Massive Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill

[eion]

is there any history of ecoterrorists directly trying to kill people?

Aside from the Unibomber, of course.

[Commander 598]

http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/oilspill/

Should be a good page for updates.

[wautd]

Is there a good reason why they decide to burn off the oil (causing additional pollution) instead of containing (and later recoverying) the oil using floatable dams?

[Broomstick]

It takes time to get booms in place, and it's not a perfect system. Storms, waves, wind and the like can make containing oil in booms impractical, as the containment works best in calm water and water isn't always calm in the real world.

[FSTargetDrone]

Weather is already impacting the cleanup. In any case, burning is a trade-off. Oil that has reached shore is a lot harder to clean up and worse to deal with than some air pollution. The air pollution is by no means good, but it's better than the alternative. Oil from the Valdez spill is still being found in Alaska, on the shore.

This may also be a bigger disaster than the Valdez spill.

AP:

Weather hurts Gulf oil fight; new drilling on hold

By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer Cain Burdeau, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 46 mins ago

MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER – Oil from a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico oozed into Louisiana's ecologically rich wetlands Friday as storms threatened to frustrate desperate protection efforts. The White House put a hold on any new offshore oil projects until the rig disaster that caused the spill is explained.

Crews in boats patrolled coastal marshes early Friday looking for areas where the oil has flowed in, the Coast Guard said.

The National Weather Service predicted winds, high tides and waves through Sunday that could push oil deep into the inlets, ponds and lakes that line the boot of southeast Louisiana. Seas of 6 to 7 feet were pushing tides several feet above normal toward the coast, compounded by thunderstorms expected in the area Friday.

Crews are unable to skim oil from the surface or burn it off for the next couple of days because of the weather, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Waves may also wash over booms strung out just off shorelines to stop the oil, said Tom McKenzie, a spokesman for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is hoping booms will keep oil off the Chandeleur Islands, part of a national wildlife refuge.

"The challenge is, are they going to hold up in any kind of serious weather," McKenzie said. "And if there's oil, will the oil overcome the barriers even though they're ... executed well?"

A top adviser to President Barack Obama said Friday that no new oil drilling would be allowed until authorities learn what caused the explosion of the rig Deepwater Horizon. David Axelrod told ABC's "Good Morning America" that "no additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what has happened here." Obama recently lifted a drilling moratorium for many offshore areas, including the Atlantic and Gulf areas.

Two Air Force C-130s were sent to Mississippi and awaited orders to start dumping chemicals on the oil spill. The Navy also sent equipment for the cleanup and Pentagon officials were talking with the Department of Homeland Security to figure out what other help the military could give.

The leak from a blown-out well a mile underwater is five times bigger than first believed. Faint fingers of oily sheen began reaching the Mississippi River delta late Thursday, lapping the Louisiana shoreline in long, thin lines. Thicker oil was farther offshore. Officials have said they would do everything to keep the Mississippi River open to traffic.

The Coast Guard defended the federal response so far. Asked on all three network television morning shows Friday whether the government has done enough to push oil company BP PLC to plug the underwater leak and protect the coast, Brice-O'Hara said the response led by the Coast Guard has been rapid, sustained and has adapted as the threat grew since a drill rig exploded and sank last week, causing the seafloor spill.

The oil slick could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez in scope. It imperils hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world's richest seafood grounds, teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life.

"It is of grave concern," David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press about the spill. "I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."

Oil clumps seabirds' feathers, leaving them without insulation — and when they preen, they swallow it. Prolonged contact with the skin can cause burns, said Nils Warnock, a spill recovery supervisor with the California Oiled Wildlife Care Network at the University of California-Davis. Oil swallowed by animals can cause anemia, hemorrhaging and other problems, said Jay Holcomb, executive director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center in California.

The spewing oil — about 210,000 gallons a day — comes from a well drilled by the rig Deepwater Horizon, which exploded in flames April 20 and sank two days later. BP was operating the rig that was owned by Transocean Ltd. The Coast Guard is working with BP to deploy floating booms, skimmers and chemical dispersants, and set controlled fires to burn the oil off the water's surface.

The leak from the ocean floor proved to be far bigger than initially reported, contributing to a growing sense among some in Louisiana that the government failed them again, just as it did during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. President Obama dispatched Cabinet officials to deal with the crisis.

Cade Thomas, a fishing guide in Venice, worried that his livelihood will be destroyed. He said he did not know whether to blame the Coast Guard, the government or BP.

"They lied to us. They came out and said it was leaking 1,000 barrels when I think they knew it was more. And they weren't proactive," he said. "As soon as it blew up, they should have started wrapping it with booms."

BP shares continued falling early Friday. Shares were down 2 percent in early trading on the London Stock Exchange, a day after dropping 7 percent in London. In New York on Thursday, BP shares fell $4.78 to close at $52.56, taking the fall in the company's market value to about $25 billion since the explosion.

Government officials said the well 40 miles offshore is spewing about 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, a day into the gulf.

At that rate, the spill could eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history — the 11 million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989 — in the three months it could take to drill a relief well and plug the gushing well 5,000 feet underwater on the sea floor. Ultimately, the spill could grow much larger than the Valdez because Gulf of Mexico wells tap deposits that hold many times more oil than a single tanker.

BP has requested more resources from the Defense Department, especially underwater equipment that might be better than what is commercially available. A BP executive said the corporation would "take help from anyone." That includes fishermen who could be hired to help deploy containment boom.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency so officials could begin preparing for the oil's impact. He also asked the federal government if he could call up 6,000 National Guard troops to help.

___

Associated Press writers Holbrook Mohr in Mississippi, Phuong Le in Seattle, Janet McConnaughey, Kevin McGill, Michael Kunzelman and Brett Martel in New Orleans, and Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge also contributed to this report.

This may be a real kick in the teeth, ecologically-speaking.

Incidentally...

April 29, 2010
Oil Spill’s Blow to BP’s Image May Eclipse Costs
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

HAMMOND, La. — BP says that the offshore drilling accident that is spewing thousands of barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico could cost the company several hundred million dollars.

Nobody really knows whether the London-based oil giant is being too conservative about the cost for the April 20 accident, which some experts say could end up as the biggest oil spill in history. The 1989 grounding of the Exxon Valdez off Alaska, for example, cost Exxon Mobil more than $4.3 billion, including compensatory payments, cleanup costs, settlements and fines.

But regardless of the out-of-pocket costs, the long-term damage to BP’s reputation — and possibly, its future prospects for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico — is likely to be far higher, according to industry analysts.

The magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon disaster seems to be finally sinking in with investors. BP’s stock plunged more than 8 percent Thursday in American trading in an otherwise strong day for stocks. Since the accident, the American depositary receipts of the company have fallen about 13 percent, closing Thursday at $52.56.

For Tony Hayward, who has led BP for the last three years, the accident threatens to overshadow all of the efforts he has made to burnish the tattered reputation of the company after a refinery explosion in Texas in 2005 and a pipeline leak in Alaska in 2006.

As Mr. Hayward said to fellow executives in his London office recently, “What the hell did we do to deserve this?”

A BP spokesman said no executives were available for an interview Thursday. But in response to a written question, Mr. Hayward said, “Reputationally, and in every other way, we will be judged by the quality, intensity, speed and efficacy of our response.”

So far, the company’s failure to stop the seepage from the underwater well has frustrated government officials. On Thursday, President Obama offered the assistance of an array of government agencies, including the military, while noting that, under federal law, “BP is ultimately responsible for funding the cost of response and cleanup operations.”

Mr. Hayward, who has blamed the rig’s owner and operator, Transocean, for the accident, said that it was nevertheless BP’s responsibility to deal with the immediate problem. “We take it with the utmost seriousness,” he wrote. “Nothing else matters right now.”

Wall Street experts say that while the company is spending an estimated $6 million a day on fixing the mess, it is impossible to accurately estimate how much the incident will eventually cost.

BP, which leased the platform from Transocean, has said that drilling and operating relief wells to plug the runaway well may cost as much as $300 million, but those same wells will eventually be used to produce profitable oil.

The cost of an environmental cleanup will depend largely on how much oil reaches shore. The government could assess fines or other penalties. And lawyers have already filed a flurry of suits on behalf of commercial fisherman, shrimpers and injured oil workers against BP; Transocean; Cameron, the company that manufactured the blowout preventer; and other companies involved in the drilling process.

Cleanup costs will be divided among BP, which has a 65 percent ownership of the field, and minority partners Anadarko and Mitsui.

Transocean’s stock price fell nearly 7.5 percent Thursday, and is down more than 14 percent since the accident. The company has insurance that covers the rig that was lost, but any broader assessment of Transocean’s liability will be determined after investigators understand what caused the accident.

Regardless of the final assessment of blame, Wall Street analysts warned that everything BP does from now on will come under increased scrutiny by regulators and that potential partners in drilling ventures may well look elsewhere.

“In the last two years, it seemed BP had really cleaned up their act,” said Fadel Gheit, a managing director and oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Company. “Now it looks like a house of cards that has totally collapsed.”

Under Mr. Hayward’s predecessor, John Browne, BP rebranded itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” a company that was environmentally conscious and wanted to develop alternative energy sources like solar and wind power. Its insignia of a blooming flower was intended to portray the company as one that was responsive to growing public concerns about climate change.

But the company seemed to lose its focus on maintenance and safety, BP executives later acknowledged. The 2005 explosion at a refinery in Texas City, Tex., killed 15 workers and injured hundreds more. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined BP a record $87 million for neglecting to correct safety violations.

Only a year later, a leaky BP oil pipeline in Alaska forced the shutdown of one of the nation’s biggest oil fields. BP was fined $20 million in criminal penalties after prosecutors said the company had neglected corroding pipelines. Soon after the incident, Mr. Browne quit amid tabloid headlines about his private life.

Mr. Hayward, a geologist who had been in charge of exploration and production, took over and promised to refocus the company and change the culture, emphasizing safety.

He also expanded the company’s already aggressive exploratory efforts in the deep waters of the gulf. Last year, the same platform that has now sunk to the sea floor drilled the deepest well in history, opening one of the largest new fields in the world.

Despite the accident, BP says it remains committed to its gulf drilling program, which contributes 11 percent of the company’s worldwide production.

Senior executives insist that the explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon rig and killed 11 workers does not reflect the company’s safety standards or Mr. Hayward’s management.

“This accident took place on a rig owned, managed and operated by Transocean,” said Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman. “It involves the failure of a piece of equipment on that rig. So the unfolding events do not arise from a failure of BP’s safety systems.”

But critics in Congress and elsewhere have questioned BP’s commitment to safety.

Last year, when the federal Minerals Management Service proposed a rule that would have required companies to have their safety and environmental management programs audited once every three years, BP and other companies objected. The agency is also investigating charges by a whistle-blower that the company discarded important records from its Atlantis Gulf platform.

Henry A. Waxman of California, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is demanding documents from BP and its drilling contractors in what looks likely to be a full-blown investigation. “A striking feature of the incident is the apparent lack of an adequate plan to contain the spreading environmental damage,” he said in a letter to company officials.

The faltering cleanup effort comes at a time when the company’s business is otherwise going well. Continuing the excellent performance of recent years, BP just announced earnings of $5.6 billion for the first quarter, more than double the profit during the same quarter a year ago.

“Certainly, BP will survive this,” said Cathy Milostan, an oil stock analyst at Morningstar. “This will test Tony and his ability to respond to this situation. We will see if we are seeing a new BP.”

John M. Broder contributed reporting from Washington.

[Commander 598]

http://emergency.louisiana.gov/

I assume that PDF is going to be constantly updated...

[FSTargetDrone]

Noticed that in your earlier post above, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is looking for help from people with boats to deploy oil containment booms in the gulf.

[Commander 598]

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/0 ... siana.html

Nice pictures, including one showing why booms aren't very reliable. Can't remember where I found it though.

[TithonusSyndrome]

A second unit has overturned

The "mobile inland drilling unit" overturned in the Charenton navigational channel south of U.S. Highway 90 at Morgan City.

Jesus fucking christ.

[Broomstick]

Is that another BP unit?

Because it wouldn't surprise me one bit. The BP refinery in my area is notorious for short cuts on safety and dumping shit into the big lake (which supplies drinking water to about six million people) and at various local locations. If they run their oil wells like they run that refinery... well, the execs should be force fed whatever washes ashore, really, they deserve it.

[FSTargetDrone]

Is that another BP unit?

Because it wouldn't surprise me one bit. The BP refinery in my area is notorious for short cuts on safety and dumping shit into the big lake (which supplies drinking water to about six million people) and at various local locations. If they run their oil wells like they run that refinery... well, the execs should be force fed whatever washes ashore, really, they deserve it.

Second Louisiana rig accident minor: report

HOUSTON

Fri Apr 30, 2010 6:32pm EDT

(Reuters) - An inland shallow-water drilling rig capsized near Morgan City, Louisiana, while being towed to a salvage yard, the Coast Guard said on Friday.

U.S. | Green Business

There were no injuries, and navigation was not affected by the incident in the Charenton navigation channel south of U.S. 90 near Morgan City, Coast Guard spokesman Mike O'Berry said.

"This is not a major waterway," he said. "Nobody was on board. It was being towed."

The incident followed the April 20 explosion of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, in which 11 people died. The rig sank and a disastrous oil spill has ensued.

A 210-foot-long barge rig, which worked swampland and shallow water oil and gas prospects, was involved in Friday's incident, the Coast Guard said.

It had a 20,000-gallon diesel tank but carried only about 200 gallons of fuel when it capsized. Spill containment boom was put around it as a precaution, the Coast Guard said.

O'Berry said the rig was owned by T. Moore Services in Franklin, Louisiana. A telephone call to the company was not returned.

Doesn't look like it, unless T. Moore Services has some connection to BP I can't see. It appears to be a demolition/scrapping company.

[Broomstick]

Sounds like a relatively minor accident - THAT one should be contained easily. OK, it's not good, but it's not an ecological disaster, either.

[DarkSilver]

It was a rig that, as far as I'm aware, was being brought to yard for final tear down. When these rigs are moved, they normally contain no chemicals or fluids beyond fuel for the engines and generators.

And that company has no ties to BP, BP does not do Inland Barge drilling for the most part, they have leases primarily on shore, or in the Gulf itself.

[General Mung Beans]

This means that any lifting of regulation on offshore drilling is gone. At least we are making progress on improving nuclear energy...

[DarkSilver]

.....as far as I'm aware, there was never any talk about lifting the regulations on offshore drilling - if anything, I've been expecting (and experiencing) TOUGHER regulations on nearly every platform and rig I've been to in the Gulf or on land jobs in Texas and Louisiana.

What happened on the Deepwater Horizon was a preventable disaster that occurred because people on the rig grew lax in their own duties, and safety precautions were not followed. There was a explosion earlier that day on the rig from fuel somehow got caught into one of the turbos in the Generator Housing. Operations for the rig should have been executed right there and BOPs closed and the well sealed in while things were evaluated.

It didn't happen.

The fault lies purely on BP (the Company Rep/consultant assigned to the rig at anyrate) and the crew of the Deepwater Horizon themselves, and I expect to see even tougher regulations occur because of this - not a cessation of Off Shore Drilling.

[FSTargetDrone]

Sigh, more about the Deepwater rig:

Rig had history of spills, fires before big 1

By FRANK JORDANS and GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press Writers Frank Jordans And Garance Burke, Associated Press Writers

Fri Apr 30, 6:07 pm ET

During its nine years at sea, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig operated by BP suffered a series of spills, fires — even a collision — because of equipment failure, human error and bad weather. It also drilled the world's deepest offshore well.

But Deepwater Horizon's lasting legacy will undoubtedly be the environmental damage it caused after it exploded and sank, killing 11 crew and releasing an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.

What likely destroyed the rig in a ball of fire last week was a failure -- or multiple failures -- 5,000 feet below. That's where drilling equipment met the sea bed in a complicated construction of pipes, concrete and valves that gave way in a manner that no one has yet been able to explain.

Oil services contractor Halliburton Inc. said in a statement Friday that workers had finished cementing the well's pipes 20 hours before the rig went up in flames. Halliburton is named as a defendant in most of the more than two dozen lawsuits filed by Gulf Coast people and businesses claiming the oil spill could ruin them financially. Without elaborating, one lawsuit filed by an injured technician on the rig claims that Halliburton improperly performed its job in cementing the well, "increasing the pressure at the well and contributing to the fire, explosion and resulting oil spill."

Remote-controlled blowout preventers designed to apply brute force to seal off a well should have kicked in. But they failed to activate after the explosion.

Scott Bickford, a lawyer for several Deepwater Horizon workers who survived the blast, said he believes a "burp" of natural gas rose to the rig floor and was sucked into machinery, leading to the explosion.

Halliburton's said "it is premature and irresponsible to speculate on any specific causal issues."

Before last week's catastrophe, Deepwater Horizon's most recent hiccup occurred in Nov. 2005, when the rig — under contract with BP — spilled 212 barrels of an oil-based lubricant due to equipment failure and human error. That spill was probably caused by not screwing the pipe tightly enough and not adequately sealing the well with cement, as well as a possible poor alignment of the rig, according to records maintained by the federal Minerals Management Service.

Following that spill, MMS inspectors recommended increasing the amount of cement used during this process and applying more torque when screwing in its pipes.

Experts say the number of safety incidents experienced by Deepwater Horizon isn't unusual for an industry operating in harsh conditions. And it is difficult to draw any connections between those problems and last week's deadly explosion, they say.

"These are big, floating cities," said Tyler Priest, a historian of offshore oil and gas exploration. "You're always going to have minor equipment failure and human error, and of course they're operating in a hurricane prone environment."

Because vessels like the Deepwater Horizon operate 24 hours a day, Coast Guard officials said minor equipment problems appear frequently. But if they go unfixed such incidents could mushroom into bigger concerns.

- In Feb. 2002, just months after the rig was launched from a South Korean shipyard, it spilled 267 barrels of oil into the Gulf after a hose failed, according to MMS records.

- In June 2003, the rig floated off course in high seas, resulting in the release of 944 barrels of oil. MMS blamed bad weather and poor judgment by the captain. A month later, equipment failure and high currents led to the loss of 74 barrels of oil.

- In January 2005, human error caused another accident. A crane operator forgot he was in the midst of refueling a crane, and 15 gallons of overflowing diesel fuel sparked a fire.

The rig was being used by BP during all of the above incidents.

The Coast Guard, which is supposed to ensure the vessels are seaworthy, keeps its own set of safety records on the Deepwater Horizon.

From 2000 to 2010, the Coast Guard issued six enforcement warnings and handed down one civil penalty and a notice of violation to Deepwater Horizon, agency records show.

On 18 different occasions during that period the Coast Guard cited the vessel for an "acknowledged pollution source." No further details about the type of pollution were immediately available.

The agency also conducted 16 investigations of incidents involving everything from fires to slip-and-fall accidents.

Steven Sutton, who oversees offshore drilling inspectors in the Coast Guard's New Orleans office, said the number of accidents and incidents reported on the Deepwater Horizon didn't strike him as unusual.

A collision with a towing vessel reported on June 26, 2003 could have created safety problems over the long term if the $95,000 damage to the rig's hull wasn't adequately repaired, Sutton said. The collision risked compromising the rig's watertight integrity or weakening the structure that supports the drilling operation, he said.

Guy Cantwell, a spokesman for the rig's owner Transocean Ltd., said Friday that the Swiss-based company planned to conduct its own investigation of what caused last week's explosion.

"Any prior incidents were investigated," he said. "Any speculation that they are related to the Deepwater Horizon incident is speculation."

Both Transocean and BP PLC cited comments made Monday by Lars Herbst, the regional director for the Minerals Management Service, who said the companies had a good history of compliance.

Last week's blowout was "an aberration in the history of the Gulf for the last 40 years" during which the industry has refined and automated much of the work on the estimated 3,500 rigs currently operating in the Gulf, said Priest, a professor and director of Global Studies at the Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston.

"The industry is going to learn a lot from this. That's what happens in these kinds of disaster," he said, citing the 1988 explosion of the Piper Alpha rig in the North Sea and the 1979 blowout of Mexico's IXTOC I in the eastern Gulf.

Britain overhauled its safety requirements after the North Sea incident, which killed 167 men, and companies have since spent billions upgrading emergency equipment and improving their operating procedures.

Norway, which has huge oil and gas reserves in the North Sea, requires rigs to have at least two independent systems to trigger the blowout preventer.

Deepwater Horizon was considered state-of-the-art when it was built in 2001 by Hyundai Heavy Industries, Cantwell said. It was designed to withstand 118-mile an hour winds and waves as high as 41 feet. Last year, it set a world record for the deepest oil and gas well when it drilled 35,055 feet into the Gulf of Mexico.

Cantwell said the $560 million semi-submersible model has been superseded by a new design capable of drilling 40,000 feet down in water as deep as 12,000 feet.

___

Jordans reported from Geneva, Burke from San Francisco. Associated Press Writers Mike Kunzelman in New Orleans and Chris Kahn in New York contributed to this report.

I don't know anything about offshore drilling or, indeed, if the reported incidents prior to this accident are not "unusual" for rigs in general, but in any case, the history is interesting.

This may be more damning, however:

Document: BP didn't plan for major oil spill

By CAIN BURDEAU and HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press Writers Cain Burdeau And Holbrook Mohr, Associated Press Writers

6 mins ago

MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER – British Petroleum downplayed the possibility of a catastrophic accident at an offshore rig that exploded, causing the worst U.S. spill in decades along the Gulf coast and endangering shoreline habitat.

In its 52-page exploration plan and environmental impact analysis for the well, BP suggested it was unlikely, or virtually impossible, for an accident to occur that would lead to a giant crude oil spill and serious damage to beaches, fish, mammals and fisheries.

BP's plan filed with the federal Minerals Management Service for the Deepwater Horizon well, dated February 2009, says repeatedly that it was "unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities."

And while the company conceded that a spill would impact beaches, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas, it argued that "due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected."

At least 1.6 million gallons of oil have spilled so far, according to Coast Guard estimates, making it one of the worst U.S. oil spills in decades.

"Clearly, the sort of occurrence that we've seen on the Deepwater Horizon is clearly unprecedented," BP spokesman David Nicholas told The Associated Press on Friday. "It's something that we have not experienced before ... a blowout at this depth."

Robert Wiygul, an Ocean Springs, Miss.-based environmental lawyer and board member for the Gulf Restoration Network, said he doesn't see anything in the document that suggests BP addressed the kind of technology needed to control a spill at that depth of water.

"The point is, if you're going to be drilling in 5,000 feet of water for oil, you should have the ability to control what you're doing," he said.

Amid increased fingerpointing Friday, high winds and choppy seas frustrated efforts to hold back the giant oil spill seeping into Louisiana's rich fishing grounds and nesting areas, while the government desperately cast about for new ideas for dealing with the growing environmental crisis.

President Barack Obama halted any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent another disaster.

The seas were too rough and the winds too strong Friday to burn off the oil, suck it up effectively with skimmer vessels, or hold it in check with the miles of orange and yellow inflatable booms strung along the coast.

The floating barriers broke loose in the choppy water, and waves sent oily water lapping over them.

"It just can't take the wave action," said Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish.

The spill — a slick more than 130 miles long and 70 miles wide — threatens hundreds of species of wildlife, including birds, dolphins and the fish, shrimp, oysters and crabs that make the Gulf Coast one of the nation's most abundant sources of seafood. Louisiana closed some fishing grounds and oyster beds because of the risk of oil contamination.

Many of the more than two dozen lawsuits filed in the wake of the explosion claim it was caused when workers for oil services contractor Halliburton Inc. improperly capped the well — a process known as cementing. Halliburton denied it.

According to a 2007 study by the federal Minerals Management Service, which examined the 39 rig blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico between 1992 and 2006, cementing was a contributing factor in 18 of the incidents. In all the cases, gas seepage occurred during or after cementing of the well casing, the MMS said.

As of Friday, only a sheen of oil from the edges of the slick was washing up at Venice, La., and other extreme southeastern portions of Louisiana. But several miles out, the normally blue-green gulf waters were dotted with sticky, pea- to quarter-sized brown beads with the consistency of tar.

High seas were in the forecast through Sunday and could push oil deep into the inlets, ponds, creeks and lakes that line the boot of southeastern Louisiana. With the wind blowing from the south, the mess could reach the Mississippi, Alabama and Florida coasts by Monday.

In Louisiana, officials opened gates in the Mississippi River hoping a flood of fresh water would drive oil away from the coast. But winds thwarted that plan, too.

For days, crews have struggled without success to activate the well's underwater shutoff valve using remotely operated vehicles. They are also drilling a relief well in hopes of injecting mud and concrete to seal off the leak, but that could take three months.

At the rate the oil is pouring from the sea floor, the leak could eclipse the worst oil accident in U.S. history — the 11 million gallons that spilled from the supertanker Exxon Valdez off Alaska in 1989 — in just two months.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he has pressed BP to work more efficiently to clean the spill and has pledged that "those responsible will be held accountable." President Barack Obama has ordered Salazar to report to him within 30 days on what new technology is needed to tighten safeguards against deepwater drilling spills.

With the government and BP running out of options, Salazar has invited other companies to bring their expertise to the table.

BP likewise sought ideas from some of its rivals and planned to use at least one of them Friday — applying chemicals underwater to break up the oil before it reaches the surface. That has never been attempted at such depths.

Animal rescue operations have ramped up, including the one at Fort Jackson, about 70 miles southeast of New Orleans. That rescue crew had its first patient Friday, a bird covered in thick, black oil. The bird, a young northern gannet found offshore, is normally white with a yellow head.

And volunteers have converged on the coast to offer help.

Valerie Gonsoulin, a 51-year-old kayaker from Lafayette who wore an "America's Wetlands" hat, said she hoped to help spread containment booms.

"I go out in the marshes three times a week. It's my peace and serenity," she said. "I'm horrified. I've been sitting here watching that NASA image grow, and it grows. I knew it would hit every place I fish and love."

___

Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman, Chris Kahn, Allen G. Breed, Vicki Smith, Janet McConnaughey, Alan Sayre and Brian Skoloff contributed to this report.

I'm very interested in where all of this is going for BP. If it's true, if it can be shown that they really did downplay the possibility of an accident causing real damage, I think they may be in trouble.

[eion]

Is there any chance BP can get off by blaming it on the rig workers not following established safety procedures? I'm sure their legal department is trying to find a way for BP not to get stuck with what could easily be a $500 million dollar bill when all the dust clears.

[Broomstick]

Under US law, if I have my facts right (and I'm not a lawyer, remember that) the company is held liable if workers fail to follow proper safety procedures. It's not an out for BP under US law, which I presume they were operating under as I believe they were in US territorial waters.

President Obama's brief sound bite this afternoon seemed to be pretty clear that the Federal government will throw any available assets that may be of use into the effort, including military hardware and personnel, but BP most certainly WILL be getting the bill for all of it. And possibly for the environmental clean up as well. The lawsuits are already starting to pile up. The Gulf region depends heavily on both fishing and marine cultivation (such as commercial oyster beds) for its economy. As far as the fishers and farmers are concerned this is WORSE than a hurricane.

Yes, an off shore oil rig is a complex web of machinery and yes shit goes wrong every day, but the key is to stop the chain of events that leads to accidents such as this one. And almost certainly it is a CHAIN - very, very few accidents of this nature are truly triggered by just one, unforeseen event.

[DarkSilver]

If they do find a way, it'd still be stuck by there was a Company Rep who is (ideally) ALWAYS in contact with the Home Office on a drilling rig. This doesn't matter if it's Onshore or Offshore - there is always a company rep on the rigs. They are the ones who tell the Oil Company what's going on, and relays company instructions to the drilling crews.

Not only that, but Offshore it's drilled into you every day, no matter what you do, work as safe as possible, if something looks even the slightest bit unsafe, Stop Work authority is issues to everyone on the rig.

Admittedly, BP could say it's the crews fault for what occurred - but at the same time, it's still their liability as contractor for the well and rig. They ultimately had final say-so (via their Representative/Consultant on site) on what happened there.

[MKSheppard]

is there any history of ecoterrorists directly trying to kill people?

Aside from the Unibomber, of course.

Actually yeah there is. What the fuck do you think happens when a Chainsaw strikes a spiked tree? Chances are the person using it is going to suffer serious injuries.

[eion]

is there any history of ecoterrorists directly trying to kill people?

Aside from the Unibomber, of course.

Actually yeah there is. What the fuck do you think happens when a Chainsaw strikes a spiked tree? Chances are the person using it is going to suffer serious injuries.

The point of tree-spiking is to protect the trees by making their felling too economically costly. The people (EDIT: Person actually, for I am unaware of any victimcs of treespiking asside from George Alexander, and that spiking could not be linked to any "ecoterrorist" group) injured or killed are unintended and collateral damage, rather than the direct target of such an tactic. The responsible groups were very obvious about where they had spiked. Some even going so far as to mark individual trees.

That aside, it is a stupid practice that even when executed with care and proper disclosure is little better than laying a signed minefield, and many groups (west coast EarthFirst! most notably) have banned its use. It is still a long way from DIRECTLY targeting people by sending them pipe-bombs in the mail or flying airliners into buildings.

[FSTargetDrone]

Worser and worser?

Gulf oil spill swiftly balloons, could move east

By ALLEN G. BREED and SETH BORENSTEIN, Associated Press Writers Allen G. Breed And Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Writers 33 mins ago

VENICE, La. – A sense of doom settled over the American coastline from Louisiana to Florida on Saturday as a massive oil slick spewing from a ruptured well kept growing, and experts warned that an uncontrolled gusher could create a nightmare scenario if the Gulf Stream carries it toward the Atlantic.

President Barack Obama planned to visit the region Sunday to assess the situation amid growing criticism that the government and oil company BP PLC should have done more to stave off the disaster. Meanwhile, efforts to stem the flow and remove oil from the surface by skimming it, burning it or spiking it with chemicals to disperse it continued with little success.

"These people, we've been beaten down, disaster after disaster," said Matt O'Brien of Venice, whose fledgling wholesale shrimp dock business is under threat from the spill.

"They've all got a long stare in their eye," he said. "They come asking me what I think's going to happen. I ain't got no answers for them. I ain't got no answers for my investors. I ain't got no answers."

He wasn't alone. As the spill surged toward disastrous proportions, critical questions lingered: Who created the conditions that caused the gusher? Did BP and the government react robustly enough in its early days? And, most important, how can it be stopped before the damage gets worse?

The Coast Guard conceded Saturday that it's nearly impossible to know how much oil has gushed since the April 20 rig explosion, after saying earlier it was at least 1.6 million gallons — equivalent to about 2 1/2 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The blast killed 11 workers and threatened beaches, fragile marshes and marine mammals, along with fishing grounds that are among the world's most productive.

Even at that rate, the spill should eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident as the worst U.S. oil disaster in history within about a week. But a growing number of experts warned that the situation may already be much worse.

The oil slick over the water's surface appeared to triple in size over the past two days, which could indicate an increase in the rate that oil is spewing from the well, according to one analysis of images collected from satellites and reviewed by the University of Miami. While it's hard to judge the volume of oil by satellite because of depth, it does show an indication of change in growth, experts said.

"The spill and the spreading is getting so much faster and expanding much quicker than they estimated," said Hans Graber, executive director of the university's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing. "Clearly, in the last couple of days, there was a big change in the size."

Florida State University oceanography professor Ian R. MacDonald said his examination of Coast Guard charts and satellite images indicated that 8 million to 9 million gallons had already spilled by April 28.

Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production, said it was impossible to know just how much oil was gushing from the well, but said the company and federal officials were preparing for the worst-case scenario.

Oil industry experts and officials are reluctant to describe what, exactly, a worst-case scenario would look like — but if the oil gets into the Gulf Stream and carries it to the beaches of Florida, it stands to be an environmental and economic disaster of epic proportions.

The Deepwater Horizon well is at the end of one branch of the Gulf Stream, the famed warm-water current that flows from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Atlantic. Several experts said that if the oil enters the stream, it would flow around the southern tip of Florida and up the eastern seaboard.

"It will be on the East Coast of Florida in almost no time," Graber said. "I don't think we can prevent that. It's more of a question of when rather than if."

At the joint command center run by the government and BP near New Orleans, a Coast Guard spokesman maintained Saturday that the leakage remained around 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, per day.

But Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, appointed Saturday by Obama to lead the government's oil spill response, said no one could pinpoint how much oil is leaking from the ruptured well because of its depth — about a mile underwater.

"Any exact estimation of what's flowing out of those pipes down there is impossible," he told reporters on a conference call.

From land, the scope of the crisis was difficult to see. As of Saturday afternoon, only a light sheen of oil had washed ashore in some places.

The real threat lurked offshore in a swelling, churning slick of dense, rust-colored oil the size of Puerto Rico. From the endless salt marshes of Louisiana to the white-sand beaches of Florida, there is uncertainty and frustration over how the crisis got to this point and what will unfold in the coming days, weeks and months.

The concerns are both environmental and economic. The fishing industry is worried that marine life will die — and that no one will want to buy products from contaminated water anyway. Tourism officials are worried that vacationers won't want to visit oil-tainted beaches. And environmentalists are worried about how the oil will affect the countless birds, coral and mammals in and near the Gulf.

"We are just waiting," said Meghan Calhoun, a spokeswoman from the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans. "We know they are out there. Unfortunately the weather has been too bad for the Coast Guard and NOAA to get out there and look for animals for us."

Fishermen and boaters want to help contain the oil. But on Saturday, they were again hampered by high winds and rough waves that splashed over the miles of orange and yellow inflatable booms strung along the coast, rendering them largely ineffective. Some coastal Louisiana residents complained that BP, which owns the rig, was hampering mitigation efforts.

"They're letting an oil company tell a state what to do," said 57-year-old Raymond Schmitt, in Venice preparing his boat to take a French television crew on a tour.

"I don't know what they are waiting on," Schmitt said. He didn't think conditions were dangerous. "No, I'm not happy with the protection, but I'm sure the oil company is saving money."

As bad as the oil spill looks on the surface, it may be only half the problem, said University of California Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety.

"There's an equal amount that could be subsurface too," said Bea, who worked for Shell Oil Co. in the 1960s when the last big northern Gulf of Mexico oil well blowout occurred. And that oil below the surface "is damn near impossible to track."

Louisiana State University professor Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills, worries about a total collapse of the pipe inserted into the well. If that happens, there would be no warning and the resulting gusher could be even more devastating because regulating flow would then be impossible.

"When these things go, they go KABOOM," he said. "If this thing does collapse, we've got a big, big blow."

BP has not said how much oil is beneath the Gulf seabed Deepwater Horizon was tapping, but a company official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the volume of reserves, confirmed reports that it was tens of millions of barrels.

At a church in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told a gathering of community leaders that the spill has created an "environmental challenge of the highest order."

"Every oil spill is a challenge. But this is quite different because of where it is, because the marshes are so different than the beach and the coastline in Alaska when we had the Valdez," she said. "This one is complicated by the fact that the well head is 5,000 feet below the water."

Jackson said efforts to chemically break down the oil at the surface of the oil spill have been "moderately successful," but she was skeptical of a proposal to try to disperse oil at the ocean floor, noting that she was waiting to be briefed on the results of a pilot test done Friday.

In Pass Christian, Miss., 61-year-old Jimmy Rowell, a third-generation shrimp and oyster fisherman, worked on his boat at the harbor and stared out at the choppy waters.

"It's over for us. If this oil comes ashore, it's just over for us," Rowell said angrily, rubbing his forehead. "Nobody wants no oily shrimp."

___

Associated Press writers Tamara Lush, Brian Skoloff, Melissa Nelson, Mary Foster, Michael Kunzelman, Chris Kahn, Vicki Smith, Janet McConnaughey, Alan Sayre and AP Photographer Dave Martin contributed.

[Broomstick]

Fucking hell... if this was some bizarre conglomeration of truly unforeseen circumstances that would be one thing, but most likely it's not!. If this is a result of laxity or cutting corners can we FINALLY put some of these fat-cat overpaid executives in jail? Please? Because everyone suffers except them, and that has just got to stop. A dozen people in a board room should not have the power to trash an ecosystem and devastate the livelihood of that many people without consequences.

Goodbye gulf shrimp. Goodbye gulf oysters. Goodbye many things. More people impoverished by the callous indifference of modern industry, not to mention dead humans and wildlife.

I do think the Feds should have moved faster, but this may be a case where, in the end, it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

[MKSheppard]

From what I've been reading, the rig DID have blowout prevention valves which should have capped the well and the company did try repeatedly to close those valves...but they didn't close.

Link

Dear Outstanding Investments Reader,

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. Here's another update on the disaster that befell Transocean Ltd. (RIG: NYSE) and BP (BP: NYSE) last week in the Gulf of Mexico. (Thanks to OI reader Steve, in Texas, for sending some of the photos in today’s alert.)

As you know by now, the drilling vessel Deepwater Horizon exploded, burned and sank last week, with the loss of 11 workers and injuries to many more. What happened? What's happening now? What's going to happen? I've spent the weekend working to piece things together.

An Ill-fated Discovery

According to news accounts, at about 10 p.m. CDT last Tuesday, Deepwater Horizon was stable, holding an exact position in calm, dark seas about 45 miles south of the Louisiana coastline. Water depth in the area is 5,000 feet. The vessel manifest listed 126 souls on board.

Deepwater Horizon was finishing work on an exploration well named Macondo, in an area called Mississippi Canyon Block 252. After weeks of drilling, the rig had pushed a bit down over 18,000 feet, into an oil-bearing zone. The Transocean and BP personnel were installing casing in the well. BP was going to seal things up, and then go off and figure out how to produce the oil -- another step entirely in the oil biz.

The Macondo Block 252 reservoir may hold as much as 100 million barrels. That's not as large as other recent oil strikes in the Gulf, but BP management was still pleased. Success is success -- certainly in the risky, deep-water oil environment. The front office of BP Exploration was preparing a press release to announce a "commercial" oil discovery.

This kind of exploration success was par for the course for Deepwater Horizon. A year ago, the vessel set a record at another site in the Gulf, drilling a well just over 35,000 feet and discovering the 3 billion barrel Tiber deposit for BP. So Deepwater Horizon was a great rig, with a great crew and a superb record. You might even say that is was lucky.

But perhaps some things tempt the gods. Some actions may invite ill fate. Because suddenly, the wild and wasteful ocean struck with a bolt from the deep.

The Lights Went out; and Then...

Witnesses state that the lights flickered on the Deepwater Horizon. Then a massive thud shook the vessel, followed by another strong vibration.

Transocean employee Jim Ingram, a seasoned offshore worker, told the U.K. Times that he was preparing for bed after working a 12-hour shift. "On the second [thud]," said Mr. Ingram, "we knew something was wrong."

Indeed, something was very wrong. Within a moment, a gigantic blast of gas, oil and drilling mud roared up through three miles of down-hole pipe and subsea risers. The fluids burst through the rig floor and ripped up into the gigantic draw-works. Something sparked. The hydrocarbons ignited.

In a fraction of a second, the drilling deck of the Deepwater Horizon exploded into a fireball. The scene was an utter conflagration.
Evacuate and Abandon Ship

There was almost no time to react. Emergency beacons blared. Battery-powered lighting switched on throughout the vessel. Crew members ran to evacuation stations. The order came to abandon ship.

Then from the worst of circumstances came the finest, noblest elements of human behavior. Everyone on the vessel has been through extensive safety training. They knew what to do. Most crew members climbed into covered lifeboats. Other crew members quickly winched the boats, with their shipmates, down to the water. Then those who stayed behind rapidly evacuated in other designated emergency craft.

Some of the crew, however, were trapped in odd parts of the massive vessel, which measures 396 feet by 256 feet -- a bit less than the size of two football fields laid side by side. They couldn't get to the boats. So they did what they had to do, which for some meant jumping -- and those jumpers did not fare so well. Several men broke bones due to the impact of their 80-foot drop to the sea. Still, it beat burning.

With searchlights providing illumination, as well as the eerie light from the flames of the raging fire, boat handlers pulled colleagues out of the water beneath the burning rig. In some instances, the plastic fittings on the lifeboats melted from the heat.

The flames intensified. Soon it was impossible for the lifeboats to function near the massive vessel. The small boats moved away from the raging fountain of fire fed by ancient oil and gas from far below.

The lifeboat skippers saved as many as they could find -- 115 -- but couldn't account for 11 workers who were, apparently, on or around the drill deck at the time of the first explosion. Nine of the missing are Transocean employees. Two others work for subcontractors.

Damon Bankston to the Rescue

Fate was not entirely cruel that night. Indeed, a supply boat was already en route to the Deepwater Horizon. It was the Tidewater Damon Bankston, a 260-foot long flat-deck supply vessel.

Damon Bankston heard the distress signal. Her captain did what great captains do. He aimed the bow toward the position of Deepwater Horizon. Then he tore through the water, moved along by four mighty Caterpillar engines rated at 10,200 horsepower. Soon, the Damon Bankston arrived on scene, sailed straight into the flames and joined the rescue.

Meanwhile, Coast Guard helicopters lifted off from pads in southern Louisiana, and Coast Guard rescue vessels left their moorings. "You have to go out," is the old Coast Guard saying. "You don't have to come back."

The helicopters flew in the black of night toward a vista of utter disaster. Arriving on scene, the pilots watched in awe as columns of flame shot as high as a 50-story building. The helicopters were buffeted by blasts of super-heated wind coming from the flames, while chunks of soot the size of your hand blew by.

The pilots hovered in the glow of the blazing rig, while Coast Guard medics fast-roped down to the deck of Damon Bankston ... The medics quickly assessed the casualties, strapped critically injured crewmen to backboards and hoisted them up to the helicopters. Then the pilots turned north and sped ashore to hospitals.

Uninjured survivors returned to land on the Damon Bankston. And others came out to fight the blistering flames.

But the Deepwater Horizon wasn't going to make it. The situation deteriorated, to the point of complete catastrophe. The ship was lost.

At about 10 a.m. CDT on Thursday morning, 36 hours after the first explosion, the Deepwater Horizon capsized and sank in 5,000 feet of water. According to BP, the hulk is located on the seafloor, upside-down, about 1,500 feet away from the Macondo well it drilled.

Still Spilling Oil

On Friday, I told you that the oil well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon was sealed in. The "official" word was that the well wasn't gushing oil into the sea. My sources were no less than U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry, of the New Orleans district, as quoted in The New York Times.

But over the weekend, Rear Adm. Landry and The New York Times reported that the well IS leaking oil, at a rate of about 1,000 barrels per day.

The on-scene information comes from remotely operated underwater robots that BP and Transocean are using to monitor the well and survey all the other wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon. There's now a large amount of equipment and pipe and a myriad of marine debris on the seafloor near the well. It's a mess.

Apparently, the blowout preventer is not controlling the flow of oil. According to Transocean, the blowout preventer on Deepwater Horizon was manufactured by Cameron Intl. (CAM: NYSE).

What happened? We don't know that just yet. Earlier reports that underwater robots sealed the blowout preventer were wrong. It's possible that the blowout preventer is only partially closed. We'll find out, eventually. Meanwhile, BP and Transocean have announced that they will make another effort to activate the blowout preventer. They need to stop that oil.

BP is also preparing to drill one or more relief wells to secure the site permanently. BP has mobilized the drilling rig Development Driller III, which is moving into position to drill a second well to intercept the leaking well. With the new well, the drillers will inject a specialized heavy fluid into the original well. This fluid will secure and block the flow of oil or gas and allow BP to permanently seal the first well.

Riser Problems?

According to the Coast Guard and BP, oil is leaking from two spots along what is left of the riser system. Here's a schematic view:
Originally, the risers (represented by the blue line in the graphic above) were affixed to the blowout preventer on the seafloor, and extended 5,000 feet straight up to the "moon pool" of the Deepwater Horizon. When the drilling vessel sank, it took the riser piping and bent it around like a pretzel.

The remnants of the riser system now follow a circuitous underwater route. According to BP, the risers extend from the wellhead up through the water column to about 1,500 feet above the seabed. Then the riser system buckles back down toward the seafloor. (Frankly, I'm astonished that it all held together as well as it has. It's a credit to the manufacturer, which I'll discuss below.)

According to the Transocean website, the riser devices on the Deepwater Horizon were manufactured by VetcoGray, a division of General Electric Oil & Gas. The specific designation is a "HMF-Class H, 21-inch outside diameter riser; 90 foot long joints with Choke & Kill, and booster and hydraulic supply lines."

Here's a photo of something similar. These are Vetco risers sections that I saw on another vessel, the Transocean Discoverer Inspiration, when I visited that ship last month:
The different color stripes on the risers indicate differing amounts of buoyancy. The idea is to put heavy riser pipe down at the bottom, connected to more buoyant risers above. The buoyancy keeps the entire riser system in more or less neutral buoyancy, so that the drill ship doesn't have to somehow hoist up the huge weight of all that pipe.

As you can see, there's a large-diameter pipe in the middle of each riser. That pipe is then encased in a buoyant foam substance. The risers are bolted together at the flange sections. The bolts are about as big as the arm of a very strong man. The nuts, which tighten things down, are the size of paint cans.

After the risers are assembled and hanging down from the drilling vessel, the drilling personnel lower and raise drilling pipe through the large-diameter center riser pipe. All the drilling mud stays inside the drill pipe on the way down hole, and inside the riser pipe on the return.

On the side of the riser sections, you can see smaller-diameter pipes. These are choke & kill, booster and hydraulic pipe components. The pipes run parallel to the large-diameter inner pipe. These pipe systems run down to the blowout preventer on the seafloor.

The idea is to keep the drilling process an enclosed system. All the "drilling stuff" -- the drill-pipe, drilling-mud and drill-cutting returns -- stays inside the large-diameter pipe. The smaller pipes hold fluid to transmit hydraulic power and help control drilling. In particular, the pipes on the side aid in communicating with and controlling the blowout preventer.

Technical Specs

Ideally, when the risers are working as intended, nothing leaks out into the sea. Then again, you're not supposed to twist and bend the riser sections like a pretzel. So how strong is a riser system? Extremely strong, actually.

According to technical literature from GE Oil & Gas, the riser equipment is "designed for use in high-pressure, critical service and deep-water drilling and production applications." The pressure-containing components are rated for working pressures of 15,000 psi. That's the same as the Cameron blowout preventer on the Deepwater Horizon. The materials used in risers have exceptional tensile and bending load characteristics.

According to Vetco paperwork that I've seen, the Class H riser sections have a 3.5 million pound load-carrying capacity. That's the equivalent weight of about four fully fueled Boeing 747s. These risers are super strong.

Still, it's not just any one single piece of riser section that does it all. These sections all get bolted together, for 5,000 feet in this case. The riser sections all have to work together as a system. The whole string is only as strong as the weakest spot. And yes, even the strongest steel will break if you apply enough stress.

It all has to work together. You've got the riser sections, along with things called HMF flanged riser connectors. Then there are HMF riser joints; flex joints; telescopic joints; and, near the top, things called "fluid-bearing, nonintegral tensioner rings." Together, these all comprise the marine riser system.

In general, the riser components compensate for heave, surge, sway, offset and torque of the drilling vessel as the ship bounces around on the sea surface. The bottom line is to maintain a tight seal -- what's called "integrity" -- between the subsea blowout preventer stack and the surface during drilling operations.

Down at the bottom, at the seafloor, the risers are connected to the blowout preventer by a connector device. The GE-Vetco spec is for a device that accommodates 7 million foot-pounds of bending load capacity. That's about eight fully fueled Boeing 747s.

What's the idea? You want a secure connection between the high-pressure wellhead system and the subsea blowout preventer stack. That's where mankind's best steel meets Mother Nature's high pressures.

High pressures? You had better believe it. And in this case, Mother Nature won. So looking forward, there's going to be a lot of forensic engineering on the well design and how things got monitored during drilling. Transocean drilled the well, but BP designed it. So the key question is how did the down-hole pressures get away like they did?

What Happens Now?

its a good thing that the Deepwater Horizon didn't settle right on top of the well. At least there's room for the remotely operated vehicles to maneuver. Also, there's still a lot of riser still floating in the water column. So there's some element of integrity going down to the blowout preventer.

It's absolutely imperative to shut off that oil flow. We just have to hope and pray that the BP and Transocean people can get the blowout preventer shut off. Or that there's enough integrity to the risers somehow to get in there and control the leaks, perhaps with some sort of plug. One other idea is to lower a large "hood" over the leak and capture the oil so it can be pumped up to a storage tanker ship.

Meanwhile, the relief well has to go down -- carefully and safely. This Macondo well is history. Seal it. Mark it. Give it back to the sea. Move on. Don't tempt fate on this one.

And wow... for a relatively modest-sized deep-water discovery, this thing sure has turned into the well from hell.

Welcome to the World of Deep-water Risk

As I've said before, this accident is Mother Nature's wake-up call to everyone. Deep-water drilling is a high-stakes game. It's not exactly a "casino," in that there's a heck of a lot of settled science, engineering and technology involved.

But we're sure finding out the hard way what all the risks are. And it's becoming more and more clear how the totality of risk is a moving target. There's geologic risk, technical risk, engineering risk, environmental risk, capital risk and market risk.

With each deep well, these risks all come together over one very tiny spot at the bottom of the ocean. So for all the oil that's out there under deep water -- and it's a lot -- the long-term calculus of risk and return is difficult to quantify.

There's more to discuss, but I'll end here today. I'll update you as things evolve. This is big news all through the offshore industry. There are HUGE environmental issues, and certainly big political repercussions. I won't go there just now.

For now, I'll just send out collective best wishes to the people at Transocean, BP, the Coast Guard, Minerals Management and so many more. I'm sure they're doing their best.

Thanks for reading...

I don't work offshore, but I have uncles, who flew helicopters for shell and drove crew boats outta Venice. So I have always been interested in the oil business.
My question as the cutting the flow off : y isn't there sone kinda master saftey switch that can remotely control the flow from the seafloor??
So that when a leak in the piping or an explosion occurs they can just shut it off.
Please educate me.....

Is it to deep?? Seems really hard to try and tap into a 7 in wide pipe down 5000 ft....

The "master switch" which you are looking for is what we call the BOP's. They should/would/could have been triggered by the rig crew, by the failure of communications w/ the rig fire via a "dead man" activation, and now by the ROV's manually shutting them on the sea floor. All of which are obviously not closing them. I am not at liberty to discuss most of the incident at this time since we are working for BP.

Some blowouts stop bythemselves when the well bridges over, but we are not expecting this to happen here since it is a cased hole. I hope I am wrong, but it will be unlikely.

[MKSheppard]

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