1,000 BOPD, leaking into the open sea, no good prospects for getting it under control, this one is a doozy: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/6976990.html I have read a couple of different accounts, but the basic story is a BP operated platform; the Transocean Deepwater Horizon took a kick while running production casing, and caught fire and sank. 11 dead (missing but presumed) and crude leaking from two spots. The water is 5,000' deep, the drilled hole 18,000' deep and the BOPs (blow out preventors) are either inoperable or they cant reach them due to deep water, crap from the sunken rig in the way, whatever... I don't see this getting fixed real quick. A relief well would take 60 days or more. And Obama just came out in favor of off shore drilling, and those Reep governors along the gulf coast better not take any Federal Funds... balanced budget concerns and all. What a train wreck.
i heard today that if the slick hits land (marshy land) as it is expected to do...it's going to get very expensive for BP as they are uninsured for this.. (I think it was On The Media - where i heard they weren't insured for the land part)
But scrubbing oil off rocks and sand with a toothbrush will create lots of jobs! Palin was right! - the economy will be saved! Spill baby spill!
Or maybe its 5,000 barrels per day: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36800673/ns/us_news-environment/ Ouch... this deal is huge, and currently under the radar
surprisingly (or maybe not), I've only heard NPR covering this story in depth. everyone else is treating this as a mere news item. this is a f*cking disaster in the making! I mean they're talking about weeks, possibly months just to plug the goddam leak! and now they are estimating the number of barrels emptying into the gulf per day to be 5,000?? hell, you might as well just turn the entire Gulf into a gian oil reservoir. tankers coming from the ME can just dump their load in the Gulf without actually going to a port! I don't think most people realize just how big of an ecological and environmental disaster this is developing into. spill, baby, spill! you betcha!
Word -- this is pissing me off. I can only hope that when the oil starts washing up on the shores, people will start to realize that "Drill Baby Drill" should not be the be-all and end-all of our energy policy.
WHITE HOUSE: ’SPILL OF NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE’ Gulf Leak Spewing 5 Times More Oil Than Thought.. May Reach Land By Friday.. Spill Exceeds BP’s ’Worst-Case Scenario’.. Could Impact Obama’s Offshore Drilling Plan time may be running out: Oil from the spill had crept to within 12 miles of the coast, and it could reach shore as soon as Friday. A third leak was discovered, which government officials said is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated – about 5,000 barrels a day coming from the blown-out well 40 miles offshore. Suttles had initially disputed the government's estimate, and that the company was unable to handle the operation to contain it. But early Thursday, he acknowledged on "Today" that the leak may be as bad as the government says. He said there was no way to measure the flow at the seabed and estimates have to come from how much oil makes it to the surface. If the well cannot be closed, almost 100,000 barrels of oil, or 4.2 million gallons, could spill into the Gulf before crews can drill a relief well to alleviate the pressure. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez, the worst oil spill in U.S. history, leaked 11 million gallons into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.
in case anyone needs a refresher of what this is going to look like in a day or so: Oil Spills: A History Of Disaster (PHOTOS)
The spill would be far more devestating, financially, to the coast then added value of the oil that rig drug up.
I'm just thinking, if BP is going to be held financially liable for the damage and the clean up, it may well bankrupt them. that Coast Guard bill is going to be a big one.
There's a BP around the corner. Let's see if they sneak in a few cents increase to defray the wiping-shore-birds-with-Scottstowels cost.
Jindal is already starting to try and make this into Obama's Katrina. I heard him on the radio today talking about all the requests he has made to Washington with no response...so maybe he's right. Maybe DHS is just sitting on their hands...but somehow I can't help but think he is going to spin negative anything and everything DC does. Prepping the LZ for 2012? I'm just too cynical. Sorry.
The reason this isn't Obama's Katrina is the Reep's have this postion that government can't help. The markets rule, and Big Government is just unneccesarly intrusive. So now they can't yell: "Hellp!!" to Obama. I mean, how would federal intervention affect the national debt? And this platform and leak is a shitstorm. It is going to be every bit of the Exxon Valdez. It is going to affect offshore policy in federal waters. It won't be capped/fixed for 60 days an dthe gulf coast beaches are going to be impacted. I got an email from a friend today that is close to the situation. I can't post them but the pictures were horrific. This is just the beginning of this deal.
I thought this technology was safe . . . I guess that is unless the oil rig catches fire and sinks. The economic damages will be huge. How big is the La. shrimp industry? I think it's gone.
It's kinda safe. But this well was 18,000' deep in 5,000' of water; rather testing the limits. And the US gulf coast has some weird pressure issues and is a little treacherous. Generally, this doesn't happen, but this one is a doozy. It is a real catastrophe.
well that's what I don't get. what was their plan B?? I mean did they only have one way of shutting off the oil supply should there be a breakage? I think it's an example of drilling technology out-pacing safety technology.
Ya, the safety technology isn't good enough, and it really isn't tested that often. You have drilling fluids that outweigh expected pressure, but the gulf has 'overpressured' sections where pressure is more than normally expected and outpaces the 'mud'. Then you have valves on the plaform that can be closed but if everyone is getting blown to smithereens they don't get closed. The BOP is down in the ocean (that's Blow Out Preventer) and should be shut by remote control, but for some reason it didn't shut in. What this is is a real shitstorm. A handfull of things went wrong. And once this blowout is in process, there is only really crappy, untested ways of dealing with it. This event is going to change offshore drilling in the US. Right after Obama (who I voted for) joined up with the "drill baby drill" crowd. I would really like to hear what the far right has to say about big gummint not getting involved, and all that. BP has been generally absent since the event. Why not just sieze their US assets as collateral? That's what a business would do.
Seriously, is the logical fallacy of their own positions completely lost on what passes for conservatism these days? If your major claim is that government regulation is unnecessary because a potential loss of revenue will prevent a company from killing its own customers or, say, letting a well leak hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, you can't then say that it's not the companies fault because the government didn't pass some regulation to prevent this. If your major claim is that government regulation is unnecessary because a potential loss of money will prevent a company from agreeing to union contracts that will put them out of business, or leveraging themselves to the hilt to make money or terribly risky monetary systems, then you can't then say that it's the government's job to save them because they didn't stop it. You either want regulation and enforcement because you realize corporations are going to do stupid sh!t in the name of making money, which has the potetial to hurt many, many people, or your an idealist fool. When you have huge corporations running everything, you need a similar sized government to keep them in check.
Oh, and this may be the death of the Louisiana fishing industry, which has been decimated by Katrina and cheap foreign fisheries, that don't have to worry about pesky environmental or catch limited regulations. See, if there was no regulation, America would be much better off!
If I were going to bet whether your degree of cynicism in this case will be over or under the degree of cynicism exercised by Jindal, I'd bet you're going to be under.
That'll teach Lousiana for trying to keep it's environment pristine and clean. [/Dr. Wankler remember his time in Baton Rouge in the mid-80s when the air smelled like rotten eggs on Saturdays and Sundays... days when the EPA wasn't monitoring the output at the refineries]