Gulf oil spill: 'Everybody's lost hope'

[highplainsdem]

Source: USA TODAY

Gulf oil spill: 'Everybody's lost hope'

By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY

NEW ORLEANS — Anger and frustration surged across the Gulf Coast on Monday as residents learned that the latest attempt to cap a renegade underwater well had failed and that oil may keep gushing into the Gulf of Mexico until at least August, when relief wells are scheduled to be finished.

As they entered the 42nd day of the crisis Monday, officials with oil company BP said that over the weekend they had abandoned the so-called "top kill" maneuver to jam drilling mud into the well to stop its flow and were trying a new technique.

"Everybody's lost hope," said councilman Jay LaFont of Grand Isle, La., where beaches and its fishing industry were closed because of the spill. "As long as you have something to look forward to, a little glimmer of hope, you can move on. But this just drained everything out of us."

-snip-

"We will die a slow death over the next two years as this oil creeps ashore," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-05-31-gulf-oil-spill_N.htm

[laughingliberal]

1. K & R nt

[donco6]

2. No words. n/t

[Bobbieo]

3. My sympathies to NOLA and LA residents!!! My hopes and prayers are with you.

[xchrom]

4. Recommend -- goddamn, why wouldn't they? Nt

[HowHasItComeToThis]

5. WHERE ARE THE MYTHICAL TANKERS AND THEIR PUMPS??????

WELL

[inna]

37. I don't understand why they are not "vacuuming" it up, like they did in Saudi Aurabia.

[DRex]

43. That costs money.

Simple as that.

[JDPriestly]

44. I have wondered why they didn't try to vaccum it into tankers

also. Maybe the experience in Saudi Arabia was not that positive. Maybe the amount of oil coming out of the well is too massive for the tankers. Maybe it would be too dangerous to have that many tankers in the Gulf. I can think of a number of problems with that solution although I would like to know why BP rejected that idea. I'm assuming it was BP's decision to reject that idea. I would also like to know whether my assumption was correct.

Did BP reject that idea? If so, why?

Did the government nix it? If so, why?

Were tanker owners unwilling to permit their tankers to be used for such a purpose? If so, why? (Would it ruin the tankers?)

Was there no money for such an effort? If there was not, why?

[defendandprotect]

57. Certainly there was money . . . oil industry is richer than god . . .

The thing is, it's the last thing they want to be separated from --

[Devil_Fish]

59. It's cause the tanker are being used for oil storage waiting for the market price to go back up.

Profit before everything else including the environment.

If they had to off load it, they would have to force the owners of it (read comodity stock brokers) to take delivery. The stock borkers have no place to put the oil so they would be forced to sell it. the price of oil would plumit to like $2 a barrel and gas would go down to like $1 a gallon, and then BP's profit margin would go down, and the CEO's might have to take a cut on their bonuses.

In short, it would never work so we will just have to live (or die) with a dead Gulf of Mexico... Oh well...

:puke:

[JDPriestly]

71. Devil_Fish, I think you are probably right.

[CountAllVotes]

6. from keep hope alive to

no hope almost overnight. :cry:

[Yeahyeah]

7. This is an interesting experiment-can a race of homo sapiens survive on an Earth-like planet

after they have killed their oceans.Very exciting,fascinating.

[tabatha]

9. Exciting?

[Yeahyeah]

11. That is the way we see it here on the mothership.

[TheWatcher]

13. If this is your attempt at humor, you have failed miserably.

[superconnected]

29. Congrats, you now look crazy.

[liberation]

50. I don't think most people get your humor

but I thought it was funny. Especially when you consider that for such a flawed species, most humans have a waaaaay too high opinion of themselves in spite of the constant evidence to the contrary. ;-)

[chrisa]

73. Ahhh! Our intergalactic overlords are inbound!

We are powerless! Submit humans! Muahahaha! :)

[Devil_Fish]

61. My money is on the roaches. They will be the dominant species with in 20 years. N/T

[Jennicut]

8. Ixtoc took 9 months to stop. This is just so, so bad.I hope it takes less time then that.

[Lorien]

16. And did a bunch of government morons leave the oil corps in charge of that as well?

It would have been fixed without the conflict of interests and total incompetence.

[Jennicut]

25. Incompetence happened before the oil well explosion.

Stopping the leak is not necessarily incompetence, it is that it is 5000 feet down below the ocean. All the techniques tried were never done at this depth before. BP should have admitted it was the relief well that has always been the best bet. What finally shut down Ixtoc was the relief well. Our govt. could take over the clean up but we don't have the equipment or experience in shutting off leaks, certainly not 5000 feet down. Of course, if one has trouble shutting off leaks at this depth and the govt. has no experience either, should deep sea drilling even be allowed? We won't stop drilling (we have no energy alternatives in place yet). We are looking for oil in more and more harder to get to areas. We should have had a framework of renewable energy in place a long time ago before it got to this point. Too late now, I guess. No one wanted to listen to Jimmy Carter.

[primavera]

27. Well said

The outrage isn't that it's technologically challenging to fix spills a mile below sea level. The outrage is that we allowed greed to sway us into taking risks for which there were no effective remedies if anything went wrong. The opportunity to behave responsibly passed a long time ago and it's now way too late. We now have to remorse of the convicted: we're sorry we got caught, not that we committed the actual crime.

[superconnected]

32. Then they need to bring it all up where they can work on it.

[JDPriestly]

46. What are you suggesting, superconnected?

"They need to bring it all to where they can work on it." What is "it"?

[saigon68]

38. DRILL BABY DRILL

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9D3epQL704&feature=related

[Tumbulu]

41. Thanks for making these important points- I'm with you (nt)

[lark]

48. It took 9 tries to get the releif well working right at Ixtoc

and that was at a much shallower depth. Wonder how long it will take BP - the worst of the worst - to get theirs right?

[lark]

49. Sorry, I disagree

Not being able to stop the leak is rank incompetence when they created the conditions that caused this. They lied to the government, cheaped out on the casing, did nothing even tho the BOP had failed testing multiple times, etc. etc. They also said in their official documents that they could successfully stop a gusher at 250,000 barrels a day - rank lies and INCOMPETENCE!!

[Devil_Fish]

62. All the techniques tried were tried in Ixtoc at 200 feet and didn't work then eaither. N/T

[JDPriestly]

45. Please stop blaming the government.

I know a little about the oil business, enough to know that the government could not hire the staff, the experts, etc. needed to help much in this situation.

Our universities, the only places outside the industry in which the necessary technical expertise to help might exist is, I assure you, trying as hard as they can to find a solution that will not do more harm than has already been done.

Oil is toxic. Oil destroys the environment. Reduce your personal oil consumption. Stop driving your gas guzzling SUV (or other gas guzzling car). That is the long-term solution.

Oil is vital to our lives. It is necessary for making life-saving chemicals, even some medicines and medical equipment as well as many other useful things in our lives. We should not be burning it up as fuel. Each one of us should inventory our lives and try to find out how we can reduce our demand for fuel.

When we find ourselves drilling in our oceans at the depth at which this well was dug, we have reached peak oil. We are there. Reduce your personal oil consumption. Car pool. Walk. Support alternative energy development.

[suzie]

53. And who would you have take over? Who has the technical expertise to do that?

I can understand suggesting that our government should convene a coalition of other oil companies and ask them to take over the well and finish the relief operation. Under the assumption that most of the other companies have a better safety record than BP and might be better able to manage all the efforts to contain the oil and finish the relief wells.

Perhaps you can detail who is competent other than "the oil corps" to handle drilling a relief well at 5,000 feet underwater.

[Lagomorph]

21. Face it, until last month...

Ixtoc was forgotten.

Didn't get nearly the press, since it was pre-internet.

It just kinda went away after they capped it. Obviously, it went away far too soon.

[Delphinus]

23. I have to admit,

I don't remember Ixtoc at all.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

24. Interesting... this is the first time I've heard of Ixtoc.

...Just makes the knots in my stomach get tighter.

[Lagomorph]

55. It was several presidents ago....

...there were a few wars, scandals, and issues hogging the headlines.

It may be hard to believe, but just watch what happens after the next few disasters. A volcano or two, a couple hurricanes, a war, major loss of life, Israel... and it'll move to the back pages, if there's room.

[lumberjack_jeff]

28. ...and Ixtoc was in 160' deep water. n/t

[highplainsdem]

34. At Ixtoc, they also reduced the flow within weeks, burned off much of the oil, and limited Corexit.

There was more time then to protect the coastline, too...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ixtoc I
Location Bay of Campeche, Gulf of Mexico
Campeche, Mexico

Coordinates 19°24′30″N 92°19′30″W / 19.408333°N 92.325°W / 19.408333; -92.325Coordinates: 19°24′30″N 92°19′30″W / 19.408333°N 92.325°W / 19.408333; -92.325
Date 3 June 1979 – 23 March 1980
Cause
Cause Wellhead blowout
Operator Pemex
Spill characteristics
Volume 3,000,000 barrels (480,000 m3)
Area 2,800 km2 (1,100 sq mi)
Coastline impacted 261 km (162 mi)

Ixtoc I was an exploratory oil well being drilled by the semi-submersible platform Sedco 135F in the Bay of Campeche of the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 km (62 mi) northwest of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche in waters 50 m (160 ft) deep.<1> On 3 June 1979, the well suffered a blowout resulting in the third largest oil spill and the second largest accidental spill in history.<2><3>

-snip-

In the initial stages of the spill, an estimated 30,000 barrels of oil per day were flowing from the well. In July 1979, the pumping of mud into the well reduced the flow to 20,000 barrels per day, and early in August the pumping of nearly 100,000 steel, iron, and lead balls into the well reduced the flow to 10,000 barrels per day. Pemex claimed that half of the released oil burned when it reached the surface, a third of it evaporated, and the rest was contained or dispersed.<6> Mexican authorities also drilled two relief wells into the main well to lower the pressure of the blowout, however the oil continued to flow for three months following the completion of the first relief well.<7>

Pemex contracted Conair Aviation to spray the chemical dispersant Corexit 9527 on the oil. A total of 493 aerial missions were flown, treating 1,100 square miles of oil slick. Dispersants were not used in the U.S. area of the spill because of the dispersant's inability to treat weathered oil. Eventually the on-scene coordinator (OSC) requested that Mexico stop using dispersants north of 25°N.<6>

In Texas, an emphasis was placed on coastal countermeasures protecting the bays and lagoons formed by the barrier islands. Impacts of oil to the barrier island beaches were ranked as second in importance to protecting inlets to the bays and lagoons. This was done with the placement of skimmers and booms. Efforts were concentrated on the Brazos-Santiago Pass, Port Mansfield Channel, Aransas Pass, and Cedar Bayou which during the course of the spill was sealed with sand. Economically and environmentally sensitive barrier island beaches were cleaned daily. Laborers used rakes and shovels to clean beaches rather than heavier equipment which removed too much sand. Ultimately, 71,500 barrels of oil impacted 162 miles of U.S. beaches, and over 10,000 cubic yards of oiled material were removed.<6>

[JDPriestly]

47. The difference between Ixtoc and this Gulf well is the depth of the well.

The waters involved in the Ixtoc spill were only 160 feet deep. Here we are talking about a well far, far deeper than 160 feet. That is our problem.

Ixtoc was easy compared to the Gulf leak.

[Devil_Fish]

60. it will take longer. Ixtoc was only 200 feet under water. BP is 5,000 feet under water. N/T

[skeptical cynic]

10. "...a renegade underwater well ..."

I thought the problem was a renegade oil company.

[roody]

12. Blame the well---not those responsible.

[caseymoz]

20. An orwellism detected. nt

[liberation]

51. "Pollution is environmentalism...."

[Devil_Fish]

65. +1. No Shit. That caught my attention too. N/T

[DeadEyeDyck]

14. I have to sometimes wonder if maybe these are the endtimes

[superconnected]

33. With these people running the place, it may be. Obviously since they can't cap holes

and they risk the whole planet, deep water drilling needs to stop. I want them to claim ALL of that companies money and assets. Our environment is priceless.

[Devil_Fish]

67. www.seizebp.org

www.seizebp.org

[Devil_Fish]

66. Your still wondering? I'm not. these are the end times. Kill the Ocean and nothing will survive. N/T

[DallasNE]

15. Right Now There Is A Crimp In The Pipe

That is partially limiting the oil gusher. Why not attempt to crimp that crimp even tighter with some kind of jaws device with a clamp? If that could cut the flow by, say, 90% it seems that would be very worthwhile. Instead they are planning to cut off the pipe, which will increase the oil flow until a device can be lowered over it with a similar result. Why not crimp it now and then do the other thing in August/September when the relief wells remove a good deal of the pressure.

[Lorien]

17. They don't want to seal off their access to that black gold

BP dosen't want to damage their property. They don't give a damn about anything else-their liability is limited.

[Dulcinea]

22. We have a winner! *ding*ding*

BP doesn't seem to care about ruining the environment or destroying the livelihoods of Gulf Coast residents. They care about protecting their investment above all.

If this doesn't tell you who's REALLY running the world, I don't know what will. It's not Democrats. It's not Republicans. It's Big Oil & big banks!

[caseymoz]

18. There might be a few reasons.

Maybe they know their pipe doesn't crimp, but splits? They can't afford to lose that pipe. If they do do, then we have nothing but a bleeding hole and no way to stave it.

[caseymoz]

19. I regret to say, I don't blame them.

They might as well leave. Or, if we survive, they could make a career of fishing oil out of the ocean as they once did fish.

[Stuart G]

26. K and R

[superconnected]

30. Obama, you're in charge, why isn't the US army fixing it?

Can't we start pumping it out onto another oil rig? Cant we send deep divers down there and try to seal off the hole with steal plates that we figure out how to attach to the rig? how about if something else holds the plates up to the hole on the rig. How about we put up big parashute canvases there and try to constantly capture the oil as it's coming out and switch them frequently. There must be something we can do?

I suspect the problem is that BP doesn't want to pay the real COST to stop it.

I'm getting tired of the lies - right down to the one that said oil was no longer flowing out that BP released weeks ago. It's all been lies. Our environment is priceless. If only we could now take every penny and asset BP has, and use it to stop the disaster they've created. That's fair. This ISN'T.

[rocktivity]

35. I think the root of the problem is that the leak is too far down

to be stopped by conventional methods. BP didn't prepared for this situation because it they knew it would cost too much and convinced the Bush regime that it didn't really matter.

And I'm not the least bit surprised that the news is getting progressively worse--of course they're spoon-feeding it to us.

:(
rocktivity

[ColesCountyDem]

39. While I'm fully in favor of seizing and/or bankrupting BP, I'm not sure our military could do this..

Sadly, virtually all of the knowledge and technology to even begin dealing with this matter rests in the hands of the oil companies. Knowing how incredibly popular it would make him, I can't believe that the President wouldn't have already used whatever military he needed, if he thought there was even a 50/50 chance that they could fix the problem.

[paparush]

42. The Army would just hire subcontractors like Halliburton and KBR.

Sadly, 5000+ feet of water is akin to doing things in outer space. In fact probably we have more experience and expertise with astronauts doing hands-on work in space than humans working at these depths.

[suzie]

54. Hopefully they'd now have the sense to hire Schlumberger.

[Nihil]

72. That would be such a brilliant idea I'm surprised that more people haven't suggested it.

> The Army would just hire subcontractors like Halliburton ...

Yeah, they could hire Halliburton & Transocean to drill the relief
wells and cement them down safely and ... oh ... wait ...

:banghead:

[DallasNE]

74. Humans Can't Work At That Depth. Period.

Small, unmanned subs are all that can operate in 5,000 feet of water. While the Navy has unmanned subs that can operate at this level they are not designed nor equipped for this type of work.

[Devil_Fish]

68. www.seizebp.org

www.seizebp.org

[nashville_brook]

31. ugh. kick.

[goforit]

36. Hope is for loosers....Action is for winners!!!

[liberation]

52. yer playing a tad loose with your "Os" there

[totodeinhere]

40. I fully understand their frustration and hopelessness. But having said that,

my advice to them is "never give up hope." This is an unthinkable tragedy, but there are things that can be done to at least partiality mitigate some of the damage. We need to keep up hope and hold BP and the Obama Administration accountable so that they will do everything that is humanly possible to try to minimize the damage in any way possible. If we can skim off half of the oil before it reaches the wetlands, it doesn't mean that there won't be unspeakable damage. But it does mean that there will be slightly less damage and it might take less time to recover. So we need to keep working on this in spite of the long odds and in spite of our frustrations and hopelessness.

[defendandprotect]

56. "Put BP Under Temporary Receivership" . . . Robert Reich says --

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/01-5

Also -- he's on Olberman right now --

[SomeGuyInEagan]

63. Temporary my ass ... sieze it, revoke it's corporate charter (if it has one in the U.S.), prosecute

Or just succumb to the corporate masters once and for all and stick the final fork in America.

This is *the* real moment for Obama and our country - he either turns the corner here or we continue a slow death. He simply will not get another opportunity like this.

[defendandprotect]

58. We need to resume Moratorium on off-shore UNTIL scientists judge the total loss

of nature - animal-life - long term repercussions -- loss of income to communities/labor --

from all of the past spills --

and then when we all decide what the actual cost of that is - MAKE SURE THAT ANY COMPANY

INVOLVED IN ANY WELL PUT THAT AMOUNT IN ESCROW TO BE HELD AGAINST A FUTURE SPILL.

And, I can only hope that we would deem the damage to be priceless re nature and uncoverable

by any amount of dollars!!

[rhett o rick]

64. So is our government checking on the safety of the Deep Horizon's sister rig?

The Deepwater Nautilus is also drilling deep. Have they cut the same corners?

[getthefacts]

69. I know I did

It is unfortunate that we allow companies to drill that deep without a proven security plan. I can't even begin to wrap my head around this idea of oil continuously leaking, (certainly) killing thousands of animals and destroying their habitat.

[grahamhgreen]

70. Drill Baby Drill. Stupid, baby, stupid - as is nuclear!!!!!!