Massive Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill

[Steven Snyder]

Okay here is the link to the video, it changes but right now it is where I want someone to look...

WKRG Spill Link

Is that FIRE coming out of the riser pipe? I see some undulating white that I have never seen before and to my untrained eyes it looks like there is a flame coming out? Can anyone else see this?

[Ryan Thunder]

I see it. That looks incredibly bizarre. Perhaps its just something stuck to something else waving around, though?

[Broomstick]

I'm thinking it might be gas - yes, there's a certain "fiery" aspect in shape and movement but the color reminds me more of some of the gas we've seen escaping earlier, and bubbles can move like that.

Of course, I am not an expert in any way and this is purely layman's speculation.

[Broomstick]

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.

Oh, fuck off Shep - I'm sick of your masturbation in the face of disaster and constant lust for atomic solutions to problems.

Given the potential damage maybe a company like BP should be forced to get a 2 billion line of insurance. Or do something to reduce the risk and/or consequences so they wouldn't need such a huge chunk of insurance.

You're clueless that that by limiting BP liability to a "mere" $200 million we might have been left with damages in the tens of trillions to be paid by the rest of us, including those least able to afford it.

You just don't get it - bottom line and big business are not the only things that matter in this world, and the people running these companies don't give a rat's ass about anyone but themselves. They'd cheerfully run you over in their swanky limos if they weren't afraid of murder charges, and would happily step over your mangled corpse on the way to breakfast. Why do you care so much about people who don't give a shit about you?

[Phantasee]

So I'm watching the Live feed (and the live feed at BP's site is in Windows Media format, but otherwise the same as the one previously linked to) and I see they're cutting something off? They've been at this for a while now, but I'm not sure what they're doing. Lots of yellowish stuff coming out everywhere, though.

[Erik von Nein]

Another update about the oil spill

In particular, the fact that the BP disaster plan was a complete joke including listing walruses as sensitive biological resources, naming a Japanese home shopping network as a place to obtain emergency equipment quickly, and other wonderful things.

[Steven Snyder]

Phantasee

They are preparing to cut off the riser pipe from the top of the BOP so they can attach their next gadget to it to suck the oil up and out. The stuff coming out looks like the Mud they were using for the Top Kill operation, so they are pumping it into the BOP as they are doing this. Probably a good idea, they don't want to be using a saw in the presence of oil, methane, and the rest of the gas that is coming out of the well.

[FSTargetDrone]

Visualizing the spill at your location:

[Temujin]

It keeps getting worse, but at least those responsible are feeling more heat, especially in their pocketbooks. Let's see if the Obama administration does more than talk.

U.S. launches criminal probe of BP spill
Oil found along Miss., Ala. shorelines; fishing ban widened
msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 7:44 p.m. ET, Tues., June 1, 2010

NEW ORLEANS - Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that federal authorities have opened criminal and civil investigations into the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill.

Holder would not specify which companies or individuals might be the targets of the probe, saying he did not "want to cast aspersions" while investigators come to their conclusions.

He said federal clean air and pollution laws give him the power to open the investigations, which he added had been going on for "some weeks."

Federal agencies, including the FBI, are participating in the probe and "if we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be forceful in our response," Holder told reporters after meeting with state and federal prosecutors in New Orleans.

The Justice Department has already demanded that the companies involved in the spill, including BP, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton Co., preserve records related to the accident.

The Coast Guard, for its part, said Tuesday that oil was reported reaching Mississippi and Alabama shorelines. That came after officials widened the region under surveillance to include those states and expanded the no-fishing area to include parts of Florida and Alabama.

Confirmation of the oil came soon after Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen told journalists of the reports.

Red-brown oil was found on Alabama's Dauphin Island on Tuesday, and local officials closed fishing and posted signs warning against swimming as a precaution.

Video: Feds launch criminal probe of oil spill
The Mobile Press-Register said one of its reporters had seen a slick in the Mississippi Sound some three to four miles south of Pascagoula, Miss.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said oil had reached Petit Bois Island. The strand of oil was just three-feet-wide but two miles long, he added.

"This is the first significant amount of oil residue to hit Mississippi," he said. "While it’s the first, it probably won’t be the last."

Federal officials on Tuesday also expanded the no-fishing area to 75,920 square miles, or 31 percent of all federal waters in the Gulf. That was a five percentage point increase over Monday.

Crews will aim to capture oil "moving into waters off eastern Alabama and the western tip of the Florida Panhandle, as well as some large patches of sheen moving onto the west Florida shelf and southward to Cuban waters," the advisory said.

This federal closure does not apply to any state waters. Closing fishing in these areas is a precautionary measure to ensure that seafood from the Gulf will remain safe for consumers.

'Aggressively increased surveillance'
Earlier Tuesday, the Unified Incident Command said in a statement that it had "aggressively increased surveillance by air and sea. ... Additional beach support teams have been mobilized on shore to respond as well."

Shorelines along Florida's Panhandle were included in the widened surveillance.

Federal forecasters on Monday had warned that oil could wash ashore in Mississippi and Alabama by Wednesday.

Video: Onslaught of oil moving further inland
Alabama's Mobile Bay could be covered by a light sheen by Wednesday morning, and then hit Baldwin County shores by noon, forecasters said.

Efforts to create a floating gate of booms at the mouth of the bay failed, but officials are optimistic that skimming equipment can clean up any sheen.

The slick has spread over 100 miles of Louisiana's fragile coast, but until now Mississippi and Alabama had escaped lightly, with only scattered tar balls and oil debris reaching their coasts.

The forecast was a sober reminder that oil from the unchecked spill, broken up and carried by winds and ocean currents, could threaten a vast area of the U.S. Gulf Coast, including tourism mecca Florida, as well as Cuba and Mexico.

Allen also said that BP, in its latest fix attempt, was making its first major cut with super sheers that weigh 46,000 pounds and resemble a giant garden tool. The company will also use a powerful diamond-edged cutter the resembles a deli slicer to try to make a clean cut above the blowout preventer, then will lower a cap over it with a rubber seal.

It could be as many as three days before the oil can be siphoned to the surface, Allen said.

'Triple the manpower,' Obama vows
In Washington, President Barack Obama vowed that if laws were broken in the devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill, those responsible would be prosecuted and pledged changes to avert future disasters.

Video: Obama: BP will be held accountable
Obama, speaking to reporters in the Rose Garden after meeting the co-chairs of a new oil spill commission, said his administration was ready to step up government response to the spill, pledging to "triple the manpower" in the area.

"My solemn pledge is we will bring those responsible to justice," Obama said.

He also said energy giant BP would be held accountable for financial losses from what he called the "greatest environmental disaster of its kind in our history."

Obama said the independent commission investigating the Gulf oil spill will thoroughly examine the disaster and its causes to ensure that the nation never faces such a catastrophe again.

The president said that if laws are insufficient, they'll be changed. He said that if government oversight wasn't tough enough, that will change too. And Obama said if laws were broken, those who were responsible will be prosecuted.

Obama said the leaders of the commission have his support to follow the facts wherever they lead. The commission will be similar to those that looked into the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.

The spill, which has eclipsed the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster as the biggest in U.S. history, entered its 43rd day as BP prepared a new and untested plan to use a dome to funnel oil gushing from a well a mile beneath the sea to a tanker on the surface.

The British oil giant's shares sank another 15 percent Tuesday following the failure of its "top kill" attempt to plug the leak Saturday. The company said the cost, so far, of dealing with the spill was some $990 million.

BP's shares have lost more than a third of their value since the oil spill started six weeks ago, a wipeout of about $75 billion.

After previous attempts to plug or contain the well failed, BP is to attempt a new kind of containment cap.

Risks and uncertainties
In a statement issued Tuesday, BP said "preliminary operations" were being carried out to cut away the existing, damaged riser at the head of the pipe outlet on the sea floor and deploy a cap called a lower marine riser package (LMRP).

"All of these operations, including the cutting of the riser, are complex, involve risks and uncertainties, and have to be carried out by ROVs at 5,000 feet under water," it added.

"Systems such as the LMRP containment cap have never before been deployed at these depths and conditions, and their efficiency and ability to contain the oil and gas cannot be assured," the statement said. "It is currently anticipated that attachment of the LMRP cap will be attempted later this week; however, operational delays could impact anticipated timeframes."

BP said it continues to drill two relief wells as part of a longer term plan to control the leak. Its statement said the first relief well had reached a depth of 12,090 feet, while the second relief well was at 8,576 feet. The wells are expected to be completed in August.

The public anger and frustration over the spill poses a major domestic challenge for Obama, who has been forced to admit publicly that the U.S. government and military do not have the technology to plug the leaking well and must leave this to BP and its private industry partners.

Obama, who made his second visit to the Gulf disaster zone Friday, is sending three of his top energy and environmental officials back there this week. He is trying to fend off criticism that his administration acted too slowly in its response to the spill.

In Venice, known as "Tuna Town" for its booming fishing business, the spill dampened business over the U.S. Memorial Day holiday when charters are normally in high demand.

"Just since about last Wednesday, we probably lost 150,000 (dollars) that we didn't take in, you know, fuel, ice, bait," said Bill Butler, co-owner of Venice Marina.

BP said in its statement Tuesday that it had received "approximately 30,000 claims" so far and more than 15,000 payments had been made, totaling some $40 million.

A panel of government scientists known as the Flow Rate Technical Group estimates the well is leaking 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil per day.

Raising the stakes even higher, Tuesday is the official start of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, which forecasters say may be the most intense since 2005, when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the region and disrupted offshore oil and gas output.

A hurricane churning through the Gulf could drive more oil ashore and force BP and the U.S. government to suspend cleanup efforts.

Reuters contributed to this report.

BP likely rich enough to survive cost of spill
Company will owe millions, but has very deep pockets
By Chris Kahn
The Associated Press
updated 7:50 p.m. ET, Tues., June 1, 2010

NEW YORK - BP is probably sturdy enough to survive the worst oil spill in U.S. history. But investors are shaving billions of dollars off its value with every day that crude gushes into the Gulf of Mexico.

On Tuesday alone, the first trading day since BP's latest attempt at a fix failed, and the day the government announced it had opened a criminal probe into the disaster, its stock took a hit of 15 percent.

The British oil giant is worth $75 billion less on the open market than it was when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded six weeks ago. Other companies involved in the spill — Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron — have all lost at least 30 percent in value.

And as oil seeps unchecked into the Gulf, nearby states, businesses, environmental regulators and injured workers and cleanup crews are eyeing damages that could total billions more.

"This will be the mother of all liability claims," said Fred Kuffler, a Philadelphia maritime lawyer who has handled oil-spill lawsuits.

The stakes were raised Tuesday as Attorney General Eric Holder said federal authorities had opened criminal and civil investigations into the spill. He did not specify which companies or individuals might be targets.

BP says it has spent $1 billion so far on fighting and cleaning the spill. Its liabilities and potential fines are growing by the day, and it could be August before the company gets control of the situation by completing two relief wells.

The company has already agreed to pick up the government's cleanup tab and any "legitimate" damage claims. BP said Tuesday it has paid out about $40 million to cover about half of the 30,000 claims it has received.

At least 130 lawsuits have been filed seeking damages for business lost from the spill. Most are from seafood processing plants, charter boat captains, hotels, restaurants and others who make their living from the sea or from coastal tourism.

Based on federal law, BP also faces a minimum fine of $1,000 per barrel of oil spilled, said Eric Schaeffer, who led the Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement office from 1997 to 2002 and is now the director of the Environmental Integrity Project.

The government estimates 20 million to 43 million gallons of crude have gushed into the Gulf over the past six weeks. If the spill were contained today, the fines would add up to between $480 million and $1 billion.

Already, the Gulf disaster has eclipsed the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, which, after two decades of lawsuits, cost Exxon Mobil $4.5 billion, or roughly $654 per gallon in today's dollars, according to Blake Fernandez, an analyst with Howard Weil, an energy investment firm with headquarters in New Orleans.

Experts are increasingly looking at the Valdez disaster as a conservative model because the Gulf Coast is home to far more people and businesses than Alaska, where the Valdez ran aground.

In addition to cleanup costs, the government will probably also ask BP to pay for restoring an oil-soaked coastline — including repairs to sensitive marshlands, oyster beds and fisheries, Kuffler said.

Doug Hinckley, a senior scientist for the National Wildlife Fund who monitored the Gulf spill from a boat, said the damage is nearly impossible to fix.

Crews could try to burn marshlands to get rid of the oil, or they could send people in with rags to try to mop it up by hand. But both solutions could do more damage than help, Hinckley said.

What's especially troublesome to many scientists is BP's use of chemicals to disperse the crude plumes. They argue that the dispersants could harm fish larvae and other creatures living below the surface.

BP also will face claims from commercial fishermen, hotels, party boat operators, and other businesses that depend on the Gulf Coast.

"Think of everything you find at a beach front resort like jet skis and trip planners. The contractors involved, they will all have claims," Kuffler said.

Altogether, the impact on tourism, fishing, property values and other damages could reach $10 billion to $15 billion, said Ahmad Ijaz, an economist for the center for business and economic research at the University of Alabama.

In Florida, the $60 billion tourism industry can probably withstand the impact, but other industries, such as commercial fishing, probably cannot, said Amy Baker, the state's top economist. Fishing has already been heavily restricted along the Gulf.

Commercial fisheries in Louisiana bring more than $275 million of seafood annually to Louisiana docks, and recreational fishing generates an estimated $1 billion in retail sales. State officials say up to 12,000 jobs may be lost from the spill.

"From just a sociological standpoint ... pretty much every crab and oyster processor is shut down," state Rep. Spencer Collier said. "So even outside the numbers, just looking at the reality of it, it's significant."

Then there are contract workers helping with the cleanup who say they have suffered respiratory problems because of exposure to the oil.

BP is self-insured, and analysts say it has enough money to pay for the growing calamity without putting the company at risk of bankruptcy.

Most of its legal costs will be spread out over years, if not decades, as suits wind their way through the courts. The company can also borrow up to $15 billion from various credit lines to pay for cleanup and other costs without overextending debt beyond company targets.

BP also will benefit from what has become an extremely lucrative oil production business. As long as oil prices stay above $60 a barrel, BP's other oil rigs will make enough money to maintain company operations and pay shareholders the expected $10 billion in dividends, Fernandez said.

"They could use the rest to pay down debt or whatever," he said.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[The Defenestrator]

Daily Kos Booming School

I lost my one copy of Photoshop, had to learn Gimp, and so the quality is sorta piece-of-shit-c*nt, but you get the idea. It's fucking obvious. Boom is not meant to contain or catch oil. Boom is meant to divert oil. Boom must always be at an angle to the prevailing wind-wave action or surface current. Boom, at this angle, must always be layered in a fucking overlapped sort-of way with another string of boom. Boom must always divert oil to a catch basin or other container, from where it can be REMOVED FROM THE FUCKING AREA. Looks kinda involved, doesn't it? It is. But if fucking proper fucking booming is done properly, you can remove most, by far most of the oil from a shoreline and you can do it day after day, week after week, month after month. You can prevent most, by far most of the shoreline from ever being touched by more than a few transient molecules of oil. Done fucking properly, a week after the oil stops coming ashore, no one, man nor beast, can ever tell there has been oil anywhere near that shoreline.

In practice, there's a reason the best booming schools last weeks. Different types of shoreline, different shapes, require different configurations. Your numerous anchor points (for this spill those would be 1-yard cement blocks with tie-off buoys) need to be chosen so the boom-tenders (you) can adjust the ropes, slanting the booms this way and that to account for changes in wind and current. Booms are tended 24/7, by the way. BUT... just having learned what you've learned here today, DKos Boomer, you know enough of the CONCEPT to figure it out. You get it. You could go out there and watch how the ping-pong balls (your test-oil) glide along the boom. You could see where they miss the catch basins and you could adjust and re-configure and you could perform fucking proper fucking booming. By the third day of actual booming, no one on this planet would be better than you. So if you understand it, and all these production employees understand it (we're talking tens of thousands of people here), then why is most or all of the booming along the Gulf... being done wrong?

Great Fucking Question, DKos Boomer!

1. The booming is being run by a company that concentrates on drilling and booming is for pussies. Production employees were not invited because they would just cause trouble. This is a drilling operation so just fuck off.

2. There's not enough boom, rope nor anchor on this planet to properly boom the Northern Gulf of Mexico. There should be! It's not that much an expense! Really! It's not! They said they were ready! Having enough materials to perform fucking proper fucking booming, IS part of being ready! THEY'RE NOT READY! ARE THEY?

3. Governors, Senators, Presidents and most of all the Piece-Of-Shit-C*nt Media don't know what fucking proper fucking booming LOOKS LIKE! So you can just lay a single line of neon-glo-orange boom out parallel to the shore, for miles, with anchor points every quarter-mile to where a good part of it washes up onto the shore like a huge, dead, orange nightcrawler... and they won't know the difference! Where it manages to stay off the bank, a little two-foot chop you would let your kids frolic in will send all the oil either over or under it! ALL THE OIL! ON THE SHORE! IN THE REEDS! ON THE BEACH! IN THE NESTS! OIL! So what! It's not gonna make CNN send a single correspondent to booming school, is it?

Now the Coast Guard? They know booming. They know what fucking proper fucking booming looks like. Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad Allen should be fired. Today. Now. This minute. Before he can give another press conference echoing what BP said not five minutes before him. Then he should be fucking court-martialed and fucking sent to prison before BP can give him a goddamned fucking job. He's a shameless piece of shit. And so is President Obama if he can't see that. People who know me and how I've supported our President through thick and thin, know how hard it was for me to write that. I'm literally on the verge of tears, right this second. But I won't erase it. There it is.

[Rogue 11]

Anyone know if this solution has a high probability of working or not?

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_interne ... ill_v2.pdf

It LOOKS workable to me, but I'll admit that I'm not qualified to assess this (No geology and no oil industry background). I notice that they don't exactly give any form of timeframe or really more than a bunch of optimistic diagrams showing them capping and collecting the oil while relief drilling occurs.

EDIT: Or even any sort of efficiency on collecting as this is hardly working under optimal conditions so I'd expect it to be less than perfect based on what (Very little) I know of North Sea drilling

[Sky Captain]

I think the biggest danger is that something could go wrong during riser pipe removal and LMRP cap attachment procedure causing the BOP to break off the wellhead or full wellhead blowout which would make the spill much worse and impossible to contain.

[FSTargetDrone]

Well, if there was any doubt, it's official now: No nuclear option (in this case).

June 2, 2010
Nuclear Option on Gulf Oil Spill? No Way, U.S. Says
By WILLIAM J. BROAD

The chatter began weeks ago as armchair engineers brainstormed for ways to stop the torrent of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico: What about nuking the well?

Decades ago, the Soviet Union reportedly used nuclear blasts to successfully seal off runaway gas wells, inserting a bomb deep underground and letting its fiery heat melt the surrounding rock to shut off the flow. Why not try it here?

The idea has gained fans with each failed attempt to stem the leak and each new setback — on Wednesday, the latest rescue effort stalled when a wire saw being used to slice through the riser pipe got stuck.

“Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapon system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it, hopefully encasing the oil,” Matt Simmons, a Houston energy expert and investment banker, told Bloomberg News on Friday, attributing the nuclear idea to “all the best scientists.”

Or as the CNN reporter John Roberts suggested last week, “Drill a hole, drop a nuke in and seal up the well.”

This week, with the failure of the “top kill” attempt, the buzz had grown loud enough that federal officials felt compelled to respond.

Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, said that neither Energy Secretary Steven Chu nor anyone else was thinking about a nuclear blast under the gulf. The nuclear option was not — and never had been — on the table, federal officials said.

“It’s crazy,” one senior official said.

Government and private nuclear experts agreed that using a nuclear bomb would be not only risky technically, with unknown and possibly disastrous consequences from radiation, but also unwise geopolitically — it would violate arms treaties that the United States has signed and championed over the decades and do so at a time when President Obama is pushing for global nuclear disarmament.

The atomic option is perhaps the wildest among a flood of ideas proposed by bloggers, scientists and other creative types who have deluged government agencies and BP, the company that drilled the well, with phone calls and e-mail messages. The Unified Command overseeing the Deepwater Horizon disaster features a “suggestions” button on its official Web site and more than 7,800 people have already responded, according to the site.

Among the suggestions: lowering giant plastic pillows to the seafloor and filling them with oil, dropping a huge block of concrete to squeeze off the flow and using magnetic clamps to attach pipes that would siphon off the leaking oil.

Some have also suggested conventional explosives, claiming that oil prospectors on land have used such blasts to put out fires and seal boreholes. But oil engineers say that dynamite or other conventional explosives risk destroying the wellhead so that the flow could never be plugged from the top.

Along with the kibbitzers, the government has also brought in experts from around the world — including scores of scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and other government labs — to assist in the effort to cap the well.

In theory, the nuclear option seems attractive because the extreme heat might create a tough seal. An exploding atom bomb generates temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun and, detonated underground, can turn acres of porous rock into a glassy plug, much like a huge stopper in a leaky bottle.

Michael E. Webber, a mechanical engineer at the University of Texas, Austin, wrote to Dot Earth, a New York Times blog, in early May that he had surprised himself by considering what once seemed unthinkable. “Seafloor nuclear detonation,” he wrote, “is starting to sound surprisingly feasible and appropriate.”

Much of the enthusiasm for an atomic approach is based on reports that the Soviet Union succeeded in using nuclear blasts to seal off gas wells. Milo D. Nordyke, in a 2000 technical paper for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., described five Soviet blasts from 1966 to 1981.

All but the last blast were successful. The 1966 explosion put out a gas well fire that had raged uncontrolled for three years. But the last blast of the series, Mr. Nordyke wrote, “did not seal the well,” perhaps because the nuclear engineers had poor geological data on the exact location of the borehole.

Robert S. Norris, author of “Racing for the Bomb” and an atomic historian, noted that all the Soviet blasts were on land and never involved oil.

Whatever the technical merits of using nuclear explosions for constructive purposes, the end of the cold war brought wide agreement among nations to give up the conduct of all nuclear blasts, even for peaceful purposes. The United States, after conducting more than 1,000 nuclear test explosions, detonated the last one in 1992, shaking the ground at the Nevada test site.

In 1996, the United States championed the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, a global accord meant to end the development of new kinds of nuclear arms. President Obama is pushing for new global rules, treaties and alliances that he insists can go much further to produce a nuclear-free world. For his administration to seize on a nuclear solution for the gulf crisis, officials say, would abandon its international agenda and responsibilities and give rogue states an excuse to seek nuclear strides.

Kevin Roark, a spokesman for Los Alamos in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, said that despite rumors to the contrary, none of the laboratory’s thousands of experts was devising nuclear options for the gulf.

“Nothing of the sort is going on here,” he said in an interview. “In fact, we’re not working on any intervention ideas at all. We’re providing diagnostics and other support but nothing on the intervention side.”

A senior Los Alamos scientist, speaking on the condition of anonymity because his comments were unauthorized, ridiculed the idea of using a nuclear blast to solve the crisis in the gulf.

“It’s not going to happen,” he said. “Technically, it would be exploring new ground in the midst of a disaster — and you might make it worse.”

Not everyone on the Internet is calling for nuking the well. Some are making jokes. “What’s worse than an oil spill?” asked a blogger on Full Comment, a blog of The National Post in Toronto. “A radioactive oil spill.”

Henry Fountain contributed reporting.

[Sea Skimmer]

Funny enough the US never ratified the comprehensive test ban because it doesn't allow hydronuclear tests, nor will we likely ever do so, and nuclear proliferation has only gotten worse since it was signed anyway. Well, we'll see if opinions change after the first relief well fails....

[Broomstick]

And why are you so certain the relief well will fail? Yes, it's a possibility, but all along that's been given the greatest chance of success.

[Steven Snyder]

BP has given up on the sawing and is opting to use the giant shears to just cut the rest of the riser pipe off. This isn't going to be a clean cut but probably has a better chance than the saw of getting through it. The result is to expect more oil leaking from the LMRP, if they can get that going.

Linky

[Sky Captain]

And why are you so certain the relief well will fail? Yes, it's a possibility, but all along that's been given the greatest chance of success.

As I understand they have to drill several kilometers in ocean floor and then precisely hit the leaking well which is something like 20 - 40 cm in diameter. I think it is very easy to miss something so small over such large distance.

[Broomstick]

And yet - successful relief wells have been drilled in the past.

You are correct they could miss - that is why they are drilling more than one - but it's actually a method that has a track record of working.

It's no more or less remarkable than shooting probes around the solar system, or digging the Chunnel from both ends and meeting in the middle with only a very small offset. It's a significant feat, but well within our capabilities.

[montypython]

If in case this wasn't posted before:

article link

BP Cited for Worst OSHA Safety Violations Among U.S. Refiners

WASHINGTON - May 17 - Two refineries owned by oil giant BP account for 97 percent of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry by government safety inspectors over the past three years, a Center for Public Integrity analysis shows. Most of BP's citations were classified as "egregious willful" by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and reflect alleged violations of a rule designed to prevent catastrophic events at refineries.

BP is battling a massive oil well spill in the Gulf of Mexico after an April 20 platform blast that killed 11 workers. But the firm has been under intense OSHA scrutiny since its refinery in Texas City, Texas, exploded in March 2005, killing 15 workers. While continuing its probe in Texas City, OSHA launched a nationwide refinery inspection program in June 2007 in response to a series of fires, explosions and chemical releases throughout the industry.

Refinery inspection data obtained by the Center under the Freedom of Information Act for OSHA's nationwide program and for the parallel Texas City inspection show that BP received a total of 862 citations between June 2007 and February 2010 for alleged violations at its refineries in Texas City and Toledo, Ohio.

Of those, 760 were classified as "egregious willful" and 69 were classified as "willful." Thirty of the BP citations were deemed "serious" and three were unclassified. Virtually all of the citations were for alleged violations of OSHA's process safety management standard, a sweeping rule governing everything from storage of flammable liquids to emergency shutdown systems. BP accounted for 829 of the 851 willful violations among all refiners cited by OSHA during the period analyzed by the Center.

Top OSHA officials told the Center in an interview that BP was cited for more egregious willful violations than other refiners because it failed to correct the types of problems that led to the 2005 Texas City accident even after OSHA pointed them out. Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, said it was clear that BP "didn't go nearly far enough" to correct deficiencies after the 2005 blast.

"The only thing you can conclude is that BP has a serious, systemic safety problem in their company," Barab said.

BP officials did not respond to requests for comment about the OSHA data. BP's website said it was committed to improving safety companywide. "Creating a safe and healthy working environment is essential for our success. Since 1999, injury rates and spills have reduced by approximately 75 percent," the BP website says.

To view a list of BP's U.S. OSHA Refinery Violations, this interactive graphic can be embedded for the Web or click on the following link: http://www.publicintegrity.org/project_ ... neries.swf

And the Daily Show's take on it.

[Alyrium Denryle]

linkus

Here's what President Obama didn't see when he visited the Gulf Coast: a dead dolphin rotting in the shore weeds.

"When we found this dolphin it was filled with oil. Oil was just pouring out of it. It was the saddest darn thing to look at," said a BP contract worker who took the Daily News on a surreptitious tour of the wildlife disaster unfolding in Louisiana.

His motive: simple outrage.

"There is a lot of coverup for BP. They specifically informed us that they don't want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence. It's important to me that people know the truth about what's going on here," the contractor said.

"The things I've seen: They just aren't right. All the life out here is just full of oil. I'm going to show you what BP never showed the President."

The day was 85 degrees, the blue sky almost white with sunshine, the air fresh with salt tang.

After checking that he was unobserved, he motored out to Queen Bess barrier island, known to the locals as Bird Island.

The grasses by the shore were littered with tarred marine life, some dead and others struggling under a thick coating of crude.

"When you see some of the things I've seen, it would make you sick," the contractor said. "No living creature should endure that kind of suffering."

Queen Bess Island was the first place where fledglings were born when the beloved, endangered Louisiana brown pelicans were reintroduced in the 1970s. Their population rebounded and was finally declared stabilized in 2002.

Now their future is once again in doubt. In what had been such an important hatchery, hundreds of pelicans - their white heads stained black - stood sentinel. They seemed slow and lethargic.

"Those pelicans are supposed to have white heads. The black is from the oil. Most of them won't survive," the contractor said.

"They keep trying to clean themselves. They try and they try, but they can't do it."

The contractor has been attempting to save birds and turtles.

"I saw a pelican under water with only its wing sticking out," he said. "I grabbed it and lifted it out of the water. It was just covered in oil. It was struggling so hard to survive. We did what we could for it.

"Nature is cruel, but what's happening here is crueler."

The uninhabited barrier islands are surrounded by yellow floating booms, also stained black, that are supposed to keep the oil out. It's not working.

"That grass was green a few weeks ago," the contractor said. "Now look. ... This whole island is destroyed. How do you write a check for something like this?"

He said he recently found five turtles drowning in oil.

"Three turtles were dead. Two were dying and not dead yet. They will be," he said.

As the boat headed back amid the choppy waves, a pod of dolphins showed up to swim with the vessel and guide it to land.

"They know they are in trouble. We are all in trouble," the contractor said.

BP's central role in the disaster cleanup has apparently given the company a lot of latitude in keeping the press away from beaches where the oil is thickest.

On Monday, a Daily News team was escorted away from a public beach on Elmer's Island bycops who said they were taking orders from BP.

BP spokesman Toby Odone denied the company is trying to hide the environmental damage; he noted BP has organized press visits to the spill zone and said BP cannot tell cops what to do.

The contractor for BP said the public needs to see the truth.

"BP is going to say the deaths of these animals wasn't oil-related," he said. "We know the truth. I hope these pictures get to the right people - to someone who can do something."

[Ronsu]

Watching this shit go down has been appalling. There has been wishful talk here about prosecuting the truly guilty higher-ups of BP to the fullest extent, but what are the realistic chances of getting the shitbag culprits brought to justice?

Wong´s sig image of Halliburton (and their ilk) existing in the absence of Weyland-Yutani is depressingly accurate.

[Temujin]

You think BP would have gotten it by now during the short time this has been going on. Practically every eye is on this situation and by extension BP. They have already gotten blow back from being less that honest, and yet the bullshit keeps piling up. Better to just come completely fucking clean and try to salvage what you can of your company's reputation. Instead these fuckers just keep digging themselves into an ever deeper hole. At this rate, when all is said and done they'll be lucky people aren't literally coming for them with torches, pitchforks, and rope to string their asses up.

[CJvR]

The only thing missing now is a decent sized hurricane to blow an oil soaked storm surge all over the place.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Be careful what you wish for. Hurricane season this year is going to be a doozy.

[Broomstick]

Watching this shit go down has been appalling. There has been wishful talk here about prosecuting the truly guilty higher-ups of BP to the fullest extent, but what are the realistic chances of getting the shitbag culprits brought to justice?

Dismal.

The top movers and shakers are all UK citizens and local grapevine has them all leaving the US. If that is indeed the case then trying them would require extradition from the UK to the US. Granted, that has occurred in the past, but these aren't petty riff-raff. They are people of wealth and privilege, most likely with friends in high places. How willing is the UK to throw them to the American dogs?

Also, I suspect the BP corporate culture is to give plausible deniablity to the the executives while making the middle-management and peons fall guys for the corporation, they are that sort of 21st Century corporation. Oh, and independent contractors - one of many reasons for outside contracting of services is to make the contractors handy fall guys for problems. We've seen that already, with BP saying this is all Transocean's and Halliburton's fault.

The only way I see the top BP guys getting hauled into court is if the situation gets back enough the oil starts washing up on the shores of Great Britain - and frankly, I'd rather the problem get fixed, or at least contained, before it gets that bad.