Petroleum engineer weighs in on what BP isn't doing -- Salon

[nashville_brook]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/06/01/engineer_gulf_spill_open2010/index.html


Petroleum engineer responds to the spill
An expert points out some technical mistakes

(This piece originally appeared at Robert Reich's blog.)

A petroleum engineer who's worked in the oil industry tells me BP is doing the minimum to clean up the oil and everything it can to protect its bottom line. According to the engineer, here’s what BP should be doing right now to mitigate the damage. If the president were to put BP into temporary receivership, he’d have the power to get BP to:

1. Stop releasing dispersants. So-called dispersants are toxic, and it's crazy to add more poison to the Gulf. Dispersants do nothing to assist the environment in naturally cleaning the oil; their main use is PR. They reduce the number of ugly pictures of birds covered in pure black crude. Dispersants break the thick layer of crude into smaller globs, but that doesn’t help the Gulf and its wildlife. Most of the crude just mixes with the water to produce a goop that looks like chocolate ice cream but is highly poisonous.

2. Mobilize every possible tanker to siphon up crude from as close to the leak points as possible. Oil industry leaders as John Hofmeister (president of Shell Oil from 2005 until 2008) have recommended this, but inexplicably neither BP nor the federal government are talking about even trying this idea. BP currently has only one spot where they have inserted a tube into a riser, or pipe, that is leaking oil from the sea floor. The company is gathering the crude oil and siphoning it up to a drill ship for storage.

They should have at least a dozen collectors. BP has 24 tankers that are being used to make money for BP, not for clean-up duty. (President Obama should also use all necessary federal power -- or money, and send BP the bill -- to put as many tankers and refineries from other companies on the task.) Mile-long pipes could be dangled down into the crude spewing from the wellhead and at each breach in the riser pipe, and the tankers could pump the crude mixed with water back into the tankers. They could then separate the crude and water in the tanker, and pump the water out on the spot. This should continue until each tanker is full of oil. The crude should then be taken to a refinery for processing, as other tankers take their place. Submersibles can be used to monitor the uptake into the dangling pipes, moving them as needed to keep them picking up as much crude as possible.

(snip)

3. Restart work on the second pressure relief well. BP did start work on two relief wells as the government requested, but the second has been shut down to cannabalize parts from it for the primary well kill effort. The president must order BP to spend whatever money it takes to get another blow out preventer on site, to re-start work on the second pressure relief well. A recent blow-out off the coast of Australia required five pressure relief wells to successfully shut it down.

[Mari333]

1. those bastards are STILL protecting the bottom line, their own money??

corporate sociopathic maggots

[nashville_brook]

16. if oil corps really were people -- they'd all be Baker Acted.

they're psychopaths.

[Electric Monk]

17. It's in the job description

http://www.thecorporation.com/

[William Z. Foster]

68. no choice

They are obligated to look after the bottom line, first, last and always. The investors come first, and the public counts for nothing.

Anyone interfering with that agenda in any way - including our most powerful political representatives - will be seriously punished.

But we are supposed to pretend that all of that is not true.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

80. I hope every one of BP's investers are having problems sleeping.

Just wait.... they probably will complain when their McMansion beach front private beaches get destroyed bye this.:puke:

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, nashville_brook.

[liberal N proud]

3. Makes you wonder just how serious they are taking this disaster.

[BeFree]

6. BP quotes.. not verbatim

We have more than enough resources to handle this small spill

The gulf can handle this

I want my life back

We will pay all legitimate claims

Dispersants are good for you

[nashville_brook]

7. BP = Blood Pressure (rising exponentially)

[BeFree]

9. Know what?

I am numb. I have been outraged for 40 days and nights and now I am numb.
Just what BP was hoping for, I imagine.
Am resigned to utter destruction and anything less will be a 'blessing'.

[nashville_brook]

11. i hear you! went out to Caladesi Island on Memorial Day, and could barely enjoy it...

kept seeing the bright blue-green water fouled in oil.

[marions ghost]

38. yes

they count on the numbness.

I've hit the numb stage too. It's like watching someone die from a terminal illness and you keep going through all the options to try to save them. You get some hope from each one, but when they fail, the numbness sets in. And you prepare for the worst.

These stopgap, halfway measures--we have to try to hang some hope on because in this case, just capturing some of the crude would still help. We have to keep attention on it.

Anything less than total destruction will be a blessing--yes, true.
:grr: :cry:

[nashville_brook]

41. that's a very apt analogy. it feels a lot like watching my mother die.

literally, from years ago...and figuratively as in "mother earth."

[marions ghost]

42. My mom too

Doing this vigil for the Gulf is a lot like that. She died in 03 after 5 years of battling health issues...she had been quite a coastal environmentalist. One of my earliest memories was swimming at the beach with her. I thought she was half fish, I remember. And now I still have dreams of her as a fish or mermaid.

I know I'm going through the same emotions now with this graphic & dramatic example of the damage to Mother Earth...who gives so much and is so under-appreciated and exploited. We abuse her to our own detriment.

It seems like all we can do is witness it.

[valerief]

43. Hey, the money people "want their lives back." That's all that matters to them. Nothing else. nt

[90-percent]

4. They're still in Corporate MBA mode

They are making decisions based more on maximizing profit/minimizing loss than on clean up and plugging of the well. If solving this thing quickly was coincident with maximizing profits, I suspect the thing would have been fixed by now.

-90% jimmy

PS - Robert Reich is one of the most impressive people that has ever served in our government. He is one hell of a magnificent public servant, fer sure!

[nashville_brook]

10. MBA/money-making mode is the only mode they have.

expecting an oil company to act in the public interest is like expecting a wolverine to crawl into your lap and purr.

Reich is one of my all time favorite public servants -- there should be trading cards! i'd totally collect his!

[laughingliberal]

62. +1000 nt

[calimary]

65. Bingo! These are BUSINESSmen/women. BUSINESS is what they're about, and all they care about.

There is nothing else.

NOTHING else matters. Only the chase for the bucks. Makin' money. That's God, Jesus, Mohammed, Yahweh, Buddha, and anybody else you want to throw in.

I'd love to see not just Tony Hayward but ALL the BP boardmembers and biggest shareholders thrown in jail.

[marylanddem]

5. Yes - why the hell aren't there tankers in the Gulf siphoning this up???

Appalling.

[nashville_brook]

13. it gets interesting when you start asking these questions: what "isn't happening" that could be

seems like siphon tankers have been a feature of other spills -- how come not now?

[austin78704]

48. That's easy

Tankers can't siphon.

If you want to pull up crude from near the leak undersea, you'll need lots of pipe and lots more pump capacity, and lots of horsepower to run those pumps. If you want to siphon up oil from the surface, you'll need skimming equipment and some sort of separation ability, like Costner's machine. Tankers are not equipped for any of those jobs.

Tankers are glorified buckets, and like most buckets, cannot fill themselves.

[bertman]

55. So what's to keep them from fitting those humongous buckets with gigantic pumps and

lots of pipe to pull the oily water into the tanker? Seems like something that could be done quickly if they wanted to do it. Of course, it would cost a LOT of money to do that, so it's not going to happen unless the government steps in and does it. Which might be what BP would like to happen--way later on.

[austin78704]

58. Where wil you get the pumps and equipment?

None of that shit has been built yet. Sure, you can speed some things up with heaps of money, but no matter how many girls you knock up, it will still take nine months before you start getting your babies.

Pipe isn't too big a deal, fittings aren't too big a deal, but the pumps, engines to drive the pumps, cooling systems, fuel tanks, couplers from engines to pumps, gearboxes, mounting for everything, etc. all needs to be gathered up, engineered, assembled, and tested. Not to mention retrofitting the tankers with the kind of rigging needed to handle the equipment--you can't just dangle tons of hardware off the side of a ship without consequences. Imagine the cries of incompetence if a cleanup tanker rolled over.

Currently, there are no systems made to suck seawater/crude from the deep sea up to the surface--so this would be brand-new technology. By the time it's all put together and the bugs are worked out to make it even half-way effective, it won't be needed anymore. The only time it has been attempted so far is the coffer dam BP built a few weeks ago for this very spill.

There are very few ships I know of that have the equipment to separate oil from water AND skim it at the same time. Last I heard there were three such vessels already in the gulf, and three more on the way. It's somewhat specialized equipment and the makers can make only so much so fast. It's not typically mass-produced, so there's going to be a lead time, no matter what you're willing to pay.

Also keep in mind no matter how right it may feel to make BP pay out the nose right now, when the dust settles, the only people who will get hit with those costs will be laid-off workers and the consumers. Yes, BP needs to pay, but pushing the costs exponentially higher for no gain in effective response to the disaster won't help anyone who's not a middle-man.

[William Z. Foster]

66. unless it were for war

Then aircraft carriers and stuff could be built in an amazingly short period of time.

People would be very forgiving of mistakes if they could detect any urgency or commitment.

Yep, we can't fine or tax industry - they will just pass the costs along to consumers and lay off workers.

Seems to me to just made a powerful argument for nationalization.

[kenfrequed]

74. Also...

Bush made similar arguments when it came to taxing the wealthy. He implied that rich people knew how to dodge taxes so that it was a waste of time trying to get them to pay more.

[austin78704]

75. Justify that.

Explain how nationalization of BP will make the needed equipment appear any faster. Be specific--don't fall back on blind faith that "It can happen."

You are correct that people would be more forgiving of mistakes if they could detect some kind of urgency in the response, and you could pretty easily put together a case that the response wound up way too slowly and is still insufficient in many ways. However, outright bullshit about nationalization and crackpot ideas for "solutions" that either will not work or cannot be done in a timely manner have left the majority of people too confused to understand what is actually happening now, much less understand what needs to be changed about it.

[laughingliberal]

83. ""crackpot ideas?"

Sorry, the man who was largely responsible for cleaning the over 700 million gallon Aramco spill in the Arabial Gulf in 1993 has been talking about this all along. Can't get BP to return his calls. He is of the opinion that it's because BP does not want to spend the money to do it right. They would, likely, have to pay some companies to use their supertankers. Much easier to dump more toxic chemicals to camouflage the problem. You're more than welcome to keep making excuses for them but I'm not buying it. I have to ask myself why the guy who cleaned a spill this size was not the first call they made if their goal was really to clean the spill.


<snip> "No one's listening," says Nick Pozzi, who was an engineer with Saudi Aramco in the Middle East when he says an accident there in 1993 generated a spill far larger than anything the United States has ever seen.

According to Pozzi, that mishap, kept under wraps for close to two decades and first reported by Esquire, dumped nearly 800 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf, which would make it more than 70 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill.

But remarkably, by employing a fleet of empty supertankers to suck crude off the water's surface, Pozzi's team was not only able to clean up the spill, but also salvage 85 percent of the oil, he says.

"We took out of the water so it would save the environment off the Arabian Gulf, and then we put it into tanks until we could figure out how to clean it," he told AOL News.


http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/gulf-oil-spill-supertankers-051310

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/could-cleanup-fix-for-gulf-oil-spill-lie-in-secret-saudi-disaster/19476863

[austin78704]

93. Those articles leave out some information

By their numbers, the cleanup effort left more than 10 million gallons of oil out in the environment. What happened to it? How was that much of a spill kept secret for so long? Perhaps it was confined to a very small area. The articles do not specify.

Where did they get the equipment to vacuum up the oil slicks and centrifuge out the water? Where is that equipment now? How much time was given to initiate the cleanup effort, and how fast was the oil spilling into the environment? Was it really a bunch of tankers, each with the necessary equipment, or was it one centralized pumping/separating operation that merely discharged into the tankers? If it is the latter, you cannot implement that solution over a wide area.

How does that spill compare to his one? The Persian gulf is a lot smaller and shallower, and judging from the small amount of information in those articles, the Saudi spill was mostly from at or near the surface and would have been much easier to corral for the cleanup. How do you address the difficulty of the GOM oil spill being located deep underwater and the oil being so widely dispersed by the time it reaches the surface?

Other than being an oil spill, and being in the water, what are the parallels? The differences do matter.

[William Z. Foster]

89. welcome to the fray

The more the merrier, I guess.

At issue here is who has command and control, whose interests are being served.

All of this "equipment" and "assets" and "expertise" stuff is a distraction.

[suzie]

71. Thank you for the reasoned explanation.

[kenfrequed]

73. exponentially higher than what?

Seriously this is starting to sound like PR.

For one thing ships HAVE been outfitted with such equipment before. It does exist.

As far as the damages, including loss of livelihood and destruction of the environment, the damages are practically incalcuable. Do not Defend their bottom line here. The only way that these companies will learn is to make the fines and fees and damages in law suites so extraordinally bad, so high, that they will risk the life of their business itself in such an undertaking.

By playing this 'passing the cost off' canard, you are playing into their hands completely. There is a quotation that used to be very popular among the oil men and that is. "It is cheaper to pay the fine and pay the cost of compliance."

So, please, save the spin for whatever other websites you are posting on. We do NOT buy it here.

[austin78704]

76. My disagreement with you

does not make me a PR man. It's entirely possible that you're just wrong.

My argument was not that it is impossible to provide ships with the needed equipment, my argument was that it takes too long to build that equipment for those ships to be filling the gulf right now in response to this particular disaster. I didn't see a lot of posts out of you or much of anyone else around here, demanding armadas of oil skimmers back before this mess, when we had the TIME, and I'm sure once everyone has something else to be all up in arms about, the skimmers will move to the back burner along with everything else we used to need RIGHT NOW!!!!! Hopefully this disaster will cause somebody somewhere to ready such equipment in time of the next disaster, but I don't hold out a lot of hope.

I said nothing at all about damages. You want to fight about that, fight someone else.

I will stand by my argument that mindlessly pushing costs (and if you pay attention to the context, I was speaking of costs with regards to equipment) to BP through the roof will only help middle men. Fines and fees never hurt the people at the top who made the bad policies in the first place. OTOH, once the crisis is over, you can bet your ass the vast majority of people out there, working to fix the leak and clean the mess will lose their jobs. Your mindless attack against the company because you don't personally like them (for now) will do lots and lots of collateral damage to the workforce of BP, and do absolutely no harm at all to the people at the top. Chances are Wall Street would be the middle man to soak up most of the ballooned costs you want so much since that's what those people do.

You want to punish someone, how about pressing for criminal charges against the specific individuals in BP that continue to push cost cutting above all else? It is becoming clear that this blowout was the result of a whole cascade of fuckups stretching back years, providing ample opportunity to roll some heads that actually need to be rolled.

[kenfrequed]

85. On Fines, Fees, and Taxes.

Somehow Saudi Arabia managed to do it in 1993 vwhen they spilled some 800 million gallons of oil into the persian gulf and after the Ixtoc I oil spill Norwegian skimmers were contracted to help collect the oil.

BP has made no efforts to do so deciding that tasking skimmers and diverting tankers to aid in the collection would cost more in time than the amount of money these ships would make if they sold their oil.

I am quite certain that the Norwegian skimmers that were used In Mexico weren't just standing by waiting just in case there was an oil accident. We have had 40 days of this and flagellating the critics of BP, after this accident for not having the skimmers before it is logically absurd.


As far as fees and fines and taxes go it is hard for you to possibly be more wrong.

Yes, a business could just pass on the cost of said fines and fees to the consumer but then a magical thing will happen in a capitalist society. They will lose customers. They do have competition and people will go to their petrol stations instead. If the entire industry suddenly decides to use this as a price gouging exercise then there will be more demand for public transport, conservation, and alternative energy again as these options become not only more economically viable but more popular as people look to the horrors inflicted by the oil industry.

[austin78704]

91. Norwegian skimmers are on the scene now

Been there a while.

As for the fines bit, you apparently have no experience working for the oil industry.

[William Z. Foster]

90. yes, it sounds exactly like PR

That is what it is - an aggressive public relations effort being passed of as "discussion." That is the problem - energy and resources are going into public relations rather than into responding to the catastrophe.

[austin78704]

92. If what I wrote is truely nothing more than PR

You'd be able to point out the parts that are bullshit. After all, bullshit is what PR is.

[mod mom]

8. "and everything it can to protect its bottom line" which is why it needs to be placed in

receivership

[nashville_brook]

12. people are acting like receivership is unheard of...an earth-shattering no-no...

i'll tell ya -- much of the commercial real estate in Central Florida is in receivership right now and the world has not ended. businesses are still operating and people are still going to the malls. the only thing that's different is that the greedy developers who bit off more than they could chew are now having to step aside.

[mod mom]

28. as should the oil execs who created this mess or better yet imprison them.

All the innocent people and animals effected by their greed and the fricking CEO wants it to be over so he can get on w his life. :mad:

[TexasObserver]

14. He's absolutely right.

The dispersants are a bad idea, and BP has been far more concerned with saving their investment in the ocean floor than in stopping the pollution and corralling the oil.

[nashville_brook]

40. when they first floated the idea of capture rather than capping, i thought, oh good...

but, they weren't talking about capturing the oil that's already out there -- even though it's vast and available.

[blindpig]

15. I am so surprised....

Kill Capitalism

[90-percent]

18. Compromise

I'd settle for getting referees back on the playing field of capitalism.

-90% Jimmy

[blindpig]

23. There is no compromise.

Capitol will own the 'referees' because that is what is best for the bottom line and that is their sole responsibility.

Every compromise with Capitalism is a win for Capitalism.

No compromise.

[William Z. Foster]

67. why?

Why on earth would any of us advocate compromise?

No "regulated Capitalism" ever happened from people advocating compromise.

[Faryn Balyncd]

19. [phone] 9999999 9999999 99999999 999999999 999999 999999999 999999999 999999999 9999999 ....+

[nashville_brook]

20. dang!

i'm actually amazed at the positive response to this. thanks!

[Catherina]

21. It doesn't even take an engineer to figure this out. Rec'd n/t

[nashville_brook]

27. no doubt -- these are common sense actions that have been called-for from nearly the beginning.

but, good to see confirmation from "an expert."

[amborin]

22. K&R today's ny times: Obama's experts include movie director for "The Deep"

[nashville_brook]

25. guess they think they can "set design" their way out of this.

[Bluenorthwest]

86. Wow, Peter Yates has to be over 80 at this point!

If you mean James Cameron, who did not direct that film, he is one of the world's leading experts on remote deep sea devices. That is just how it is.

[ladjf]

24. Another person with some good sense who isn't involved in the

decision process. nt

[EJSTES2005]

49. James Cameron is someone I would want involved....

having spent years immersed in the oceans which is where he got the idea for some of Avatar's life forms....

Some of the computer generated flora and fauna in the movie Avatar have an uncanny resemblance to marine life which Cameron himself has admitted to being influenced by in interview about this movie and his past work.
http://aquaviews.net/james-camerons-love-for-scuba-diving-shows-in-avatar/

"Filmmaker James Cameron says his blockbuster Avatar, which depicts a world of stunning natural beauty that is threatened with destruction, is a cautionary tale about our own environment."

In the Filmcast Interview, Cameron discusses why the environment has been an influence in his filmmaking. Here are excerpts:

"Well it's been a big influence in my life in general, you know, being a child in the 60s, and sort of coming to that point in the development of your cognitive processes, as a teenager in the late 60's, early 70s – which was the birth of the environmental movement, and its always been a big deal to me – even though I haven't been an activist until more recently. And then with my relationship with the ocean and seeing the devastation of the coral reefs and by all kinds of human activity."

"And now with climate change pretty much dooming the coral reef habitats over the world over the next 50 years, which not enough people are talking about, I do feel a sense of outrage, in the sense that as an artist, its kind of my responsibility to create a warning and remind people."
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2009/12/james-cameron-sees-avatar-as-environmental-warning/1




After even more thought I can't think of anyone else I personally would want involved!

[chill_wind]

26. K & R.

[Mimosa]

29. K&R ...And people wonder why some of us are disappointed with the administration?

From OP:

They should have at least a dozen collectors. BP has 24 tankers that are being used to make money for BP, not for clean-up duty. (President Obama should also use all necessary federal power -- or money, and send BP the bill -- to put as many tankers and refineries from other companies on the task.) Mile-long pipes could be dangled down into the crude spewing from the wellhead and at each breach in the riser pipe, and the tankers could pump the crude mixed with water back into the tankers. They could then separate the crude and water in the tanker, and pump the water out on the spot. This should continue until each tanker is full of oil. The crude should then be taken to a refinery for processing, as other tankers take their place. Submersibles can be used to monitor the uptake into the dangling pipes, moving them as needed to keep them picking up as much crude as possible.

(snip)

3. Restart work on the second pressure relief well. BP did start work on two relief wells as the government requested, but the second has been shut down to cannabalize parts from it for the primary well kill effort. The president must order BP to spend whatever money it takes to get another blow out preventer on site, to re-start work on the second pressure relief well. A recent blow-out off the coast of Australia required five pressure relief wells to successfully shut it down.

There has been a lack of the necessarry urgency to act. The whole Gulf and the entire coastal wetlands of Louisisiana are at stake. They may take decades to recover, in the meantime species will be lost, there will be dead zones in the Gulf and a million interrealated jobs will be effected.

[nashville_brook]

30. we're seeing lots of twadling. not much else. and, excuses.

like -- let "the experts" do their work.

well when can we expect them to start?

[nc4bo]

31. KnFnR!! nt

[nashville_brook]

32. FnA!

[HCE SuiGeneris]

33. DAMNIT! This is f'n intolerable!

We are being played for Patsies. I want justice for this nation and its people!!!

[JCMach1]

34. Not doing the 2nd well is unacceptable... that essentially means if the first fails, it is TWO MORE

months of leaking!!!

:(

[nashville_brook]

35. this came as a surprise to me -- one of the reasons why i thought this was an

exceptional piece of information.

[JCMach1]

36. Yes it is! have posted it to everyone I know...

[Feron]

57. I read that the second relief well has restarted drilling.

They stopped drilling to use the BOP for a possible BOP stacking operation at the gusher.

That idea was nixed and the relief well drilling will resume.

[suzie]

72. Thank you for the information.

[jeff47]

77. Once again, alarmism wins!!

The 2nd well was stopped because they wanted to use its blowout preventer on the gusher if "Top Kill" worked.

When "Top Kill" failed, they restarted the 2nd well.

This was all in the media coverage when they stopped the 2nd well and when they started it up again.

[JCMach1]

82. Could it be the 'secrecy' BP has maintained...?

[jeff47]

88. It's not very secret when I hear it on Olberman and Maddow. (nt)

[RT Atlanta]

37. bump

k&r too

[Heywood J]

39. We should just dig up Red Adair and be done with it...

Even his corpse could do a better job than BP.

[Overseas]

44. K&R -- great points ! //nt

[undeterred]

45. Obama is a lawyer

and I'm sure he's considering how to manage this in such a way that BP bears the full brunt of liability. If BP was put into receivership now, that may shift financial responsibility onto the government instead of BP.

[swilton]

46. Doesn't surprise me

Any idiot could have figured this out - Papantonio said as much weeks ago. He also said that BP was waiting on deploying the tankers until the price of oil went up.

I blame Obama for letting BP handle this - he should have declared this a national emergency weeks ago and summoned the best and brightest minds to work on solving this....Once the oil gets into the eco-system it's not fixable despite what BP says.

[Mimosa]

47. He didn't understand., Swilton

I'm seeing that people who've never lived in a fragile coastal environment (as adults) don't understand how bad this is. I'm seeing this on many sites in many comments on the internet. This is a 'meh' moment for most people. The Haitian earthquake earlier this year exhausted their store of compassion. Some probably think Louisiana is a bad place to be repeatedly cursed. *sad*

[troubledamerican]

50. Are "Cheney Sleeper Cells" advising the President?

#2 is so obvious and easily done -- why isn't it happening?

Why is Obama doing basketball interviews & cultural heritage events? This could be the fatal event of his presidency.

[EJSTES2005]

51. 700 Million Gallons sucked up off the Persian Gulf....

Tip Jar for the OP for making this clean up fact more well known....

Sadly the use of dispersant's have made this option more difficult to execute.

The Secret, 700-Million-Gallon Oil Fix That Worked — and Might Save the Gulf

"There's a potential solution to the Gulf oil spill that neither BP, nor the federal government, nor anyone — save a couple intuitive engineers — seems willing to try. As The Politics Blog reported on Tuesday in an interview with former Shell Oil president John Hofmeister, the untapped solution involves using empty supertankers to suck the spill off the surface, treat and discharge the contaminated water, and either salvage or destroy the slick."
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/gulf-oil-spill-supertankers-051310#ixzz0pkqUEOOm

The esquire story above is over 3 fucking weeks old...Why the fuck has this not been done ???????????????????


Many people have been screaming from the roof tops about what worked there since day fucking one and evry day since.....But no one seems to be listening.

[Individualist]

52. K&R

[cognoscere]

53. Technical mistakes my ass.

You can't tell me there aren't a few thousand engineers in this country who couldn't figure out how to stop the leak in substantially less time than a month. Just off the top of my head, place a two piece valve around the pipe; cut off the kinked/leaking portion; slide the valve into place; have the robots drill and bolt it to the pipe to keep it from sliding off under pressure; close the valve.

[jtrockville]

54. Still no mention of F*ing PROPER F*ing BOOMING?

WARNING: Vulgar language NSFW, but very enlightening:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btnQjUqqAsc

[flamingdem]

56. We need MORE RELIEF WELLS being drilled

and BP should know better considering their record. BACKUPS!

[Kalun D]

59. Listened To Progressive Talk Radio All Day

Here's what I heard.

""1. Stop releasing dispersants.""

BP is using dispersants because it hides the oil from view, primarily by keeping it below the surface. It also makes it harder to clean up because it mixes the oil with the water and by keeping it below the surface makes it harder to skim. It is also very toxic. So just because BP wants to hide the oil they are being allowed to dump more toxins that only make the problem worse.


""2. Mobilize every possible tanker to siphon up crude""

BP's tankers are all full and sitting offshore. There is a glut of oil right now and if these tankers are offloaded the price of oil will drop. The Arabian spill(wasn't in the news) was very large, they used no dispersants. They used tankers and skimmed the surface and recovered about 80% of the oil. This method is already very compromised by the dispersants.


""3. Restart work on the second pressure relief well.""

This is a no-brainer. They should have been drilling 5 relief wells from day one.

The Obama admin is a big FAIL on this spill. They need to ban BP from the clean-up operations. They need to ban the dispersants. They need to seize BP's American assets. This is a criminal company, they've had this same profit over safety record for a long time.

The MSDS safety sheet for the dispersant Corexit mandates protective gear including respirators when handling Corexit. BP is being allowed to order the clean-up workers not to use respirators due to the bad image. There have already been several cleanup workers getting sick, and this stuff is so toxic it's permanent damage including neurological.

BP is buying $100,000 full page image ads in the paper and at the same time foot-dragging on providing more booms to areas that are asking for it.

Another thing I heard today was that the White House suspended the Davis-Bacon act which mandates the prevailing wage for the clean-up workers. Typical corporate lap-dog sh*t.

[riverdale]

60. Link?

I ran a google search and the only stories involving suspending Davis Bacon involve Bush or Nixon. Nothing current.

[Kalun D]

64. Yes

That one might be just a rumor, it was Pappantonio on Hartman

so unconfirmed rumor

[scentopine]

61. According to this story, non-BP scientists have been shut down and censored (link)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/02/noaa-director-toes-bp-lin_n_598461.html

[WillyT]

63. K & R !!!

:kick:

[laughingliberal]

69. Don't know which engineer he's quoting but it's not the first one I've read of with the same message

Yet, we keep hearing how BP is our only hope and the only ones who know anything about how to fix this.

[Quantess]

70. There's Rec #100

[Tuesday Afternoon]

78. something, More something. Even if it is wrong. WE are moving to slowly.

K&R

[jeff47]

79. Well...clearly an engineer and not a biologist

"Dispersants do nothing to assist the environment in naturally cleaning the oil"

Wrong.

In seawater, the main way that oil biodegrades is by bacteria consuming the oil. The speed at which this occurs is proportional to the surface area of the oil. Dispersants vastly increase surface area, and are not toxic to the bacteria that eat oil (they're rather hardy beasties; after all they're eating crude oil).

With high surface area, the limiting factor becomes oxygen in the water. So an infinite surface area wouldn't make the oil disappear instantly. But a giant mass of oil is going to be terribly slow for biodegradation because of the low surface area and local oxygen depletion.

I also am a tad concerned about his other errors. For example:
"A recent blow-out off the coast of Australia required five pressure relief wells to successfully shut it down"

No, in the Montara blow-out, it was the fifth attempt using one relief well. As in the relief well hit the target, but it took them 5 tries over 2 days to get the mud mixture right and inject the cement to plug it.

He's also wrong in that the 2nd relief well in this spill is already back to drilling. Once "Top Kill" was declared a failure, they restarted it. But perhaps it took a while for this anonymous engineer's assessment to be reported.

As for tankers, I have no information about what they're doing at this moment, but the previous glaring errors makes me a tad uneasy about trusting this anonymous engineer's assessment.

[Ho Tai]

81. I only hope

that when they're sitting in their mansions late at nite, sipping 100-year-old cognac, the oil executives can forget, if only for a moment, how very HARSH our words have been. After all, scum are people too.

[inna]

84. It's like the banksters who created the financial crisis with complete impunity...

Only to reap obscene profits while completely screwing everyone else...

Only this time it's the "oilsters", and now they created not just an economic disaster, but an environmental catastrophe.

It may be only a matter of time when another disaster created by corporate greed will put our very existence as a species at risk.

:shrug: Looks like the end-stage capitalism to me. Put the rabid monster out of its misery before it kills us all.

[NYC_SKP]

87. K&R n/t