You give good points about North Sea and Canada, wouldn't you STILL rather see those jobs in the US? I'd rather not give those jobs to folks with flip top heads and those Norse in the North Sea. As for the people in the periphery of the shrimping industry, they are the same people in the periphery of the oil industry. You are basically giving the people that are already going to have a hard time with the spill a double wammy. The seafood industry is something like 25% of the economy in a lot of these states with the oil industry being over 50%. So BP has hurt 25% of the economy, thent he President comes right over the top of that and nails 50%. Not to mention that the other 25% is tourism that has been crippled due to the media coverage of the event. Nobody should be cancelling trips to Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and actually a big chunk of Louisiana because most of the area is unaffected, yet CNN makes you think that you will drown in oil if you try to go to the tourist beaches. I will agree to disagree with you because I'm trying my hardest to come to this thing with updates and not get into the political discussion. Let's just agree to disagree on the situation.
This is an easy excuse. BP over riding Transocean. It certainly may have happened. Except for one fact. Transocean, if they truly feel that there is a safety concern can tell that BP management to go to hell at any time. BP management can threaten to get them fired (they can't), they can threaten to not use Transocean, they can say whatever they want. Ultimately Transocean can say F-you, we'll move our ultra advanced and expensive rig to the next contract costing you Billions. Transocean has the leverage, legal and contractual right to do that. They have the right, in their contracts, the lowest floorman or roustabout can stop everything if they feel there is a safety concern.
I seriously doubt they have captured half of the oil by skimming ships on the surface... look out Texas...
Obama talking now. Best talking point: tripled federal workers working near or on shore clean up efforts. He is also doing a good job of reading BP's numbers on the response and taking full credit for them. Everytime he says "we" are doing this, and "we" are doing that, he is actually referring to the Coast Guard and BP, yet he did not mention that once. WOOO POLITICS!!!
Is Obama the CinC of the USA? If so, he is directly in command of the Coast Guard and as such, using the word "we" is completely accurate. Woo politics indeed.
Be that as it may, the bulk of the response, the 22,000 people and 1,200 boats and all that was due to BP's response with the Coast Guard helping. No credit at all was given to the thousands of men and women from BP working around the clock to clean this up. I'm not talking about the executives that you can hate on all you want, but I'm talking about the people doing the bulk of the work. Obama is right, it is the largest oil spill response in history, and BP launched it. News: no fresh oil has leaked today. The mud has stopped the oil flow because they are pumping. There has been progress today. Cross your fingers, say your prayers, burn some incense, do whatever. Some very cautious optimism from some folks I know. I just pray that its true.
Will only take BP 2 weeks to clean up this mess. no mention of the subsurface mess.... OUMA, La. — BP’s top oil spill adviser said today that if its damaged Macondo well is capped soon, the company will be able to clean up the most damaging parts of the massive oil spill on the water’s surface within weeks. "What’s left, probably weeks, certainly by the end of summer,"" said David Fritz, who heads up BP’s global oil spill response efforts. "It’s hard to predict."" But he said the country should not expect the cleanup to take a decade or more, as some have suggested. "Some people want to downplay it, and some people want to overplay it," Fritz said after accompanying journalists on a helicopter flyover of the far western edge of the spill this morning. "People have their agendas to show how bad this all is, and that we need to do other things. But it’s not true." A Texas official with responsibility for oil spills didn’t dispute the timetable, but offered a caution. "If the source is stopped in a day or two, I would tend to agree with Dave that the majority of the oil could probably be picked up by the end of summer," said Greg Pollock, who leads oil spill response for the Texas General Land Office. "However, if we see significant tarball formation this oil could be transported around the Gulf and we’ll be chasing BP’s tarballs for much longer. Anything other than a light dusting of tarballs will require a physical removal effort." The spill already has sent both liquid oil and semisolid globs of tar into coastal areas of Louisiana and Mississippi. Larry McKinney, executive director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi, suggested BP is narrowly defining the meaning of cleanup. "I believe the BP definition relates to when they cease operations and have to let the system heal itself," he said. "To me and most folks cleanup means restore to previous condition. The oil plume and its fate will define the parameters of cleanup and not some arbitrary date set to meet BP’s definition." Fritz said BP is focusing cleanup efforts on thick pockets of oil seen as posing the most direct threat to wildlife and sensitive coastal areas. He said it would be futile to try to collect all the crude found in thin oily sheens across a spill area covering hundreds of square miles. Even the most fragile coastal areas affected by the spill should take no more than five years to recover, he said. Stan Senner, who planned restoration for the state of Alaska after the Exxon Valdez tanker spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, said it took more than two years to declare the end of the cleanup. Even then, the effort recovered less than 10 percent of the oil spilled, he said. Senner, now conservation director for the advocacy group Ocean Conservancy, said the Gulf spill could take longer because of the underwater plumes of oil some researchers have observed. "I certainly wouldn’t say weeks or months," Senner said. Elgie Holstein, the oil spill response coordinator for the Environmental Defense Fund, also alluded to the underwater oil. "It’s a big mistake to confine the cleanup task to what’s on the surface of the Gulf," he said. On another matter today, Fritz took issue with suggestions that the U.S. government should take a more active role in managing the oil spill. He said federal and state officials have been involved closely in the effort from the beginning and that all decisions are made jointly. "There’s nothing more they could do that we’re not already doing,"" he said. BP is continuing its effort to stop the nation’s worst-ever oil spill by injecting heavy drilling mud into the blown out well a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf. If they can stop the flow, they will seal the well with cement. Officials now say they hope to know by Sunday whether the effort is successful. Clanton reported from Houma. and Tresaugue from Houston. chron
He said "we," didn't he? I took that to mean ALL of the people working on it, from the BP folks to the Coast Guard. At no point did he say "my administration has single handedly cleaned up the mess that BP made," he used the word "we," which you tried to make seem like he was taking credit from someone. BECAUSE THEY CAUSED THE SPILL THROUGH THEIR NEGLIGENCE!!! Good news, I hope they get some concrete set in the pipe soon.
Your constant damage control in this thread for BP has included caution for being overly critical and jumping to conclusions for the oil company, but you are ready to go into spin mode over the definition of 'we'. All that everybody working together and shared responsibility rah rah etc. etc. goes right out the window when politics are involved, eh? woo politics indeed.
If anybody is interested, you can see the ROV working with a power saw right now. Dunno what it is cutting, but it is interesting.
http://www.thestate.com/2010/05/21/1296692/live-video-the-deepwater-horizon.html Doesn't look good at all it went from mud to much heavier oil release. This is of course just from what i'm seeing visually on the feed. From what I heard if the top kill did not work they were going to cut the pipe and try to place a collector right above the blow out preventer. BP said cutting the pipe would cause a temporarily larger flow of oil - I hope that's not what i'm seeing.
The pipe they were cutting was not the riser, but who knows what they were doing. They may in fact be doing the collection alternative. When they pump the mud, they can stop the flow, but they can't get past equilibrium with too much mud escaping out of the top. They may have figured out that the top kill is not working and be preparing to go for the containment option now.
Obama is the commander and chief of the Coast Guard also as noted in the speech BP is essentially under command of the US government in regard to this cleanup.
As I figured at about 2, top kill did not work. Just too much pressure allowed to leave from the top so they couldn't jam enough down. They could stop the flow when pumping, but could not acheive enough to be able to cement. Next stop, new containment effort that will take 4 to 7 days to try to implement. They've already been working on this one for the last week as well. They will cut the riser off the top of the BOP, so all the oil will be leaking from there, then try to drop an attachment on to the BOP to capture most of the oil. Same risks of freezing apply. They may try to pump mud/methenol mixture while doing this to limit the methane and stop freezing. They will also be injecting warm water down the riser on the outside of the drill pipe mixed with methenol. This procedure would, if worked, collect the vast majority of the oil, perhaps upwards of 95% + of it. The top kill was probably the last, best option for a total prevention of oil, unless the next containment system does not work and they attempt to try to install a new BOP.
Whoa... expensive projects with government oversight not working?? This must... this must be groundbreaking news! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VfypUzx1tI
I was really hoping Top Kill would work, but am not surprised it didn't. The third hand info I've been seeing is not as optimistic as what Supermac is bringing to this thread. I suppose a miracle could happen, but barring one, August/September for the relief wells. At this point, all the other stuff looks to be busy work/PR stunts designed to take up time while the relief wells are drilled. My guess is we'll soon see some changes in how the Feds are responding... probably won't make much difference in the grand scheme of the leak and oil moving onshore, but they see a long-term siege and have to use the resources accordingly. A frenzied response isn't going to accomplish anything but burn people out in the short-term. So, more people, more equipment, more staging areas, lots more ground to cover, and a rotation schedule designed to keep people fresh (relatively) over many months. This whole thing sucks.
Now BP execs say they're "learning" from this. They're gonna learn about it the hard way if they don't fix it.
I have some questions that no one in the media or government are answering or even asking. If you have contrary information, please provide it. 1. Why doesn't the oil reserve of this well simply run out? 2. What happened to burning the surface oil? Are they doing it or has it been stopped? 3. The giant oil slick is in approximately the same location it was a month ago. Is it going to stay there, sink, start moving more rapidly or what? 4. What about the oil that is staying deep below the surface? Will it sink to the bottom or eventually wash on shore. 5. What effect will a tropical storm or hurricane have on this situation? Could it pick the oil up and rain it over a large coastal area? 6. Why hasn't explosives been used to close the well? 7. What is going on as far as skimming the oil from the surface of the slick? Seems to be no mention of such operations.
