not sure why they couldn't use some sort of telescoping expansion bellows to reach into the pipe and plug the hole? There are pressure issues, I know, so it would have to be mechanical vs. inflatable, perhaps some type of cylindrical expansion joint that swells when wet / oily?
Seems like the pipe, while horizontal, has a relatively intact inside that would hold a plug.
i did see the guy advocating for explosives...seemed nuts.
they could have built a submarine / compression fitting by now - could have swam into place and locked-on.
Amazing we can take photos of solar systems 600 light years away, but can't cap a pipe a mile away?
idiots.
It's also amazing there is no engineered protocol for fixing a leak in the pipe. I mean, when you design a pipe, you also design a way to fix its leak, don't you? Especially when it contains hazardous materials... beneath the ocean... what is wrong with people and why has the car become the worst invention of mankind!!
are they going to compensate all the lost wages for people that are directly affected by this whole mess. Accidents do happen but their response is ridiculous...
"why is BP not completely protested and boycotted?"
Well, to be honest, BP is not really to blame. The way that these things work is you have companies who drill, companies who pump et cetera.
The reason many of these smaller companies don't move the oil themselves is that they lack the infrastructure to process the oil into anything of market importance.
Considering the US has maybe built 3 or 4 refineries (and those were expansions of existing facilities) in the last 3 decades. In addition to the cost of shipping and the limited access to refining, many of these smaller companies don't have much to offer in terms of competition.
Ideally, that's the problem here is monopolization of infrastructure and contracting liability by utilizing smaller companies.
The company (Transocean) BP was paying is ultimately the one to blame.
But that's sort of the game here is that big oil companies contract with many small companies to spread out their debt and liability load. Of course, anyone can pump, discover or prospect for oil... but you can't do much with it!
crazy how we can go to war for oil in the middle east and lose soldiers but now there's a big ass oil leak and no one is doing shit about it...... how hard is it to fix a leak?....might be time to riot the BP gas stations...just saying
I think the BBC reported a couple of days ago that the miltiary has been asked to dispatch nuke and heavily explosives experts to the site to see if blowing it up is a viable alternative. I think everybody is waiting to see if the top kill works. If it doesn't, my suspicion is that we're going see some type of escalation in in the War on A Big Hole in the Crust
okay, I submitted my solution to BP - I wish I had two weeks ago....I think it will work.
Anyway - here's a link to a submittal form....certainly an architect can think of something: http://www.horizonedocs.com/artform.php
The gulf exhibits two unique qualities only really found in the gulf.
Hypersalinity:
I'm not sure if you can make this out. But those are lakes. Yes, lakes on the bottom of the ocean.[/img] They are concentrations of hypersaline solutions mixed with methane and other volatiles. Because of the unique geography of the Gulf of Mexico (lacking major fault lines, being essentially a giant pan, rather shallow slops, presence of oil), these formations are plentiful in the gulf.
The first is more or less dependent on the second.
Cold seeps are found in abundance in and around hypersaline lakes (also known as brine pools) and vice versa.
Areas like cold seeps contain pretty widespread deposits of icy crystalline methane (methane hydrate). So, in areas that have significant abundance of petroleum tend to have a significant abundance of methane hydrates.
This methane hydrate stays relatively stable at the depth, temperature and pressure found at 5000' below. When you start to muck that up, that pressure equilibrium leads to not so pleasant results.
And on top of that, the methane hydrates in the water are the tip of the gassy iceberg. The mud, sand, rocks and pretty much everything on the bottom of the Gulf is coated in methane hydrate crystals. On the underside of rocks and in the mud itself, this methane ice can be inches or even feet thick.
A one inch chuck of methane hydrate ice can expand up to [b]164 cubic inches of gas instantaneously.
So our problems? A thick layer of explosive muck (that's potentially all hells of poisonous) sits underneath a layer of hypersaline water. That hypersaline water is so dense that most submarines and vehicles are not dense enough to move through it. Then we have an abundance of rocks, tube worms and animals that live on or near giant chucks of explosive ice. And then ontop of that, we have water that's also explosive.
Not to mention, this lovely fun fest of pressure and explosion is 1 mile underneath the water-- where the water exerts a force of 1 ton per square inch. Most modern tools and machinery do not operate very well at such pressures (about 160 atmospheres).
This is kind of why deepwater drilling is a big issue.
It is kinda absurd there are no solutions ready to go in a failure like this.
Not sure how the blame game will go, it looks like it was decisions made on a rig that caused it. Transocean filled for a limit of liability a few weeks ago, although looks like it was turned down and they were scolded. Stock was up today, though!
No excuse not to have some solution ready to go, trial and error this far in is just absurd. I do hope that the oil companies have to pay into some kind of fund for research and development of solutions.
I'm not sure if you can make this out. But those are lakes. Yes, lakes on the bottom of the ocean.[/b] They are concentrations of hypersaline solutions mixed with methane and other volatiles. Because of the unique geography of the Gulf of Mexico (lacking major fault lines, being essentially a giant pan, rather shallow slops, presence of oil), these formations are plentiful in the gulf.
The first is more or less dependent on the second.
Cold seeps are found in abundance in and around hypersaline lakes (also known as brine pools) and vice versa.
Areas like cold seeps contain pretty widespread deposits of icy crystalline methane (methane hydrate). So, in areas that have significant abundance of petroleum tend to have a significant abundance of methane hydrates.
This methane hydrate stays relatively stable at the depth, temperature and pressure found at 5000' below. When you start to muck that up, that pressure equilibrium leads to not so pleasant results.
And on top of that, the methane hydrates in the water are the tip of the gassy iceberg. The mud, sand, rocks and pretty much everything on the bottom of the Gulf is coated in methane hydrate crystals. On the underside of rocks and in the mud itself, this methane ice can be inches or even feet thick.
A one inch chuck of methane hydrate ice can expand up to 164 cubic inches of gas instantaneously.
So our problems? A thick layer of explosive muck (that's potentially all hells of poisonous) sits underneath a layer of hypersaline water. That hypersaline water is so dense that most submarines and vehicles are not dense enough to move through it. Then we have an abundance of rocks, tube worms and animals that live on or near giant chucks of explosive ice. And then ontop of that, we have water that's also explosive.
Not to mention, this lovely fun fest of pressure and explosion is 1 mile underneath the water-- where the water exerts a force of 1 ton per square inch. Most modern tools and machinery do not operate very well at such pressures (about 160 atmospheres).
This is kind of why deepwater drilling is a big issue.
I've acquiesced to the idea that this leak will flow until 2012, and then someone will shoot a flare into the slick, setting off the biblical conflagration that ends civilization as we know it....
These fucking idiots can build an oceanic death star that drills several miles through the sea and into the earth, but they cant build a fucking remote-controlled cork.
Well, as others have mentioned, the kind of pressures theyre dealing with are well outside any of our engineering experience. I dont have much doubt these guys are doing anything and everything imaginable to stop the leak itself. Theres still some ambiguity whether the top kill is actually working, but it does look *cross-fingers* like there could be some progress.
What really pisses me off is actually whats happening outside the well. Obama is frankly terrifying right now. Ken Salazar should be fucking fired. There should have been 10,000 coast guard and national guard troops raking oil off those beaches and a dozen supertankers weaving the gulf sucking up oil for two weeks now. Bobby Jindal should want for nothing on this. The dispersants are a fucking con. I have little doubt all theyre really meant to do is get the oil away from the cameras, and in the end the total destruction of the water-column and sea-floor will drive ecosystem collapses 10 times more devastating than sucking it off the surface. There should be no ambiguity whatsoever that the federal government is in charge, that BP works for us now, and we'll send them a bill at the end for whatever we damned well please. How James Inhofe can stand up there and block removing liability caps while the way of life of 4 states drowns in toxic ooze without being chased out of congress with pitchforks is beyond comprehension for me.
Im glad Obama seems to be waking up, finally. But this has been more than a month now. Where the fuck have you been?? Why in gods name are you fundraising in california and giving interviews on Lebron fucking James?? I was quick to say the Katrina comparisons were insane a few weeks ago, but to look at it now, I'll be honest, Im losing faith.
This is the greatest man-made disaster (to nature) in human history.
Seriously....WHY DISPERSE IT! Isn't it better-off in a slag than evenly distributed throughout the entire fucking gulf? The dispersant chemicals are worse for the environment than oil....wtf.
what's obama really going to do about it though? yeah, he can be vocal project an "image of leadership" but at the end of the day, despite bp's negligence, they really are the drilling experts. this is a really hard problem to solve, probably harder than securing order in new orleans after katrina, and the gov't doesn't really know anything about plugging holes on the ocean floor.
in fact, apparently nobody does, and they have obviously been trying to invent an entirely new discipline of engineering, and tasked to master it as quickly as possible. the soviets apparently had a natural gas well explode on land and it took them three years to figure out how to stop it. and the oil slick on the surface quickly grew to way beyond the capacity of what anyone could control. what this underscores for me is just how much the oil companies are playing with fire because they have absolutely no idea how to deal with an accident of this magnitude, which could probably happen again. this is a company that was taking suggestions from the public about what to do.
if there's anything obama can do, it would be to force oil companies to learn from this accident and put the infrastructure in place to deal with it, and block new oil drilling off the coast until it's there, or forever. i'm sure he's gotten plenty of reassurance from bp and transocean that they would take care of the problem in the past month, and they just haven't. it also underscores the obnoxiousness of "drill baby drill."
to be honest, i'm glad this happened. it takes a total disaster of enormous magnitute for people to realize how stupid they are. arguably, the environment will be much safer after this is over, and after people have hopefully second-guessed their rediculous love of oil. i don't think we'll ever hear people chanting "drill baby drill" again.
it's in BP's best interest to fix this crisis ASAP, being a PR nightmare and all. unfortunately there's not a lot gov't/obama can do, so finger pointing either way is just a political tactic.
I mean totally, the specific engineering problem at the wellhead isnt something you need 20 surgeons around 1 patient on. But what about all the oil thats already washing around the gulf? Is it even possible to put enough resources on that? The president has some pretty broad powers in an emergency like this. Theyve got national guard, navy, coast guard. The whole commercial fishing fleet on the gulf is itching for stuff to do. They can commandeer tankers and crews and equipment if need be from other companies and just send BP the bill after. FEMA should be there dolling out 50,000 hazmat suits by now and you shouldnt be able to point a camera anywhere at the coast of Louisiana without seeing people working.
My theory on the lack of response/outrage from Obama/Congress/the govt in general is that they fear talking it up too much as a disaster or coming down too hard on BP would drive gas prices up. In the immediate aftermath of the initial explosion prices moved close to or above the $3 mark but have since come back down. I think the prospect of $3 - $4 gas in an already very fragile economy scares the crap out of the politicians.
As for boycotting BP, most of the filling stations are individually owned franchises and the supplies for those stations comes from third party distributors who aren't necessarily affiliated with the station's brand name. The brand name sign on a filling station is often just that and little more. So boycotting filling stations is going to hurt the individual owner, the cashier, the local distributor, the delivery tanker driver, etc. more than it would ever hurt BP. Beyond filling stations, the individual consumer doesn't really have any other interface with the oil industry. Selling any stock you have in BP would probably be the most effective means to boycott.
In the end, it's going to take more tangible images and effects than we've felt thus far to make people understand and get angry about the enormity of this disaster. Oil's going to have to wash ashore, seafood's going to have to skyrocket in price or disappear from menus altogether, and cruising and vacationing spots are going to have to be damaged. It seems all but certain all of that will happen this summer.
well i think that with regard to the response to the disaster, those are good points. i agree with you that obama hasn't done absolutely everything he can.
I honestly don't really care anymore. Let the shit leak forever.
To be honest, we really haven't made very strides to reduce our own dependence on oil and any attempt to build a decent neighborhood or city block is usually diluted beyond point.
I say we let the remaining 40 million barrels leak into the gulf-- it'll end up in Europe in 4 months anyways.
Operation Top Kill looks like a complete fucking failure...now leaking 4 separate plumes from a hardened blob of mudcrete.
Better get a deep-sea jack hammer down there to break-up the blob and jam something into the cleanly severed pipe you had to work with before this. Fucking idiots.
as bp states on the live feed Throughout the extended top kill procedure – which may take up to two days to complete - very significant changes in the appearance of the flows at the seabed may be expected. These will not provide a reliable indicator of the overall progress, or success or failure, of the top kill operation as a whole. BP will report on the progress of the operation as appropriate and on its outcome when complete.
I know....but after the pipe-end is buried, are they just going to leave this pipe laying there? or are they going to disconnect it again upstream? A relief well will help, but the crust is still penetrated.
I guess as long as the oil stops it's progress. This whole thing has me sick...
When you make a mess at home and you aren't able to clean it up, there is an answer. In this case BP (or whoever they are paying for this pipeline) is pretty much using the same logic....
"let's just throw an area rug down there, when the neighbors come over they won't see a thing."
i hate to say it, but if there's a small area of seabed that is contaminated 1 mile beneath the vastness of the ocean that covers 75% of the earth, i could care less as long as they stop the gusher. another million years and it will be buried under 1000 feet of sediment.
Funny how they will wait till the weekend to tell us that it didn't work... by then the markets will be closed and their stocks wont take a dive. This is why the government should take this mess over!
As far as the lack of response to this (by the general public, not the administration, which is just mind boggling after Katrina)...it's guilt, plain and simple. We're hooked on the fucking stuff, we need it, we need it in our cars, to heat our homes, to get our food to the stores. We're all addicts now, and does a heroin addict question the damage that the growing and dealing of his drug wreaks? No, he just wants the stuff, please, just give me the stuff.
oh darn, I have illegal mexican immigrants following me around Archinect. I'm flattered to be your preoccupation.
If you spent as much time pursuing a legal pathway to citizenship, as you do here, you'd agree with me by now.
Go away - this thread is oily enough.
Geertrude had a deadbeat illegal alien mexican father who he never met and who abused his mom while molesting his sister. Really sad story that made poor Geert a Klan reject even with his blue eyes from the mother's side.
well... sorry to interrupt the important task of berating the haplessly pathetic closet illegal Geert Rude, but it looks like the Top Kill attempt has failed
Top Kill
Anyone else watching and waiting for the gulf to implode?
it's like the reverse augustus gloop in slo-mo.
good job, BP... good job!
not sure why they couldn't use some sort of telescoping expansion bellows to reach into the pipe and plug the hole? There are pressure issues, I know, so it would have to be mechanical vs. inflatable, perhaps some type of cylindrical expansion joint that swells when wet / oily?
Seems like the pipe, while horizontal, has a relatively intact inside that would hold a plug.
Russians used nuclear weapons to stop leaks before...
why is BP not completely protested and boycotted? It seems like more people are blaming Obama than BP...
i did see the guy advocating for explosives...seemed nuts.
they could have built a submarine / compression fitting by now - could have swam into place and locked-on.
Amazing we can take photos of solar systems 600 light years away, but can't cap a pipe a mile away?
idiots.
It's also amazing there is no engineered protocol for fixing a leak in the pipe. I mean, when you design a pipe, you also design a way to fix its leak, don't you? Especially when it contains hazardous materials... beneath the ocean... what is wrong with people and why has the car become the worst invention of mankind!!
are they going to compensate all the lost wages for people that are directly affected by this whole mess. Accidents do happen but their response is ridiculous...
I was watching the feed and there was a huge Plume a few minutes ago, it went blank, and now the pipe looks distorted and partially buried...wtf?
This whole debackle is outrageous minus the outrage. Where are the environmentalists?
This country is so fundamentally divided that we can't even find common ground on an issue which is literally about the destruction of common ground.
Now the issue and my opinions of it are as murky as the Gulf itself:
-BP should have had counter measures in place a long time ago.
-The govt should have had tighter regulations in place.
-BP should be sentenced to the corporate death penalty.
-Free Market Capitalism does NOT always have the best interest of the general public and their health, safety, and well-being in mind.
-Corporate capitalism sometimes means screwing the greater number of the general population in turn for risky short term profits.
**debacle
"why is BP not completely protested and boycotted?"
Well, to be honest, BP is not really to blame. The way that these things work is you have companies who drill, companies who pump et cetera.
The reason many of these smaller companies don't move the oil themselves is that they lack the infrastructure to process the oil into anything of market importance.
Considering the US has maybe built 3 or 4 refineries (and those were expansions of existing facilities) in the last 3 decades. In addition to the cost of shipping and the limited access to refining, many of these smaller companies don't have much to offer in terms of competition.
Ideally, that's the problem here is monopolization of infrastructure and contracting liability by utilizing smaller companies.
The company (Transocean) BP was paying is ultimately the one to blame.
But that's sort of the game here is that big oil companies contract with many small companies to spread out their debt and liability load. Of course, anyone can pump, discover or prospect for oil... but you can't do much with it!
I'm all for relaxing environmental laws on oil refineries.
I think if these started popping up in suburbs across the United States... people would really think twice about their dependence on oil!
crazy how we can go to war for oil in the middle east and lose soldiers but now there's a big ass oil leak and no one is doing shit about it...... how hard is it to fix a leak?....might be time to riot the BP gas stations...just saying
I think the BBC reported a couple of days ago that the miltiary has been asked to dispatch nuke and heavily explosives experts to the site to see if blowing it up is a viable alternative. I think everybody is waiting to see if the top kill works. If it doesn't, my suspicion is that we're going see some type of escalation in in the War on A Big Hole in the Crust
my fingers are crossed that it really is working and isn't just another BP hyperbole and understatement.
okay, I submitted my solution to BP - I wish I had two weeks ago....I think it will work.
Anyway - here's a link to a submittal form....certainly an architect can think of something:
http://www.horizonedocs.com/artform.php
"how hard is it to fix a leak?"
At this depth? Very.
The gulf exhibits two unique qualities only really found in the gulf.
Hypersalinity:
I'm not sure if you can make this out. But those are lakes. Yes, lakes on the bottom of the ocean.[/img] They are concentrations of hypersaline solutions mixed with methane and other volatiles. Because of the unique geography of the Gulf of Mexico (lacking major fault lines, being essentially a giant pan, rather shallow slops, presence of oil), these formations are plentiful in the gulf.
The first is more or less dependent on the second.
Cold seeps are found in abundance in and around hypersaline lakes (also known as brine pools) and vice versa.
Areas like cold seeps contain pretty widespread deposits of icy crystalline methane (methane hydrate). So, in areas that have significant abundance of petroleum tend to have a significant abundance of methane hydrates.
This methane hydrate stays relatively stable at the depth, temperature and pressure found at 5000' below. When you start to muck that up, that pressure equilibrium leads to not so pleasant results.
And on top of that, the methane hydrates in the water are the tip of the gassy iceberg. The mud, sand, rocks and pretty much everything on the bottom of the Gulf is coated in methane hydrate crystals. On the underside of rocks and in the mud itself, this methane ice can be inches or even feet thick.
A one inch chuck of methane hydrate ice can expand up to [b]164 cubic inches of gas instantaneously.
So our problems? A thick layer of explosive muck (that's potentially all hells of poisonous) sits underneath a layer of hypersaline water. That hypersaline water is so dense that most submarines and vehicles are not dense enough to move through it. Then we have an abundance of rocks, tube worms and animals that live on or near giant chucks of explosive ice. And then ontop of that, we have water that's also explosive.
Not to mention, this lovely fun fest of pressure and explosion is 1 mile underneath the water-- where the water exerts a force of 1 ton per square inch. Most modern tools and machinery do not operate very well at such pressures (about 160 atmospheres).
This is kind of why deepwater drilling is a big issue.
It is kinda absurd there are no solutions ready to go in a failure like this.
Not sure how the blame game will go, it looks like it was decisions made on a rig that caused it. Transocean filled for a limit of liability a few weeks ago, although looks like it was turned down and they were scolded. Stock was up today, though!
No excuse not to have some solution ready to go, trial and error this far in is just absurd. I do hope that the oil companies have to pay into some kind of fund for research and development of solutions.
I'm not sure if you can make this out. But those are lakes. Yes, lakes on the bottom of the ocean.[/b] They are concentrations of hypersaline solutions mixed with methane and other volatiles. Because of the unique geography of the Gulf of Mexico (lacking major fault lines, being essentially a giant pan, rather shallow slops, presence of oil), these formations are plentiful in the gulf.
The first is more or less dependent on the second.
Cold seeps are found in abundance in and around hypersaline lakes (also known as brine pools) and vice versa.
Areas like cold seeps contain pretty widespread deposits of icy crystalline methane (methane hydrate). So, in areas that have significant abundance of petroleum tend to have a significant abundance of methane hydrates.
This methane hydrate stays relatively stable at the depth, temperature and pressure found at 5000' below. When you start to muck that up, that pressure equilibrium leads to not so pleasant results.
And on top of that, the methane hydrates in the water are the tip of the gassy iceberg. The mud, sand, rocks and pretty much everything on the bottom of the Gulf is coated in methane hydrate crystals. On the underside of rocks and in the mud itself, this methane ice can be inches or even feet thick.
A one inch chuck of methane hydrate ice can expand up to 164 cubic inches of gas instantaneously.
So our problems? A thick layer of explosive muck (that's potentially all hells of poisonous) sits underneath a layer of hypersaline water. That hypersaline water is so dense that most submarines and vehicles are not dense enough to move through it. Then we have an abundance of rocks, tube worms and animals that live on or near giant chucks of explosive ice. And then ontop of that, we have water that's also explosive.
Not to mention, this lovely fun fest of pressure and explosion is 1 mile underneath the water-- where the water exerts a force of 1 ton per square inch. Most modern tools and machinery do not operate very well at such pressures (about 160 atmospheres).
This is kind of why deepwater drilling is a big issue.
UGH OH WELL.
methane hydrate bad... if ever released, they are a very potent greenhouse gas too.
There's already plans (once the tech is 'proven') to start dredging and pumping methane hydrate from the ocean floor.
Apparently, brine pools contain 'economically significant' amounts of a variety of elements.
lemme guess.. BP wants to do this, with help from Transocean and Halliburton. Boom.
lemme guess.. BP wants to do this, with help from Transocean and Halliburton. Boom.
I've acquiesced to the idea that this leak will flow until 2012, and then someone will shoot a flare into the slick, setting off the biblical conflagration that ends civilization as we know it....
These fucking idiots can build an oceanic death star that drills several miles through the sea and into the earth, but they cant build a fucking remote-controlled cork.
Well, as others have mentioned, the kind of pressures theyre dealing with are well outside any of our engineering experience. I dont have much doubt these guys are doing anything and everything imaginable to stop the leak itself. Theres still some ambiguity whether the top kill is actually working, but it does look *cross-fingers* like there could be some progress.
What really pisses me off is actually whats happening outside the well. Obama is frankly terrifying right now. Ken Salazar should be fucking fired. There should have been 10,000 coast guard and national guard troops raking oil off those beaches and a dozen supertankers weaving the gulf sucking up oil for two weeks now. Bobby Jindal should want for nothing on this. The dispersants are a fucking con. I have little doubt all theyre really meant to do is get the oil away from the cameras, and in the end the total destruction of the water-column and sea-floor will drive ecosystem collapses 10 times more devastating than sucking it off the surface. There should be no ambiguity whatsoever that the federal government is in charge, that BP works for us now, and we'll send them a bill at the end for whatever we damned well please. How James Inhofe can stand up there and block removing liability caps while the way of life of 4 states drowns in toxic ooze without being chased out of congress with pitchforks is beyond comprehension for me.
Im glad Obama seems to be waking up, finally. But this has been more than a month now. Where the fuck have you been?? Why in gods name are you fundraising in california and giving interviews on Lebron fucking James?? I was quick to say the Katrina comparisons were insane a few weeks ago, but to look at it now, I'll be honest, Im losing faith.
This is the greatest man-made disaster (to nature) in human history.
Seriously....WHY DISPERSE IT! Isn't it better-off in a slag than evenly distributed throughout the entire fucking gulf? The dispersant chemicals are worse for the environment than oil....wtf.
what's obama really going to do about it though? yeah, he can be vocal project an "image of leadership" but at the end of the day, despite bp's negligence, they really are the drilling experts. this is a really hard problem to solve, probably harder than securing order in new orleans after katrina, and the gov't doesn't really know anything about plugging holes on the ocean floor.
in fact, apparently nobody does, and they have obviously been trying to invent an entirely new discipline of engineering, and tasked to master it as quickly as possible. the soviets apparently had a natural gas well explode on land and it took them three years to figure out how to stop it. and the oil slick on the surface quickly grew to way beyond the capacity of what anyone could control. what this underscores for me is just how much the oil companies are playing with fire because they have absolutely no idea how to deal with an accident of this magnitude, which could probably happen again. this is a company that was taking suggestions from the public about what to do.
if there's anything obama can do, it would be to force oil companies to learn from this accident and put the infrastructure in place to deal with it, and block new oil drilling off the coast until it's there, or forever. i'm sure he's gotten plenty of reassurance from bp and transocean that they would take care of the problem in the past month, and they just haven't. it also underscores the obnoxiousness of "drill baby drill."
to be honest, i'm glad this happened. it takes a total disaster of enormous magnitute for people to realize how stupid they are. arguably, the environment will be much safer after this is over, and after people have hopefully second-guessed their rediculous love of oil. i don't think we'll ever hear people chanting "drill baby drill" again.
DRILL BABY DRILL !!
it's in BP's best interest to fix this crisis ASAP, being a PR nightmare and all. unfortunately there's not a lot gov't/obama can do, so finger pointing either way is just a political tactic.
Obama doesnt like Pelicans
haha^
I mean totally, the specific engineering problem at the wellhead isnt something you need 20 surgeons around 1 patient on. But what about all the oil thats already washing around the gulf? Is it even possible to put enough resources on that? The president has some pretty broad powers in an emergency like this. Theyve got national guard, navy, coast guard. The whole commercial fishing fleet on the gulf is itching for stuff to do. They can commandeer tankers and crews and equipment if need be from other companies and just send BP the bill after. FEMA should be there dolling out 50,000 hazmat suits by now and you shouldnt be able to point a camera anywhere at the coast of Louisiana without seeing people working.
My theory on the lack of response/outrage from Obama/Congress/the govt in general is that they fear talking it up too much as a disaster or coming down too hard on BP would drive gas prices up. In the immediate aftermath of the initial explosion prices moved close to or above the $3 mark but have since come back down. I think the prospect of $3 - $4 gas in an already very fragile economy scares the crap out of the politicians.
As for boycotting BP, most of the filling stations are individually owned franchises and the supplies for those stations comes from third party distributors who aren't necessarily affiliated with the station's brand name. The brand name sign on a filling station is often just that and little more. So boycotting filling stations is going to hurt the individual owner, the cashier, the local distributor, the delivery tanker driver, etc. more than it would ever hurt BP. Beyond filling stations, the individual consumer doesn't really have any other interface with the oil industry. Selling any stock you have in BP would probably be the most effective means to boycott.
In the end, it's going to take more tangible images and effects than we've felt thus far to make people understand and get angry about the enormity of this disaster. Oil's going to have to wash ashore, seafood's going to have to skyrocket in price or disappear from menus altogether, and cruising and vacationing spots are going to have to be damaged. It seems all but certain all of that will happen this summer.
well i think that with regard to the response to the disaster, those are good points. i agree with you that obama hasn't done absolutely everything he can.
I honestly don't really care anymore. Let the shit leak forever.
To be honest, we really haven't made very strides to reduce our own dependence on oil and any attempt to build a decent neighborhood or city block is usually diluted beyond point.
I say we let the remaining 40 million barrels leak into the gulf-- it'll end up in Europe in 4 months anyways.
Operation Top Kill looks like a complete fucking failure...now leaking 4 separate plumes from a hardened blob of mudcrete.
Better get a deep-sea jack hammer down there to break-up the blob and jam something into the cleanly severed pipe you had to work with before this. Fucking idiots.
don't contradictering yourself, geertrude.
as bp states on the live feed Throughout the extended top kill procedure – which may take up to two days to complete - very significant changes in the appearance of the flows at the seabed may be expected. These will not provide a reliable indicator of the overall progress, or success or failure, of the top kill operation as a whole. BP will report on the progress of the operation as appropriate and on its outcome when complete.
keep the faith !!
I know....but after the pipe-end is buried, are they just going to leave this pipe laying there? or are they going to disconnect it again upstream? A relief well will help, but the crust is still penetrated.
I guess as long as the oil stops it's progress. This whole thing has me sick...
When you make a mess at home and you aren't able to clean it up, there is an answer. In this case BP (or whoever they are paying for this pipeline) is pretty much using the same logic....
"let's just throw an area rug down there, when the neighbors come over they won't see a thing."
i hate to say it, but if there's a small area of seabed that is contaminated 1 mile beneath the vastness of the ocean that covers 75% of the earth, i could care less as long as they stop the gusher. another million years and it will be buried under 1000 feet of sediment.
just wait for the earthquakes/sink holes and volcanoes to start acting up..... mother nature is pissed off right now.....
Funny how they will wait till the weekend to tell us that it didn't work... by then the markets will be closed and their stocks wont take a dive. This is why the government should take this mess over!
As far as the lack of response to this (by the general public, not the administration, which is just mind boggling after Katrina)...it's guilt, plain and simple. We're hooked on the fucking stuff, we need it, we need it in our cars, to heat our homes, to get our food to the stores. We're all addicts now, and does a heroin addict question the damage that the growing and dealing of his drug wreaks? No, he just wants the stuff, please, just give me the stuff.
or
Gertrude probably thinks that illegal aliens from Mexico did it.
oh darn, I have illegal mexican immigrants following me around Archinect. I'm flattered to be your preoccupation.
If you spent as much time pursuing a legal pathway to citizenship, as you do here, you'd agree with me by now.
Go away - this thread is oily enough.
nope not an illegal Gert rude , just a person another person that thinks you are stupid.
so an illegal is not a person? That's a racist statement.
Geertrude had a deadbeat illegal alien mexican father who he never met and who abused his mom while molesting his sister. Really sad story that made poor Geert a Klan reject even with his blue eyes from the mother's side.
well... sorry to interrupt the important task of berating the haplessly pathetic closet illegal Geert Rude, but it looks like the Top Kill attempt has failed
http://www.businessinsider.com/top-kill-a-failure-oil-leaking-as-fast-as-ever-2010-5
Dunno what's next? Parallel hole? Nukes?
oh.. it looks like the next alternative may involve a robot!
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2919914320100529?type=marketsNews
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