It’s In The Loop
The Panhandle has a little less to worry about today because they have screwed around so long that the oil is headed into the Loop Current, which means that Florida’s reef system, the Keys, and the Atlantic Coast are now in danger from the oil.
Because it is so significant to Gulf hurricanes, those of us who track the storms are familiar with the Loop. It is a warm water current and deep which is like a gas station for hurricanes. The Weather Underground has a primer on the current, which becomes the Gulf Stream after passing through the Florida Strait.
Today’s NASA image of the oil spill makes it rather obvious that oil is being sucked into the Loop. Dr Jeff Masters agrees: Oil enters the Loop Current and is headed to the Florida Keys.
This spill is large enough that it can destroy the state’s barrier reef, with plenty available to destroy Louisiana’s wet lands. I guess South Carolina will have to cancel those ads talking about Myrtle Beach being “oil free”, as there is no guarantee for any coastal area from the Gulf to Great Britain that borders on the Gulf Stream.
2 comments
Ouch.
WASF. Big-time. As in, pretty much everybody not named BP.
My take on it: BP is going to spend the next decade abusing the court system to prevent paying out on their claims? Fine. Declare them a criminal enterprise under RICO, seize all their US-based assets, and make them prove that their US-based assets aren’t derived from criminal activities such as murdering oilfield workers via bypassing their own safety procedures. And make them do this while not having access to any US-based funds, LOL. RICO. If it’s good enough for the Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff’s Office to seize the cars of random travellers on I-10 (if they don’t donate to the sheriff’s favorite charity), surely it’s good enough for the biggest criminal enterprise of them all, a criminal enterprise whose actions are going to destroy the lives of millions of people, far more lives destroyed than any other enterprise ever operating on American soil.
Won’t happen, of course. Laws like RICO are for the little people, not for our rulers like BP. SIIIIGH!
– Badtux the Wistful Penguin
.-= last blog ..The odd man out =-.
Somebody suggested that BP doesn’t want the flow measured because they have to pay a royalty on anything that comes out of the ground, That is probably part of it, but they are avoiding providing any hard information to any of the attorneys lining up to sue them in state and Federal courts where they will use every stall available so that the plaintiffs give up or die.
Our reefs are already in trouble from global climate change, so this could well push them over the edge to extinction. It is time for criminal complaints because they don’t seem to worry about the civil process.
In other news – according to what is on record at the Minerals Management Service as a result of the initial investigation, Halliburton finished the cementing at 1AM on the 20th, and they started pumping out the mud at 1:17PM the same day. The blowout came just under 21 hours after the cementing was finished. Sounds like enough to support “depraved indifference to human life” and 11 counts of manslaughter, but that’s New York State law, I don’t know what the Feds have that’s similar.
I do have a question, since you were in the business. In trying to do some calculations I looked around and it seems that in the oil business pipe sizes are generally stated as the outside diameter, and the general difference between pipe and tubing, is rigid versus flexible. Are those fair assumptions, or is there some other set of conventions in place?