Massive Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill

[Commander 598]

Catfish is [generally] a freshwater fish and I don't see the oil flowing uphill anytime soon...

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Catfish is [generally] a freshwater fish and I don't see the oil flowing uphill anytime soon...

I would presume he means that with the sudden lack of seafood products coming out of the Gulf Coast, people will substitute other fish products into their diets, such as catfish.

[Steven Snyder]

I have been watching the feeds...

The big black plumes have started making an appearance again, it was brownish from the mud for the past few days but the inky blackness of crude is billowing out again.

WKRG Spill Cam

[Commander 598]

Catfish is [generally] a freshwater fish and I don't see the oil flowing uphill anytime soon...

I would presume he means that with the sudden lack of seafood products coming out of the Gulf Coast, people will substitute other fish products into their diets, such as catfish.

I'm not sure it really works out the same though, most consumed seafood is probably crustacean, shellfish, or tuna I guess so catfish probably isn't that great of of a substitute.

[Temujin]

I have been watching the feeds...

The big black plumes have started making an appearance again, it was brownish from the mud for the past few days but the inky blackness of crude is billowing out again.

WKRG Spill Cam

This doesn't surprise me. I figured that 'mud' would just get blasted right back out; and from what I've been hearing on the news, a lot of others seemed to figure this for a long shot at best and stalling at worst.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Just as a curiosity...

Can seawater be pumped into the wellhead at sufficient pressure to hold back the oil so that most of what's coming out the pipe is seawater?

It's not a soloution, but if you can hold down the oil with seawater, it would at least prevent or reduce further contamination whilst soloutions are enacted.

[Broomstick]

Catfish is [generally] a freshwater fish and I don't see the oil flowing uphill anytime soon...

I would presume he means that with the sudden lack of seafood products coming out of the Gulf Coast, people will substitute other fish products into their diets, such as catfish.

I'm not sure it really works out the same though, most consumed seafood is probably crustacean, shellfish, or tuna I guess so catfish probably isn't that great of of a substitute.

Not sure why you think crustacean and shellfish are that high up on the list, but maybe I'm biased by my acquaintances.

Tuna is certainly common and popular. Catfish... some people won't eat catfish on principle (it's a bottom feeder, and concentrates environmental contamination though farmed catfish eliminates most of that problem) and some are forbidden it by religion (Jewish dietary laws, for example) and some others just don't like that taste (which I why I personally don't eat it).

Think most of the shrimp in the US comes from the Gulf - that will certainly see an impact.

Most common fish eaten in the US is, if I recall, "whitefish" which can be one of several species (cod, haddock, etc).

But certainly, other fisheries may benefit if the Gulf can't supply and the demand seeks them out... until those fisheries start to suffer from overfishing. Yes, it's a complicated and annoying world we live in sometimes.

Saw governor Jindal on the news today stating firmly that while some Louisiana fisheries are closed there are still others that are open and uncontaminated, and freshwater fish and crustaceans (such as crawdads) are just fine, PLEASE buy them, help support our state, etc. He's right, though - it would be a shame for folks to assume ALL Louisiana fish are off limits, and those who are raising/catching/selling freshwater critters need customers.

[Temujin]

Just as a curiosity...

Can seawater be pumped into the wellhead at sufficient pressure to hold back the oil so that most of what's coming out the pipe is seawater?

It's not a soloution, but if you can hold down the oil with seawater, it would at least prevent or reduce further contamination whilst soloutions are enacted.

Probably not, as the seawater isn't as dense as the 'mud', and the 'mud' isn't doing any good.

The problem is also trying to balance between too little pressure, and no result, and too much pressure, and creating more damage to the piping and hence more leakage.

Edit: I also just realized something watching that feed. The page has a fucking oil forecast. This would be fucking comical if it wasn't so serious.

[FSTargetDrone]

Perhaps what BP "wants" should not be a factor here. They need to get the well capped, period. If it costs them half a billion dollars to do it too fucking bad for them. Take it out of the executives' paychecks and stock options.

Yes indeed. If this business about BP originally choosing to use the more "economical" blowout preventer gear and the like is true (and it sure seems to be), then their only concern is to spend whatever it takes to clean up the mess they made. They were all set to make hundreds of millions from their well, then can go ahead and pay for the mistake, whatever it costs.

Imagine if that $75 million cap on what a petroleum company is liable in a case like this were actually to be relevant... I don't know what top-of-the line blowout preventers and associated gear costs, but I bet it's a lot less than what this fiasco is going to cost.

Again, as an aside, I'm still amazed at how the price of gasoline is dropping. I swear, it was 2 cents cheaper 6 hours ago than what it is now at my local filling station (now down to $2.67/gallon for 87).

[Steven Snyder]

Things got really exciting for a few moments there, there were Junk Shots which looked (from the crappy angle) like a bunch of trash being shot through the water at high velocity. The pipe wasn't visible at the time for some odd reason, so we really couldn't see anything at all when this was going on.

They pulled the ROVs up after that, now they are back down and looking at the end of the riser pipe with black crude flowing from it. Safe to say the junk shots did not work.

[Sky Captain]

Now it seems they are pumping mud again into the BOP because plume coming from riser cracks is brown.

Whole this mud pumping seems rather futile to me because while there is open riser pipe and various cracks the mud will just flow the path of least resistance and that is back into the ocean. If they could somehow seal most of the leaks so the mud has nowhere else to go but down the drill pipe then it might work.

[His Divine Shadow]

About cleanup efforts, I remember hearing about oil eating bacteria in the 90s to clean up oil spils at sea, whatever happened to those?

[The Yosemite Bear]

oddly enough the bio-tech company that patanted that, was bought by BP, and the anti-GM crowd got it banned in most places.

[Admiral Valdemar]

About cleanup efforts, I remember hearing about oil eating bacteria in the 90s to clean up oil spils at sea, whatever happened to those?

Natural bacteria will devour the oil overtime anyway. The oil won't stay around forever, and bacteria are pretty much able to survive on anything, anywhere. The problem is, not all life is as adaptable, and by the time a spill this big has been micronised to easily disgestible emulsified blobs and digested, the ecology of the area may well be totally dead.

[MKSheppard]

Acutally, BP has spent nearly $1 billion so far on the clean up efforts (1,000+ ships apparently isn't cheap); and has paid out $37+ million in claims (the total limit is $75 million).

Hmmm....the same Oil Pollution Act in 1990 that created the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (funded by a tax on oil produced); set a limit on how much damages that hotel operators, fishermen, etc can claim against the owner of a platform. This limit was also set at $75 million -- and I can understand why -- though the Liability limit needs to be raised to something like $200 or so million -- to prevent a company from being bankrupted by a blizzard of claims from every joe schmuck.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Wah wah wah poor poor BP. Heaven forbid the same standard we apply to single proprietors or your neighbors in terms of having to pay the real costs of your behavior imposed on others apply to multinational corporations. Clearly they of all people need to a leg up and a pat on the back. BP and others cut corners because we subsidize the risk they have in order to profit.

[Starglider]

Presumably the problem is that bankruptcy of a major oil company poses a systemic risk for the entire economy. The assets will be sold on of course, but there will still be cascading supply disruptions and a major crude price spike.

[Phantasee]

Presumably the problem is that bankruptcy of a major oil company poses a systemic risk for the entire economy. The assets will be sold on of course, but there will still be cascading supply disruptions and a major crude price spike.

Are you saying BP is... too big to fail?

[Edi]

Presumably the problem is that bankruptcy of a major oil company poses a systemic risk for the entire economy. The assets will be sold on of course, but there will still be cascading supply disruptions and a major crude price spike.

Well, this shit wouldn't be happening if there was an actual threat of annihilation in case of not taking proper precautions. That's a piss poor excuse, really. In case of demonstrable pattern of willful negligence, there is no reason to do anything other than utterly destroy them as an example to every other actor in the field.

[Starglider]

Well, this shit wouldn't be happening if there was an actual threat of annihilation in case of not taking proper precautions. That's a piss poor excuse, really. In case of demonstrable pattern of willful negligence, there is no reason to do anything other than utterly destroy them as an example to every other actor in the field.

You don't need to destroy the company. You simply need to fire the entire board and any operational management involved in the decision, plus fines/prison/barred from ever working in the industry again as appropriate. Simply sending the company bankrupt punnishes all the low level staff and may not have any effect on the real miscreants at all; they'll escape with golden parachutes and use connections to get onto other boards.

Unfortunately the US isn't big on personal responsibility for executives.

[Broomstick]

Hmmm....the same Oil Pollution Act in 1990 that created the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (funded by a tax on oil produced); set a limit on how much damages that hotel operators, fishermen, etc can claim against the owner of a platform. This limit was also set at $75 million -- and I can understand why -- though the Liability limit needs to be raised to something like $200 or so million -- to prevent a company from being bankrupted by a blizzard of claims from every joe schmuck.

What the fuck?

So it's OK for hundreds of small businesses and thousands, nay, tens of thousands of individuals to go bankrupt rather than hold BP fully liable? The little guy gets told to pound (oily) sand again?

If every Joe Schmuck has to deal with BP muck then sure as fuck BP should PAY!

[MKSheppard]

Heaven forbid the same standard we apply to single proprietors or your neighbors in terms of having to pay the real costs of your behavior imposed on others apply to multinational corporations.

Lets all forget the damn reason why liability limitations exist -- because if liability were effectively unlimited -- nothing would get done except the most simplest tasks in todays' litgation happy society -- especially in energy production industries -- Give you one example -- solar cell costs would skyrocket, because of the etching chemicals used in solar cell production -- can you gurantee 100% that there will not be a leak or accident from the chemical plant at the solar cell factory?

Unless the damn factory's in the middle of nowhere; people will live nearby. With effectively unlimited liability caps; before construction or operation of the plant begins, the investors have to get the necessary lines of credit/insurance for liability purposes -- and it's a lot harder to get an effectively unlimited line of credit than it is to get one that's about $75-100 million.

Let's not get into Atomic Energy....

[MKSheppard]

So it's OK for hundreds of small businesses and thousands, nay, tens of thousands of individuals to go bankrupt rather than hold BP fully liable?

Why don't you take your overhyped Sam Waterston impression to the local talent shop, instead of spewing it all over the board. If you could get rich off histronics, you'd be a fucking quadrillionare...or a guest star on a Law and Order spin off...

Anyway; I just explained earlier why liability limitation is needed -- it's easier to get a $200 million line of liability insurance/credit than it is to get a $2+ billion line of credit/insurance.

[MKSheppard]

You don't need to destroy the company. You simply need to fire the entire board and any operational management involved in the decision, plus fines/prison/barred from ever working in the industry again as appropriate. Simply sending the company bankrupt punnishes all the low level staff and may not have any effect on the real miscreants at all; they'll escape with golden parachutes and use connections to get onto other boards.

You have probably posted the best idea of all to prevent future spills, rather than HURR punitive punishment expeditions against the evilllllll KKKorporation.

Congress has the power to subponae people and businesses -- simply subponae all records relating to the Deepwater Horizon rig which exploded and general BP exploratory activities.

BP will try to snowball the Government with a couple million pages...but this is when a bloated federal government becomes useful.

We got 2 million pages of memorandums? Okay; just assign 6,000 government drones from DOJ, EPA, DOI to work on the memos -- instruct them for what key phrases to look for -- and that's just 330~ pages per drone to scrutinize.

Once we've got that all done...begin setting up individual manslaughter cases against the BP executives who approved on cheaping on standards -- 11 rig workers died in the explosion which preceded this spill and use the 11 billion documents we found to set up the case.

E.g. instead of generically prosecuting everyone in a single trial; we prosecute everyone individually -- e.g. The Federal Government vs. Upper Executive John Schmucakatelli; the Federal Government vs Upper Exectuive James Idontgiveashit...etc; so that who cares if we get a 40% conviction rate -- we'll have achieved justice by sending key people responsible away to prison for 10 years.

Watch suddenly as standards get enforced more rigoriously.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Heaven forbid the same standard we apply to single proprietors or your neighbors in terms of having to pay the real costs of your behavior imposed on others apply to multinational corporations.

Lets all forget the damn reason why liability limitations exist -- because if liability were effectively unlimited -- nothing would get done except the most simplest tasks in todays' litgation happy society -- especially in energy production industries -- Give you one example -- solar cell costs would skyrocket, because of the etching chemicals used in solar cell production -- can you gurantee 100% that there will not be a leak or accident from the chemical plant at the solar cell factory?

Oh wah wah wah. The same excuses were made against every environmental regulation, OSHA, labor law on how it would destroy productivity and the economy and growth and progress...and none of them did.

Unless the damn factory's in the middle of nowhere; people will live nearby. With effectively unlimited liability caps; before construction or operation of the plant begins, the investors have to get the necessary lines of credit/insurance for liability purposes -- and it's a lot harder to get an effectively unlimited line of credit than it is to get one that's about $75-100 million.

Let's not get into Atomic Energy....

Wah wah wah wah, so the State has the guarantee profits to capitalists before they do anything, they turn around and fund propaganda about American Free Enterprise from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. I think you delude me or anyone else here is very impressed by right-wing/business boilerplate on these issues. I am not, and they're not based in rigorous economics or history.

EDIT: The problem with that system is the managers do these things because they are pressured to by the job incentives by the owners. The owners have to take a haircut when they impose real losses so they accept the costs of short-term greed (y'know, the market discipline oft-spoken of with regard to poorly educated, professionally misled home buyers, but somehow not wealthy institutional investors), in addition to managers being unable to hide behind Nuremberg Defenses.