[Sixstrings]

Gulf Coast Oil Spill: 'Exxon Valdez Is Going to Pale in Comparison to This'

210,000 gallons a day are gushing into the sea 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.
April 29, 2010

The US military has joined efforts to stop an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico as fears rise about its scale.

Five times as much oil as previously thought could be leaking from the well beneath where a rig exploded and sank last week, US officials said earlier.

The slick is 45 miles (72km) by 105 miles (169km) - almost the size of Jamaica - and heading for the US coast.

A third leak has been discovered, and a fire-fighting expert said the disaster may become the biggest oil spill ever.

"Probably the only thing comparable to this is the Kuwait fires [following the Gulf War in 1991]," Mike Miller, head of Canadian oil well fire-fighting company Safety Boss, told the BBC World Service.

"The Exxon Valdez [tanker disaster off Alaska in 1989] is going to pale [into insignificance] in comparison to this as it goes on."

Scientists say only a quarter of local marine wildlife survived the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Some 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) a day were now thought to be gushing into the sea 50 miles off Louisiana's coast, said the US Coastguard's Rear Admiral Mary Landry.

If those estimates are correct, the spill could match the 11m gallons spilt from the Exxon Valdez within two months.
http://www.alternet.org/news/146669/gulf_coast_oil_spill:_'exxon_valdez_is_going_to_pale_in_comparison_to_this'_

Oh man, what a mess this is. The coast guard can't get the well capped.. they're trying to set the sea on fire because that would be "less damaging" to wildlife than letting the slick continue to grow.

This should be a real wake up call to cornucopians -- there is simply no replacement for the easy-to-extract oil.

[timmac]

If this hits our coast in a big way this is going to look very bad on Obama for signing agreements to open up more off shore drilling.

Also brings me to this question, now that China is soon to be drilling some where near Cuba if they have a accident and that slick heads for Florida will they be this aggressive at stopping it ?

[Cloud9]

Does anyone smell sabotage here? Why would the President be sending SWAT teams to oil rigs?

[Sixstrings]

Does anyone smell sabotage here? Why would the President be sending SWAT teams to oil rigs?

Breaking news on MSNBC:

MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER - No new offshore drilling will be authorized until authorities learn what caused the explosion of the rig Deepwater Horizon, an aide to President Barack Obama said Friday as oil oozed ashore in Louisiana.

Senior adviser David Axelrod also defended the administration's response to the April 20 accident in the Gulf of Mexico, saying "we had the Coast Guard in almost immediately."

He deflected comparisons with the government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, telling ABC's "Good Morning America" that such speculation "is always the case in Washington whenever something like this happens."

Meanwhile, migrating birds, others nesting on the shoreline, such as pelicans, and even river otters and mink living on Louisiana's fragile islands and barrier marshes were among the animals being hit first by the massive oil spill.

The leak from a blown-out well a mile underwater is five times bigger than first believed. Faint fingers of oily sheen were reaching the Mississippi River delta late Thursday, lapping the Louisiana shoreline in long, thin lines. Thicker oil was about five miles offshore. Officials have said they would do everything to keep the Mississippi River open to traffic.

The oil slick could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36865687/ns/us_news-environment/

So much for "drill, baby drill." We shouldn't be drilling offshore without the technology / capability to cap these wells when something goes haywire.

Makes me wonder what would happen during general collapse.. I guess all these wells around the world would blow their top and start pouring into the oceans?

[Mesuge]

On the brighter note, it was nice to see on the telly the person in command, the admiral is actualy a lady, more power to them. Some, sociologists-psychologists tend to support the idea, look at the women in given society as the ultimate benchmark to gauge the situation. Although some very recent "wichcraft material" bordering examples were hopefully just freak outliers, which somehow made it in rapid succession inside the upper echelons of U.S. establishment:

- Albright the 1/2million dead iraqi children collateral worth it
- Rice the no one could have predicted planes as missiles
- Nancy the Repukratstein / Impeachment of war criminals - is off the table
- Hillary the overall ultimate chameleon

[Keith_McClary]

Now it's 5 x 5 = 25 times worse than first thought, as I posted in the other thread:
Experts: Oil May Be Leaking at Rate of 25,000 Barrels a Day in Gulf -WSJ
This "leak" or "seep" is covered only by the business press.
I'd call it a "gusher".

Ian MacDonald, professor of oceanography at Florida State University who specializes in tracking ocean oil seeps from satellite imagery, said there may already be more than 9 million gallons of oil floating in the Gulf now, based on his estimate of a 25,000 barrel-a-day leak rate. That's compared to 12 million gallons spilled in the Valdez accident.

John Amos, a geologist who has worked as a consultant with companies such as BP, ExxonMobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC on tracking and measuring oil spills from satellite data, said NOAA raised its estimates to 5,000 barrels a day after he and his colleagues published calculations that showed the original figures were far too low based on the NOAA data. Amos has also previously participated in a joint industry-NASA study using satellite imagines to detect and track oil slicks.

Mr. Amos said the 5,000 barrels a day is the "extremely low end" of their estimates. He said, based on NOAA maps, a more realistic figure is 20,000 barrels a day.

[heroineworshipper]

It sounds like sabotage now. There's no way after all these years of oil spills & the mathematical certainty of a blowout that anyone could be so unprepared to contain it.

[Keith_McClary]

It sounds like sabotage now. There's no way after all these years of oil spills & the mathematical certainty of a blowout that anyone could be so unprepared to contain it.

There's no way after all those years of terrorist attacks and "intelligence" warnings that anyone could be so unprepared for 9/11.

[mos6507]

It sounds like sabotage now. There's no way after all these years of oil spills & the mathematical certainty of a blowout that anyone could be so unprepared to contain it.

And so another stupid 911-style conspiracy theory is born. This is so tedious.

[EnergyUnlimited]

It sounds like sabotage now. There's no way after all these years of oil spills & the mathematical certainty of a blowout that anyone could be so unprepared to contain it.

And so another stupid 911-style conspiracy theory is born. This is so tedious.

These conspiracy theories are product of hubristic mind of most of Westerners who are believing in infallibility of our technologies etc.

They are coming at any time when technology is failing.
Peoples simply cannot accept it.

So for example BMA (British Medical Association) have scrapped a term "accidental injury" several years ago.
They say that no injury is accidental.
It is always someones fault.

[Timo]

I'll be curious to see how this oil slick affects the upcoming hurricane season. I honestly have no idea if the slick somehow impedes the upward evaporation of water that then will fall back down as rain. Might we see Dallas suffering 130 mph winds blowing oil around instead of water? And god forbid the levees in New Orleans if they are filled to overflowing again, but this time with oil. It'll be the Coyuhoga (sp?) all over again.

[eXpat]

Not my fault
BP: Oil rig leak 'wasn't our accident'

NEW ORLEANS - Facing an unprecedented Gulf Coast environmental disaster, not to mention lawsuits, oil giant BP told NBC on Monday that while it was taking responsibility for cleaning up the giant undersea leak, the accident that triggered the disaster was not its fault.

"It wasn't our accident, but we are absolutely responsible for the oil, for cleaning it up, and that's what we intend to do," BP Group CEO Tony Hayward told NBC's "TODAY" show.

The rig that exploded on April 20 and then sank was run by another company, Transocean, he reminded viewers. That rig, he said, "was run by their people, their processes."
Hayward added that the failure of the rig's "blow-out preventer" — a device that should have shut off the well when the rig exploded and sank — was "unprecedented in our industry."

"What has failed here is the ultimate safety device on a drilling rig," he said. "There are many barriers of protection that you have to go to before you get to this. It isn't designed to not fail."

Guy Cantwell, a Transocean spokesman, responded by reading a statement without elaborating. "We will await all the facts before drawing conclusions and we will not speculate," he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36912754/ns/us_news-environment/
This is already the worst accident in history of the oil industry, is bigger already than the exxon valdez oil spill. I hope, BP (who didn´t take all the security measures that it should) and everybody involved is ripped into very little pieces.

[Sixstrings]

Not my fault
BP: Oil rig leak 'wasn't our accident'

Ah, the beauty of subcontracting strikes again. So what does this mean, do you think they'll be able to push some of their liability off to Transocean? Would sure save them a lot of money, letting the little rig operator go bankrupt from lawsuits.

I also noticed their use of the words "unprecedented in our industry," I think I smell a legal defense brewing.

[rockdoc123]

Ah, the beauty of subcontracting strikes again. So what does this mean, do you think they'll be able to push some of their liability off to Transocean? Would sure save them a lot of money, letting the little rig operator go bankrupt from lawsuits.

I also noticed their use of the words "unprecedented in our industry," I think I smell a legal defense brewing.

absolutely. But I think the liability they will be able to push off will likely only be related to loss of life. Most contracts put the liability on the Operator unless he can prove criminal negligence on the part of the contractor and that is a difficult task. In terms of equipment failure the Operator is suppossed to inspect the rig when he takes it on and he normally should be conducting integrety checks.
BP is clearly responsible for all costs related to the actual spill, that is mandated in legislation that came out following Exxon Valdez. My understanding is that they are only on the hook for a maximum of 75 MM although there is a bill going to be pushed through Senate that raises this to 10 billion.

[EnergyUnlimited]

BP is clearly responsible for all costs related to the actual spill, that is mandated in legislation that came out following Exxon Valdez. My understanding is that they are only on the hook for a maximum of 75 MM although there is a bill going to be pushed through Senate that raises this to 10 billion.

These 75 millions cap is only for third party damages claims (to fishermen etc).
They will also have to pay full expenses of cleanup and these can easily exceed 10 billions. There is no limit on these.

I think, BP is tethering on the brink of bankruptcy and markets will soon realize that.

[PrestonSturges]

Does anyone smell sabotage here? Why would the President be sending SWAT teams to oil rigs?

That would be the same international Marxist/Jewish conspiracy the Nazis claimed burned the Reichstag?

The right is pretty working exclusively from the Nazi propaganda play book at this point.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/4/30 ... s-Revealed

[Plantagenet]

Its a little bit late for Obama to put a hold on drilling now.........I wish the government would have realized that these new ultra deep wells encounter higher pressures then previously experienced, and so are more dangerous.

I'm especially troubled by the failure of the Obama administration to require modern acoustic blow out preventers on these wells like Norway and Brazil do.....if we had modern safety equipment in place, it might've been possible to shut this spill down at the start.

--------------------------------

[Plantagenet]

Its possible that the oil discharge is steadily increasing through time as sand and rock debris carried up in the oil jet abrades and destroys the well casing and enlarges the entire hole.

That would be very bad.

[PrestonSturges]

And hardware behaves strangely under those pressures. The gas turns to clathrate "ice" in the pipes at those pressures.

it's like sending a space probe to Mars.

And then it gets dumped off to a subcontractor whose margins are shaved to nothing.

[Keith_McClary]

Not my fault
BP: Oil rig leak 'wasn't our accident'

BP Group CEO Tony Hayward:
"It isn't designed to not fail."

That goes in my quote collection, along with these:

U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana:
“What’s important about this sheen is that 97% of it is a rainbow sheen,” she said in the Senate. “Only 3% contains emulsified crude…So it is important to understand that, while this is an unprecedented disaster—the oil slick is wide and covers a large section of ocean—97% of it is an extremely thin sheen of relatively light oil on the surface.”

Pavel Molchanov, analyst with Raymond James:
"Thousands of offshore wells have been drilled in the Gulf without anything of this sort happening. It's truly a once-in-a-decade type of event, maybe even more rare than that."