But when the oil company that caused the mess is using this terminology, you have to wonder how horrible it is:
BP’s top official, who had previously said the environmental impact on Gulf of Mexico would be modest, upgraded his assessment Friday to an “environmental catastrophe.”
Also Friday, engineers in the Gulf tried the “junk shot” method in an attempt to stop a massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward said.
The procedure involved shooting debris such as shredded rubber tires, golf balls and similar objects into the blowout preventer in an attempt to clog it and stop the leak. The goal of the junk shot is to force-feed the preventer, the device that failed when the disaster unfolded, until it becomes so plugged that the oil stops flowing or slows to a relative trickle.
The company plans to resume its “top kill” method, pumping heavy mud into the leak, later Friday, he said.
Goodness.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
BP’s top official, who had previously said the environmental impact on Gulf of Mexico would be modest, upgraded his assessment Friday to an “environmental catastrophe.”
Shit – it’s going to wipe out the human race somehow.
Violet
The entire Gulf is going to end up as a dead zone. I wonder how much the Gulf can take before it’s permanently ruined. Nature is pretty resilient, but at some point it’s just too much to come back from.
Vishnu Schist
This is obviously Obama’s fault. If he had “acted more quickly” then got really pissed off and told us this was the end of civilization as we know it then posted a You-Tube of braking an arm or two, we’d all have expected worse. Then when BP said it was simply a “catastrophe” all of us would have said “well that ain’t so bad, Obama sure took care of that problem”. At that point we could all go back to being a pack of ignorant jack-off’s having been downgraded from fucking idiot status.
Punchy
Like someone on TOD said yesterday, just what the fuck were we “watching” yesterday on the RoboCams if indeed they had stopped the mud treatment? Were they looping old vid with a new timestamp?
scav
BP — masters of nuance.
MattF
So, we’ve hit eleventeen on a scale of 1 to 10. What’s next? “Environmental Armageddon”? “Environment, Tee Hee”? “What is this ‘environment’ entity of which you speak'”?
r€nato
This would have been fixed already if Obama had given BP a tax cut.
bkny
@Punchy:
that does seem to warrant an answer, doesn’t it….
4tehlulz
Only the judicious use of nuclear explosives can save us now.
GLASS THE GULF
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Violet: Nah. Life will find a way, it always does.
Wonder instead just how long it’s going to take… and at that, unfortunately, it’s too damn early to start drinking.
brendancalling
@Vishnu Schist:
obama is not innocent here. yes, BP deserves the brunt of the blame, but the fact is (and obama acknowledged yesterday) that MMS has been a mess dating back to the Bush years. The scandal of drugs, sex, and money was reported on in the NYT in september 2008. At Salazar’s confirmation, Ron Wyden specifically brought up MMS and his expectation that Salazar clean it up. Salazar, no friend of the environment, did not do that. in 2009, he appointed Sylvia Baca, a BP executive to be MMS deputy administrator. That same year, MMS not only gave Deepwater Horizon permission to drill in the affected field, but exempted them from an environmental impact study.
It was nice to see a head roll yesterday, but Salazar is still there and so is Baca.
Had Obama appointed a conservationist to head Interior (as progressives and enivronmentalists hoped) this might not have happened. But no one can say “who knew MMS was a mess”, because EVERYONE knew.
When does ken Salazar get fired?
PanAmerican
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
3-4 months until they get a relief well in place. This is theater for the “do something!” crowd.
PeakVT
The sad thing is that this will change the minds of approximately zero people regarding our energy policy.
The endless repetition of the phrase “junk shot” by Important Media Persons might end up being the only bright spot in this disaster.
Michael
For me, this means that we need far more robust regulation and well-educated experts in physics and engineering that ARE NOT CAPTIVE to private funding always on tap to direct hordes of well-trained and well-equipped operators of a plethora of equipment, all on the government payroll in an amount adequate to retain good, non-ideological folks.
Of course, that would take funding via taxes, which might make a Texas cretard oilboy cry when he couldn’t justify buying a matching Learjet for his mistress every year.
Mr Furious
Am I the only one who thinks it’s preposterous that this procedure is called a “junk shot” and composed of identifiable trash? Even if it’s exactly what it is, you’d think they come up with a better way to present it as technologically advanced or something.
Golf balls? Seriously? What about a hard, smooth sphere sounds likely to clog a giant pipe? It sounds to me like they are loading a shotgun full of BBs.
I can see the shredded tires, as some sort of rubbery strips that will lock together and plug shit up, but call it something like “bore stoppage material” and tell me it’s made of recycled tires. Don’t just tell me your emptying your dumpster into the well.
slag
While this is an improvement over the “it’s a big ocean” statement, I’m thinking we still have a ways to go before we all comprehend the magnitude of this situation. But no worries…even if we do finally comprehend the magnitude, I’m sure we’ll completely forget the whole thing in about 10 years from now.
sparky
@4tehlulz: win.
also, that way the non-oily seafood would land right on the beach! yay!
scav
@Mr Furious: It’s rare that we get a passionate plea for obfuscation by technical jargon. Thanks.
Bulworth
@Mr Furious: You can’t make this stuff up. The description of the “junk shot” sounds like some SNL skit.
Mnemosyne
@sparky:
Unfortunately, it would also look like this.
PWAX
@brendancalling:
Another thing Obama could have done was a quick experiment with the dispersant “Corexit” (sp?). We could have found out that it hides the oil where it will kill fish and decided …NAH bad choice between the marshes of Louisiana and the fish of (I hope just) the Gulf. They could have known that this would be causing much worse damage than the oil itself. Instead we acted like this was the best way to “get rid” of the oil. Talk about short sighted.
xephyr
We may all agree this is a tragedy, but not all are learning from it. Trading short-term gain for long-term loss is still just peachy with some folks… and guess who they are?
http://www.gallup.com/poll/137882/Oil-Spill-Alters-Views-Environmental-Protection.aspx
Maude
@Mr Furious:
They aren’t golf balls.
Spocko
If junk shot work expect the golf ball and tire companies to create brag commercials.
“Titleist, the official golf ball of junk shot!”
“Whether you are stopping your car or plugging a hole in the ocean, you can count on Bridgestone.”
Skepticat
True Majority is soliciting ideas for a new positioning line for BP.
http://www.truemajority.org/renamebp/
I’d like to have them at least try the epoxy material an individual has invented (sorry, brain cramp, no details coming to mind). Heard the fellow on NPR and he really seemed knowledgeable–about facts!
And has anyone heard any more about Costner’s piece of equipment and whether it’s being used?
OTB
@PeakVT:
I think “junk shot” is what happens at the end of a teabagging party.
Swift Loris
Am I the only one who thinks it’s preposterous that this procedure is called a “junk shot” and composed of identifiable trash?
No, you’re not. A lot of folks aren’t aware that this procedure is a well-established method for controlling a blown-out well. Normally the public doesn’t hear about junk shots being performed, so there’s been no perceived need to give it a more impressive-sounding name.
PeakVT
@OTB: You mean like this, right? (Yes, it’s safe for work.)
artem1s
@slag:
nah, two words, burning river.
frankdawg
@brendancalling:
Good point Brendan. While a lot of people are running around screaming fix it! FIX IT! with no idea what the hell that means I think we need to admit we can’t unscrew the pooch here. What is done is done, what we MUST do is point out how this can be prevented from happening again.
One way to do that is to highlight that there were people talking about this danger and that they were ignored. As much as I hate Boy Blunder and as much of the fault that goes to his team of bunglers & thieves not all the fault is his. This is a change that needs to be made.
frankdawg
Anybody know if there has been any discussion of what affect a hurricane would have on this disaster?
PeakVT
@frankdawg: There’s been several posts on the topic at Jeff Masters’ Wunderblog.
NonWonderDog
@Mr Furious:
They apparently aren’t really golf balls. There were a couple comments on TOD(The Oil Drum) talking about them. There’s some fancy name for the specialized rubbery balls that they use, and they come in different grades and sizes and everything. Apparently the first press conference to mention them even used the fancy name. The media reported “golf balls,” of course, because our media is stupid.
I can’t explain the subsequent stories about how actual golf balls really are good for clogging blown-out wells. As far as I can tell they’re just completely made up by confused reporters.
Mnemosyne
@xephyr:
It would be nice if someone (ahem, perhaps someone heading the executive branch) could point out that “economic growth” and “protecting the environment” are not actually mutually exclusive no matter how much Republicans like to pretend they are. Economic growth for one part of the country has completely decimated the economy of the Gulf coast, probably for at least a decade (but more likely several decades). We really can’t keep prioritizing these destructive types of “economic growth” that wreck everyone else’s economy.
I think I should e-mail that to the White House once I get it more coherent. ;-)
sukabi
something else to think about… yesterday, when everyone thought the “top kill” was ongoing because of the “live video feed”, it had been halted for 16 hours and started back up late yesterday afternoon…. sooooo, that “live feed” isn’t so live…
asiangrrlMN
Here is a video a friend on FB posted. It’s taken from under water (by the grandson of the legendary Jacques Cousteau, yes, I found that amusing, though the video, not so much). The oil spill.
Allen
I’m not surprised at all. From the beginning everyone downplayed this. Though to anyone in the business it was a Chernobyl meltdown situation.
The well surged, which blew up and sank about a billion dollars worth of offshore rig, killing 11 people. That’s not your average offshore accident, that’s a damn catastrophe. But, look how BP played it from the very beginning. When is the last time you heard of an offshore rig being destroyed?
For that to happen, the very last line of defense, the blowout preventer had to have failed. We’re talking a very rare event in equipment with multiple redundancies. Once again BP calmly stated, like it’s an everyday event, the blowout preventer failed. If you hit the lottery would you be calm? Similar probability.
This was a calamity from the very beginning, and very few people seem to have noticed.
Matthew J. Orley of Peninsula, OH
Sure, NOW what are they gonna call it now that its failed!?
Wouldn’t want to live in Tampa… or Belize for that matter.
Matt Orley, Summit County Ohio