Posts from — May 2010

Australia celebrates her success:

Teen sailor Jessica Watson has completed a triumphant return to Sydney, with thousands of people on land and water giving her a hero’s welcome.

After a 210-day journey of a lifetime, the 16-year-old from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast has become the youngest person to sail around the world, solo, non-stop and unassisted.

Just two days shy of her 17th birthday, Watson sailed her 10-metre yacht Ella’s Pink Lady up Sydney Harbour, the same spot she left from almost seven months ago.

Sailing the southern oceans in a 33-foot boat is a major accomplishment, no matter how old the skipper. You would not feel comfortable being out on the waters of Choctawhatchee Bay in anything much smaller – you can do it, but you will probably end up wet. Handling sail while doing it makes the trip even more “interesting”.

Update from Kryten in comments: Official Jessica Watson Blog

Enjoy the Jim Morin cartoon in the Miami Herald, and Mark Fiore’s animation at CBS.

I’m getting ready to unleash a major rant about what’s going on off the coast. I’m trying to bring it down from an all out screaming fit about politicians, the media, and corporations, but I’m not having a lot of luck.

The winter weather that is making the Forester Grumpy is spreading across the Northern Plains, but Alberta hasn’t seen any precipitation and wildfires are the result:

Firefighters are bracing for another tough day battling a brushfire north of Edmonton after the blaze doubled in size and destroyed a home
…

The fire has grown from around 1,000 hectares to more than 2,500 since noon Thursday and has spread into Sturgeon County.

The number of firefighters on the scene is expected to double Friday to about 250, and Alberta Sustainable Resource Development is expected to send in water bombers.

It is going to be a long fire season.

Apparently due to a sharp rise the price of mutton, Britain is now dealing with sheep rustlers. They aren’t making off with one or two; they are taking entire flocks.

Meanwhile, Adobe & Apple are continuing to tell the world how much they loathe each other. It takes decades to foster this kind childishness.

While it is in the Houston Chronicle‘s business section, it’s an AP story: Missing data causing rig reconstruction mystery.

I don’t like to pull quotes or anything else from the AP, but it covers some important points in the story and fills in a lot of background. While you have to skeptical that a lot of information is coming from someone who represents Halliburton employees, the reality is that Halliburton has the data to back up their claims, while the data from BP and Transocean after 3PM went “down with the ship”.

The basic point is that Halliburton had sensors on the well that transmitted data back to the shore. This is one of the services that Halliburton sells to clients, but wasn’t being used by BP or Transocean. Halliburton installed them to monitor their cementing of the well. BP and Transocean apparently did periodic batch dumps of data to shore.

Halliburton admits that they saw a pressure surge, which would endanger the cement job [many people have opined that the curing cement caused the surge], and told BP and Transocean. BP and Transocean say that they conducted another test and the pressure was normal, so they continued to replace the heavy drilling mud with sea water.

The problem for BP and Transocean is that this well had a history of “kicking”, sending high pressure bursts of gas up the riser for some time, and that will show up in the record. This was testified to at the Coast Guard/MMS hearing in Kenner by the crew members of the Damon B. Bankston.

What also comes out is that the Deepwater Horizon people would get a bonus if they finished early. That sounds like the reason for replacing the mud with sea water before the final cement plug was in place, rather than waiting and doing things in the normal order.

I don’t know the exact composition of the product that Halliburton was using, but I have poured some concrete over the years, and while it might looked solid after 24 hours, it takes a good deal longer to achieve full strength. This would have been some form of hydraulic cement, which is used for underwater applications. I’ve used it on concrete ponds to seal damage. It sets quickly, but you don’t subject it to unequal pressure for a few days or it will crumble. Twenty hours is a short time for cement to set, even Gorilla Glue tells you to wait 24 hours.

From McClatchy: Congress wants to know why MMS aborted tougher drilling rules

Staffers from the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee, who traveled to Louisiana this week to sit in on the U.S. Coast Guard-led inquiry into the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig, said they learned from the testimony of Mike Saucier, an MMS regional supervisor for field operations, that new rules had been proposed.

Saucier said the agency prepared but never completed regulations in 2001, the first year of George W. Bush’s presidency, that would have required secondary control systems for blowout preventers.

“As far as I know, they’re still at headquarters,” Saucier said.

The executive branch was headed by two oil guys and people are asking why increased regulation of oil companies didn’t take place? Face it, if the Minerals Management Service wasn’t a convenient place for oil companies to dump people who needed more training, Cheney would have abolished it altogether.

Table For One

Nom, nom, nom…

[Editor: Molly is enjoying her dinner in solitude. The yard guy had been using the obnoxious weed whacker and the others were still in hiding.]

Friday Ark

It’s comforting to know there are still some “honest” politicians in Washington [if your definition of “honest” is one that stays bought no matter what happens.] Pitch hitting for Mary Landrieu, the Senator for the Oil industry from Louisiana, is Lisa Murkowski, the Senator for the Oil industry from Alaska.

Lesley Clark of McClatchy reports that Alaska’s Murkowski blocks Senate on higher oil spill liability

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats Thursday lost a bid to raise the liability cap for oil companies to $10 billion when Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski raised objections. They vowed to try again.

Murkowski said she supports lifting the cap from $75 million, but contends the $10 billion figure would prevent smaller, independent companies from drilling along the Outer Continental Shelf.

The debate came as Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that caught fire and sank, touching off an oil leak that is still dumping 210,000 gallons of crude in the Gulf of Mexico daily, sought in federal court in Houston to use a 1851 maritime law to $27 million.

Referring to the Deepwater Horizon in the feminine, the petition said that because “she” was lost, her owners are responsible only for damages up to the rig’s salvage value, which they pegged at $26,764,083. The peititon describes the offshore rig as “having a burden of 32,588 gross tons” and at the time of her final “voyage” being “tight, staunch, strong, properly and sufficiently manned, supplied, equipped and furnished.”

Obviously Transocean is pining for the days of sail when the vessels with the most cannon usually won, however I doubt that anyone in 1851 would have considered the Deepwater Horizon a “vessel”.

I assume that these “smaller, independent” drilling companies exist on the same planet as the family farms that Republicans are always talking about. Corporations have killed off those entities on this planet with the help of the Republicans.

Meanwhile in Mississippi I read: Gov. Barbour seeks federal assistance for south Mississippi businesses affected by oil spill.

This would be the same Haley Barbour who “hates” the Federal government’s interference in people’s lives. The individual who is always screaming about Federal incompetence for running a deficit. The staunch defender of the “free market” who, as a US Senator voted for every deregulation bill and tax cut that was presented. He is the governor of a state that receives over $2 for every $1 its citizens pay in Federal taxes.

It is time for Mississippi to grow up and get to work, rather than going to the Federal government every time it is short of cash. The Federal government didn’t cause the leak, so why are you asking for Federal assistance? BP is the responsible party, so act like a real American and sue them. Oh, and you might want to consider extending your tax base beyond casinos. If you educated your children and built some infrastructure businesses might want to locate in the state. It’s time to get Mississippi off Federal welfare.

[My apologies to Mississippi liberals and progressives. I know what it’s like living in “enemy territory” watching the results of bad decisions on a daily basis while being powerless to change things. Keep the faith. Maybe one day reason will prevail.]

Oh, I’m sorry, it’s the governor of Florida: Florida tries get out message: No oil on our beaches

Officials in Florida would like the world to know that the state’s 663 beaches and the water that surrounds them are oil free.

A message that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist wants $34.75 million to spread. In a letter to BP, the company at the center of the oil spill problem in the Gulf of Mexico, Gov. Crist asks for the money to start a marketing campaign. This campaign would “counter the negative, widespread and false information potential visitors to Florida are receiving,” a statement from the Governor’s Press Office says.

There is no visible oil on Florida beaches yet, but we don’t know if there is oil in the water, because the state doesn’t want people testing the water. Like most corporatists, Charlie thinks that everything is a public relations problem that can be fixed by a media blitz.

The state is ready to ask for $34.75 million for TV ads, but has a hissy fit when local governments want money to protect beaches and inland waters: DEP questions Okaloosa’s ‘Cadillac’ boom plan. Yes, it could cost upwards of 8 million dollars to do everything the county wants, but the county is trying to protect the one resource that makes people put up with the hurricane season and pay obscene amounts of money for real estate.

I’m not being sarcastic when I say that this happens all the time, and not just in the oil industry. When you ask for plans to trouble-shoot a problem what you get will almost always be drawings that were submitted for approval, and not what was actual built.

McClatchy reports that Oil spill: BP had wrong diagram to close blowout preventer

WASHINGTON — In the days after an oil well spun out of control in the Gulf of Mexico, BP engineers tried to activate a huge piece of underwater safety equipment but failed because the device had been so altered that diagrams BP got from the equipment’s owner didn’t match the supposedly failsafe device’s configuration, congressional investigators said Wednesday.

If there were “as-built” plans, they are probably on the sunken vessel in a filing cabinet. BP and the drilling crew modified the BOP, so there is no way the manufacturer is going to have plans of what was done. All Cameron can do is supply the plans for what left their factory.

Henry Waxman is not a happy camper. From today’s House hearing

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said the oil company told the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight privately that the well failed a key pressure test just hours before it exploded on April 20.

The test indicated pressure was building up in the well, which could indicate oil or gas was seeping in and could lead to an explosion, said Waxman.

“Yet it appears the companies did not suspend operations, and now 11 workers are dead and the Gulf faces an environmental catastrophe,” he said, asking why work wasn’t stopped on the well.

Actually, it would appear that work did stop, but nothing was done to improve the situation, according to the captain of the supply ship.

According to the testimony of Alwin Landry, captain of the supply ship Damon B. Bankston, his vessel was tied up at the Deepwater Horizon taking on drilling mud being pumped out of the well. He expected to received 4,500 barrels from the rig, but at 5:17PM the transfer stopped after only 3,100 barrels had been transferred. He was told that the transfer would restart later.

After 9:00 he called the rig to get an update because he had mud spattering his vessel. He was told to untie and take a position 500 feet away from the rig. At 9:53PM the rig caught fire as the well blew out.

It is reasonable to assume that the crew on the rig thought there was a problem at around 5:00PM, which is probably why they stopped pumping off the mud. What isn’t clear, is why they didn’t reverse direction and start pumping mud back into the well to counter the building pressure. They certainly could have transferred non-essential personnel to the Bankston until things were stable, and shut the hatches to make the rig water-tight.

The BBC has a story about the prenuptial agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. It seems a bit one-sided.

Two things caught my eye:

“Voting system: Bill will be brought forward for referendum on changing to AV but parties will be able to campaign on opposite sides of argument”; and “MPs will not be able to throw out the government unless 55% vote to do so – a higher threshold than currently.”

So, the LibDems get to put an instant runoff voting system to a vote with no Conservative support, while the Conservatives get to ensure that they are in power for 5 years as they have 47% of the vote in Parliament.

I don’t know what will happen in the UK, but in the US the Repubs would push the change to increase the “no confidence” vote to 55% and tell their erstwhile partner to stuff it. One would hope that the Tories have better manners.

Lots of things regarding the sludge pool that was the Gulf of Mexico. The newest game on the Coast is find the tar balls, and we have winners in Gulf Shores, Alabama and Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.

We read that a Congressional investigation reveals oil rig’s blowout preventer had a hydraulic system leak. They also rigged one of the ram valves on the BOP for testing, so it wasn’t able to work as designed. This was the “fail-safe” system that made an accident “unpossible”. This also makes the acoustic switch that everyone seems to want moot – the valve couldn’t work under those conditions, so another switch is irrelevant.

BP has managed to accomplish something as the ‘Top hat’ reaches Gulf of Mexico floor. This won’t stop the flow, it is merely supposed to direct some of the gusher to a tanker on the surface. They are planning on using warm water and methanol [wood alcohol] to control hydrate build up.

James Gill of the Times-Picayune shows why Louisiana politics are a league of their own in his piece: Polluters have had enough of law clinics.

Yes, the Louisiana Senate is considering a law to prevent students at law schools in the state from representing people in law suits against petro-chemical companies. It’s all the fault of students at Tulane. They didn’t just represent people, they have won cases and polluters have had to pay the people they have poisoned. It’s bad for business. No one will invest in Louisiana businesses if they think there’s any risk involved. What do you think this is, capitalism? 😈

I’ve said before, we have entirely too much tar and too many feathers [already tarred] to put up with this crap from politicians.

I have already noted that dead sea turtles were washing ashore. and now dead dolphins wash up in Gulf; oil role unclear.

It could be the natural result of swimming in water polluted with oil and dispersants, or breathing the fumes of oil and dispersants, or eating fish poisoned by oil and dispersants – we just don’t know yet.

And we don’t know because BP holding back, UWF researchers say

Researchers from universities across Florida claim they are being locked out of Gulf oil spill response efforts by BP and state and federal agencies.

Since the April 20 spill, BP and government agencies have hampered their efforts to secure information about the spill and scientific data, such as water oil samples, collected during response efforts, the academics said.

“We’re throwing this open for the scientific discourse, and right now, we’re not getting a heck of a lot of information about what’s going on out there,” said Florida State University Associate Vice President for Research W. Ross Ellington. “If we, the scientists, are not getting much information … we know the public isn’t getting information.”

Florida is a state defined by water on all but our North side. Our universities and colleges specialize in water-related activities like marine biology, oceanography, and underwater archæology. They have manned and unmanned submarines. They have decades of records to establish baselines for “normal”. The only reason to block them is to hide the truth.