but otherwise yours is every bit as theoretical a position as anyone else's==more even because you seem against all reason to be able to persuade yourself that it isn't theoretical.

get a grip there, ace buddy.

as for the hearings themselves, i'm not posting stuff from them for any reason beyond that there's some interesting information that passes through the veil of generalized tedium that they are. and there's something kinda funny about having representatives of all 3 of the private-sector players being hauled up in front of the senate. but it's all obviously theater and were it not for the information and/or posturing (in its particularities, so as information) i wouldn't bother. fyi.