If you are unclear as to why something happened it is usually helpful to summarize the major events in a time-line. While the preceding event may have no causal effect, it is certain that anything that occurred later definitely didn’t cause earlier events.

All times are in Central Daylight Savings time, the local time for the Deepwater Horizon.

1:00AM – Halliburton finishes its cementing of the well.

8:20AM – the supply ship Damon B. Bankston arrives at the Deepwater Horizon

11:00AM – a Schlumberger team that was to test the cementing is sent back to land without testing.

1:17PM – the process of pumping the heavy mud out of the well to the Bankston begins.

5:00PM – Halliburton informs BP that pressure is building up in the well.

5:17PM – the transfer of the mud stops.

9:00PM – the Bankston is told to expect more mud.

9:45?PM – mud droplets are raining down on the Bankston, and they are told to cast off and stand by.

9:53PM – the Deepwater Horizon is engulfed in flame.

BP spent a lot of money to have a Schlumberger team on stand-by for two days to perform a thorough test of the cementing, and then sent them back to land without doing it.

Just over twelve hours after the cementing was finished, BP started to pump out the heavy mud that was balancing the well pressure.

When the well pressure increased, BP stopped taking mud out, but didn’t pump any back in to balance the pressure. They depended on cement that had been curing for 16 hours.

PBS has updated their Leak Meter again. As they explain, since BP is now, in fact, recovering 5,000 barrels per day with their tube, and the live video showing not much in the way of an impact on the oil coming out of the broken pipe, the minimum on the Leak Meter has been raised to 25,000 barrels per day [1,050,000 gallons/day].

BP now says they don’t know how much oil is coming from the well, but we know that BP lies and the US government swears to it.

Once again, since they stopped mucking about with the BOP, what exactly has BP done that would stop the oil from gushing out of the ground? All of their actions have been geared towards getting refinery-ready crude into a tanker.

So, that number might be a bit low, by about 120 million gallons, but who’s counting, certainly not the US government.

The AP is reporting that BP is capturing 210,000 gallons/day with its tube. I think AP has confused the report that BP thinks that 210K is the maximum capacity of the tube. That is 5,000 barrels, and supposedly the amount of oil gushing from the Well from Hell.

Note that the Leak Meter has been adjusted to account for BP’s claims about diverting oil.

Of course we would know if we could watch the spill. The Times-Picayune reports on that possibility: Live feed of BP oil spill in Gulf will be posted on congressman’s website

After a demand from Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., for a live feed of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to be made publicly available on the web, BP officials said they would release the feed and it will be shown shown on Markey’s committee website at www.globalwarming.house.gov.

Don’t hold your breath while waiting for it, because, while the T-P thought it would be available on Tuesday, it still wasn’t there this morning. [update: Spillcam has a URI now, but it seems overloaded at the moment.]

The New York Times says that Scientists Fault U.S. Response in Assessing Gulf Oil Spill

Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the gulf oil spill are escalating, with prominent oceanographers accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope.

The scientists assert that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies have been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill and the damage it is causing in the deep ocean.

What a surprise, the Obama administration has done little to repair the damage of the Hedgemony to agencies that are involved in science that doesn’t go boom and kill people. There has been no major shift to depoliticize the government agencies, and many Bush appointees are still in place.

The US government lacks the capability to monitor what is happening in the Gulf. The Navy is down to one Deep Submersible Vehicle and it is classified. Woods Hole has the Alvin which was built for the Navy and then retired to Woods Hole. Alvin is what is available and, if you can find a vessel capable of launching and recovering it, it fits in a C-5 for rapid transport.

It’s time for people to come to grips with the reality that the Hedgemony has transformed the US government into a “can’t do” organization in regards to anything but the military, and the military isn’t in such great shape. This is what the taxpayers received for the trillions in deficits that the Republicans spent.