Deepwater Horizon~Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster

[Meridian]

I stand corrected: BP are actually drilling two relief wells. The problem is essentially one of time: it will take until August to get down deep enough for the new wells to work.


As for this being the fault of the government not allowing drilling elsewhere, you need to think this through: all that does is move the pollution somewhere else. It gives one advantage - capping a ****ed wellhead is easier - at the price of wrecking the local enviroment. And yes right-wingers, it does wreck it. If you don't live there then the you may consider the price worth paying. If you drill for oil, you pollute. Sooner, later, big, small, it will happen.


As for nukes: the oil will be all but undetectable in a decade, but radioactive fallout lasts a little longer than that.


M

[TheGlasMan]

That simply makes no sense. BP is in business to get the oil and make $$. Why would they take any action that would risk production and getting more $$ into their grubby lil hands? It's not good for their business to take shortcuts and they know it.

You obviously have ignored the history of this particular well. And there is no reason to expect that it is unique.

I was thinking about starting a thread on this a few days ago seeing how you guys had ignored it, but I didn't want to be in anyway responsible for the resulting blithering.

Just couldn't resist the temptation to take cheap shots at the president, could you. Beck would be proud.

[AMDScooter]

You obviously have ignored the history of this particular well. And there is no reason to expect that it is unique.

Elaborate on how I'm "ignoring the history of this well". It is unique insomuch as it is making an ecological disaster that is going to dwarf Valdez at this rate.

I was thinking about starting a thread on this a few days ago seeing how you guys had ignored it, but I didn't want to be in anyway responsible for the resulting blithering.

Thanks for adding your blithering to the debate then.

Just couldn't resist the temptation to take cheap shots at the president, could you. Beck would be proud.

Pointing out the fact that this clueless administration is late to the game despite the nice photo ops and speech is hardly what I'd call a cheap shot. Pundits on the left and right are pointing this out so your partisan accusations are falling a bit short of factual..

Liz Cheney on Obama’s Response to BP Oil Spill: “A Gift for Reading the TelePrompter Is Not the Same as Leadership” (Video)

Liz Cheney on Obama’s response to the BP oil spill:
“A gift for reading the TelePrompter is not the same as leadership.”



Liz Cheney hit this one out of the park this morning on FOX News Sunday:

“You know you’ve got a president who believes that saying something makes it so. You showed it in the last segment when he said he was going to have the most transparent administration in history. But, that doesn’t mean you’re actually going to be open and transparent. It’s not the same thing as we’ve seen with him. On the war, he says he knows were at war but he doesn’t actually understand he has to lead us in the fight… And, going down to Louisiana he says, “Gosh, I’m heart-broken. I’m angry. I’m frustrated.” And then going on vacation to Chicago really doesn’t send a message that this is a man who’s leading… A gift for reading the TelePrompter is not the same as leadership.“

There's Obama's Story, And There's History

John at Powerline debunks Obama's claim that the BP oil spill was a top priority from day one:

Obama's principal revisionism lay in his account of how his administration responded to the Deepwater Horizon explosion. To hear him tell it, the administration anticipated the worst from the beginning and reacted accordingly:

The day that the rig collapsed and fell to the bottom of the ocean, I had my team in the Oval Office that first day. Those who think that we were either slow on our response or lacked urgency don't know the facts. This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred. ...

Q. On April 21st, Admiral Allen tells us, the government started dispatching equipment rapidly to the gulf. And you just said, on day one you recognized the enormity of the situation. Yet, here we are 39, 40 days later, you're still having to rush more equipment, more boom, there are still areas of the coast unprotected.

Why is it taking so long? And did you really act from day one for a worst case scenario?

OBAMA: We did.

The rebuttal is provided by the NY Times:

The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP, which was leasing the drilling rig that exploded in flames on April 20 and sank two days later. Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead.

The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was “a spill of national significance,” and then set up a second command center in Mobile. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day.

The delay meant that the Homeland Security Department waited until late this week to formally request a more robust response from the Department of Defense, with Ms. Napolitano acknowledging even as late as Thursday afternoon that she did not know if the Defense Department even had equipment that might be helpful.

Well, that was then - now the Times is more or less parroting uncritically Obama's resolute soundbite:

Mr. Obama brushed off the Katrina comparisons, arguing that the government has made “the largest effort of its kind in U.S. history” and was in charge of BP’s response. “Those who think we were either slow in our response or lacked urgency don’t know the facts,” he said. “This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred.”

...

Still, there were uncomfortable echoes of Katrina. Just as Mr. Bush cast aside Michael Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Mr. Obama addressed reporters just hours after S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, his director of the Minerals Management Service, resigned under pressure.

Just as Mr. Bush was criticized for being on vacation in Texas when Katrina bore down on New Orleans, Mr. Obama has been criticized for golfing, fund-raising and, on Thursday night, heading to Chicago for a holiday weekend while oil laps up in the marshes and beaches of Louisiana.

Hmm, if they really want to make the Katrina comparison they could simply cite their own reporting - the spill was not declared an event of national significance for days.

Nor did the Times laugh out loud or provide appropriate context in their coverage of Obama's resolute Gulf visit:

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

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

”

But thanks for the deflection attempt.. Mediamatters would be proud.

[JustinC939]

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/...ust.cnn?hpt=T2

[BlackDragon24]

First:

The feds have neither the equipment or expertise to do jack sh*t. So what exactly are they gonna do? Is Obama gonna use his massively overstated power of persuasion to plug the hole? So far the hole seems to give as much a sh*t about him as I do. Perhaps his ego might be big enough to plug it.. but the feds have no means to deliver it on target a mile under the ocean. So we are stuck with BP... period.

Then:

Pointing out the fact that this clueless administration is late to the game despite the nice photo ops and speech is hardly what I'd call a cheap shot.

So he can't do anything about it, you know he can't do anything about it, but yet you call him out for not doing anything about it....or waiting too long to do nothing about it.

Yeah that's exactly what we call a cheap shot.

And then dialing up Liz Cheney to spout the republican talking points? You gotta warn me before you do that so I don't hurl coffee all over my keyboard. Bitch is about as relevant as you or me in this whole mess.

[tucker]

1: Don't drill oil in such a vulnerable and valuable resource such as the ocean. The ocean is already suffering enough, now we gotta deal with polluting more of the world.
2: Serves us right for not endorsing alternative fuels. Solar, wind, Wave (& Tidal) and Geo-thermal energies are capable of providing at least 1000 times the energy which oil is capable of providing.

1. That’s simply because environmental extremists and politicians force them to drill in undesirable places like deep water by closing down easy access land based property for drilling.

2. Got a link?


btw… I’m not defending BP I’m just pointing out there is a lot of pieces to this puzzle.

[TheGlasMan]

Originally Posted by AMDScooter View Post
That simply makes no sense. BP is in business to get the oil and make $$. Why would they take any action that would risk production and getting more $$ into their grubby lil hands? It's not good for their business to take shortcuts and they know it.

You obviously have ignored the history of this particular well. And there is no reason to expect that it is unique.

Elaborate on how I'm "ignoring the history of this well". It is unique insomuch as it is making an ecological disaster that is going to dwarf Valdez at this rate.

The history of BP's decisions drilling this particular well, and its predecessor which failed from the same faulty decision process.

This disaster was not an accident or caused by ignorance or negligence. It was caused by the willful disregard of the facts and the risks. The primary factor in 3 critical decisions* was to reduce the costs of running the drilling rig. This history directly contradicts the first quoted post.

*2 of which would have almost eliminated risk, and the 3rd guaranteed the highest risk
.
1)When drilling turned out to be slower then scheduled do to conditions, BP decided to speed up drilling instead of revising the time table. This resulted in the first attempt to fail.

2) When the 2nd hole was nearly completed the drill was turned on during a test of the shut off valve. This resulted in the seal being destroyed (the rubber chunks came up to the top of the drill during later drilling). BP decided to continue instead of replacing the shutoff valve.

3) BP decided to remove the drilling mud before pouring the concrete when they KNEW the emergency shutoff was incapacitated by the earlier accident. This was to save the 1 week of time it would take to remove the drilling mud after the concrete was poured.

[old82]

I stand corrected: BP are actually drilling two relief wells. The problem is essentially one of time: it will take until August to get down deep enough for the new wells to work.


As for this being the fault of the government not allowing drilling elsewhere, you need to think this through: all that does is move the pollution somewhere else. It gives one advantage - capping a ****ed wellhead is easier - at the price of wrecking the local enviroment. And yes right-wingers, it does wreck it. If you don't live there then the you may consider the price worth paying. If you drill for oil, you pollute. Sooner, later, big, small, it will happen.


As for nukes: the oil will be all but undetectable in a decade, but radioactive fallout lasts a little longer than that.


M

i've wondered about the nuke thing. why does it have to be a nuke? why can't it just be a ball of whatever the MOAB uses for explosives?

[AMDScooter]

First:

Then:

So he can't do anything about it, you know he can't do anything about it, but yet you call him out for not doing anything about it....or waiting too long to do nothing about it.

Yeah that's exactly what we call a cheap shot.

Two separate issues.

First: King Canute can't do jack sh*t about pluggin the hole. So claiming to have their "boot to the neck of BP" or rhetoric that they are going to "take over" or that they are in control is absolute bullsh*t.

Second: The things he could have done that the locals on the ground requested and suggested to mitigate the effects of the spill he either made half hearted attempts, panned them altogether or slept on until it was too late. See above story about the timeline Captain bullsh*t is trying some nice revisionist history on.

There's Obama's Story, And There's History

Telling the truth is only considered a "cheap shot" by those whom do not like to be bothered with inconvenient facts.

And then dialing up Liz Cheney to spout the republican talking points? You gotta warn me before you do that so I don't hurl coffee all over my keyboard. Bitch is about as relevant as you or me in this whole mess.

Republican talking points? Nice attempt at shooting the messenger. Unfortunately for you that "b*tch" is saying the exact same things as Carville, mushmouth Matthews and a sizable number of other lefties. Odd you did not seem to upset when Carville was far less rational while making the exact same points.

[old82]

oh, and this has happened before. i don't think you all noticed that though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill

apparently this thing leaked anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 barrels per day into the gulf for about 10 months.

"Ultimately, 71,500 barrels of oil impacted 162 miles of U.S. beaches"



either this thing is far FAR worse than they're letting on, or it's not as big of a deal as we think it is.

[Meridian]

i've wondered about the nuke thing. why does it have to be a nuke? why can't it just be a ball of whatever the MOAB uses for explosives?

The correct name of the MOAB is "fuel-air explosive". That should answer your question.


M

[TheGlasMan]

So Plan A is a nuke!?!? Hmmmm!

[old82]

The correct name of the MOAB is "fuel-air explosive". That should answer your question.


M

i thought it stood for massive ordinance air burst....

and i was close

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/...Air_Blast_bomb

and you were WAY WAY WAY off.

it uses H6 explosive....

Composition H6 is a castable military explosive compound composed of the following percentages by weight:

* 45% RDX
* 30% TNT
* 20% powdered aluminium
* 5% paraffin wax as a phlegmatizing agent.

Another (very similar) version of H6 has the following proportions: RDX (including Nitrocellulose, Calcium Chloride and Calcium Silicate) 45.1 %, Trinitrotoluene 29.2 %, powdered Aluminium 21 % and 4.7% paraffin wax & Lecithin.

H6 is used in a number of military applications, notably underwater munitions (e.g. naval mines, depth charges and torpedoes) where it has generally replaced torpex, being less shock sensitive and having more stable storage characteristics. It is approximately 1.35 times more powerful than pure TNT.




the only reason i can think of for using a nuke is because an H bomb produces serious amounts of heat, enough to melt and weld shut a hold. so, i wonder, is it the kinetic energy they're looking for or the heat.


that and the MOAB isn't that strong.

[Meridian]

That Wikipedia article isn't very helpful but here's a question: why do you suppose the powdered aluminium is there? Answer: it's the fuel part. When it is finely dispersed and ignited it will explode, magnifying the shock from the original HE. The H6 is the providing a big bang in its own right, unlike early FAEs where the HE was just a dispersal charge; but it still gets a large part of the damage from the powdered Ali.

The bit about using H6 underwater is a red herring: any explosive can be used underwater. You could use a MOAB on the wellhead, but much of the blast effect would be gone as the ali would not ignite, leaving just that 1.35 factor over TNT (which is not one of the most power explosives in the first place I believe).


M

[Enmore]

The aluminium powder will be there to provide the thermitic element of the blast - a hell of a lot of heat. The oxygen is provided by the actual explosives - TNT & RDX. Explosives are, at the end of the day, essentially a rapid oxygenation process. It's the Potassium NitrATE that has this job in gunpowder for example. Still, I fail to see how using explosives is going to resolve the situation. It would just make a big crater and kill a lot of fish.

Seems to me that dropping a large & heavy concrete caisson on top of the broken well head would have a better chance.