BP and this disaster

[Gretsch]

One other clarification and then I will stfu... Although many share the blame for causing this disaster, one man alone enjoys the credit for the way it has and has not been handled. Anyone care to guess who it is? I'll give you a hint: he's the incompetent, narcisistic bastard who's filed suit against Arizona while ceading parts of that state to Mexican drug lords.

:chin: Hmmmm.... I'm not sure I know who that is but it sounds like he should win the Nobel Peace Prize. :lol:

 

[strokerlmt]

Tom........I have to respectfully disagree with you. BP is a privately owned company. They will everything they can to do as little as possible re clean up and claims/compensation. They will say anything to mediate this disaster. That is their responsibility to teh stock holders. They are probably already shifting assets and money all over the world because sooner or later the financial drain from this will force the company to re structure AND at that point claims and compensation will start to dry up. It looks like they knew from the beginning that the only solution was the relief wells so the rest of it was bullshit. I have been listening and reading the over the pond news and obviously it has a different spin than the usa media....and BTW I belief the USA media are a bunch of idiots......I have friends in all 3 gulf states and the claims / assist / help with the disaster from BP is disorganized slow .....one business friend told me it is worse than dealing with insurance companies. You have to scream and yell and fill out pages and pages only to be rejected or ignored. They say no a hundred times until you finally wear them down. Bottom line you cannot simply say....."that BP have promised to clean up and handle all claims and compensation".....that is pure bullshit and is a smoke screen to stave off the hurt people. As for the senators most of them are sanctamonius over paid like to hear my own voice assholes......BUT they have a huge point......IF they don't keep the pressure up on BP ....BP will mitagate this slowly to the best interest of teh stock holders.....not the best interest of the damages......
LMT

 

[Sal Paradise]

If you look at the Interior Department, the department that handles the environmental reviews you will find that they were turned into a patronage lapdog industry whore in 2001. They literally had an orgy with the people they were supposed to regulate, you can't really get less ethical than that.

I never posted anything about this before, but back when I was a rising star in parks, before I pissed off too many people to ever get promoted again.; In fall 2000, there was a senior Dem. Senator who was going to resign and become Sec. of the interior under Gore. I was interviewed several times at his home,met his family was introduced to people in his organization. I might have been going with him to Interior Department or National park Service. I can tell you that he was NOBODY's lapdog.I can'tsay it wouldn't have happened anyway of course. But instead of HIM (and me) we got Gail Norton who was possible the worst sec. of the interior in history. Everyone in parks saw the writing on the wall when Gail Norton got that appointment.

A grand jury is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton violated federal laws before going to work for Shell.
(Haraz N. Ghanbari / Associated Press / March 20, 2006)

Obviously she is a Bush appointment, but all that said I personally feel this spill is is just so bad, its a "911 moment" and I couldn't care less about assigning blame or politics. I just want it fixed and fast...

 

[nohawk]

Damn Sal that would have been a pretty swanky job. This thing with BP was more likely to happen with them involved or at the wheel than with any of the other major oil companys i think, remember 03/05 at Texas City? I missed being part of that 'mishap' by a couple of days. Some friends of mine were there taking down scaffolds and had arm and thier head hair burned off. I have no idea if they run thier drilling like they ran thier refineries but it was prretty well known that they would run/use some off the equipment to failure and sometimes that would be the only reason for the unit turnaround or shutdown. The BP plant in Carson,CA seemed to be run better but not by much. Again I dont know much about the upstream drilling part of the business, I was a contractor that would go into the refineries during turnarounds and BP was always more Fd up then say ConocoPhlps...

But I have heard that the Blow Off Preventer that is used on sub sea wells is a piece of equipment that is 'registered' and 'inspected' in whatever part of the world it had been used in most often, I doubt BP would have taken any additional steps to inspect that B.O.P further then what they were required to do just like the level alarms that were on that vessel in Tx.City. Im serious when I say that I never dealt with a BP operator that knew more about his units' heater that I was working on then I did. Im sorry to anyone on here that might know or be related to a BP operator, but this was my experiance.Things were always more chaotic at BP facilities,safety was an afterthought to daily progress and these regulatory agencys were never in sight. OSHA or EPA or whatever was never on anyones mind. Total Joke. I worked in the plants from 2001 till 2007, maybe shits different know but I kinda doubt it.

I really feel bad for those proud coon asses and everyone else down on the gulf.

 

[Beaman]

It just needs to be shut off now.....Hindsight is 20/20. Sure there are some fuckers who should pay, but it demonstrates how much on the edge the whole world is in regards to getting enough oil and even power on a daily basis. Bottom line: plug the damned hole or divert the well (Way easier said than done).

 

[Nick Morey]

An interesting side note here. Grand Isle, VT sort of adopted Grand Isle County in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, sending those people supplies and volunteers to help with the clean up.

Recently, these Vermonters got in touch with Grand Isle County again, asking them what they could do to help with their new plight. They were told to send nothing or nobody, only well wishes. It seems for legal purposes they are bound to receive help only from BP.

Imagine that, they can't even accept help from do gooders, they're totally at the mercy of BP, or the government's "independent 3rd party". I suppose the law is the law, but some things just make no sense!

 

[KingBear]

Sorry to revive this old thread, but there are very few things better than being proven right. Actually, there's nothing better than being proven right.

On the Surface, Gulf Oil Spill Is Vanishing Fast; Concerns Stay
By Justin Gillis and Campbell Robertson
The New York Times
July 27, 2010

The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected, a piece of good news that raises tricky new questions about how fast the government should scale back its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The immense patches of surface oil that covered thousands of square miles of the gulf after the April 20 oil rig explosion are largely gone, though sightings of tar balls and emulsified oil continue here and there.

Reporters flying over the area Sunday spotted only a few patches of sheen and an occasional streak of thicker oil, and radar images taken since then suggest that these few remaining patches are quickly breaking down in the warm surface waters of the gulf.

John Amos, president of SkyTruth, an environmental advocacy group that sharply criticized the early, low estimates of the size of the BP leak, noted that no oil had gushed from the well for nearly two weeks.

“Oil has a finite life span at the surface,” Mr. Amos said Tuesday, after examining fresh radar images of the slick. “At this point, that oil slick is really starting to dissipate pretty rapidly.”

The dissolution of the slick should reduce the risk of oil killing more animals or hitting shorelines. But it does not end the many problems and scientific uncertainties associated with the spill, and federal leaders emphasized this week that they had no intention of walking away from those problems any time soon.

The effect on sea life of the large amounts of oil that dissolved below the surface is still a mystery. Two preliminary government reports on that issue have found concentrations of toxic compounds in the deep sea to be low, but the reports left many questions, especially regarding an apparent decline in oxygen levels in the water.

And understanding the effects of the spill on the shorelines that were hit, including Louisiana’s coastal marshes, is expected to occupy scientists for years. Fishermen along the coast are deeply skeptical of any declarations of success, expressing concern about the long-term effects of the chemical dispersants used to combat the spill and of the submerged oil, particularly on shrimp and crab larvae that are the foundation of future fishing seasons.

After 86 days of oil gushing into the gulf, the leak was finally stopped on July 15, when BP managed to install a tight-fitting cap on the well a mile below the sea floor, then gradually closed a series of valves. Still, the well has not been permanently sealed. Until that step is completed in several weeks, the risk remains that the leak will resume.

Scientists said the rapid dissipation of the surface oil was probably due to a combination of factors. The gulf has an immense natural capacity to break down oil, which leaks into it at a steady rate from thousands of natural seeps. Though none of the seeps is anywhere near the size of the Deepwater Horizon leak, they do mean that the gulf is swarming with bacteria that can eat oil.

The winds from two storms that blew through the gulf in recent weeks, including a storm over the weekend that disintegrated before making landfall, also appear to have contributed to a rapid dispersion of the oil. Then there was the response mounted by BP and the government, the largest in history, involving more than 4,000 boats attacking the oil with skimming equipment, controlled surface burns and other tactics.

Some of the compounds in the oil evaporate, reducing their impact on the environment. Jeffrey W. Short, a former government scientist who studied oil spills and now works for the environmental advocacy group Oceana, said that as much as 40 percent of the oil in the gulf might have simply evaporated once it reached the surface.

An unknown percentage of the oil would have been eaten by bacteria, essentially rendering the compounds harmless and incorporating them into the food chain. But other components of the oil have most likely turned into floating tar balls that could continue to gum up beaches and marshes, and may represent a continuing threat to some sea life. A three-mile by four-mile band of tar balls was discovered off the Louisiana coast on Tuesday.

“Less oil on the surface does not mean that there isn’t oil beneath the surface, however, or that our beaches and marshes are not still at risk,” Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a briefing on Tuesday. “We are extremely concerned about the short-term and long-term impacts to the gulf ecosystem.”

Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who leads the government’s response, has emphasized that boats are still skimming some oil at the surface. Admiral Allen said the risk of shoreline oiling might continue for at least several more weeks.

“While we would all like to see the area come back as quickly as it can,” he said, “I think we all need to understand that we, at least in the history of this country, we’ve never put this much oil into the water. And we need to take this very seriously.”

Still, it is becoming clear that the Obama administration, in conjunction with BP, will soon have to make decisions about how quickly to begin scaling down the large-scale — and expensive — response effort. That is a touchy issue, and not just for environmental reasons.

The response itself has become the principal livelihood for thousands of fishermen and other workers whose lives were upended by the oil spill. More than 1,400 fishing boats and other vessels have been hired to help deploy coastal barriers and perform other cleanup tasks. Those fishermen are unconvinced that the gradual disappearance of oil on the surface means they will be able to return to work soon.

“Surface is one thing; you know that’s going to dissipate and all,” said Mickey Johnson, who owns a shrimp boat in Bayou La Batre, Ala., pointing out that shrimpers trawl near the sea floor.

“Our whole big concern has always been the bottom,” Mr. Johnson said.

The scientific picture of what has happened at the bottom of the gulf remains murky, though Dr. Lubchenco said in Tuesday’s briefing that federal scientists had determined that the oil was primarily in the water column and not sitting on the sea floor.

States have been pushing the federal authorities to move quickly to reopen gulf waters to commercial fishing; through most of the spill, about a third of the United States part of the gulf has been closed. The Food and Drug Administration is trying to speed its testing, while promising continued diligence to be sure no tainted seafood gets to market.

Even if the seafood of the gulf is deemed safe by the authorities, resistance to buying it may linger among the public, an uncertainty that defies measurement and is on the minds of residents along the entire Gulf Coast.

“How do we get people to buy our food again?” Mr. Johnson asked.

While leaders on the Gulf Coast would welcome moves by the federal government that could put residents back to work, they are also wary of any premature declaration of victory. Officials in Grand Isle, La., met with the Coast Guard after the well had been capped to insist that no response equipment be removed until six weeks had passed.

Rear Adm. Paul F. Zukunft of the Coast Guard, coordinator of the response on the scene, said any decisions about scaling down the effort would be made only by consensus, and only after an analysis of the continuing threat from oil in each region of the gulf.

“I think it’s going to happen one day at a time,” Admiral Zukunft said.

Yes there is still work to be done, and yes it will take time for lives and businesses to recover. But it appears the worst is over, so how about we show a little forgiveness and move on with our lives.