oil spill hits Louisiana coast
WaveCameCrashin
Posts: 2,929
Even though I don't belive global warming is caused by man I still have great concern for our enviroment especially our coastlines. Before we start slamming oil companies I think we should see what really caused this terrible accident and what could have been done to prevent it from happening. WE haven even begun to see the real damage this is going to cause. It says it make take them 90 days before they would be able to cap off th flow. If this is true this will make the exxon valdeeez spill look lie an oil spot from a car sitting in the driveway. Further more Im really suprised no one else has even posted anything about this.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 90.htmlThe worsening oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday threatened not only the shores of five states but also President Obama's plan to open vast stretches of U.S. coastline to oil and gas drilling.
THIS STORY
Gulf of Mexico oil spill reaches Louisiana coast
Spilled oil burned in gulf in hopes of saving coast
Gulf oil spill could hit Louisiana coast Thursday night
View All Items in This Story
Hours before the spill started washing ashore in Louisiana late Thursday, members of Congress issued new calls for Obama to abandon his plans for expanded offshore drilling, and White House officials conceded that the spreading oil slick could cause the president to rethink his position. "We need to figure out what happened," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "Would a finding of something possibly affect that? Of course."
The outlook in the Gulf of Mexico remained bleak in the wake of the April 20 explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and killed 11 workers. A change in the weather and choppy waters prevented a second burn of oil at sea and slowed efforts by a flotilla of ships to skim the oily mixture from the surface of the gulf, federal officials said. Continuing efforts to use remote-controlled robotic submarines to activate a malfunctioning blowout preventer lying on the sea floor in 5,000 feet of water failed.
The Coast Guard approved an experimental plan by petroleum giant BP, which had leased the rig, to apply chemical dispersants underwater near the places where oil is gushing from three breaks in the well pipes at an estimated rate of 5,000 barrels a day.
In Washington, the White House held a series of high-profile media events aimed at communicating that the administration is fully engaged in the crisis. Obama went to the Rose Garden and said, "While BP is ultimately responsible for funding the cost of response and cleanup operations, my administration will continue to use every single available resource at our disposal, including potentially the Department of Defense, to address the incident."
At a midday news conference, the administration rolled out two Cabinet chiefs and other senior White House advisers to assert that the government would do whatever it could to help BP stop the leak.
The administration is well aware that the president's campaign victory was built in part on a belief among voters that he would do a better job at responding to disasters like Hurricane Katrina than did President Bush. "This is in that list: Are you competently running government?" Gibbs said. He said the news conference with senior officials was aimed at letting the press and the public "know what we've done to respond."
Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said there were more than 50 vessels as well as aircraft deployed to the area of the spill and that workers had laid down 174,060 feet of absorbent foam booms and recovered 18,180 barrels of an oily mixture from the gulf's surface. She said they would also open a second command center in Mobile, Ala., in addition to the one in Louisiana.
The Navy said it is sending 66,000 feet of inflatable boom and seven skimming systems, and would offer its bases in the region as staging areas for the operation.
White House officials said they began holding regular conference calls with BP executives soon after the accident. On Thursday, Obama also called the governors of the five Gulf Coast states, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar met with oil and gas industry executives to appeal for ideas and help. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency and mobilized National Guard troops.
On Friday, Napolitano, Salazar and EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson will travel to the Gulf Coast at the president's request with Carol Browner, the White House director of energy and climate change policy, and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to inspect ooperations dedicated to minimizing environmental risks.
Extensive damage
Despite these efforts, it remained possible that the oil leak could continue for as long as three months, by which time it would rival the size of the 1989 spill from the Exxon Valdez. If efforts to reactivate the blowout-preventer fail, BP will try to lower 100-ton domes on top of the leaks in the pipes now lying on the sea floor and funnel the oil up through pipes to storage vessels. Such methods have been used before, but generally at depths of 350 feet or less.
BP also plans to start drilling a relief well Friday that would intercept the oil from the existing well and plug the leak, but the company said that could take several weeks. It took more than two months to plug a similar well blowout off the coast of Australia late last year.
By that time, the damage from the spill could be extensive and the political effect on Obama's offshore drilling plan and broader climate change agenda uncertain.
"I don't know whether it changes our understanding of offshore oil," David Pumphrey, deputy director of the energy and national security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the accident. "But I think it changes the political debate quite a bit."
In backing wider offshore oil and gas exploration only a month ago, Obama promised to "employ new technologies that reduce the impact of oil exploration." He acknowledged that his decision would provoke criticism from those who decried the expansion and those who said it did not go far enough.
"Ultimately, we need to move beyond the tired debates of the left and the right, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure-all and those who would claim it has no place," Obama said.
Political damage, too
The accident in the gulf may provide more firepower for the critics on the left who for years have lobbied presidents and Congress to keep in place federal moratoriums on further offshore exploration. Those moratoriums have expired.
Florida Sen. Bill Nelson (D) called on Obama to step back from his expanded offshore drilling plans. In a letter to the president, Nelson said he would file legislation to ban the Interior Department from following through on Obama's proposal for new seismic and drilling activity. He said the gulf spill "may be an environmental and economic disaster that wreaks havoc for commercial fishing and tourism along the Gulf of Mexico coast."
Dan McLaughlin, a top aide to Nelson, said it was too early to say whether the federal government had responded adequately to what he called "our worst nightmare come true." But McLaughlin asked why the government had not done more to ensure that the oil companies could shut down a well if a catastrophic failure happened. "Somebody is going to have to ask the question as to why the regulators didn't put this question to the industry before?" McLaughlin said. "If everything fails, then what?"
That inquiry will likely focus on the blowout-preventer, which like the sunken drilling rig was owned by Transocean. In Norway, for example, blowout preventers are required to have a device known as an acoustic valve that can help assure activation in the event of an accident, but that device isn't required in the United States and wasn't part of the blowout preventer used on this well. BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said Wednesday that the blowout preventer had been inspected 10 days before the accident.
The Minerals Management Service, a part of the Interior Department that oversees safety on offshore rigs, said it would complete new inspections of all gulf exploration drilling rigs within seven days to prevent a repeat of the April 20 blast.
Obama aides stressed at the midday briefing that BP would bear the cost of the spill, including the cost of plugging the well, cleaning shorelines and paying for government air and water tests. Separately, fishermen and others anticipating environmental damage filed class-action suits against the company. On a day when the stock market rose broadly and sharply, BP's stock price fell more than 8 percent to $52.56 a share.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 90.htmlThe worsening oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday threatened not only the shores of five states but also President Obama's plan to open vast stretches of U.S. coastline to oil and gas drilling.
THIS STORY
Gulf of Mexico oil spill reaches Louisiana coast
Spilled oil burned in gulf in hopes of saving coast
Gulf oil spill could hit Louisiana coast Thursday night
View All Items in This Story
Hours before the spill started washing ashore in Louisiana late Thursday, members of Congress issued new calls for Obama to abandon his plans for expanded offshore drilling, and White House officials conceded that the spreading oil slick could cause the president to rethink his position. "We need to figure out what happened," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "Would a finding of something possibly affect that? Of course."
The outlook in the Gulf of Mexico remained bleak in the wake of the April 20 explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and killed 11 workers. A change in the weather and choppy waters prevented a second burn of oil at sea and slowed efforts by a flotilla of ships to skim the oily mixture from the surface of the gulf, federal officials said. Continuing efforts to use remote-controlled robotic submarines to activate a malfunctioning blowout preventer lying on the sea floor in 5,000 feet of water failed.
The Coast Guard approved an experimental plan by petroleum giant BP, which had leased the rig, to apply chemical dispersants underwater near the places where oil is gushing from three breaks in the well pipes at an estimated rate of 5,000 barrels a day.
In Washington, the White House held a series of high-profile media events aimed at communicating that the administration is fully engaged in the crisis. Obama went to the Rose Garden and said, "While BP is ultimately responsible for funding the cost of response and cleanup operations, my administration will continue to use every single available resource at our disposal, including potentially the Department of Defense, to address the incident."
At a midday news conference, the administration rolled out two Cabinet chiefs and other senior White House advisers to assert that the government would do whatever it could to help BP stop the leak.
The administration is well aware that the president's campaign victory was built in part on a belief among voters that he would do a better job at responding to disasters like Hurricane Katrina than did President Bush. "This is in that list: Are you competently running government?" Gibbs said. He said the news conference with senior officials was aimed at letting the press and the public "know what we've done to respond."
Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said there were more than 50 vessels as well as aircraft deployed to the area of the spill and that workers had laid down 174,060 feet of absorbent foam booms and recovered 18,180 barrels of an oily mixture from the gulf's surface. She said they would also open a second command center in Mobile, Ala., in addition to the one in Louisiana.
The Navy said it is sending 66,000 feet of inflatable boom and seven skimming systems, and would offer its bases in the region as staging areas for the operation.
White House officials said they began holding regular conference calls with BP executives soon after the accident. On Thursday, Obama also called the governors of the five Gulf Coast states, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar met with oil and gas industry executives to appeal for ideas and help. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency and mobilized National Guard troops.
On Friday, Napolitano, Salazar and EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson will travel to the Gulf Coast at the president's request with Carol Browner, the White House director of energy and climate change policy, and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to inspect ooperations dedicated to minimizing environmental risks.
Extensive damage
Despite these efforts, it remained possible that the oil leak could continue for as long as three months, by which time it would rival the size of the 1989 spill from the Exxon Valdez. If efforts to reactivate the blowout-preventer fail, BP will try to lower 100-ton domes on top of the leaks in the pipes now lying on the sea floor and funnel the oil up through pipes to storage vessels. Such methods have been used before, but generally at depths of 350 feet or less.
BP also plans to start drilling a relief well Friday that would intercept the oil from the existing well and plug the leak, but the company said that could take several weeks. It took more than two months to plug a similar well blowout off the coast of Australia late last year.
By that time, the damage from the spill could be extensive and the political effect on Obama's offshore drilling plan and broader climate change agenda uncertain.
"I don't know whether it changes our understanding of offshore oil," David Pumphrey, deputy director of the energy and national security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the accident. "But I think it changes the political debate quite a bit."
In backing wider offshore oil and gas exploration only a month ago, Obama promised to "employ new technologies that reduce the impact of oil exploration." He acknowledged that his decision would provoke criticism from those who decried the expansion and those who said it did not go far enough.
"Ultimately, we need to move beyond the tired debates of the left and the right, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure-all and those who would claim it has no place," Obama said.
Political damage, too
The accident in the gulf may provide more firepower for the critics on the left who for years have lobbied presidents and Congress to keep in place federal moratoriums on further offshore exploration. Those moratoriums have expired.
Florida Sen. Bill Nelson (D) called on Obama to step back from his expanded offshore drilling plans. In a letter to the president, Nelson said he would file legislation to ban the Interior Department from following through on Obama's proposal for new seismic and drilling activity. He said the gulf spill "may be an environmental and economic disaster that wreaks havoc for commercial fishing and tourism along the Gulf of Mexico coast."
Dan McLaughlin, a top aide to Nelson, said it was too early to say whether the federal government had responded adequately to what he called "our worst nightmare come true." But McLaughlin asked why the government had not done more to ensure that the oil companies could shut down a well if a catastrophic failure happened. "Somebody is going to have to ask the question as to why the regulators didn't put this question to the industry before?" McLaughlin said. "If everything fails, then what?"
That inquiry will likely focus on the blowout-preventer, which like the sunken drilling rig was owned by Transocean. In Norway, for example, blowout preventers are required to have a device known as an acoustic valve that can help assure activation in the event of an accident, but that device isn't required in the United States and wasn't part of the blowout preventer used on this well. BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said Wednesday that the blowout preventer had been inspected 10 days before the accident.
The Minerals Management Service, a part of the Interior Department that oversees safety on offshore rigs, said it would complete new inspections of all gulf exploration drilling rigs within seven days to prevent a repeat of the April 20 blast.
Obama aides stressed at the midday briefing that BP would bear the cost of the spill, including the cost of plugging the well, cleaning shorelines and paying for government air and water tests. Separately, fishermen and others anticipating environmental damage filed class-action suits against the company. On a day when the stock market rose broadly and sharply, BP's stock price fell more than 8 percent to $52.56 a share.
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in any case - i attribute partially the recent rash of earthquakes to drilling ... i mean oil is a lubricant - if you take all that oil out from the earth's crust - it's no longer going to slide easily ...
This is our collective society's cloacal fart. We are all at fault. Oil drilling (especially in the open ocean) is incredibly complex and dangerous. This is bound to happen over time and WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. The oil companies do everything they can to prevent it, not because they give a damn about the environment, but because this spill was cost them billions of dollars. The reason this happens is because there is a demand for oil. YOU demand it (so do I).
We must change our behavior soon or we will be kicked off of "Pandora." The blame is on all of us.
HALF-ASS CONSPIRACY THEORY - Did the G.O.P. blow up the rig so Obama would have egg on his face for authorizing more offshore drilling just weeks ago??? END HALF-ASS CONSPIRACY THEORY
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
My question would be. Could an oil rig that was just performing 'exploratory drilling' as claimed by BP - create such a monumental oil spill from it is under water pipes without knowing it had already hit oil? Or did they rupture one of their existing pipelines that hadn't been properly inspected after Hurricane Katrina?
44 oil spills found in southeast Louisiana
By Miguel Llanos
Reporter
msnbc.com
updated 8:14 a.m. ET Sept. 19, 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9365607/
More than 500 specialists are working to clean up 44 oil spills ranging from several hundred gallons to nearly 4 million gallons, the U.S. Coast Guard said in an assessment that goes far beyond initial reports of just two significant spills. ...
None of the leaks sent oil directly into the Mississippi River, he said. The leaks involved either ruptured tanks or pipelines protected by levees.
BP is no novice
World's deepest oil well may rival Alaskan field in production
By Chris Kahn | ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Story last updated at 9/3/2009 - 1:33 am
NEW YORK - Nearly seven miles below the Gulf of Mexico, oil company BP has tapped into a vast pool of crude after digging the deepest oil well in the world.
The Tiber Prospect is expected to rank among the largest petroleum discoveries in the United States, potentially producing half as much crude in a day as Alaska's famous North Slope oil field.
The company's chief of exploration on Wednesday estimated that the Tiber deposit holds between 4 billion and 6 billion barrels of oil equivalent, which includes natural gas. That would be enough to satisfy U.S. demand for crude for nearly one year. But BP does not yet know how much it can extract.
"The Gulf of Mexico is proving to be a growing oil province, and a profitable one if you can find the reserves," said Tyler Priest, professor and director of Global Studies at the Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston.
The Tiber well is about 250 miles southeast of Houston in U.S. waters. At 35,055 feet, it is as deep as Mount Everest is tall, not including more than 4,000 feet of water above it.
Drilling at those depths shows how far major oil producers will go to find new supplies as global reserves dwindle, and how technology has advanced, allowing them to reach once-unimaginable depths.
Deep-water operations are considered to be the last frontier for pristine oil deposits, and the entire petroleum industry is sweeping the ocean floor in search of more crude.
BP needs to invest years of work and millions of dollars before it draws the first drop of oil from Tiber. Such long waits are not uncommon. Three years after announcing a discovery at a site in the Gulf called Kaskida, BP has yet to begin producing oil there.
Projects like the Tiber well will not reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil, which continues to grow. But new technology does permit access to major oil finds closer to U.S. shores.
BP expects Tiber to be among the company's richest finds in the Gulf on par with its crown jewel, the Thunder Horse development. Thunder Horse produces about 300,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, as much crude as half of Alaska's famous North Slope.
Even if Tiber produces that much, it would still be a trickle compared with the largest oil producers in the world - the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia, which produces 5 million barrels per day.
But because it's close to home, Tiber would be especially attractive to refiners in America, where the government wants to cut down on oil imports from the Middle East.
"Early indications are that it's a significant positive discovery," said Matt Snyder, lead analyst with Wood MacKinzie's Gulf of Mexico research team.
Exploration companies recently have been pushing drilling operations farther from shore because of technological improvements that allow them to handle extreme depths and pressure, Snyder said.
It's an expensive process. A production platform costs more than $1 billion to build. Drilling a deep-water well can add another $100 million, and if crude is located, it could cost another $50 million to bring the oil to the surface.
"And when they finally get down there, it's very hot," said Leta Smith, a director with Cambridge Energy Research Associates' Global Oil Supply Group.
"It could be upwards of 250 degrees Fahrenheit. The pressures can be the most challenging aspect of it. These rocks are over-pressured, which means you need to have a lot of special equipment."
For an ambitious project like Tiber to pay off, experts say crude must cost at least $70 to $75 per barrel, though lower prices have never slowed the industry. When crude prices fell below $20 per barrel in the late 1990s, exploration and Thunder Horse never slowed.
"They're not swayed by daily price swings when it comes to planning deep-water exploration," Priest said.
BP's discovery is the latest in what's called the "lower tertiary" region, an ancient section of rock in the Gulf that is roughly 300 square miles and formed between 24 million and 65 million years ago.
Chevron Corp. drilled one of the first wells in the region in 2001, followed by more than a dozen others from companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, Australian oil company BHP Billiton, BP and Total SA, according to the U.S. Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service.
In 2006, Chevron estimated that the lower tertiary holds between 3 billion and 15 billion barrels. But it has taken years to develop wells for commercial use.
Smith said that the first drops of crude from the lower tertiary will arrive in 2010 with Shell's Perdido operation and Petrobras's Cascade and Chinook developments.
BP has a 62 percent working interest in the Tiber well. Petrobras owns 20 percent while ConocoPhillips owns 18 percent.
Yes, President Obama is sending the FBI, along with SWAT teams to Gulf oil rigs as part if its investigation to ensure that there was no act of foreign or domestic (yes domestic) terrorism involved. Is this a problem for the Fox parrots, after all, isn't BP technically, a foreign company?
So now the flip flopping begins.
-One minute your screaming for him to allow more offshore drilling because of national security and the need to reduce are dependency on foreign oil.
--Now that there is a disastrous oil spill - you damn flip floppers are claiming you were against the whole offshore drilling idea.
Just like complaining about him sending in the FBI and SWAT teams. If he would have done nothing you flip floppers would be claiming he was soft on national security and not securing our border interests.
I will fault President Obama for not doing a complete breakup of the Department of Interior's BLM. That group has been corrupt for so long that it needs to be dismantled and removed from the Department of the Interior. The group oversees the rights, inspections, and revenue producing structure of our natural resources and they have failed miserably. It should be broken up under Treasury or DHS, if not, all sales and leases, rights and inspections should have to be reviewed and approved via Treasury and DHS.
Why am I NOT overly surprised you would bring Obama into this disaester of a situation, nothing shocking there. :roll: Here we have yet another diseaster that's hitting the Gulf region once again but drill away as the oil comes ashore.
Peace
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Hail, Hail!!!
"Having worked/lived thru Exxon oil spill,my family&I understand Gulf residents' fears.Our prayers r w/u.All industry efforts must b employed"
http://twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA/status/13132651183
:roll:
Its a fucking shame and I find it hard to believe that a company with that kind of cash doesnt have a way to stop the flow of oil from its well AUTOMATICALLY when something like this happens
because they don't give a shit about the environment and will use this as an excuse to raise gas prices hence paying for the cleanup and repairs
But the clean up is gonna cost them out of pocket bucks-And we all know how much they hate spending money to clean up the environment. I think I am going to invent a valve that can remotely open or shut a well below the surface/ocean bottom.
I won't be surprized if gasoline prices increase and the Oil Companies site this spill as the reasoning.
Hail, Hail!!!
taxpayers will cover a lot of the cleanup ... whatever penalties they incur will just be written off somehow anyways ...
well.. penalties can't be "written off" I'm sure. They don't reduce a company's taxable income.
And $4Billion...
how much of that was paying scientists to make up shit like they normally do? ... too bad they couldn't of spent some money to make sure the people who did the cleanup were safe ... :evil:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r5y7G9w ... re=related
To me, its ridiculous that oil is still spilling into the Gulf.
watch the video and you will see why ... despite "by law" (which is real popular sentiment on the arizona threads) they were supposed to have certain technologies on their vessels - they chose not to comply because it was simply cheaper to have an oil spill and "clean" it up than to add all the safety requirements ...
and there stock isn't hurting too much these days so whatever valdez did - a good ole war in iraq fixed ...
That said, you are correct that BP should have measures ready for a worst-case scenario. Maybe a giant cork . . .
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
This spill happened 1 week ago. They have had one week to do something about it, yet only got moving once it came near shore. They never ignited it, like they talked about, while it was out way off-shore. I've been watching this story as every one else for an entire week, but it was not big news until now. Who the fuck is in charge here?? The Coast Guard failed when they confirmed there was no leak shortly before the leak happened so who's fault is it and where are all the oil fans when it needs to be cleaned up??
Where the Hell is Palin now? Spill Baby Spill.
If there was ever a reason to switch to renewables on a national scale, the time would be now, with the coupling of this oil spill and the Massey Coal mine deaths and the corruption following it.