Wheeeeee!
The Leak Meter just zipped by 80 million gallons [1.9 million barrels or more than a quarter million metric tons]. That is the amount of oil dumped in the Gulf, and doesn’t include what has been sucked up by various methods.
McClatchy explains the latest screw-up: BP oil leak setback: ‘Top hat’ removed, oil flow unhindered.
The short version – based on speculation by various sources, it is probable that one of the ROVs bumped the Top Hat and closed a shutter which increased the pressure. As a result, methane has started coming up the warm water line and filling the vessel.
Have none of these people heard of a “check valve”? Do they know any plumbers or pipefitters?
I have gone from believing they can’t trusted to change a faucet, to believing they can’t be trusted to change the toilet paper roll.
11 comments
Yeah. After decades of similar operations all around the world, there’s no pool of engineering experience or even academic knowledge to draw on? No effective contingency plan to be had? Really? Now that’s scary.
I assume there is, but they want to be paid for what they know, and BP is still trying to do things on the cheap.
I have watched them do one amateur job after another, and wonder at the inability of the Feds to figure out that they just don’t know what they are doing.
The Navy has pipefitters that work on the high pressure lines in submarines and aircraft carriers who could have told people how to do this, and could have created the tools they needed aboard a ship.
BP doesn’t seem to be able to maintain a sustained operation.
I have been completely baffled since about the third week (when the failure of the first “top hat” containment domes made it clear that BP didn’t know what they were doing) that BP is still in charge. No, it’s not because of the law. BP is responsible for *paying* for the cleanup, but there’s nothing that says BP has to be in *charge* of the cleanup. But they just bumbled their way into the job, and now everybody’s acting as if they were appointed by God or something and can’t be shoved aside and a new prime contractor appointed to lead the effort (with the bill going to BP). Baffling. Utterly baffling. Makes you wonder what kind of dirt BP has on certain officials…
– Badtux the Contracting Penguin
This is just incredible. We both know that Louisiana and Texas has companies that do similar things all over the world, and have done for decades. You wonder where the guys BP is using come from – Labor Finders?
The people they send out to local parishes and counties can’t answer the simplest of questions, while the locals are looking stuff up on the ‘Net or talking to the same spill consultants the military uses.
Like you, I just don’t get it.
Change the toilet paper roll?
I don’t think they can find their asses using both of their hands…
I know almost nothing about offshore drilling myself. Like Bryan, I assume that these repeated failures are mainly due to greed and politics — it seems that the whole disaster is just the Ford Pinto scenario writ large. However I’m certainly open to the possibility that through lack of planning and foresight these bozos have created a situation that has no ready solution. Maybe no solution at all, in some of the worst case projections I’ve read.
Apparently they didn’t get the same childhood indoctrination that I did. Remember Smokey Bear and Sparky the Fire Dog? The Boy Scout Motto? First Do No Harm? Hell, don’t any of these guys own beachfront property? Maybe it really comes down to some kind of hubris. Doesn’t it sometimes seem that money and power can just plain make people stupid?
From a “Rolling Stone” overview article dated June 8, 2010:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/111965?RS_show_page=0
“…the “moratorium” on drilling announced by the president does little to prevent future disasters. The ban halts exploratory drilling at only 33 deepwater operations, shutting down less than one percent of the total wells in the Gulf. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the Cabinet-level official appointed by Obama to rein in the oil industry, boasts that “the moratorium is not a moratorium that will affect production” – which continues at 5,106 wells in the Gulf, including 591 in deep water.
Most troubling of all, the government has allowed BP to continue deep-sea production at its Atlantis rig – one of the world’s largest oil platforms. Capable of drawing 200,000 barrels a day from the seafloor, Atlantis is located only 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, in waters nearly 2,000 feet deeper than BP drilled at Deepwater Horizon. According to congressional documents, the platform lacks required engineering certification for as much as 90 percent of its subsea components – a flaw that internal BP documents reveal could lead to “catastrophic” errors. […]
According to an e-mail to a congressional aide from a staff member at MMS, the agency has had “zero contact” with Atlantis about its safety risks since the Deepwater rig went down.”
There are people who know how to do this safely, and know how to fix things, but they are expensive and BP is cheap. BP won’t pay for what it needs, they are still trying to reduce costs. This is a classic case of penny-wise and pound-foolish.
BP simply cannot be trusted and should be banned from drilling.
It would be a start if BP could learn to use the toilet paper roll, let alone changing it. Failing that, BP should be wiped and flushed. Now.
I know nothing about offshore but I did other sorts of contracts for the oil business long enough to realize that there is no lack of expertise out there, and that even at its brokest, the industry can afford to hire that expertise at tidy salaries. So why is BP not doing exactly that? I am mystified. It would be the “easy” (heh) solution to practically everyone’s problems. This non-approach they’re taking now seems almost guaranteed to fail, and if cheapness is their prime criterion, it won’t achieve that, either. I’m beginning to conclude that the exec’s just aren’t bright enough, even if they do hold high positions in major multinational corp’s.
What really bothers me is that this continuing “nickel and dime” miserly approach is a clear indication that they haven’t learned the basic lesson that spending the money to avoid these problems is good business. The upper management still doesn’t get it, so they can’t be trusted, no matter what the regulations may say.
At $50/barrel they have dumped about $100 million worth of crude into the Gulf, without even considering what their “clean-up charade” has cost. They are totally separated from reality. They can’t even understand the standard financial concepts like return on investment and cost-benefit ratio.
What spooks me is thinking about events like the Centralia coal fire — an underground fire which has been burning since 1962, with no end in sight.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/underground-coal-fire-centralia-started-1962-burns.php
See also the proliferation of sinkholes as Florida’s aquifer is depleted.
Could this situation could evolve into something uncontrollable? Dunno. Some people think so. You’ve got to wonder how many other drilling platforms are also accidents waiting to happen?
“It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.”
– President Obama , Apr 02 at Charlotte, NC
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-a-discussion-jobs-and-economy-charlotte-north-carolina
Hmph. Turns out it only takes one. Who wudda thought?
There is no good way of putting out a coal fire. As long as it can get air it will burn, and burn under people and buildings. Centralia is just the best known, there are others, and Juanita and I have talked about them because she is up in coal country.
This thing can definitely get worse because of the nature of the bottom of the Gulf, It is layered like a cake, and if the oil floods one of the sand or hydrate layers, the relief wells may not be able to stop it. The other worry is one of the layers of rock fracturing while they are drilling, The rock under the Gulf can shatter like glass, and it will take a hell of a lot of concrete to stop something like that.
The well that is gushing is the second attempt, as the first attempt did fracture a rock layer, Fortunately it was an upper layer so they could just abandon the well.
All of those wonderful “advanced technological features” only work if they aren’t turned off because they are expensive.