A Sad Day for Pensacola

[Chuck Howard]

The oil has arrived on the beaches here. There are plans to put oil booms out across many of the local harbors and bayous that will restrict boat traffic. If you are planning to be in the area, be sure to check to make sure you will be able to get in and out.

Thanks British Petroleum #%@#&!!

[IdoraKeeper]

In my travels in the SE of USA I am hearing the the accident was not the result of depth and technological difficulty. I am hearing that it was the result of trying to keep a schedule and optimize profits. Anyone have knowlege?

[hummingway]

Migratory birds will be threatened, seafood prices go up, the US economy is going to suffer at a difficult time and a major corporation may collapse. Seeing BP take it on the nose may be satisfying but it will cause collatoral damage - jobs and investors.

I've heard it reported (CBC radio) that the Bush administration waived the permit requirement for adequate study of the project. I wonder if there will be consequences for them? The Obama administration seemed to feel that it was ok to let BP deal with the problem in the early going. I imagine their will be fallout for that. If the Bush administration was still n power we might see another war or terrorist target to distract the voters. Hopefully Obama won't reward my cynicism

Can we learn from this? Have we learned from the tar sands fiasco? Did we learn from Exxon Valdez? I'll give you a hint. They've already lifted the moratorium on drilling in the gulf. It is business as usual.

The precautionary principle:
http://www.research.utoronto.ca/behi...ico-oil-spill/

[RayW]

Just a heads up... if a hurricane hits with the oil still out there, you can expect all of the crops in the southeast to be ruined too. I doubt you can sell oil covered oranges, peaches, corn, cotton and what not.

[Alexei]

Originally Posted by IdoraKeeper

In my travels in the SE of USA I am hearing the the accident was not the result of depth and technological difficulty. I am hearing that it was the result of trying to keep a schedule and optimize profits. Anyone have knowlege?

Nope. Best theory so far is they hit a pocket of methane. As the gas rose up the pipe, it expanded rapidly, causing a rupture on the station. Then something caused a spark and the whole place went up.

Of course, we won't know anything for certain for a while, if ever. The immediate concern is figuring out how to stop it. Or at least it should be. Unfortunately we live in a sound bite society that expects every problem to bd done now now now, regardless of its complexity. So we're already seeing blame and finger-pointing, even from those who should know better (POTUS and the administration). It is WAY too early for investigations and criminal charges, but don't let good leadership or management principals get in the way of political points.

I know it's the fun and simple path to just blame it all on greed or some other nebulous thing like that, but sometimes stuff just happens in spite of people's best efforts. Until proof of negligence is shown, it is immature, irresponsible, and offensive (if not libelous) to presume guilt where there may be none.

[David_Old_Jersey]

Originally Posted by IdoraKeeper

In my travels in the SE of USA I am hearing the the accident was not the result of depth and technological difficulty. I am hearing that it was the result of trying to keep a schedule and optimize profits. Anyone have knowlege?

Errrrrr. That's their job isn't it?

Could make oil extraction environmentally 99.9999999% safe. Just cost USD 200+ for a litre of gas / petrol. Yer pays yer money..........

Just on a general point it's "BP" no longer "British Petroleum". Half the Board are US, more shareholders (by %) are US than from the UK and way more workers are US employees than in UK. Shares listed in London, Frankfurt, Paris and...........New York.

Head office is in the UK - at the moment............possibly fair to call BP an international company, but a bit of a stretch nowadays to call it a "British" company. If anything it's.............American

[pete33458]

Who cares who owns BP? I also could care less about how much fuel costs. When it becomes impossibly expensive we'll just have to adjust. Meantime, devastating and potentially irreversible damage is almost certain to occur all through the gulf, and everywhere the gulfstream travels.

If you really want to get p#ssed off at someone, try the US government. Federal regulations preclude you from volunteering to help directly with the cleanup unless you have OSHA Hazardous Materials training. Which is basically impossible to get, even if you can figure out what it is an who offers it. Unbelievable. Apparently they've never heard of a liability waiver. Unbelievable.

[hummingway]

Originally Posted by Alexei

I know it's the fun and simple path to just blame it all on greed or some other nebulous thing like that, but sometimes stuff just happens in spite of people's best efforts. Until proof of negligence is shown, it is immature, irresponsible, and offensive (if not libelous) to presume guilt where there may be none.

We can safely say they were drilling at depths where they hadn't worked out how to deal with a blowout. That's a pretty large example of neligence right there. We also know that BP has pled guilty to charges of fraud and environmental crimes twice over the last two years and the fines totaled over 730M. Do really think anyone was making a "best effort" here?

[roverhi]

BP and other oil service business are the only ones that have the knowledge, experience and equipment to deal with the well. The US and State Governments should be working on containing the oil and getting it mopped up. So far the US Government has done virtually nothing on the containment side except prevent everyone else from doing something. One examples is they didn't allow the CG to follow the Spill Protocol established back 1994 and try and burn off the surface oil while it was fresh, reasonably contained, and well at sea. The Fed's dithered for more than a week before giving the CG the go ahead to even try a small burn. By that time, the leak had spread over a large area and the winds changed which made burning an impossibility. The states have been trying to get the Corps of Engineers to issue dredging permits to try and stop the oil at the barrier islands. Once again, those in DC have prevented the Corps from issuing more than a few, hear it's only one, permit to do the dredging. There is a Hawaii based CG Buoy Tender that is set up to suck up surface oil, only last week was it ordered to make it's way to the Gulf, more than 30 days after the explosion on the rig. How many of these other assets have been sitting in their home port waiting for the call from DC??

It seems that the Obama administration is dithering while Louisiana is getting covered in goo. Don't know whether they are afraid that doing anything will leave some oil stuck to their feet or so afraid that they'll get a bad rap from the environmentalists that their feet are in cement.

We need all our resources working on containing and cleaning up the oil that has already and will continue to leak into the Gulf, not a bunch of lawyers running around trying to fix the blame for this catastrophe. There will be plenty of time in the future to figure out what happened. We shouldn't be wasting energy on that till this environmental disaster is put behind us. It's seems to be pathological with attorneys to try and affix blame not solve a problem. Don't worry about fixing a problem, just see who we can pin it on and, incidentally, pick up 33% of the award in the process.

FWIW, this is not yet the biggest oil 'spill' in the Gulf of Mexico. The IXTOC well blow out off the Mexican Gulf Coast in 1980 still holds the record. That well was not fully capped for 9 months and, IIRC, the flow wasn't even reduced for 6 months. The 'spill' fouled the coasts of Mexico and Texas. Seems Mother Earth is pretty good about cleaning up these assaults on her as almost no one seems to be aware that IXTOC ever happened. Strange that all we hear in the news that this is that this is possibly the biggest US oil spill. The News people are so intent in grabbing headlines to actually report a balanced story.

BTW, when are we going to stop hearing "Bush did it" for anything that the current administration doesn't want to claim credit for???

[Bloodhound]

This might interest some of you... It's a copy of an email I received from another Chem.E. in the oil industry and I offer it without comment...

http://adropofrain.net/2010/05/rumor...efore-blowout/

AlanfromBigEasy on May 14, 2010 – 3:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Story circulating in New Orleans

With appropriate caveats:

BP contracted Schlumberger (SLB) to run the Cement Bond Log (CBL) test that was the final test on the plug that was skipped. The people testifying have been very coy about mentioning this, and you’ll see why.

SLB is an extremely highly regarded (and incredibly expensive) service company. They place a high standard on safety and train their workers to shut down unsafe operations.

SLB gets out to the Deepwater Horizon to run the CBL, and they find the well stillkicking heavily [this means gassing], which it should not be that late in the operation. SLB orders the“company man” (BP’s man on the scene that runs the operation) to dump kill fluid down the well and shut-in the well. The company man refuses. SLB in the very next sentence asks for a helo to take all SLB personel back to shore. The company man says there are no more helo’s scheduled for the rest of the week (translation: you’re here to do a job, now do it). SLB gets on the horn to shore, calls SLB’s corporate HQ, and gets a helo flown out there at SLB’s expense and takes all SLB personel to shore.

6 hours later, the platform explodes.

Pick your jaw up off the floor now. No CBL was run after the pressure tests because thecontractor high-tailed it out of there. If this story is true, the company man (whosurvived) should go to jail for 11 counts of negligent homicide.

Alan
….
AlanfromBigEasy on May 14, 2010 – 8:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | [Parent subthread ] Comments top

This story did come from within the industry. I agreed to keep the source(s) confidential.

Alan

[DeepFrz]

BTW, when are we going to stop hearing "Bush did it" for anything that the current administration doesn't want to claim credit for???

Probably when all the Bush/Cheney **** is cleaned up, which could be a long time.

[roverhi]

The Schlumberger story may not be all that accurate. AFAIK, it was Dick Cheney and Haliburton who were responsible for that part of the well. Haven't heard Schlumberger mentioned with this disaster. Oh, just remembered, Cheney hasn't worked for Haliburton for more than a decade so I guess it's just Bush's fault.

[RedBellies]

As a native Floridian, I find the entire situation just sad. BP, the current administration, Transoceanic, Haliburton, who cares. A senior BP official apparently commented today that Louisiana is not the only place on earth where shrimp could be found. Basically, screw you, no one cares. We have met the enemy and he is... everyone.

The part I find laughable is the political game being played. "No excessive government regulation, no more government agencies, no government involvement, let the market dictate ITSELF and... what? Oil spill? Well what is the government doing about it???"

Cleaning up oil is not our governments job. If it were I'd be recalled and already down there doing it. The testing is currently being performed by private contractors like PPM, and as Pete stated, they are only hiring people with an OSHA card. Which I have. And they're paying less per hour than a landscaper makes and most of the samplers end up hospitalized. My life and my boat are worth more than 19 bucks an hour.

[RedBellies]

But if you have a boat and an OSHA card, have experience spotting and taking samples and want a job, I can point you in the right direction.

[positron]

http://moneycentral.msn.com/ownershi...ship&Symbol=BP

Look 'who' sold almost 50% of their shares before the spill. Though it looks like Bill Gates is making a bit of loss now (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Investment).