I wish I lived in Norway

[stilltrucking]

BP also chose not to implement a Automatic Shutoff Valve even though the Governments of Norway and the UK require that device when BP operates in those jurisdictions

Reply
EdwardTeller April 29th, 2010 at 1:49 pm 30
In response to librty @ 29
standard practice should be three emergency shutoff valves, separated by at least 200 feet of pipe.


http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/44083

[stilltrucking]

Deepwater Horizon well lacked $500,000 shut off valve safeguard required in almost every country except U.S.


Rigs in Norway and Brazil are equipped with the remote-control devices, which can trigger the blowout preventers from a lifeboat in the event the electric cables connecting the valves to the drilling rig are damaged.

While U.S. regulators have called the acoustic switches unreliable and prone, in the past, to cause unnecessary shut-downs, Inger Anda, a spokeswoman for Norway's Petroleum Safety Authority, said the switches have a good track record in the North Sea. "It's been seen as the most successful and effective option," she said.

The manufacturers of the equipment, including Kongsberg Maritime AS, Sonardyne Ltd. and Nautronix PLC, say their equipment has improved significantly over the past decade.

The Brazilian government began urging the use of the remote-control equipment in 2007, after an extensive overhaul of its safety rules following a fire aboard an oil platform killed 11 people, said Raphael Moura, head of safety division at Brazil's National Petroleum Agency. "Our concern is both safety and the environment," he said.

http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot ... acked.html

[stilltrucking]

Obama has halted any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent another disaster.

Estimated six billion gallons of oil in that well. Estimated spilled so far anywhere from two million to four million gallons.

Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons.

I could use some good news.

[stilltrucking]

BP didn't need a back up system because nothing can go wrong.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair. —Douglas Adams

Oil spill containment structure faces problems
By Steven Mufson
Saturday, May 8, 2010; 4:04 PM

After running into obstacles, BP has set aside a containment box it hoped would contain most of the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.

[constantine]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5hUPvc16pY

[constantine]

made me think of you, boss!

[stilltrucking]

Thanks for thinking of me Dino
I liked that song.

Reminds me of the murder of the college girl at the University of Virginia.

I been thinking about going to law school.
Lawyers are interesting.

The defense lawyer said her death was a tragic accident. He accidently kicked her door in, accidently pounded her head into the wall till she was dead and then then accidently took her computer with all the incriminating emails and disposed of it.

Oh well I almost accidently strangled my mother after John F Kennedy's murder. Amazing grace that saved me from suicide by matricide.

[constantine]

listening to stephane grappelli and django reinhardt. i like those guys. i think about you often, jack. school's going very well. i've maintained a 4.0 gpa through 3 quarters at uc. it's a good environment - one that i think would appeal to you. you'll make the kids look like pikers - which are what they are, jack - let's be honest! i always thought that you would go back for philosophy.

[stilltrucking]

I want to be a poet
Thinking about poor Gustav Hasford tonight.

I want to learn how to dance.

"Doctor say I live five years if I take my time"

We are all still kids I think.

Thanks for the poetry Constantine

Trains come and go
and tomorrow is mother's day

I might get stoned

I need to get out and do something.

Maybe I will take an English course.

"Philosophy is a smile on a dog"
I think about Heidegger the Nazi. How the hell can anyone take him serious. Yet he is considered a great philosopher.

trains come and go here all the time
so do my thoughts.

[stilltrucking]

Government fears Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher…..

"The following is not public," reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response document dated April 28. "Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought."

Kalki1
06.05.10 7:20 am
Extract..A confidential government report on the unfolding spill disaster in the Gulf makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf.
“The following is not public,” reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Emergency Response document dated April 28. “Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought.”

Asked Friday to comment on the document, NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said that the additional leaks described were reported to the public late Wednesday night. Regarding the possibility of the spill becoming an order of magnitude larger, Smullen said, “I’m letting the document you have speak for itself.”

In scientific circles, an order of magnitude means something is 10 times larger. In this case, an order of magnitude higher would mean the volume of oil coming from the well could be 10 times higher than the 5,000 barrels a day coming out now. That would mean 50,000 barrels a day, or 2.1 million gallons a day. It appears the new leaks mentioned in the Wednesday release are the leaks reported to the public late Wednesday night.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration video, shot as officials coordinated response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, shows that federal officials almost immediately worried that the oil well could leak up to 110,000 barrels per day, or 4.6 million gallons.


The high end of the estimate, 110,000 barrels, is about 4.6 million gallons. At that spill rate, 32 million gallons of oil would enter the Gulf every week. By comparison, the entire Exxon Valdez spill was about 11 million gallons.

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/04/deepwat ... _memo.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-2 ... 91695.html

[stilltrucking]

"Is that all there is?"

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[constantine]

let's break out the booze and have a ball! i used to live in norway, but i couldn't a fjord it.

[stilltrucking]

I am still laughing
thanks I needed that

But I have decided that I am fortunate to live in Texas. I heard there ain't no God in Norway.

We sure got one in Texas

Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) claimed on Monday that the oil rig explosion that caused a massive -- and still-expanding spill -- may have been "just an act of God" that could not have been prevented.

BP: “This was not our accident”

Speaking on the BBC yesterday, Hayward said: “This was not our accident … This was not our drilling rig. This was not our equipment. It was not our people, our systems or our processes. This was Transocean’s rig. Their systems. Their people. Their equipment.”

But evidence suggests otherwise

· We already know that a key remote control acoustic safety device was not being used on the rig;

· We know that BP “ spent years battling federal regulators over how many layers of safeguards would be needed to prevent a deepwater well from this type of accident”.

· In a letter sent last year to the Department of the Interior, BP objected to what it called “extensive, prescriptive regulations” proposed in new rules to toughen safety standards. “We believe industry’s current safety and environmental statistics demonstrate that the voluntary programs … continue to be very successful.”

But this was not the only crucial equipment that was missing:

· One BP worker has now said the company had chosen not to install another deep-water valve that would have been placed about 200 feet under the sea floor, which could have acted as a blowout preventer.

· One worker who was on the oil rig at the time of the explosion has said the rig had been drilling deeper than 22,000 feet, even though the company’s federal permit allowed it to go only 18,000 to 20,000 feet deep, although this is denied by BP.

http://priceofoil.org/2010/05/04/bp-%e2 ... %e2%80%9d/

[mnaz]

more greed and negligence. sick of it, really.

love the edie brickell reference, btw...

what nuts this place is.

[stilltrucking]

I feel like a rubber necker. One of those people who slow down on the interstate every time they see a wreck. I get so fascinated by one disaster after another courtesy of the Bush administration. I wonder what happened to tonyc? Remember his sense of outrage? What the hell is wrong with me? I just stand and shake my head. Where is my outrage?

Check this out if you get a chance. The MMS, an agency none have heard of. The same agency that also brought us the death of 29 coal miners in West Virginia last month

<center>____________________________________________________</center>



Sex & Drugs & the Spill
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: May 9, 2010


“Obama’s Katrina”: that was the line from some pundits and news sources, as they tried to blame the current administration for the gulf oil spill. It was nonsense, of course. An Associated Press review of the Obama administration’s actions and statements as the disaster unfolded found “little resemblance” to the shambolic response to Katrina — and there has been nothing like those awful days when everyone in the world except the Bush inner circle seemed aware of the human catastrophe in New Orleans.

Yet there is a common thread running through Katrina and the gulf spill — namely, the collapse in government competence and effectiveness that took place during the Bush years.

Yet there is a common thread running through Katrina and the gulf spill — namely, the collapse in government competence and effectiveness that took place during the Bush years.

The full story of the Deepwater Horizon blowout is still emerging. But it’s already obvious both that BP failed to take adequate precautions, and that federal regulators made no effort to ensure that such precautions were taken.

For years, the Minerals Management Service, the arm of the Interior Department that oversees drilling in the gulf, minimized the environmental risks of drilling. It failed to require a backup shutdown system that is standard in much of the rest of the world, even though its own staff declared such a system necessary. It exempted many offshore drillers from the requirement that they file plans to deal with major oil spills. And it specifically allowed BP to drill Deepwater Horizon without a detailed environmental analysis.

Surely, however, none of this — except, possibly, that last exemption, granted early in the Obama administration — surprises anyone who followed the history of the Interior Department during the Bush years.

For the Bush administration was, to a large degree, run by and for the extractive industries — and I’m not just talking about Dick Cheney’s energy task force. Crucially, management of Interior was turned over to lobbyists, most notably J. Steven Griles, a coal-industry lobbyist who became deputy secretary and effectively ran the department. (In 2007 Mr. Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his ties to Jack Abramoff.)

Given this history, it’s not surprising that the Minerals Management Service became subservient to the oil industry — although what actually happened is almost too lurid to believe. According to reports by Interior’s inspector general, abuses at the agency went beyond undue influence: there was “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” — cocaine, sexual relationships with industry representatives, and more. Protecting the environment was presumably the last thing on these government employees’ minds.

Now, President Obama isn’t completely innocent of blame in the current spill. As I said, BP received an environmental waiver for Deepwater Horizon after Mr. Obama took office. It’s true that he’d only been in the White House for two and half months, and the Senate wouldn’t confirm the new head of the Minerals Management Service until four months later. But the fact that the administration hadn’t yet had time to put its stamp on the agency should have led to extra caution about giving the go-ahead to projects with possible environmental risks.

And it’s worth noting that environmentalists were bitterly disappointed when Mr. Obama chose Ken Salazar as secretary of the interior. They feared that he would be too friendly to mineral and agricultural interests, that his appointment meant that there wouldn’t be a sharp break with Bush-era policies — and in this one instance at least, they seem to have been right.

In any case, now is the time to make that break — and I don’t just mean by cleaning house at the Minerals Management Service. What really needs to change is our whole attitude toward government. For the troubles at Interior weren’t unique: they were part of a broader pattern that includes the failure of banking regulation and the transformation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a much-admired organization during the Clinton years, into a cruel joke. And the common theme in all these stories is the degradation of effective government by antigovernment ideology.

Mr. Obama understands this: he gave an especially eloquent defense of government at the University of Michigan’s commencement, declaring among other things that “government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that caused them.”

Yet antigovernment ideology remains all too prevalent, despite the havoc it has wrought. In fact, it has been making a comeback with the rise of the Tea Party movement. If there’s any silver lining to the disaster in the gulf, it is that it may serve as a wake-up call, a reminder that we need politicians who believe in good government, because there are some jobs only the government can do.

NYTIMESdotcom