Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
- Worse Than Obama's Kill List? American Support for It
- States Take On GMOs in Battle Over Labeling
- Nearly 50 Climate Activists Arrested Outside Obama's White House
- Genetically Engineered Meat, Coming Soon to a Supermarket Near You
- DOJ Kill List Memo Forces Many Dems Out of the Closet as Overtly Unprincipled Hacks
- Watch a City-Sized Glacier Collapse
- Nearly 50 Climate Activists Arrested Outside Obama's White House
- Around the World, A 'Billion Rise' to Fight Violence Against Women and Girls
- Study Finds 80% of All Antibiotics in US Used for Big-Ag
- DOJ Kill List Memo Forces Many Dems Out of the Closet as Overtly Unprincipled Hacks
Popular content
Today's Top News
Containment Dome Fails to Stop Oil Gusher: No Plan B
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana - BP officials desperately searched Monday for a new fix to the enormous Gulf of Mexico oil spill after efforts to cap a gushing leak with a containment dome hit a perilous snag.
An oil soaked bird struggles against the oil slicked side of the HOS Iron Horse supply vessel at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana Sunday, May 9, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) British energy giant BP, which owns the lion's share of the leaking oil and has accepted responsibility for the clean-up, is facing the jaw-dropping possibility that, failing a swift fix it has yet to deliver with a containment dome, the crisis could spiral into an even worse environmental calamity.
The White House also was scrambling to contain fallout from the massive disaster threatening to take a toll on President Barack Obama's political and energy agenda.
In Washington, Obama on Monday "will meet with a number of Cabinet members and senior staff in the White House Situation Room to review BP efforts to stop the oil leak, as well as to decide on next steps to ensure all is being done to contain the spread, mitigate the environmental impact and provide assistance to affected states," a White House statement said.
Meanwhile the Minerals Management Service (MMS) said it "continues to work with BP to explore all options that could stop or mitigate oil leaks from the damaged well."
The BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig sank some 80 km (50 miles) southeast of Venice, Louisiana April 22, two days after an explosion that killed 11 workers.
The riser pipe that had connected the rig to the wellhead now lies fractured on the seabed a mile below, spewing out oil at a rate at some 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day.
Sheen from the leading edge of the slick has surrounded island nature reserves off the coast of Louisiana and tar balls have reached as far as the Alabama coast, threatening tourist beaches further east.
Sea life is being affected in a low-lying region that contains vital spawning grounds for fish, shrimp and crabs and is a major migratory stop for many species of rare birds.
The 2.4-billion-dollar Louisiana fishing industry has been slapped with a temporary ban in certain areas due to health concerns about polluted fish.
No Plan B
BP, facing a barrage of lawsuits and clean-up costs soaring above 10 million dollars a day, had pinned its hopes on a 98-ton concrete and steel containment box that it successfully lowered 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) down over the main leak.
But the contraption lay idle on the seabed as engineers furiously tried to figure out how to stop it clogging with ice crystals.
Still, if efforts fail to make the giant funnel system effective, there is no solid plan B to prevent potentially tens of millions of gallons of crude from causing one of the worst ever environmental catastrophes.
Untold damage is already being done by the 3.5 million gallons estimated to be in the sea so far, but the extent of that harm will rise exponentially if the only solution is a relief well that takes months to drill.
Admiral Thad Allen, head of the US Coast Guard, suggested they were considering what he called a "junk shot" to plug the main leak.
"They're actually going to take a bunch of debris, shredded up tires, golf balls and things like that and under very high pressure shoot it into the preventer itself and see if they can clog it up and stop the leak," Allen, who is leading the US government's response, told CBS television.
This could be risky as experts have warned that excessive tinkering with the blowout preventer -- a huge 450-ton valve system that should have shut off the oil -- could see crude shoot out unchecked at 12 times the current rate.
There are also fears the slick, which covers an area of about 2,000 square miles (5,200 square kilometers), could be carried around the Florida peninsula if it spreads far enough south to be picked up by a special Gulf current.
"If this gusher continues for several months, it's going to cover up the Gulf coast and it's going to get down into the loop current and that's going to take it down the Florida Keys and up the east coast of Florida," warned Florida Senator Bill Nelson.
"You are talking about massive economic loss to our tourism, our beaches, to our fisheries, very possibly disruption of our military testing and training, which is in the Gulf of Mexico," he told CNN.
On the dome front, clearing out the slushy crystals is easy -- the chamber just has to be raised to warmer levels, Suttles told reporters. Keeping the crystals out so that a pipe can be lowered into the dome to suck the oil to a waiting barge is another matter.
BP began drilling a first relief well one week ago, but that will take up to three months to drill -- by which time some 20 million gallons of crude could have streamed into the sea and ruined the fragile ecology of the Gulf.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
164 Comments so far
Show AllThis is full blown panic.
Panicking people do not make rational decisions.
The blow out preventer plan failed.
The robotic activation of manual switches on the inappropriate blow out preventer in 5000 feet of water failed.
The cofferdam containment of the larger of the two riser pipe leaks failed, mostly due to ignoring the readily available knowledge of the behavior of the formation of methane clathrates at those depths, temperatures and pressures.
The main blowout is still spewing oil at a rate of 25000 bbl/day. And there is knowledgeable chatter that as the reservoir continues to spew into the gulf, the original borehole could erode and expand in diameter even further leading to a possible increase in flow to as much as 60000 bbl/day. If it is not there already.
BP, the US Government and its various departments have no idea what to do.
In short, a foreseeable and preventable incident has become a clusterfuck mated to a Chinese fire drill.
Galenwainwright, are they really saying this out there in BP land???
Unfortunately, yes.
I don't know. If this does get out of the Gulf and into the open ocean, that could be the beginning of the end for most of the currently viable species on Spaceship Earth and a horrible end it will be as food becomes contaminated, water undrinkable, and the oxygen level begins to decline as the photo-plankton continue to die off.
I am sure that that 1% that controls 98 going on 99% of the world's wealth will sit in their sealed, guarded, compounds and party hearty right up to the end. They'll have hoarded water, food, and air to last for years, but eventually, the "Mask of the Red Death" will visit them, too.
Gaia will, no doubt, start all over again, over a span of hundreds of millenia, to evolve another life form, possibly from the deep ocean tube worms etc. that thrive near volcanic vents in the deep trenches.
We have plenty of hubris, this human race. We think we are so smart. We can do anything. Nature is just something to defeat, to rob from. We have super weapons, we can genetically modify anything now and turn it into a designer whatsit with no thought as to what it may do to living growing things, including us. We have borrowed excessively from nature, but now, nature may be calling in its markers. Only time will tell.
Perhaps the Mayan Calendar is right.
It's tragically entertaining to watch corporatists like Bill Nelson weep and whine when he and the people that elect him get hammered by the logical consequences of uncontrolled, unwise exploitation.
EPIC FAIL! Time to lock up BP crooks and throw away the key!
To find out more about how corporations gained person hood rights in this country go to this website or look up www.democracyunlimited.ning.com and click on Learn.
http://democracyunlimited.ning.com/page/the-hidden-history-of
The Gulf of Mexico Loop Current promises to share BP's petroleum blunders with all countries sharing a gulf coastline... and further. The loop current will basically swirl this toxic mess around the gulf like a big crude oil bathtub drain.
http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2008/graphics/loopcurrent/index.shtml
My heart is breaking when I see and even think of the destruction to this beautiful part of the country for years and generations to come. I remember the 1969 spill in Santa Barbara, CA and remember the damage done there and this spill I fear when the numbers are counted after getting the oil to stop flowing out like a river is going to I believe going to be the worst spill in our nation’s history.
I spent time in LA and the people who live there are hard working and deserve so much better than this. There are families who have lived there for generations who love the gulf, the animals, every aspect of life in LA. It just breaks my heart to see that the wonderful paradise they love is being destroyed and I biggest fear is that nothing will really change and that once this is cleaned up they will still drill in the gulf of Mexico and it could happen again. There has to be a better way for hard working men to make a living to support their families?
I hope when this is contained that LA and the other states will look at bringing Green Tech jobs so the men can have good paying jobs that don’t have the risk of destroying the envioirnment they live in and love so much.
I will keep LA and all the people who live on the gulf in my prayers and ask for a miracle that a way is found to stop the leaks.
Chrisy
Hey British Petroleum, I don't Swim in your Toilet, Why'd you have to pee in my ocean.
This is a true catistrophic disaster for the enviroment of the Gulf of Mexico and eventually perhaps the Atlantic ocean.
You know, the 9,000 square mile, six foot deep plastic garbage dump in the Pacific Ocean is just as bad as this, perhaps even far worse. The difference is, it's out of sight and out of mind.
It rather remids me of those who say, "Don't worry about nuclear power plant's safety Tree Hugger." Someday we'll see.... Hope not.
This event will undoubtably be the equivalent of Chernobyl.
I wonder how many human lives will eventually be lost to toxins and cancer caused by this monster?
While this oil spill is bad, nothing is as bad as Chernobyl. Chernobyl spewed fuel rod (plutonium) into the stratosphere that showered the entire Northern Hemisphere. The molecules of plutonium have a half-live of four billion years. Many people have mysteriously died who have inhaled a molecule from that disaster but we'll never know it was due to this power plant. The Russians basically nuked the whole world, just like we did accidentally with the Castle Bravo test in the Pacific.
See map of red radiation detected in 1986 halfway down the page:
http://planetliberty.wikidot.com/nuclear-power-incidents
(remember: these were detected radiation events. Absence of a red dot may just mean there's no detector there.)
This oil spill, while extremely bad, will go away in 20-100 years as the goop sinks into the sand. Of course the genetic mutations it caused will still be with us....
Solar is the only way to go.... it doesn't matter what it costs. We subsidize war anually at a trillion dollars a year don't we? We can subsidize solar as well and shut down all the coal plants in the south. Who cares if we have blackouts due to cloud cover? It's better than eating oil products.
TJ
While this oil spill is bad, nothing is as bad as Chernobyl. Chernobyl spewed fuel rod (plutonium) into the stratosphere that showered the entire Northern Hemisphere. The molecules of plutonium have a half-live of four billion years. Many people have mysteriously died who have inhaled a molecule from that disaster but we'll never know it was due to this power plant. The Russians basically nuked the whole world, just like we did accidentally with the Castle Bravo test in the Pacific.
See map of red radiation detected in 1986 halfway down the page:
http://planetliberty.wikidot.com/nuclear-power-incidents
(remember: these were detected radiation events. Absence of a red dot may just mean there's no detector there.)
This oil spill, while extremely bad, will go away in 20-100 years as the goop sinks into the sand. Of course the genetic mutations it caused will still be with us....
Solar is the only way to go.... it doesn't matter what it costs. We subsidize war anually at a trillion dollars a year don't we? We can subsidize solar as well and shut down all the coal plants in the south. Who cares if we have blackouts due to cloud cover? It's better than eating oil products.
TJ
Chernobyl did not threaten the phytoplankton of an entire oceanic area.
Phytoplankton are responsible for creating more atmospheric oxygen than the rain forests of Brazil.
Wipe out the phytoplankton, and you endanger every living thing on this planet. Including humanity.
So far, this is the single largest oil spill disaster in the history of technological man. And it shows no sign of stopping soon.
The Chernobyl event was the result of arrogance and deliberate tampering with the failsafe systems of said reactor.
This disaster was the result of Corporate malfeasance in wanting to save money to boost potential profits. Thus the installation of a substandard blow out preventer.
>This is a true catastrophic disaster for the enviroment of
>the Gulf of Mexico and eventually perhaps the Atlantic
>ocean.
No, it's not. It's a "small" disaster: one of, maybe, a thousand needed to wake people up to the fact that corporations - and their political lackeys! - have placed us all on a fast-moving train with no brakes.
If you think this is bad, wait till the train we're on crashes into a terminal station.
If this 'spill' grows to the point it escapes the Gulf of Mexico and gets picked up by the Gulf Stream current, it will circulate up the east coast of N. America, through the Arctic, down the west coast of England, past France, Portugal and Spain, infiltrate the Mediterranean, flow past the west coast of Africa, swing over the north coast of Antarctica, then work it's way up the east coast of South America back to it's starting point in the Gulf.
Oh, and incidentally poisoning everything along the way.
Let's see now;
1. Hemorrhaging illegal aliens on the SW border.
2. Hemorrhaging oil off our SE coast.
3. Hemorrhaging counterfeit dollars in the Mid Atlantic and Northeast.
Wow, this is getting good.
Illegal "aliens" (are they Martians?) aren't to blame. I won't go through the list, but NAFTA alone put millions of Mexicans out of work. And Bill Clinton admitted, recently, that other policies he implemented put thousands of Haitian farmers out of business.
To particular groups of foreigners, it is America that is the illegal interloper causing strife and tension in their country.
What would you do if the U.S. made you unemployed? Lie down and die? It's an option, I suppose.
Um. For a bunch of us out here in America, the U.S. DID make us unemployed. I think the the stock marked tanked last week because for a blink of a moment the elites saw what was happening in Greece and were afraid people might actually revolt elsewhere.
And then they said, nah, and went back to doing god's work.
Whatever you wanna call 'em. Same difference.
The bad ones need to go.
We have met the enemy •••
Obama administration blocked efforts to stop BP oil drilling before explosion
By Joe Kishore 10 May 2010
In 2009, the Obama administration intervened to support the reversal of a court order that would have halted offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who has long had close ties to the industry, specifically cited BP’s Deepwater Horizon operation as one that should be allowed to go forward, according to a group involved in the court case. A Washington DC Appeals Court ruled in April 2009 that the Bush administration’s five-year plan for offshore oil and gas drilling (covering 2007 to 2012) was not based on a proper review of the environmental impact of the drilling. Only days before the ruling, the Obama administration had granted BP a "categorical exclusion," exempting it from an environmental impact study for the Deepwater Horizon project. (legitgov)
••• and he is us!
WHAT!!!!!! DISRUPTION TO MILITARY TESTING AND TRAINING?!?!?!??????????? WHAT COMMIEPINKODEMOCRATHOMOFAGCOLOUREDSOCIALISTLESBIANTREE-HUGGER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS????
God bless America!! Support our troops!! Power of Pride!!
Fuck the environment! If the founding fathers had meant us to save the environment, they would have, they would have... well, I don't know what they would have, but I'll tell you it's gawdamn un-American to worry about the environment when there's drillin' an' killin' an' money-makin' to do.
As commented before, WE'LL SEE just how much permanent and total responsibility BP takes.
And why do they keep saying that if such and such happens, it 'could be disastrous'? Apparently, ever since this fucking nightmare started, it hasn't QUITE become disastrous.
Who the fuck do they think they're bullshitting? Jesus H. Christ almighty - is this another effort at stupefying and dumbing down the population? What kind of a goddamn idiot do you have to be to think anything other than that this has been a catastrophic hellish disaster since MINUTE ONE????
And if fire extinguishers are required in the drilling rig mess hall/galley, why the hell is a blowout preventer with a few more billion spent on its R & D and deployment and readiness and daily or weekly testing TO FUCKING GUARANTEE THAT IT WORKS AND IS READY TO GO THE VERY SECOND THE GODDAMN PIPE LOOSENS OFF THE SEABED NOT FUCKING REQUIRED BY LAW?????
Because in the Fascist, Sodom and Gommorrah States of Absolute Betrayal of the People and the Planet, it is vital that the BPs and the Exxons and the Halliburtons and the rest of these corporate cocksuckers have free rein to fuck every plant, animal, person and ecosystem as far as possible.
Of course there's no goddamn Plan B. There was no fucking Plan A, either, remember? And there will not be next time around. And there will be a next time. Guaranteed. Don't think for a moment that the rest of the murderers, or BP, are going to let this little glitch fuck up their plans.
Please excuse the profanity. I can't see why people are not running in the streets, mad as hell. And the use of profanity in the discourse is neither here nor there, considering the magnitude of the horror that the discourse is about.
Maybe if that corporate whore Obama did some swearing, we'd see that he's human, and maybe he'd cow some people into getting some real shit done.
But he's the Manchurian Candidate. He couldn't ultimately give a fuck, now could he? He gives more of a fuck about his own ass than he does about the Gulf of Mexico. Otherwise he would not have beeen on goddamn Leno the other night.
Jesus wept.
This is the BEST COMMENT so far! Thank you for saying what I think!! There isn't enough profanity to describe this disaster!
Agree. But what the fuck good does it do? None.
As I stated earlier, the Lena Horne obit came before the oil spill story on CBS tonight.
You know the drill, "pay no attention to..."
God, its just horrid.
"As commented before, WE'LL SEE just how much permanent and total responsibility BP takes."
It will do its best to not take any responsibility, thank you!
OYE
Thanks Barry. What you said.
Not even a plan A.
Barry Greene. Indeed!!!!!!!!!!
Way to go, Barry Greene!! Well said.
Great comment Barry. Unfortunately I doubt much will be done/learned about this disaster. Meet the press didn't even mention it on Sunday, and today Vice Pres. Biden said there will only be a short moratorium then it will be back to business as usual.
As far as I can find out, Boston is *still* under a boil water advisory.
Hmm.
Not much mention of the cascade of failing systems that support modern society in the wider media. Lots of coverage about Obama's appointee to the Supreme Court, ongoing blather about which celebrity is sleeping around or in re-hab, etc. etc.
But very little coverage about the impending effects of the oil disaster, the flooding in Tennessee, the Boston water shortage, California's continued insolvency, or the spreading effects of the riots and forcible bailout in Greece.
I would hazard a guess that if the people really found out what was actually going on, the politicians and Corporate Elite would be swinging from lamp posts and highway overpasses in very short order.
...and the continuing eruption of the Icelandic volcano (which historically has popped with its larger neighbor), the drop and bounce of the stock markets---still a "mystery", the 6.6+ quake in Sumatra...
And it still has time for Empire.
So ICE crystals of Methane Hydrates have a propensity to form at these depths and block wide pipey funnel things up. This sounds ideal. There is plenty of water around, so perhaps need to pump water in methane in right proportions, and have them mix and freeze in the riser pipe at a sufficient rate to overcome the oil flow and form a plug. There is natural glue down there,so use it.
To quote Peter Maass on Democracy Now! today, "I mean American consumers—still want their gasoline, still want their cars, and aren’t ready to make the investments that are necessary, the changes that are necessary. And so, in some ways, the Obama administration certainly isn’t leading us to a new direction, but neither are they really being encouraged to lead us in a new direction by a kind of large population in America."
This speaks volumes about where Americans are at, I think.
November 5, 2012
Obama re-elected in a landslide.
Any bets?
Nope.
Yeah, I'll take some of that action.
(Then again, I owned a Betamax!)
:)
From the very moment the explosion and fire crippled the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, BP was in full CYA mode.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126667241
BP was more concerned about being sued by the survivors than the deaths and impeding devastation of the Gulf ecology. And it appears the the US Coast Guard was aiding and abetting them from the get go.
This should get some circulation: (from another's post)--
"In 2009, the Obama administration intervened to support the reversal of a court order that would have halted offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who has long had close ties to the industry, specifically cited BP’s Deepwater Horizon operation as one that should be allowed to go forward, according to a group involved in the court case. A Washington DC Appeals Court ruled in April 2009 that the Bush administration’s five-year plan for offshore oil and gas drilling (covering 2007 to 2012) was not based on a proper review of the environmental impact of the drilling. Only days before the ruling, the Obama administration had granted BP a "categorical exclusion," exempting it from an environmental impact study for the Deepwater Horizon project. (legitgov)"
It seems that the short story, ICE NINE, is real and has arrived.
Here's a Plan B I have not seen mentioned:
As I understand it, the oil is at least 10,000 feet below the sea bottom, and is gushing upward through layers of limestone and ancient compressed salt through a very narrow pipe. It seems logical that explosives could seal the vent and that the shock waves of even a large blast would be dispersed through the final layer of silt. Anyone know why this wouldn't work? (other than that it would end BP's chance to get all that oil)
I've got a better plan B.
Shove the massive 30 year-old pile of American ignorance, and right-wing values down the hole. Why it would be like solving two problems at once.
In the name of christ, fuck oil.
The great Jurassic revenge commences!
...There are 2000 other wells in the Gulf, a blast might affect some of those. If it shut them too, it "d be OK, but,...
Like a Hollywood meteor movie, all problems can be solved by detonating nuclear bombs. I like it!
Explosives shatter the rocks, providing new conduits for the oil to get to the surface.
Explosives ignite oil on surface, keeping repair crews away for an extended period?
Explosives open the vent in the hard matter wider, allowing escaping oil to push the silt aside?
I must say the actual results or non-results of such action lie quite beyond my expertise.
Sadly, if the well can be sealed, BP will most likely just drill again in a different place, with cosmeticized US approval.
Here's a contrarian/cassandran view of the flow rate of the runaway well:
http://blog.skytruth.org/2010/05/bp-gulf-oil-spill-how-big-is-it.html
These activists have calculated the flow at about 5 times what the BP/Coast Guard estimate is.
***
Some have been curious about the effect of a hurricane on the oil spill and vice versa. Here's a meteorologist with advanced knowledge on the topic:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1476
***
Those with an interest in a more technically oriented discussion are advised that The Oil Drum has become fully engaged on this topic: http://www.theoildrum.com/
We can assume from past performance that government and BP public figures are very low: we have some idea what their perceived self-interest will be.
Other than that, such things are probably awfully hard to measure.
If you have a sense or feel for the spirits of the earth then you know you have been seperated from the natural world. Like your feet can't feel the earth. This is a bad sign and a bad power. A crack in the artifical world.