Thad Allen has sent a letter to BP that discusses a seep “a distance” from the well, and “anomalies” at the wellhead. Tom Fowler at the Houston Chronicle adds this speculation:
All weekend a steady stream of small bubbles has been coming from a pipe used to inject mud into the well just below the blowout preventer. Wells noted the bubbles on Saturday but said they weren’t a concern. Could that be one of the anomalies Allen referred to?
Update: Rich Lowry:
Now that B.P. has finally capped the well, the temperature on the story is going down considerably because so much of it was driven by the irresistible cable-bait of the live video of gushing oil. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if within the next couple of months a major newspaper runs a story on how the most extreme scenarios of destruction from the spill aren’t coming to pass and the Gulf might bounce back sooner than expected.
Island in Alabama
All is well. Remain calm!
Morbo
Uh oh. We’re all gonna die.
dmsilev
Can we use Rich Lowry’s ultra-dense skull as a backup cap, just in case?
dms
Scott
Shorter Rich Lowry: “We’re Winning!”
SpotWeld
Similaraly all the repair and acessment effort was focused on the well head. Now that it’s under control there will (hopefully) be a review of the surrounding area.
mistermix
@Scott: Or, “Give it 6 more months, and you’ll see that I’m right”
Bulworth
Also, too, now that it’s capped (maybe) all the damage caused by the 70+ plus days it was gushing will disappear. Pretty soon Faux news/Limbo will be claiming the oil spill never happened.
burnspbesq
Anyone who is tempted to believe in good outcomes should go here and watch the video clip called “Lessons from an Old Oil Spill.”
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/07/18/us/1247468464693/oil-and-water.html
eemom
Rich Lowry should stick to what he’s good at, i.e., watching Sarah Palin on teevee and jerking off.
Tim Waters
The media is always on the prowl for the next big thing. They know the attention span of the average person can compare to changing channels on TV.
This Oil disaster will be felt for years to come. Once again we will have learned nothing. That seems to be our History.
We didn’t learn from any prior oil disasters. Workers then, and now are sick and dieing from the same exposure, Oil, Dispersant, perhaps even the so called Mud they use in drilling.
An so sadly, the Mantra of Drill baby Drill will win out pea brain consumers. Our Next screw up will probably be in Alaska.
Ash Can
I would dearly love for Rich Lowry to be right. Given his track record, however, the chances of this are somewhere between dismal and laughable. Sigh.
Keith G
Rich is just using a cheap, easy, and time honored method to appear prescient.
If he is wrong, no one will remember. If he is correct, it will be noted in the blurb for his next book.
Either way, this early contrarian stand guarantees an interview or two and a bunch of links.
me
Palin will be greeted as a liberator in New Orleans.
burnspbesq
More on the persistence of adverse environmental impacts of oil spills.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/science/earth/18enviro.html?_r=1
El Cid
@eemom: Starbursts! I haz them!
Comrade Javamanphil
Rich Lowry is to political punditry as Rob Enderle is to technology punditry. Definitely file this one away for future claim chowder.
Shalimar
There is also the irresistible cable-bait of oil washing up on white beaches, but luckily for Rich Lowry BP dumped every gallon of dispersant they could make into the water so we won’t see as much oil (or the poison that makes it disappear) as we would have.
Montysano
@Tim Waters:
How else but DBD to allow us to idle our Escalades in the parking lot while we shop? 30 seconds in a hot car makes the Baby Jesus weep.
The American way of life is not negotiable, bitchez!!
Svensker
@eemom:
I was trying to think of something clever or witty but I’ll stop now. You win.
DBrown
Rich is an utter asshole – he has so much past proof that gaint oil spills in water (esp. ultra deep water) just get so much better than people thought (truth is, we just ignore all the terrible damages because we don’t or very often, can’t find it due to limitations of equipment) – its still there doing long term harm but out-of-sight somehow makes doesn’t exist true – just cover your eyes… ) A total wack-off story.
wolfetone
@eemom: you have my nomination for today’s winner of the internets!
StringonaStick
BP and the corporate media just don’t want to talk about the thing they’ve been worried about all along: the original explosion may have damaged the casing inside the well, so much so that with the cap now blocking the outflow on top, oil will leak out at the damaged point(s) in the subsurface. At the high pressure this well produces at, leak(s) into the surrounding soft sediments mean there is a very real risk of creating an undersea exit point for oil; one that is not controllable by a cap since it will be oozing (or blasting) out into the sediments of the gulf seafloor and then into the sea.
This is one of many things that piss me off about this whole situation. This could have been explained easily at the very beginning had the media bothered to find a petroleum engineer or geologist (even an anonymous one); they simply didn’t want to bother. We can all recall that there were indications this weekend that the new cap wasn’t containing all the pressure, and this means that the next question is where the “lost” pressure is exiting the drill hole. Since the answer is most likely going to seriously suck it is therefore not being discussed, just like a reasoned discussion of just how hard it is to drill exactly into the existing well is also not being discussed. I swear, we are such a nation of dumbasses that we see Hollywood special effects and just assume this is what happens in the real world…
Joshua
Thing is, I wouldn’t be surprised if the media runs those stories next year, either. The media has a pretty good track record of downplaying unmitigated disasters to defray anger at reckless corporate bastards who ruin the environment or economy out of sheer greed.
Resident Firebagger
Aw, Rich Lowry is bored…