BP can clean up worst of spill in weeks, official says

[maddezmom]

Source: Houston Chronicle

HOUMA, La. — BP’s top oil spill adviser said today that if its damaged Macondo well is capped soon, the company will be able to clean up the most damaging parts of the massive oil spill on the water’s surface within weeks.

"What’s left, probably weeks, certainly by the end of summer,"" said David Fritz, who heads up BP’s global oil spill response efforts. "It’s hard to predict.""

But he said the country should not expect the cleanup to take a decade or more, as some have suggested.

"Some people want to downplay it, and some people want to overplay it,"" Fritz said after accompanying journalists on a helicopter flyover of the far western edge of the spill this morning. "People have their agendas to show how bad this all is, and that we need to do other things. But it’s not true."

A Texas official with responsibility for oil spills didn’t dispute the timetable, but offered a caution.

"If the source is stopped in a day or two, I would tend to agree with Dave that the majority of the oil could probably be picked up by the end of summer," said Greg Pollock, who leads oil spill response for the Texas General Land Office.


Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7026805.html

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This sounds like wishful thinking to me but would be great if true.

[charlesg]

1. The check is in the mail

[BootinUp]

23. lol nt

[kirby]

2. "on the water’s surface"

What about the massive underwater plumes floating underneath the surface? How will those be cleaned up?

[FLPanhandle]

4. out of sight; out of mind for them (nt)

[readmoreoften]

3. In weeks. 50,000 or so weeks.

[foxfeet]

5. Did he factor in the effects of hurricane season?

Multiple hurricanes are not out of the question this summer.

[Loge23]

7. I'm they did factor this...

...it will provide them a convenient excuse.

[Loge23]

6. They're off to a rousing start.

So why hasn't this begun in earnest yet? Of course, no one really knows how bad this is since the C.G. is allegedly preventing the media from the crime scene.
These guys are so full of shit. Just like prisons, so are corporations these days - they are full of innocent convicts.

[ProudDad]

8. Let's connect the dots, shall we?

It's the (very new) corporate capitalist industrial growth model supporting the recent (8000 year) experiment in dominator hierarchies that's operative here.

As long as a "healthy" economy is measured by GDP, and the mantra is growth...

A small group of humans will derive huge profits for their own personal gain... from their rapacious degradation of the Earth as a livable planet...


What's happening in the Gulf is a slightly faster moving version of what's happening worldwide, the Long Emergency.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXsCMC0xcOY


We're witnessing the inevitable destruction of any possibility for a sustainable, humane "way of life" in the gulf region for the foreseeable future...

Of course, there may be a subsistence living available scooping up tar-balls for the next 50 years or so -- Mad Max...

It's the same story globally -- all for the short-term profit of a few individuals...

Power Down!!!

[Downwinder]

19. Your subsistence living won't work. A bucket of oil should have

at least the same commercial value as an empty beer can; but, they won't let you pick it up.

[joanmj]

9. i am waiting for the Prez to speak....

in LA after his tour of the damage(he was picking up a tar ball the size of a pea)....ughhh. It'll be decades....

[primavera]

10. Right, and the Tooth Fairy is real

Why are these guys wasting their breath talking when they have absolutely no credibility?

[Posteritatis]

11. "Best of oil spill will take decades." (nt)

[One_Life_To_Give]

12. 80/20 rule

20% of the effort will achieve 80% of the oil cleaned. But thats going to be surface skimmers out in the gulf itself. Cleaning the shores and particularly tidal estuaries/marshes is going to take the lions share of the effort and dollars. Although in terms of number of Barrels cleaned it will be relatively small.

[aquart]

16. Where are the skimmers? Have they started?

[Xipe Totec]

13. How long will it take to clean up this bullshit spill? nt

[Critters2]

20. Clean it up?! You have to get the spill stopped first!

And I don't see that happening any time soon.

[Xipe Totec]

21. You're right

I'm sad now...

:(

[FedUpWithIt All]

14. How worried do they have to be to spew lie after lie when they know the truth will out sooner or lat

later*

I must be much much worse than we even suspect. They are investing an awful lot into maintaining the ruse.

Their behavior, honestly, scares me more than anything. They are frantically trying to keep something hidden. I hate suspecting something even worse is coming but not knowing what it is or when to expect it.

[aquart]

15. Lying prick.

Any explanation why they haven't even STARTED to skim that oil while it's still at sea? And explanation why they're WAITING till it destroys the land?

[CanonRay]

17. How the hell are they going to clean up

a slick 20X6 miles and 3000 feet thick? I'd really like to know.

[Bozita]

18. Cleaned up "certainly by the end of summer"? - Wonder what the bookmakers' odds are on that.

[cloudythescribbler]

24. Yep -- I'll bet you can find MUCH more reliable info from the oddsmakers than ANYTHING BP says nt

[cloudythescribbler]

25. Yep -- I'll bet you can find MUCH more reliable info from the oddsmakers than ANYTHING BP says nt

[mbperrin]

22. Little weird statement, since Prince William Sound is still contaminated

from 21 years ago. (!)


http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/exxon_bp.html

Making Money on Oil Disasters
Will BP Take Responsibility, or Squeeze this Disaster for Profits?

By Susan Lyon, Daniel J. Weiss | May 26, 2010


The Exxon Valdez tanker spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, which eventually contaminated approximately 1,300 miles of shoreline. The total costs of Exxon Valdez, including both cleanup and also “fines, penalties and claims settlements,” ran as much as $7 billion. Cleanup of the affected region alone cost at least $2.5 billion,


and much oil remains.