In addition to Transocean not getting any blame, Cameron is not getting any blame either. Cameron is the one who manufactured the blowout preventer that might have failed!
^ ^ ^ Hypocrite alert. Do you disagree with offshore drilling? I thought your hero Palin was all in favor of "drill baby drill". Or should we say "spill baby spill"
Exactly. BP, while they will be legally responsible for the financial implications (and a lot of the operations as well) for physically cleaning up the spill (as will all the other lease holders, apparently Anadarko owns a significant portion of this well too), actually has very little, if anything, to do with the actual incident.
Aren't they researching methods of testing pressures at various depths before they drill them? Types of seismographs or some such? How can we tell the pressure at every depth in the sun but then be surprised by these things on Earth? I guess it's a lot harder with rocks, but still, I suspect it's just because we aren't getting the right techniques on the right problems yet.
If there were going to be any justice here BP, Transocean and whoever else involved would be fined/sued and that money would go to the shrimpers and others who will be severely economically impacted by this.
tried to start a thread on this earlier here's my questions The situation in the gulf i'm sure has made some people think twice about loosening up our off shore drilling policy. rachel maddow was talking with a coast guard member about the accident (which btw, seems like it wasn't preventable, anyone know anything about blowouts?). One thing they got into a discussion about is that this technology to drill further out and deeper basically leaves all the ability to clean up the mess in the hands of the corporations. the coast guard really doesn't have a clue on how to cap the well. -------------------- also, why do people keep saying the cause isn't completely known
I would say before this accident...I never gave off-shore drilling much thought as to the dangers involved of a major accident/spill occurring. I wasn't even aware of the other major one that happened in the Bay of Campeche in Mexico until this one happened. I don't know much about off-shore rigs and the safety issues involved. That said...I get really mad and sad just thinking about this. If this type of thing has a chance of happening, then I just don't see the point. Now, I've seen a lot of people who work on these rigs or in the oil business commenting over at Chron.com about how we need oil for everything, this is their livelihood, this is supposed to not happen due to safeguards, etc. ...basically trying to sell why we should be doing this. But, the facts are this barely makes even a dent compared to the amount of oil we import and even an expansion won't make much of a dent. This idea that we need to do this to ween ourselves from a dependency off of foreign oil is a bunch of political bullcrap. The only way we're going to ween off of oil is through alternative sources of energy and that is a ways away. Until that time, I would rather just continue importing all of it. Until they come up with better ways to deal with these "accidents", then I say no more new rigs should go up and only ones that have already been tapped should be used. This valve that won't close that is supposed to be the safety mechanism to stop the oil from flowing...well I call bs on that. They had one of these same valves in the Mexico spill...and it didn't work, either, because it couldn't hold up to the pressure once it was closed. What makes it so certain that this valve would hold up even if it could be closed? It is blatantly apparent that noone is ready for an accident of this magnitude...and that the fallout from this is much more damaging for people who make their livelihoods in the Gulf outside of oil drilling. Now, I know oil companies and oil men will sell us their bs for their bottom lines. But, I'm not buying it. I'd rather have all those people lose their jobs...than to see this catastrophe happen. The fact is they likely destroyed a lot of other peoples' livelihoods that have nothing to do with this. I don't care if this happens only once every ten or twenty years. Once is damn sure enough. You better have a more proactive plan in place for dealing with this and containing the situation than you did this time around...or no go in my book. If this reality doesn't really slap everyone in the face, then nothing will.
the thing to consider, this is just one rig, look how much damage it causes. I'm from Houston, I am pro off shore drilling because so many people's livelyhoods are connected, but as you say surfguy, this is eye opening.
Honestly, with all the problems like: overfishing CO<sub>2</sub> acidification dead spots and red tides from algae blooms caused by fertilizer runoff the Great Pacific Garbage Patch ...among others, that ecological disasters of equal or larger size are ongoing and have been for a long time. In other words, this sucks but it is just one brick in a giant wall of oceanic suck. Maybe the fact that this is such an acute event with a clear starting event, perhaps people pay more attention, but it isn't going to cause the level of damage to ocean ecology that some other ongoing disasters are causing and have been causing.
So far the oil doesn't seem to be headed for Texas. But if it takes three months to stop the flow of oil, it's hard to imagine how bad this is going to be. This Rig exploded on april 21st I believe, but it seems like it's taken until today for everyone to realize how bad this thing is. I now see where the Department of Homeland Security is involved in this whole mess. I have no faith what so ever in the Department of Homeland Security.
The oil will eventually wind up on the Texas coast... it may take a few months... hell even a year or more for some of it... but it's going to eventually wind up over here.
i read a little into the mechanism last night, if i remember correctly, it's a series of pipes laid inside one another that are connected to floating stations and there are several of these stations (not positive on that, but it would make sense because of the following) so they were apparently supposed to be fail proof, because there were so many mechanisms that should have stopped the oil first. the blowout occurs because the oil is mixed with mud and other natural gas which is highly pressurized and so they think there must have been some depressurized natural gas that could have been ignited from a simple spark.
This is a massive catastrophe. We're talking 3-4 Exxon Valdez spills per week for the foreseeable future (if they are being honest about the amount coming out). If they don't get it capped soon, oil will be all over the Gulf from FL to Mexico and Cuba. This has the potential to break BP. They are the responsible party and therefore have to pay for the entire government response. You figure the LA, AL, MS, FL, and TX National Guard deployments, huge mobilization of other Federal resources, and no telling what costs from other countries could bankrupt them if this isn't capped soon. Buy your Cajun food now because there's not going to be much available after this travesty.
Hopefully this doesn't turn into an incident like the Ixtoc... _____ Ixtoc I was an exploratory oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, about 600 miles (970 km) south of the U.S. state of Texas. On June 3, 1979, the well suffered a blowout and is recognized as the second largest oil spill in history. Approximately ten thousand to thirty thousand barrels per day were discharged into the Gulf until it was finally capped on March 23, 1980. link
