http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcU4t6zRAKg Time for this. It seems like the arguments that oil companies make all the time. Because it has not happened, we can keep trimming back standards until we have an accident. Transoceans front fell off.
Gonz, that video is classic. Start to finish, a person can’t really tell if it is an interview or a Monty Python sketch. “The front fell off! Why? Because a wave hit the ship. Is that unusual? Why, it’s one in a million! But it’s very safe. The other ones I mean… Anyway, we dragged it beyond the environment. There’s nothing out there!” Thanks for the oil company logic.
Snopes: The Front Fell Off
Status: FALSE
It’s an Australian TV Comedy Sketch from the early 90’s.
No shit. But it is the logic they use.That’s why it works.
You should’ve tagged it as fake yourself.
Not everyone is as smart and perceptive as you are, you know.:dubious:
I think it’s a fairly hilarious bit myself, but I don’t think it makes quite the point you seem to think it does. The person being interviewed in the sketch is clearly identified as a politician, not a company exec, for one thing. There is no evidence so far that the BP accident had anything to do with a ‘trimming back’ of standards, for another.
Here’s the slick at 1km resolution on 5/9/10:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?subset=USA7.2010129.aqua.1km.jpg
250 meter resolution:
Both from MODIS Rapid Response System
The slick doesn’t seem to be moving much, just sitting there well offshore and slowly swirling.
Ok Squink. You know how calamitous IMHO the data is. Beyond ‘less bad than You think’, I am not sure how serious you think this is.
If you don’t mind, how bad, in your opinion, is this blowout situation?
ETA: thanks for the satellite shots.
Looks like a lower-density gray cloud extends from the core all the way north and northeast to the coast.
Can anyone in the industry comment on BP using hundred of thousands of gallons of Corexit when there are dispersants already on the NCP/EPA product schedule with a fraction of the toxicity?
Availability. BP is using a third of the world’s supply of dispersant. It’s simply not possible for it all to be the good stuff.
Tapioca- where did you get the 1/3rd figure? (Would like a cite for personal edification, not because I don’t believe you.)
And today’s update is
Once again, Bill White shows that he is one of the most intelligent politicians in the country. You wouldn’t get that kind of fact filled, well reasoned type of memo from any other politician.
Good lord. I want to vote for that man.
I was quite pleased to see, in the third para of his memo, that he gets that the best way to deal with a blowout is to concentrate on making sure it doesn’t happen in the first place. Later on, he gets the well configuration at the time of the event a little wrong, but he clearly has a pretty good understanding of the methods and practices used by the industry.
Yah, but you could find a sack just as full of bull in the hands of almost any other politician.
Look. I read the memo in full. It is thoughtful and well put. However, without amendment, the memo will forever have a gigantic police signal flashing from its center, warning me away.
Yah, he points out that the best path is to not have a blowout in the first place. No argument there.
But then his logic becomes manipulative. On page 4 he says:
Ultimately they are… generally? And you guys want to base policy on this? wtf!?
There are ten gallons of shit in a five gallon hat here. What he is really doing is suggesting guarantee-ability in preventing blow-outs, when we all can see that is not the case.
Since we cannot guarantee that a deep-water blowout will not occur, we must be prepared to quickly stop a runaway well. Oh gee, our brilliant author also points out that there is no ‘off the shelf’ solution to blowouts, citing the mile of 18" pipe sticking everywhichway around the disaster site.
Hm. Hey numbnuts White! Yes or no: in a blowout, would you expect a length of pipe equal to the sea depth to be present? Why or why not?
Hey numbnuts! It actually * is* the policy to be able to control a blowout. BP engaged in ‘faith-based drilling’, in which their contingency plan for dealing with a deep blowout actually was to pray that it didn’t happen. And lie about their capabilities. I don’t see any reference to this in the memo.
Hey numbnuts! BP actually had jack shit on-site for dealing with a blowout. And now we all get to enjoy a catastrophe. Not too much stressing of this in the memo AFAICT.
Not that I reject the whole thing. I reserve the right to propose further amendments in the future. Like on-site deep-well capping equipment. If such a thing isn’t even possible, say ‘bye-bye’ to deep-water drilling! I agree with the whole ‘preventing runaway blowouts’ thing. That’s why I demand BP’s head on a platter and stuck on a stake for the other oil companies to view.
The consequences for this spill are liquidation. They need a concrete example.
Well, he was probably sober when he wrote it. Your language here would fit better in the Pit, along with your Robert Johnson quotations & pictures of St George.
I can understand that you’re angry (where do you live?) but Bill White’s position means he will be heard. And his position might improve next November.
You sound like you agree with White’s implication that BP could not have been expected to be more prepared for a blowout event. I mean, they’re drilling a mile under the ocean, it’s complicated…