BP Oil Spill in the Gulf

[Steve Plonk]

The gulf stream protects our oysters & all we have to do is cultivate 'em & get 'em past that infernal oil spill. Is that a big "IF" or what? Inquiring minds want to know: when is the mess going to stop squirting into the sea?

Is there a speaker who knows the truth about the situation? I'd hate
to live near the gulf coast right now...I feel sorry for all the poor pelicans, geese, oysters, shrimp, and other aquatic animals. I'll bet there are
some sorry looking alligators, too...Hey, and let's not forget all the channel fish and the muskrats. It's worse than the "Exxon Valdez"!
I live far inland in Tennessee, but I have a heart. It's bleeding now...

Praying for all the poor fishermen & marine life now... We need to send BP a message... I think we need to start boycotting BP Oil until they get that oil well capped. Do you think a boycott would do any good? We have quite a few BP stations around here where I live. But they are not the only gas stations to we go to.

[stilltrucking]

BP exec says enviormental impact be 'very very modest'

[stilltrucking]

Some good news

"Oil Flow Is Stemmed, but Could Resume, Official Says"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 02x4401829

SpillCam live feed

[Steve Plonk]

The local paper here, in Chattanooga, quoting an AP article, has called this BP oil spill "the worst oil spill in U. S. history"...It is well above the spill from the "Exxon Valdez" and it is currently still spurting oil. (However, there was an oil spill off the coast of Mexico in the Gulf which was even worse than this one.)

No oil cap in sight yet... I am worried that it will foul the nests
of sandhill cranes & whooping cranes in Florida, if it keeps heading toward the Florida coast. I will quote more on the local articles later. They were
AP articles so they are probably in other large papers, too. See this article in the internet: link http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_15187813

[Steve Plonk]

Here's a liability update on the BP Gulf oil spill. See link: From May 7th--

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010 ... consequen/

In addition, here's a more recent link about the failure to cut the
pipe and "top kill" the well--June 2, 2010. See below.

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010 ... stuck-saw/

Last I heard on Chattanooga's Channel 12's 11pm news: June 3, 2010--
The BP crew has succeeded in getting the saw to work to cut through the pipe. The next step is to siphon the oil up a temporary pipe into a tanker, if they can fit it over the cut oil well pipe...that's my take on it.

[stilltrucking]

No the saw did not work they cut through with shears they put the cap on it and it might be working and it might not be working in the meantime after a month of sleep walking Obama has decided to make BP pay 350 million dollars to dredge sand and build some barrier islands off their coast. BP is in charge and you yanks can bloody well fuck off. We got all this military might and we can kill people from afar but we can't make one foreign company do the right thing. They can bring in super tankers with vacuum skimmers to pick up the oil instead using a million gallons so far of toxic dispersant to break it up and make things worse.

Check this out

In an interview with FastCompany.com, Hofmeister explained that a little-known Saudi oil spill from an offshore platform in the early 1990s dumped more crude into the sea than any spill in U.S. history (think hundreds of millions of gallons). But the government and local press kept it quiet. And that's why one of the big fixes in the Saudi oil spill--the oil-skimming supertanker--hasn't been publicized.

Pozzi saw the technique used in the Middle East, where it recovered 85% of the oil from the Saudi spill. And he thinks it could work in the Gulf of Mexico. "The only downside is that you tie up oil tankers. That's why we think that BP won't listen to us. They don't want to spend that extra money."

After learning about the supertanker technique a few weeks ago, Hofmeister decided to bring it to the government's attention. "I've been trying to connect engineers with decision-makers at the Coast Guard and in the interior department," he said.

Fast Company

[Steve Plonk]

That technique of using supertankers to siphon the wasted oil sounds like a good plan. I think BP is trying to implement this
technique, but they have expended too much energy & money with
chemical dispersion. They should, hopefully, be using the supertankers and temporary pipes as we speak. Let's hope so,
because the Gulf Coast is going to be a mess, if we have to wait
until August for relief wells to be drilled. In the meantime, we are
getting help from the Coast Guard with the booms and sand burms.
BP , as it has been said earlier, shares responsibility with two other
corporate entities. Hopefully, all parties involved are cooperating
with the clean-up at this point in time.

Even though the public would like to scapegoat the Obama administration, I think that those in the know should realize BP, et al, is responsible & relay that fact to the public. That's one reason that I am writing this topical commentary. There is no way that
the Obama administration can be blamed for the snafu in cleaning
up oil. The government can only prod the corporations responsible
to act in a reliable manner. Criminal penalties may be on the way
in the future. Civil penalties are already pending.

[Doreen Peri]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/rap ... 201006161/

Rape and Spillage
By Robert Scheer

What’s with the president’s war analogy on the oil spill? It’s as if some alien force, “The Invasion of the Slippery Sludge,” suddenly attacked us. “Abroad, our brave men and women in uniform are taking the fight to al-Qaida,” President Barack Obama said Tuesday in his White House speech, “and tonight, I’ve returned from a trip to the Gulf Coast to speak with you about the battle we’re waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens.”

What nonsense. The oil was minding its own business until some multinational corporations, enabled by a dysfunctional government regulatory regime, decided to wage war on the ecological balance of the oceans by employing technology that they were not prepared to control. Cleaning up the oil spill mess we made by raping the environment to satiate our consumer gluttony is not a glorious battle against evil but rather obligatory penance for the profound error of our ways.

You wound Mother Nature by punching a hole deep in her pristine ocean where you have no business going and when she bleeds uncontrollably you dare blame her for the assault? This from a president who shortly before this disaster had given the oil companies permission to pillage in the deep seas at will. At least now he admits to having been extremely naive in his belief that they knew what they were doing:

“A few months ago, I approved a proposal to consider new, limited offshore drilling under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe—that the proper technology would be in place and the necessary precautions would be taken. That obviously was not the case on the Deepwater Horizon rig, and I want to know why.”

He already knows why! It’s the same ideological obsession that led to the deregulation of the banking industry based on the assumption that the unfettered pursuit of multinational corporation profits would somehow serve the public good. In every area of federal governance the story is the same; the mammoth corporations, through their lobbyists and campaign contributions, end up controlling the government agencies ostensibly regulating the activities of the military/industrial, health, financial and communications complexes. Why be surprised that the oil conglomerates are also in bed with their pretend Washington regulators?

Obviously Obama cannot be blamed for the bipartisan endorsement of the Reagan Revolution’s siren song, a call to make the world safe for multinational corporations. The radical anti-regulation campaign—endorsed by Bill Clinton as well as the father-and-son Bush team—corrupted rather than improved the efficiency of the entire private sector, and what happened with the oil industry was the rule and not the exception.

In explaining the failure of the Minerals Management Service, responsible for regulating the oil drillers, Obama stated: “Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility—a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves. At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.”

That damning indictment of the corporate corruption of our political process should stand as a cautionary tale to those like the majority in those red states now suffering so because of the offshore drilling of which their voters previously approved. Hopefully they, and the president who catered to such impulses, will take away from this very costly mess a justifiable skepticism about the risk assessments of plunderers who treat natural treasures as nothing more than potential profit centers.

The public goes along because, as with the jobs created by military spending and the false wealth of financial bubbles, it is blinded by lavishly funded corporate PR to the true costs of such reckless corporate behavior. It is understandable that folks struggling to get by would fall for that line, but it is inexcusable when the political elite in Washington that know better goes along with such chicanery.

The war that needs to be fought and won is against corporate dominance of every important aspect of our political culture. I hope this disaster, its impact revised upward by the government on Tuesday to represent an Exxon Valdez-size spill of oil into the Gulf every four days, will facilitate that. The difference between the new estimate, 60,000 barrels of oil a day, and BP’s original claim of 5,000 barrels a day is just another example of the systemic corporate deceit that has characterized this immense catastrophe. This is the wakeup call to fight corporate arrogance that we, and our president, desperately needed.

[Steve Plonk]

Looks like Robert Scheer had an "axe to grind" on the President's speech.
I thought that President Obama had a good speech which showed that he
had mobilized resources and was doing all he could to help stop the damage which the explosion and oil leaks have caused. I think that the
President's metaphors in the speech were appropriate to the gravity of
the situation. I believe that British Petroleum (BP) and several other companies share the ONLY blame for the spill and the problems thereafter.

My take on it is that, next time, there needs to be a well-utilized safety technology in place before any more deep wells are drilled in the ocean. Safety valves must be retrofitted with the latest technology on ALL EXISTING WELLS before any more wells are drilled in the Gulf or elsewhere. I now refer you all back to the original liability article link which I posted above: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010 ... consequen/

Once again, B P, et al, have tried to shift the blame elsewhere. However, the fact of the matter is that, I believe, the blame rests squarely on BP and its fellow travelers and the owners of the rig.

[Steve Plonk]

See update video on a new cap by BP on the spurting Gulf oil well: Click on
Link below:
http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625 ... d-20901716

Hope this thing holds. It supposedly was done on July 15, 2010.
More updates to follow as soon as I have time...

[Steve Plonk]

SUMMARY
Two years after a rig operated by British Petroleum exploded, spilling oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the company agreed to plead guilty to felony charges and is expected to pay $4.5 billion in fines. Jeffrey Brown talks to ProPublica's Abrahm Lustgarten and John Young, president of Jefferson Parish, La., for their reactions.

Read the PBS news transcript &/or view the video below--Nov. 15, 2012--

See link: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/july ... 11-15.html

[Steve Plonk]

Loud mouths who wanted to blame the Obama administration, where are you?!
Eat Crow!