Heard on the news there was a huge room-clearing argument about the drilling operation between a bp official and one of the other company reps just before the explosion. That should be interesting when it fully comes out.
From here, it looks like the spill is starting to burn large areas of coast. I’m finding it difficult to track this side of the story…
Meanwhile, BP Denies Oil Spill Is Larger Than 5000 Barrels A Day.
According to NPR, the spill is more in the neighborhood of 70,000 barrels a day, if you haven’t already heard. A telling quote:
Clearly BP is transitioning to full-bore corporate bullshit mode. I bet next thing they will say is that they are only responsible for the equivalent of 5000 barrels a day, and that they are not responsible for all the rest of the ‘mystery oil’. They are trying to weasel out of their responsibility already.
BP is lying directly to us.
With the complicity of the US Coast Guard?
I don’t know what is the deal with the Coast Guard. The best explanation I have seen is that they are making their estimates based on surface-oil observations. Recently enormous underwater plumes of oil have been detected, which will almost certainly force the Coast Guard to revise their estimates.
I found a better link describing the scope of the impact:
http://oilspill.labucketbrigade.org/
Point being, it appears that no, BP by no means is doing enough to clean up the oil. Landfall is simply unacceptable.
Starting to see some reports this afternoon that at least one of the siphon methods is now working and they are drawing crude oil to a surface vessel. I’m sure it’s not capturing it all, but at this point every little bit helps.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100516/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill
The 60 minute piece (May 16) is the first real explanation of what happened that I’ve seen. It looks like a classic aviation accident involving a series of events and poor decisions that add up to one large event:
-The main safety valve was damaged by forcing pipe through it during a test
-One of 2 actuators for the safety valve was not operating reliably
-A 3rd plug was not installed before drilling
-There was not a proper chain of command between BP and the owner/operator of the rig
In addition (at least on a different platform) BP did not maintain proper engineering drawings.
As far as I’m concerned, there needs to be a wholesale review of all of BP’s procedures plus a platform-by-platform inspection of… everything.
Likely not. BP says “that it hasn’t established the spill as any more than the 5,000 daily barrels estimated earlier.”
Seems to me that’s probably TRUE, and it’s likely BP is working very hard to* prevent the establishment* of a higher or more accurate assessment of the leak rate.
Now BP claims that the actual leak rate doen’t matter with respect to the mitigation strategy, and that’s a bunch of bull, but the US Coast Guard hasn’t said that.
Well, now that we know the surfactant treatment has diepersed the oil throughout the water column, this animation of the loop current at 200 meters is cause for concern. Those little vortices to the north of the main current appear to feeding into the loop. If there’s oil in the water at that depth, it’s likely on its way to the Florida keys.
Oil slick may be heading to Florida
Then there is more data.
Tonight’s 60 Minutes interview with Deepwater Horizon’s electrical engineer was a decent piece of work, which will hopefully get BP to own up to this.
Michael Williams, good for him for stepping up to the plate of explaining—guess that jumping off of a burning platform 10 stories down into oil soaked deep waters after the lifeboats that were supposed to help all on the rig zoomed on off was an awakening of sorts. It’s amazing he survived, and I can’t commend him enough for speaking up now.
As he tells it, and as graphically illustrated in the 60 minutes piece, a key factor was that a key plug was giving up bits of rubber weeks before the accident, indicating that it had failed, with other failures as well. BP high-ups were pushing for speed, and bickering for control, which led to poor decisions.
Kudos to CBS for airing this now, it’s letting us all see important questions BP will now have to answer.
Is data available on the long term effects of the Ixtoc blowout in 1979 (the one that leaked for nine months before being stopped)?
The plug was the rubber “annular” which is the sealing component of the safety valve and it had not failed at that point and may have functioned properly if the actuators had worked. The pieces indicated it was damaged when someone inadvertently extended the drill while it was being tested. There were a series of safety issues that should have been addressed, any one of them may have prevented the blowout.
Given the evidence of damage to the safety valve and a faulty backup actuator that operated that valve it was an amazingly bad decision to remove the drilling mud before the 3rd concrete plug was in place. The mud acted as a plug against the high pressure gas/oil.
While the decisions leading up to the blowout were bad and may have involved more than one person it looks like a very small group, possibly one person, caused the disaster.
The slick has sprouted a tail nearly 200 miles long, headed south towards the loop current: At NASA
I’ve rescaled the May 17 image to match the May 9 image so as to look at the growth of the slick. Here is the comparison. The slick is a lot bigger now, and surely looks like it’s hooked up to the loop current.
Who knows, maybe the news’ll mention this as something beyond a ‘possibility’ tomorrow. Nah, that’d probably be seen as too bold of them, gotta keep it all fair and balanced.
Here is a report on the Ixtoc I (thanks to somebody else who posted it last week). Pdf. Damage is discussed on page 27. It sounds like they don’t know anything/are denying everything (and, well, they’re talking about Texas, see the maps…)
And so on.
Well, the blogs have picked up on the spill entering the loop current.
Today could be the day that the papers stop gassing about the success of the soda straw thingy, and tell us that Florida is DOOMED.
What do you mean by the papers gassing about the success of the soda straw thingy? Do you think it’s getting unnecessary press? The plume has been discussed every night on every news channel.
You sound like you would be disappointed if Florida isn’t doomed.
I mean they’re slurping up the company line on how great it is, without demanding any actual figures that show the ‘straw’ is anything more than a pr stunt.
Yeah, I’m an ‘America hater’, and you sound like you make a positive effort to remain gullible every day. Did you even look at the satellite photos? If you did, do you understand what that big long tail that intersects the loop current is telling you?
So you think they should stop recovering the oil this way?
I’m not gullible and you know what you can do with your insults. I want to hear what’s going on. That should be clear from my posts.
And yes, I looked at the satellite photo’s. It looks like the oil is being drawn away from the coast line and will be thinned out into the Atlantic. That should be a benefit to the Louisiana coast line and a detriment to the Florida Keys. I would rather it stays off the coastline as much as possible.
Yeah, that’s what I said. :rolleyes:
I think it’s not at all clear that they are recovering any significant amount of oil this way. If it’s a PR stunt then yeah, they should stop doing it and work on something that might actually help mitigate the problem.
Obviously, you disagree, right? You’ve bought BP’s line that the straw is a major triumph? That’s certainly not any concrete indication of gullibility on your part, whatsoever.
Too bad about the Keys though. Are you certain your admission that they might be impacted doesn’t show that you are wishing DOOM on them, like you claim I may be?
You called it a pr stunt.
You have a cite that it’s not working? Do you have some reasoned thought that it’s a bad idea? Seems like a good idea to me to pull as much oil from the source rather than chasing it around. Do you think BP is trying to waste money on the problem?
Obviously you’ve read nothing that I posted earlier. I’ve made my opinion clear about how I feel about BP.