The “junk shot” is turning out to be real handy:
BP officials were casting about for another way to slice through a leaking riser pipe located a mile underwater after a diamond-studded wire saw operated by a robot got stuck and was later found to be ineffective. The delay on Wednesday was one more bump in a frustrating obstacle course that BP has tried to run in dealing with a stricken oil well on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, 50 miles offshore and a mile below the surface. Since an explosion on April 20 that wrecked a drilling rig and killed 11 workers, the well has been spewing thousands of gallons of oil a day into the gulf, fouling beaches, shellfish and birds on the coasts of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.
A technician involved in the effort said that the wire saw had cut less than halfway through the riser when it stopped being effective. The technician, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the work, said that it appeared that there was other material in the riser — including, perhaps, some of the objects pumped into the well during the failed “top kill” procedure last week — that was dulling the saw.
“It was cutting at a rate far less than it should have,” he said.
Here’s an idea- how about we plug the hole with the clown car that takes these guys to work in the morning.
Zifnab
Clown car. It is to laugh. Maybe clown corporate jet, assuming they feel like slumming it.
Capitalism, bitches!
JR
At this rate, it seems the most sensible, least ridiculous option out there is to just stomp it with the giant foot from Monty Python.
geg6
OT, but there may be a tornado heading your way, John. It’s at the PA/WV border. Batten down the hatches.
frankdawg
OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH – Who lived in a pineapple under the sea?
SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!
Who died in a disaster caused by BP?
SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!
Hey! I would have been making crushed ice jokes while I was bobbing around the Titanic.
Hiram Taine
I worked in the Gulf oil fields in the early and mid 80’s, I have a great deal of sympathy for the poor bastards who are actually doing the work. When some bigwheel would tell us how to do things a remarkable percentage of the time they would be telling us to do something that we knew from painful experience either wasn’t going to work or was going to make some subsequent process much more difficult.
Just watch the TV show Undercover Boss and see how often the bigwheel of the company is not competent to do the work of his low level subordinates.
Violet
They should use a giant tampon. Those things work.
cleek
dulling the saw?
did they stuff it with diamonds?
i thought the junk shot was hair and golf balls and other junk…
srv
I wish China would just get it over with and take us over. They would line up some executives and just shoot them over this.
Citizen Alan
I am absolutely convinced that BP is doing all this deliberately. If they fix the problem, Obama looks like a hero and can then start doing the math on BP’s liability bill. If they drag this out indefinitely, it makes Obama look completely incompetent, and he’ll end up getting replaced by some god-damned Republican who will let BP off with a slap on the wrist.
ruemara
Is it too soon for pitchforks and torches? Really, what is everyone waiting for? How bad does America have to get?
Elie
I was reading somewhere that they believe that there is actually a possible failure of the actual drilled hole and that this was why in part, the whole junk shot and mudd failed — making this way more complex than just the fuck up it already is..
And now, we have the saw..
Meanwhile, BP shares are tanking and after spending 1 billion since this thing started, with no end in sight, they might actually be completely imploding and may need to actually be taken over by the government (something that I am very ambivalent about)
This is one absolute, royal, fuck up of almost surreal proportions…. the old book — Tipping Point comes to mind… one more grain of sand, one little fucked up, cost cutting corner cutting project leads to the complete destruction of the Gulf of Mexico and probably every State economy of the region –(won’t go further than that right now, but we know it would not be a minor issue to our overall economy as well)
I think that there needs to be jail time and major penalties and major —whatever!!!!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
We can all relax. Mark Penn is on the case!
See? I bet Obama is kicking himself over not asking any scientists. Obama is just too worried about appeasing Teh Left. He needs to get some scientists and “business people”. “Big time business people.” Easy-peasy. I’m glad a grown up has weighed in.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
How about the clown car that pundits and bloggers drive to work every day?
Nothing mentioned in the junk shot descriptions sounds like anything hard, or big enough to dull a large powerful diamond-tipped saw. The thing is designed to cut through steel for crissakes.
The entire tactic was described as having a somewhat lower success probability than techniques already tried, BEFORE THEY STARTED, and this also explains why this method was down on the list of things to try and hasn’t been tried sooner.
It would be nice if somebody, anybody, who shoots his fucking mouth off about this stuff would take the time to understand the technical background before just adding to the din of mob reaction.
Not here of course, that would be asking too much. But maybe somewhere, this could be done?
Anniecat45
Don’t bother with the clown car — can we just stuff BP’s top management into the well?
Violet
@Elie:
BP’s stock price went up today, along with the rest of the market.
serge
I’m too depressed to comment.
Elie
@Citizen Alan:
Your brain shows limited ability to track cause and effect. Its bimodal only….
As time goes on, it will be increasingly clear that Obama and in fact, the entire United States political and economic structure is in severe distress. Notice how quiet the Republicans are? For one of those morons to take over, they actually have to put together some path, some solution that is linked to reality and our very changed landscape. When you have the moron in Wasilla, the senior citizen in Arizona and a cast of other low wattage intellects, while Obama might not have all the answers, or know how to make all of this all better just like that, anyone with half a brain is going to want him in a leadership position.
Except maybe you. But then, do you have half a brain?
Ailuridae
I’m also confused about the dulling the saw comment. What, exactly, did they put down there could dull a diamond tipped saw?
FWIW the increased flow once the riser piper is cleanly cut is estimated at 20%. Is there any chance that it is worth it to increase the flow by that much. Its not hard to solve that equation right?
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I think this is unnecessarily harsh. The technologists working on this are being tasked with fixing something that should never have been attempted in the first place. I like your basic idea, but you are targeting the wrong plugging agent.
Elie
@Violet:
Well thats good news! That said, the overall value is still down and that is what spells their difficulties. I dont see that changing given their ongoing liabilities, do you?
Martin
@Citizen Alan: They’re gambling the company on that strategy, then. They’ve lost $60B in value, the cleanup cost could run over $25B, and the Feds might just throw them in the woodchipper out of political necessity. And, the other oil companies have to be pissed because they’re now shut down in the gulf because of BP and Obama is asking for all of their tax breaks to be rescinded.
If this is a game to them, they’re losing – badly.
JGabriel
NY Times:
Stricken? Are we supposed to feel sorry for BP, as if their oil well has come down with consumption?
Blown, exploded, gushing – all would have been appropriate adjectives, and there are probably a dozen more that would have worked well. But stricken?
Jeepers.
.
Balconesfault
I’m also confused about the dulling the saw comment. What, exactly, did they put down there could dull a diamond tipped saw?
Golf Balls, right?
Listening to AM talk radio on Sunday evening (“Beyond the Beltway”) one caller was insisting that the Russians had successfully plugged wells in the past with nukes, and that we needed to use a nuke to stop this leak.
That’s what we need. Give these guys a friggin nuke to play with. What could go wrong?
bkny
jesusfuckingchrist, that made me laugh; i’ve felt nothing but despair the past couple of weeks, but this is just beyond comprehension. bp really has absolutely no clue what they are doing. their continual lying and misrepresentations — plug the damned well with the bp executive class.
and cnn will try to find the bright side (with a great photo of blitzer):
A CNN producer sent out this email yesterday to some secret pundit e-mail job board, we assume (?), and now everyone is appropriately making fun of CNN:
1) Summary: The Good Side of the Oil Spill
Name: Gary Hewing (CNN)
Category: Biotech and Healthcare
Media Outlet: CNN
Deadline: 04:00 PM EST – 2 June
Query: Looking for pitches: The Good Side of the Oil Spill – if there is any.
http://wonkette.com/415760/cnn-will-turn-this-oil-spill-into-a-winner-less-proscons-debate-after-all#ixzz0pjqbhPSd
Mnemosyne
@bkny:
I’ve already seen stories in the New Orleans newspaper online worrying about the bad economic effects of shutting down drilling. That’s the direction I think it’s going to go — “Sure, we had a horrible environmental disaster that trashed a huge part of our economy, but that’s all the more reason why we have to drill even more!”
JGabriel
CNN:
This is what balance will get you.
.
Hiram Taine
@Ailuridae:
Not dulled I suspect, gummed up with rubber from old tires and the like.
I have some diamond hones that I use for sharpening carbide cutting tools, they work great until you use them on something that’s too soft which gums them up.. Clean out the gumming agent and they cut just fine again.
ETA: Ever tried to file lead? It will gum up a sharp file in a ridiculously short time and then you have to laboriously clean the lead out from between the teeth, then the file is fine again, it was always sharp but the sharp pieces are muffled by the softer clogging agent.
The Other Chuck
@Hiram Taine:
I’d rather the CEO’s of the company were competent at running the business rather than versed in the minutae of operations. That, unfortunately, is also not anywhere near a given, since CEOs know they’ll get a fat bonus and seats on the boards of their buddies no matter how badly they do.
Ailuridae
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
Yep. Blaming the people who are trying to fix this is pretty fucked up. Stopping a leak a mile under sea is, simply, incredibly difficult. We all should have known from history that all of these stop gap measures besides the relief well had minimal chances of working.
You can be mad at the GOP and the corporate faction of the Democratic party for pretending that off-shore drilling was safe when it clearly wasn’t. You can be mad at yourself if you believed that. You can be mad at the media for pretending this was a “two sides” story with science and corporate funded hack science having differing opinions. But it just seems incredibly unfair to be angry at the engineers tasked with solving the problem because they can’t solve it when there is a very good chance the problem itself is unsolvable.
All that said, I wish they hadn’t decided to cause the riser pipe.
Redshift
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Not that I trust anything coming out of BP, but the statements I read talked about how the capping process was less likely to succeed, not the sawing through the riser, which they seemed to think was no big deal, despite being performed by robots a mile underwater.
Considering that the suggestion that the “top kill” material dulled the saw came from the technician quoted in the NYT article and not from any pundit or blogger, perhaps you could try taking your own advice before slamming the rest of us.
bkny
@JGabriel:
it was making me crazy that ‘spill’ was constantly used — not at all the word to convey the disaster.
Martin
@Ailuridae:
Nope. Let’s assume 60 days until the well is capped from the relief (best case). A 20% increase would be 4,000 bbl per day * 60 days = 240,000 bbl extra oil flowing into the gulf over doing nothing. They need to capture a full 12 days of current production to offset that, so they can take up to 48 days to work this out at which point they can’t let another drop out just to break even.
If they can capture 80% of what comes out and it takes them a week to get the system set up, they’ll be well ahead – and I think that’s what they’re expecting, assuming they can cut through the damn thing.
The saw could be getting dulled by the junk if the rubber and such is sticking to the saw and heating. That happens on my saws all the time. But I have trouble thinking that’s happening what with all that oil there, though. I think they just underestimated how hard it would be to drill through the drill pipe, which is where they are now. That fucking thing is solid.
jl
I do not know why golf balls and cut up rubber tires would cause problems for the saw, unless they pressed against the saw blade (or cutting wire), and got it stuck.
I heard on the teevee news this weekend, that it was the WH and the whizbang panel of engineering experts who recommended to BP that they try the top kill and junk shots first, because the cutting BP is doing now is irreversible and could increase the flow, and it may make using the relief wells to stop the flow more difficult.
But, I understand how reliable and competent the new reporting is, so take that info with a grain of salt.
The Oil Drum blog says the saw is now unstuck and cutting again. And comments that come from what seem to be experts there are consistent, in my uninformed opinion, with the idea that the cutting operation BP is doing now could increase the flow, and may make using the relief wells to stop the flow more difficult.
SB Jules
I just heard a tease for All Things Considered that featured a woman in Louisiana saying she was disgusted because President Obama said he would get BP to pay and PB had not paid. Does she think they’re going to pay her now? I’ve got news for her, it takes years.
Of course, it Rahm’s fault.
Balconesfault
@Ailuridae: You can be mad at the GOP and the corporate faction of the Democratic party for pretending that off-shore drilling was safe when it clearly wasn’t.
I’ve been having arguments with people for awhile who were making the claim that “peak oil” was just so much hype – that thanks to all our new technologies that we’d have access to all kinds of oil reservoirs that we previously couldn’t touch.
If you watched Sunday morning pundit show ads, you’d have gotten the same message over and over.
Yep – we can certainly get that previously unreachable oil out of the ground.
Now if we could only get it into a pipeline.
frankdawg
@Citizen Alan:
I almost wish that they were doing this deliberately at least it would mean there was some control. Back in the late 70’s a well in the Gulf blew and it took 9 months – NINE FUCKING MONTHS – to stop it.
OH! that well was a grand total of 130 feet below the surface.
Merry fucking Christmas kids.
MattR
@Hiram Taine: So they just have to send down the “underwater diamond saw blade decrudder”? It is starting to remind me of the old nursery rhyme.
Mnemosyne
@The Other Chuck:
Carly Fiorini is about to become the Republican candidate for Senator here in California because her CEO pals are continuing to support her attempts to fail upward.
It does give me a happy knowing that Fiorina and her pals are basically throwing their money down a well, though — there’s virtually no chance that Boxer is going to lose the general election, and she’ll probably win by 20+ points.
Violet
@Elie:
I think BP’s difficulties come from cutting a lot of corners and having a corporate culture that allowed this kind of disaster to happen. And from the disaster itself. I don’t know that the stock price is low enough yet to be a problem. Could be. I just don’t know.
I don’t see the stock going up until/unless the spill is stopped. And even after that they’ll be responsible for cleanup and their name won’t be very good in the Gulf region for a very long time. So it’s hard to say how it play out long term.
I’ve heard stock people saying some of the oil related stocks are a bargain right now for buy-and-hold investors. It’s always a crapshoot, though.
kay
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I agree. I’m starting to like the technician who is talking to the NYTimes without giving his name.
His whole tone is exhausted resignation. He sounds like he’s telling the truth.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Yes, and it was pure speculation based on no evidence whatever.
Why would anyone point to that and declare that the people working their butts off to stop the well are a bunch of clowns?
Unless that person was a goddam clown himself?
Why is it that this guy’s company took more than ten months to secure a similar Gulf well blowout in 1979 and nobody called those people “clowns” while they were doing it and struggling all that time?
What exactly is the value added of this kind of STUPID GODDAM MOB BAITING shit being posted here? And why are you their lawyer?
Mnemosyne
@Redshift:
Actually, it was the reporter who said it was “dulling the saw.” I strongly suspect the reporter got it wrong in trying to oversimplify it and that it’s more like what a couple of people have said here, the top kill leftovers are gunking up the saw.
Steeplejack
@ruemara:
I believe AsiangrrlMN hasn’t been on lately because she had to put the factory on round-the-clock production of rusty pitchforks.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Sorry, the link missing from my previous post.
Maybe somebody here would have brave enough to call Red Adair a fucking clown? After all, it took him almost a year to close a well in the Gulf, right?
Hiram Taine
@The Other Chuck: My point was that the bigwheels are often trying to micromanage operations while being clueless about the minutia you speak of as well as incompetent at running the overall business.
Reaching that high level in a big corporation tends to confer a great deal of hubris, these people are often convinced that they know everything better than anyone in a less lofty position when in reality all they really know is how to schmooze and manipulate.
Maude
I wouldn’t trust the source. It’s the riser that the saw was cutting. The saw got stuck.
The oil flow wasn’t blocked by junk. I was watching when the when the saw cut deep enough to release oil. Do I believe an unknown source or my lying eyes?
jl
Visiting relatives for last part of Memorial Day holiday, and so exposed to the TV more than usual.
The oil spill/leak coverage was disappointing. NPR (which was on in one my ‘liberal’ relative’s homes) promised a technical discussion of the proposed spill fixes. But when the segment started, the real topic was how or whether the spill had been a ‘defining moment’ for US public opinion. In my view, more pointless metabloviating. Bill Nye the Science Guy was the only person who seemed to have any kind of technical expertise on anything. Very disappointing. I just got up and left and went and played with the pets, since that seemed a more worthwhile way to spend the time.
I thought about the roll of corporate sponsors shown at the beginning of NPR, and it thought that maybe NPR is so in hock to their corporate sponsors, they are afraid to say anything much of substance about anything I don;’t see how for profit outfits would be any better, so not bashing on NPR particularly.
Turgid Jacobian
@Martin: Also bent metal work-hardens (when it doesn’t break, of course).
Citizen Alan
@Martin:
The Exxon-Valdez case showed that it’s a long game that corporations usually win in the end. That $60B in lost value is based on the stock market’s valuation, and if that nest of vipers decides that BP will bounce back from this okay, then that $60B in losses will be erased the next day. The courts will figure out some reason allegedly based on due process for why BP won’t have to pay the bulk of the clean up fees. The Republicans in the Senate will block any effort to “throw them in the woodchipper.” The conservative media is already making idiotic arguments that this disaster proves that we need more offshore drilling, arguments that will probably dominate the media discourse a year from now when no one outside the Gulf Coast is even talking about this issue because some new disaster has come along.
Jay S
@Hiram Taine:
Gumming up the saw makes a little sense.
I was beginning to wonder if they bought cubic zirconia or rhinestone saws to save money.
Dead Ernest
@JGabriel:
JG, at first blush I thought your concern over their word was a bit trivial – but then, after a couple more synapses joined in, I realized the relevance of your point. The alternative example, ‘gushing’ would be far better than the milquetoast they used.
I’m not much of a conspiracy champion but it is not encouraging to see this, reminiscent of the way Springfield refers to their everlasting tire fire; like we are on the way to regarding the trauma as a ‘tourist attraction’.
…and thanks for helping bring ‘jeepers’ back.
kay
@SB Jules:
She should ask Bobby Jindal where her grant money is:
“Jindal has “been out there talking to the people impacted by the disaster and the media and got his life jacket on and is out in the water, but I want him to use his executive power to get resources out there instead of standing on the bully pulpit and pointing fingers,” said state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans.
Peterson said that at a meeting Thursday with BP officials, coastal Louisiana legislators and representatives of the Jindal administration, it was disclosed that the state has spent only about $3 million of a $25 million BP grant for spill-related expenses, and that it has not yet issued a contract for BP’s $15 million grant to promote tourism attractions threatened by the spill.
It also was revealed that the state has called up only 1,100 of the 6,000 National Guard members authorized for the spill clean-up efforts, Peterson said”
I think I know why he’s doing it. He’s hanging onto the 25 million and pointing to the feds, which is probably smart. He’ll have the grant and the emergency fed funding, which he’ll get. I have no problem with billing BP early and often.
But he’s not being entirely straight with the people of Louisiana, as far as cash on hand.
trollhattan
Cripes. If they have to abandon a clean sawcut they’re going to have to resort to The Craw, which looks approximately like this:
http://www.badmovies.org/movies/giantclaw/giantclaw1.jpg
It will leave a very rough, uneven surface (duh) that will not seal well against the cap, meaning a lot more leakage presuming the cap actually works in diverting the discharge to surface ships.
Not a single thing has gone according to plan in this entire response. Not one.
Mnemosyne
@Citizen Alan:
I think that’s one of the reasons the administration is keeping BP as the leads on this disaster despite their screw-ups — as long as they are, BP has to pay for it out of their pocket. I wouldn’t be surprised if the calculation is that BP may not be as quick or efficient as they should be, but at least they’re paying for it. The minute the federal government takes over, BP doesn’t have to pay anything except what we might be able to get out of them in court.
Sure, BP may be able to sue the federal government somewhere down the line and get some of the money they’ve already spent back, but that would take at least a decade to work its way through the courts. The feds are making the old bird-in-the-hand calculation.
Steeplejack
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Mark Penn:
This drives me absolutely nuts. We have gone beyond the point where all we need is someone with “logistical skills” and a “can do” attitude, like George C. Scott jumping out of his Jeep to personally direct bogged-down tank traffic in Patton.
What is not sinking into our consciousness is that we have reached the point where we have the ability to create technological problems that we cannot solve (at least without astronomical expense and damage). Everything that has happened in the Gulf in the last month shows that it’s not just a question of “deploying the proper equipment” correctly or waiting to get the Jetson 9000 deep-sea multi-tool on site. There is no Jetson 9000, and we don’t have the “proper equipment” to deploy. The ROVs on site have basically been playing the role of shade-tree mechanics working on a junker in the backyard.
“Junk shot?”
“I dunno.”
“What about if we hit it here?”
“Hey! I just realized I’ve got a diamond saw in the barn. I’ll be right back.”
I think everything going on now is a combination of a Hail Mary pass and public-relations theater until the relief wells are finished in August.
mr. whipple
If they can shear the pipe with a claw, I sure don’t understand why they can’t just pinch it off. It might not stop the oil, but lessen the amount that is leaking.
Violet
@trollhattan:
On the contrary, it’s all gone exactly as predicted, since there was no plan. They didn’t plan for this kind of disaster and they’re making up the responses as they go along. Things not working is pretty much what we should have expected.
Hiram Taine
@jl:
The great majority of people’s eyes glaze over as soon as you start talking about anything technical. Your explanation is probably part of the reason why NPR wouldn’t want to get into the details but I can also imagine the show’s producer envisioning listeners all over America changing the station as soon as anything really substantive in a technical sense is discussed.
We who are interested in the minutia of how technical stuff works are a quite small minority in America and I suspect in the rest of the world as well.
jwb
@Citizen Alan: “The Republicans in the Senate will block any effort to “throw them in the woodchipper.”” Possibly, possibly not. It depends to some extent on what the other oil companies want and how much influence they have. Sort of like how Goldman-Sachs was perfectly fine with Lehman going belly up.
kay
@Steeplejack:
I think it’s hysterical that Penn wants to bring “big business” in.
That itty bitty oil company is overwhelmed, and being pestered by “scientists” and the loathed “environmentalists”.
Maybe we can bring in business leaders in finance. They’re really smart.
Ash Can
@geg6: I just saw that. I went to turn on the Cubs game, saw they were in a rain delay, checked the NWS web site, and saw that rain was the least of their worries. Stay safe, everyone; I hope it turns out to be nothing much.
Elie
@Mnemosyne:
This.
AND the need in a little bit, once this disaster comes to some conclusion, to NAIL THESE FUCKERS WITH THE REALITY OF CORPORATE FAILURE —
1. The enomic meltdown almost destroyed our whole economy
2. BP’s incompetence is destroying the Gulf ofMexico
3. The real estate and combined investment sector has blown up our housing values and sent a huge number of people into default
4. The banks STILL arent lending after being given a ton of dough..
I cannot wait! I hope to God that we are knocking these fuckers’ front teeth out in the next election. Yeah, Govmint is bad — except when you damn well need it, and with these screwups, we MUST have good government with the ability to kick some ass…
DJMurphy
It comes down to this. If you do not possess the ability to clean up after your mistakes, you do not belong in the business.
And (I’m guessing here) there is no company capable of dealing with this kind of disaster.
Teak 111
Watched a lot of what they where doing down there via CNN, etc. The saw seemed to be cutting fairly well last night then stopped around midnight. Speculation on http://www.theoildrum.com was that the drill pipe inside the riser was pinching the wire saw. They finally got it loose this morning and pulled it up. Then later, they lowered the saw down again, apparently with a new wire blade attached. It looked like they were rigging it up again for a second attempt, then the ROVs stopped, vid cams just staring into the sea, not even trained on the leak. My guess is they are waiting for another piece of equipment.
I know BP is the bad guy in all this, but I have a great deal of respect for the Eng and operators out there on the front lines trying like hell to solve this problem. The conditions are extreme, just getting and eye bolt on a hook at 5000 ft takes 10 minutes of maneuvering. Yesterday, sheering of part of the riser took all day. So just consider all that when throwing your barbs at this tough situation.
mr. whipple
The problem is getting good gvt. from either the dems or goopers, as they are both whores for corporate interests.
kay
@DJMurphy:
I read that Exxon was in that Houston “command center” or whatever, consulting.
Although there might be a conflict there.
“Nah. Can’t fix this. You’ll have to slowly go out of business”.
jwb
@Violet: Actually, the plan all along has been to drill a relief well. Which suggests that regulation should demand that the relief well be drilled before any reservoir is ever tapped.
Elie
@mr. whipple:
Actually I read that they are scared to put that much back pressure on the drilling hole (I know that there is a more appropriate term, but I cant think of it). (source — theoildrum.com) They are afraid that they are concerned that the hole where the pipe is has a breach and that they would start losing even more oil or that even the pipe could be blown out (I apologize for perhaps an overly simplistic rendition — but this was how I understood it) Can’t pinch it cause they don’t trust the hardware and the drill site’s integrity which could result in even a more monstrous blow out…anyway, thats the way I read it
Hiram Taine
To expand a bit on my last post.. As someone who has to explain technical stuff to non technical people on a fairly regular basis I know that it is an art to do that and you have to carefully calibrate your explanation to the knowledge and intelligence level of a particular individual, trying to do it to a large general audience is not something I would want to attempt (if you stop and think you’ll realize that there are very few people that are really good at it).
Elie
@mr. whipple:
I agree. That said, I would rather start with reforming or improving government than assume that the private sector will be competent. We know that is never going to happen
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Actually, that is complete bullshit. Each step has played out pretty much the way it was described in advance, and in each case, relatively low confidence was expressed in the step’s chances for complete success before the steps were taken. Further, in the background, relief well drilling has been going on in parallel with these steps, because AS WAS STATED FROM THE BEGINNING, only the relief well(s) will likely produce a permanent solution. The intermediate steps were taken to be, and intended to be, temporary and palliative measures only even if they succeeded completely.
BP may be criminally negligent for doing a really bad job of preventing this blowout …. a question that will take some time to answer. But the phased response has been carried out in a rather methodical, and predictable (and predicted) manner almost day by day. The only people surprised by the results of Top Kill, for example, were people who didn’t pay attention to the briefings and news releases made public before the operation even began. It played out almost exactly as described, and as it turned out, the 50 or so percent chance of success didn’t produce success. But only a fool would have counted on it doing so.
lamh32
OT, but:
Paul McCartney’s White House Fête
I believe the WH will be showing live streaming video at it’s website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/live
trollhattan
@mr. whipple:
It’s a good question. IIUC they’re fearful of generating new and severe leakage subgrade, wherever the well damage occurred that caused the problem to begin with. The well isn’t intact and bottling the pressure inside would create new leaks wherever there’s damage or a weakness.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good lord. BP is a client of Mark Penn’s firm. Neither Penn, nor Arianna Huffington, who gives this idiot space to bloviate, feel compelled to mention this.
Penn’s final advice on plugging the leak:
“Just do it.” Clearly, what’s lacking here is a slogan.
kay
@Elie:
What do you mean by “drill site’s integrity”?
The hole in the ocean floor is leaking around the whole apparatus? Is that the conjecture?
This occurred to me, once I got my head around the “hole in the ocean floor” idea, and found out the Gulf floor is 100 feet of muck. Does it even have determinate “sides”, this hole?
Elie
@trollhattan:
Thank you Trollhattan. That was the appropriate response to Mr Whipple’s question.
bkny
@Elie:
guy on hardball saying that it’s possible to destabilize the gulf floor and instead of the gushing oil from the pipe, fissures would open up on the floor and oil would gush from them.
kiss the gulf of mexico goodbye. and a good chunk of the southern united states.
Violet
@jwb:
Agreed. It only seems sensible to have a relief well ready to go. Although that’s going to raise costs. Will the public be okay with that, as the price of oil rises?
bkny
ugh. findlaw polling stoopit america — 65% could not name one supreme court justice.
Elie
@kay:
Well I am sure that others (Martin, Trollhattan) can articulate this the most clearly, but yes, there is some concern as I read it that the drill site was either damaged or has natural flaws or leaks (as evidenced by the failure of the top kill) that if the pressure was increased by pinching the pipe, there could be an even greater rupture.
Cat Lady
Slightly OT, but this is the antidote to greed, suffering, and despair.
Go Buddhists!
Keith G
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
@Ailuridae:
Yeah, the clown car comment was unnecessarily juvenile, but if one needs to vent…. Oh well.
Ailuridae
@jwb:
The problem though is that the relief well would then need a relief well right? The first well couldn’t be the relief well’s relief well.
The problem is the inherent risk of drilling in water particularly deep sea water.
trollhattan
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
I call bullshit on your bullshit. Non BP industry experts have said from the beginning that only relief wells will stop the flow, yet there was BP trying to get away with just drilling one while trying these other failed schemes.
BP killed 11 from where I worked in 2005 and now they’ve done it again. Excuse me if I hold their management, technical skills and decision-making in low regard.
kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This is my new bitch. The undisclosed financial conflicts and incentives of pundits.
They have no rules, unlike journalists. I think it’s completely out of control. They hire each other, which is a conflict all by itself.
They just have to be put in some kind of category.
All of them: the liberals, the conservatives, all of them.
Martin
@trollhattan: That’s correct. The well is sufficiently damaged that you could see the structure moving slightly on some of the video feeds when they were working on top kill. That pretty much coincided with when they shut that effort down and when they scrapped the 2nd BOP plan. I think they’ve determined that any additional pressure on the top of the BOP has a decent chance of causing a subgrade blowout.
If that happens, they’re well and truly fucked, as in ‘go home until the relief wells are done’.
Violet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t mind if people are paid by corporations. But in the interest of fairness, there should be a large-enough-to-read scroll running by them that shows who owns them, as they bloviate on TV. Or, if they write an article or column, it should be the very first thing, in the first paragraph, not in some bio at the end. It should read something like, “Mark Penn is a paid consultant for British Petroleum (BP), corporation X, corporation Y” etc.
All these pundits and talking heads are bought and paid for, just like the representatives we keep sending to Washington. I want to know who owns them, NASCAR-style. Make them own it in public, always, all the time. No exceptions.
mr. whipple
@Elie: That sounds reasonable, but wouldn’t the junk shot- if successful- have done the same thing?
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
I think they’ve been drilling two relief wells, not one. I remember they pulled some machinery from the second to help with top kill, but they sent it back once it failed and they resumed drilling the second relief well.
kay
@Elie:
Or, they put that in on the cheap too, and that’s why the thing blew up.
Who knows, right? Maybe the blow out preventer didn’t “fail”.
Elie
@mr. whipple:
I think (if I am thinking correctly) that this was when they noticed it and therefore why they stopped — in theoildrum, heading out referenced that they were thinking that there might be a leak or rupture somewhere down under and that that was why they were losing the pressure to close down the thing… once as others have noted, that they saw things “moving around” they had to be quite concerned..
kay
@Violet:
I think it’s worse with pundits. They’re paying each other.
It’s a horrible, mutually profitable circle. They also sell each other’s books.
Ailuridae
@kay:
I’m not a big Keith Olbermann guy but as a hat tip to him once Glenn Greenwald pointed out Richard Wolfe’s conflicts they have been very very good about mentioning them with Wolfe specifically and guests broadly.
Elie
@kay:
Yep — could be. There seems to be way more uncertainty around these things than I ever dreamed. On the OilDrum they were saying that BP hadnt even fully mapped the volume of the site…that that activity was what they were going to do next and obviously didnt get to it. BP also apparently has a couple of wells that were to be gigantic producers that have fallen off in production for “unknown” reasons — inaccurate mapping of the actual volume of oil available, or actually reachable by drill? Who knows?
I think that we are all going to learn a lot about the oil business and the mountain of bullshit that has driven its expectations of itself and certainly our delusions about it.
jwb
@Violet: Of course the public won’t be ok with the additional cost, and the next time one of these wells blows we, the people will be all: “why didn’t we do something about this?” Much gnashing of teeth and then do nothing. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.
jwb
@Ailuridae: You’d have to drill the wells in parallel and basically not tap the reservoir until the relief well was basically in place.
Kiril
Relax, people (and Mark Penn).
“Titanic” director and deep sea explorer James Cameron took part in a brainstorming session with scientists, academics and Washington officials on Tuesday on how to contain the six week-old oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, environmental sources said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65105420100602
Ailuridae
@jwb:
Maybe I am misunderstanding the physics of this but wouldn’t the relief well have to be into a deeper part of the reservoir?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@bkny: True story: a while back I was naming, in my head, the nine justices, I could only get eight. I was driving myself nuts until I realized I was saying “Scalito” to myself, and counting them on one finger.
Zuzu's Petals
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Good points.
frankdawg
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I finally gave up & looked – could not remember Stevens for the life of me.
Still that makes us in the top 1% I guess.
kay
@Elie:
I stayed away from the oil business initially because my limited foray into learning about the big business end of finance and insurance was so incredibly disheartening.
But now I’m square on that: it’s adversarial. They will try to screw individuals out of much money as they can, exactly as dishonestly as they can get away with, and our job is to hang onto it.
I have spent a lot of time pondering that there is a hole in the ocean floor that we can’t control.
More and more it’s seems like trying to plug a volcano.
Zuzu's Petals
@Citizen Alan:
Since BP has something approaching strict liability imposed by the Oil Pollution Act, maybe you can explain how this would happen.
Mike in NC
@Kiril:
Rented “Avatar” the other night. Jim Cameron spent $280M to make a boring 2-1/2 hour movie that can be summed up thusly: humans suck, but aliens are cool.
Zuzu's Petals
@Mnemosyne:
Actually, they pretty much just send them a bill.
Violet
James Carville is really annoying. Politico (I know, I know) has an article about how he’s “unrepentant in his criticism of the White House.”
Give me a freaking break.
And then there’s this paragraph:
So it’s all about him. The administration didn’t pay enough attention to him, so he whines, whines, whines. Me, me, ME! Pay attention to ME!
These pundits and “operatives” make me ill.
Nick
@Zuzu’s Petals:
which they don’t pay and drag it out in courts for a decade or two.
Mnemosyne
@Zuzu’s Petals:
That’s how Exxon got out of paying anything for Valdez, though — they disputed the bill all the way up to the Supreme Court and got the amount drastically reduced.
Hence, it’s better to get BP to pay out of pocket now than to spend public money and try to collect later.
Maude
@Ailuridae:
You get a gold star. That’s right. There will be two relief wells.
They are also called kill wells.
jwb
@Ailuridae: I might be wrong, too, but from looking at the diagrams at the Oil Drum, it looked to me like the relief well would intersect above the point where the primary well enters the reservoir. How far above the reservoir, I’m not sure.
Zuzu's Petals
@Nick:
Maybe, but the law is clear, and cases won’t be decided on “due process” grounds.
Zuzu's Petals
@Mnemosyne:
That was one of the reasons the Oil Pollution Act was passed.
But of course it’s better to get BP to pay up front…that wasn’t my point.
Nick
@Zuzu’s Petals: Who cares? All they have to do is tie it up in courts long enough to get Republicans elected.
Zuzu's Petals
@Mnemosyne:
PS, if I recall correctly the Supreme Court case had to do with the amount of punitive damages Exxon was required to pay, not the amount of clean up costs.
jwb
@jwb: Here’s the diagram showing the relief wells attaching to the main well above the reservoir. At least, that’s how I interpret it.
Cacti
Just send Bobby Jindal out in a life jacket.
That will fix everything.
Zuzu's Petals
@Nick:
Right, and all they have to do is lose their checkbook in the bottom drawer until Jesus comes back.
My mistake for taking you seriously.
ruemara
@trollhattan:
Is it wrong that this looks like a movie I’d love to see on a friday?
jake the snake
@Mike in NC:
A couple of hundred sci-fi writers have been saying the same thing for over 100 years, but admittedly at much lower prices.
Citizen Alan
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Prior to BMW v. Gore in 1996, very few judges in this country would have entertained the notion that the Due Process Clause forbade excessive punitive damages. Prior to State Farm v. Campbell in 2003, very few would have thought the Supreme Court would go on to establish a completely arbitrary “ten times the actual damages” limit on punitive damages in nearly all cases.
From the Wiki entry on the Exxon Valdez spill discussing the Supreme Court’s review:
And of course, I don’t think I need to discuss the recent Citizens United case. This history of the Supreme Court for the last 15 years has been a relentless march towards eviscerating the law regarding damages for corporate wrongdoing with an eye towards protecting corporate interests as much as possible. At least one of the current justices is invested in the oil industry to the tune of a quarter-million dollars. I do not think that this Supreme Court would blink at holding the strict liability and unlimited damages portions of the Oil Pollution Act to be unconstitutional violations of BP’s Due Process rights. I am consistently amazed after everything the Supreme Court has done in the last 10 years that so many people naively continue to think otherwise.
dnelson
@Mnemosyne: Carly is giving back, Ca needs the cash. The only folks making money are her handlers and the ad boys. I am sick of the old moneyed interests, but what can we do. We have very limited options. The republicans control the message even in CA, there is not one radio station that is off the republican message, I have savage, bimbo, etc. or gospel music. We in CA have a lot of problems. dnelson.
dnelson
@Mnemosyne: Carly is giving back, Ca needs the cash. The only folks making money are her handlers and the ad boys. I am sick of the old moneyed interests, but what can we do. We have very limited options. The republicans control the message even in CA, there is not one radio station that is off the republican message, I have savage, bimbo, etc. or gospel music. We in CA have a lot of problems. dnelson.
Elie
@kay:
Yep to all of that, kay
Volcano of sorrow for our country and our spirit too
Elie
@Nick:
But see, thats where JAIL is so useful. Let every BP senior executive spend — well, lets forget about ’em for a while — in real PRISON… Lets say as for as long as it takes to clean up the coast — a long damned time — LIFE!
A perfect exchange? No — of course not…but it stops the whining and bleating and makes all of them know — cut corners at your own risk and the risk of your life…
I keep thinking, maybe one or two of them will have enough grit to go home and get the old 22 out and solve their own issue with honor and responsibility..
Get their life back? Oh no! NEVER.
Zuzu's Petals
@Citizen Alan:
You claimed that BP would try to get out of paying clean up costs based on due process arguments. Yet the case law you Googled applies to punitive damages. Do you even know the difference?
As to the USSC finding the “responsible party” provisions of the Oil Pollution Act to be unconstitutional, it would have to overturn longstanding common law and maritime law principles of liability to do so. Not to mention the fact that BP has assumed liability under its contract with Transocean anyway.
And by the way, the OPA does not impose “unlimited damages.” Please try reading it before making such silly arguments.
Va Highlander
John,
I am so glad that, despite having a degree in engineering, I do not work at it. As your comment amply demonstrates, no one cares what grease-and-metal tech-types do these days. So long as the Brawndo keeps flowing, why should they?
I think you have been an an asshole about every attempt to fix this thing.
I think you’re being an asshole about it despite the fact that, at some level, you are aware of just how clueless you are about the technical details.
And did I mention you’re being an asshole?