The best way to do this is probably like ripping off a band-aid, quickly and all at once:
- The size of the oil spill may be underestimated by as much as a factor of 5.
- Because it is considered a sunken ship under maritime law, the owners of the drilling platform may be able to limit their liability to $27 million.
- The Minerals Management Service routinely overruled staff scientists when issuing drilling permits.
On the plus side, this probably doesn’t matter, because that part of the Gulf is a dead zone anyway. (via)
4tehlulz
Fuck that shit. Have you heard about the new Soylent Green? It’s delicious!
stuckinred
Robertdsc-iphone
Is it me or are the BP folks going about this wrong? The two schemes they’ve tried were done with an eye towards keeping the flow going. Why not instead drop a concrete/solid box on top of the opening and seal it off? Don’t manage it, just stop it.
Remember November
BP- Bleeding Planets.
MikeJ
@Robertdsc-iphone: That’s what the junk shot will do, but I think the reason they haven’t been trying it is because of the pressure the oil has behind it. It will be very, very difficult to stop the flow, at least until the relief well takes the pressure off. And that will take 90 days.
El Cid
You all are looking at this as a gulf half empty. The positive view is that soon we’ll have a valuable source of oil right off our shores, and instead of having to drill baby drill we’ll just have to skim baby skim.
ChockFullO'Nuts
This whole thing happened because BP forgot rule number one, which is never throw water on a grease fire.
toujoursdan
The spin has already started. The BP CEO is saying that the spill is just a drop in the ocean. No big deal. Go back to “Survivor” episodes and your shiny new i-Pads. No harm no foul.
Guardian UK
Now the Gulf is a whole ocean. Who knew?
Expect the Fox stenographers to repeat this ad infinitum soon.
El Cid
@toujoursdan: Not to mention the famous scientist Rush Limbaugh argued that the Earth was just too big to be affected by any actions of little old us.
gnomedad
So I can fill a supertanker with, I dunno, spent nuclear fuel, sink it, write a check for $27 million, and everything’s cool?
toujoursdan
@El Cid:
The amount of rat poison I’d like to put into his coffee will be tiny in relation to the total volume too. I promise.
Eric S.
Or, you know, it could 10X larger than previously estimated.
Steeplejack
@toujoursdan:
I saw that argument being made somewhere last week and did a thought experiment: “This stadium is a very big place, and the amount of mace we released–right next to your face–is tiny in relation to the total volume of air, so there shouldn’t be any problems. Kthxbai.”
@toujoursdan: What you said.
brendancalling
@ChockFullO’Nuts:
i always thought rule number 1 was “don’t shit where you eat.”
Bill Section 147
@gnomedad: If you sink it off Somalia you can skip the fine.
Also. If it is a sunken ship then I can claim it if I can salvage it…right? I think we should just make an offer to anyone who wants to stop it gets it and all the gulf drilling rights.
And to the BP CEO…just a drop? I think if he was wearing concrete galoshes he would discover that a pool of oil the size of, say, a swimming pool might be too much oil.
Gus
There’s that famous British talent for understatement. If this asshole still has his job at this time next week, I’ll be shocked.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@brendancalling:
Unless there’s a grease fire, then the rule sheet changes.
Linda Featheringill
The amount of oil pouring into the Gulf:
Folks using different data and different approaches or methods have recently come up with estimates that seem to fall within that 56,000 to 84,000 barrels/day. Actually, they fall into a 50,000 to 70,000 barrels a day range.
[see SkyTruth, DailyKos, gcaptain, and nola dot com]
I think that BP has no freaking idea how to stop the spewing oil. Their latest idea, the straw, is actually quite confusing. You are going to stick a 6-inch tube into a 21-inch pipe and the tube is going to control the flow? I don’t think so. Of course the tube is going to have a gasket but will that control the flow? I don’t think so. Unless they plan to run their little tube all the way down into the well itself. Will that make the situation better or worse?
And . . . a rather frightening question is nibbling around the edges of my poor little brain: BP has failed at every attempt so far to control the gush. How do we know that the relief wells will fix the problem? Has that been done at that depth? Ever?
John Bird
The media’s been helpfully informing us that MMS “has been criticized for being too cozy with the industry”.
I’m guessing all that coke and orgy business is buried in the memory hole.
I’m surprised we’re not getting more laffs from the fact that BP recently changed their name to “Beyond Petroleum”. They’re never gonna get beyond this one.
Ecks
At least they aren’t trying to walk away from a mortgage though, heaven help us if they were THAT immoral.