Oil Spill Could Surpass The Exxon Valdez Disaster

[Saya]

Venice, Louisiana (CNN) -- The federal government is heightening the pressure on BP, pushing the oil company to do more to stop well leaks gushing thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and to beef up its response to the potential environmental impact on the coast.
"We'll continue to urge BP to leverage additional assets," U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano told reporters on Friday as the massive oil slick approached the Louisiana coast. "It is time for BP to supplement their current mobilization as the slick of oil moves toward shore."
BP, which owns the ruptured well, said officials expect oil to reach land sometime Friday, with Venice and Port Fourchon the first places likely to be affected.
Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of BP, said the company has had only three priorities since the April 20 rig explosion that led to the oil spill: stop the flow of oil, minimize its impact and keep the public informed.
"We've so far mounted the largest response effort ever done in the world," Suttles said at the same news conference. "We've utilized every technology available, we've applied every resource request. ... We welcome every new idea and every offer of support."

BP has been trying to stop the flow by using remote-controlled submarines to activate a valve atop the well. But the valve, known as a blowout preventer, is not working.
A stopgap plan -- putting a chamber over the well area and sending the oil to a ship -- is unproven at that depth and could take four weeks before it's ready. The ultimate plan -- drilling a different well to access the first and close it with concrete -- could take three months. Meanwhile, efforts to contain the spill and stop the leak are costing the well's owners about $6 million per day, BP said.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said Friday there is a chance that workers will be able to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, but warned that the EPA is preparing for the worst.
"There is still the opportunity and the possibility that they would be able to shut it down," Jackson told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King. "Of course as responders we have to look at the worst case, and keep planning for that."
U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-Louisiana, called on BP and government officials to split their duties between stopping oil flow and cleaning up the spill.
"BP is spread too thin in trying to both cap the well and remediate the damage along the coastline, producing an inefficient and ineffective response," Vitter said in a statement Friday. "I urge all involved to allow BP to focus all of its efforts on building a dome and drilling a relief well at the source of the spill so that federal and state officials can focus their efforts on protecting and cleaning up the coast."
As fears rose -- particularly in the commercial fishing industry, a critical economic engine for the region -- President Obama promised steps to prevent a similar disaster in the future.
Speaking at the White House, the president said he had ordered Interior Secretary Ken Salazar "to conduct a thorough review of this incident and report back to me in 30 days on what, if any, additional precautions and technologies should be required to prevent accidents like this from happening again."
"We're going to make sure that any leases going forward have those safeguards," he said.

Salazar has ordered inspections of all deep-water operations in the Gulf of Mexico. The Department of Interior will also establish an Outer Continental Shelf Safety Board to conduct a review of offshore drilling practices and safety issues and tighten the oversight of equipment testing, Salazar said.
Salazar added that the response to the spill would not affect oil production. "Oil and gas production from Gulf Coast that fuels the economy continues to flow today and will continue to flow into the foreseeable future."
Federal officials, including the president, emphasized that BP is legally responsible for paying the costs of the response to and cleanup of the spill. Still, Obama said, "We are fully prepared to meet our responsibilities to any and all affected communities."
Several top administration figures were dispatched to the region Friday, and thousands of federal personnel have joined efforts to help.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has approved Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's request to mobilize 6,000 National Guard troops in response to the spill, according to a Defense Department spokesman.
The Guardsmen will be deployed under Title 32, which means the Defense Department will pay for their services for up to 90 days. Defense spokesman Geoff Morrell said Gates approved the mobilization because "the president has declared this oil spill to be of national significance, impacting multiple states."
However, because the spill is BP's responsibility, "we do expect to be reimbursed," Morrell said. Gates is expecting such requests from other Gulf states and expects to approve those as well, he said.
Earlier in the day, two Air Force Reserve C-130s specially modified with a spray system arrived in the region to spread oil-dispersant chemicals.
How is the oil spill affecting you? Let iReport know
Rough weather, including heavy winds and high tides, have hindered the effort, federal and BP officials said. Suttles said weather challenges would continue into the weekend, meaning water surface operations, such as oil skimming, would be suspended. Choppy waters can also drive the polluted water into the coastal marshlands and other ecosystems in southern Louisiana.
"The potential danger is unfathomable, because we don't yet know how the leak can be stopped and how big the spill will get," said Ken Rosenberg, director of conservation science at Cornell University. "It's a full moon, a high tide, and it's bringing the oil on a free ride right into the coastal salt marshes on a southerly wind."
Rosenberg said when the oil hits the shore, it would have an immediate impact on large numbers of birds, causing reproductive failure and possibly death.
"If the oil then comes into the coastal marshes and the inshore ecosystems and kills the oyster beds and the shrimp and the fish nurseries," he said, "then there are much longer-lasting effects not only on birds but on an entire way of life for people of this region."
Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida declared a state of emergency in several counties on Friday, saying the oil spill "threatens the state of Florida with a major disaster." Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana declared a state of emergency in his state on Thursday.
Volunteers sought for oil spill threat
Some officials worried the destruction could surpass the Exxon Valdez disaster 20 years ago. That oil tanker ran aground on the Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989 and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil.
Friday, as people along the Louisiana coast caught a whiff of the oil, those in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida feared an environmental nightmare of greater scope.
"There's certainly immense potential consequences," LuAnn White, director of the Tulane Center for Applied Environmental Public Health, said Friday.

"This is a disaster," said Dean Blanchard, who runs a wholesale seafood business in the region. "We definitely need some help."
Biloxi, Mississippi, Mayor A.J. Holloway compared the potential economic impact of the spill to the downfall that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
"That was a tremendous blow to our city for several years and still has an impact," he told CNN Radio. "We just don't know what we can expect from this."
Ten wildlife refuges in Mississippi and Louisiana are in the oil's expected path, with the Pass-a-Loutre Wildlife Management Area at the tip of the Mississippi River likely to be the first affected, Jindal said.
Napolitano, Salazar and Jackson were among those who took an aerial tour over parts of the Louisiana area earlier in the day. They also met with government and BP officials to discuss cleanup efforts.
WWL-TV: Officials say coast's protection not enough
State and federal agencies have strung miles of floating booms -- inflatable or foam barriers -- around the leading edge of the shoreline to contain the spill.
A handful of federal agencies have recovered more than 20,200 barrels (850,000 gallons) of oily water and had deployed more than 100,000 gallons of dispersant -- which breaks up oil -- as of Thursday evening, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Efforts to shut down the well have failed so far, and more complicated plans may take weeks, officials said.
Watch historian Douglas Brinkley on the slick's consequences
The oil rig, operated by Transocean Ltd., was ripped by an explosion that burned for two days until the rig sank. Eleven missing men are presumed dead. The Coast Guard on Wednesday raised its estimate of the amount of oil the damaged well was pouring into the Gulf to 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) a day -- five times more than initially believed.
When the rig sank, a steel riser that connected the rig to the well collapsed to the ocean floor, and eventually remote-operated submarines would find three leaks coming from the riser or a related drill pipe.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/30/lou...ex.html?hpt=C1

[Saya]

There's more after the link, I couldn't make it all fit.

So....no "drill baby drill" for a while, okay Palin?

[HumanePain]

We as a species must hurry up and move on towards using all electric vehicles as soon as possible. This would not only benefit the environment, but lessen the driving forces that result in terrorism.

[Ben Lahnger]

This sure makes that plan to put a wind farm off Nantucket Sound look a lot less controversial, eh?

In fact, the Federal approval of "Cape Wind" may add momentum to other similar proposed wind farms in Maryland, Delaware, Texas, the Great Lakes and other areas. The bad PR from this disaster also will hopefully drive public sentiment further in the direction of moving away from dependence on fossil fuels.

It saddens me to learn that if the oil makes its way into the mud of the Gulf Coast and Mississippi Delta that there is no way to clean it out, and it will take 10 to 20 years of toxic seepage before it will clear itself out.

[Ben Lahnger]

Bob Cavnar, a former oil and gas industry executive, commenting on British Petroleum and Transocean (the actual company that was doing the work of setting up the platform for BP) and their silence regarding the cause of the Accident. Interesting read, and it lines up with Bob's assessment in other interviews that the accident probably happened due to a lack of normal safety monitoring.

BP and Transocean Still Silent About Why BOP Failed

[Ben Lahnger]

Bill White, former mayor of Houston and current Democratic candidate for Governor of Texas, posted the following on Facebook:

Bill White - Some questions for BP: (1) did they allow something to impede the blowout preventer (its like a valve with a ram, or sliding door, which should be able to close unless some steel tool got in the way)? (2) what did the pressure detectors show before they opened the hole? (3) did the experienced toolpusher leave and some VIPs distract rig personnel around the time of the blowout?

Seems there's a few knowledgeable people who are doing a little detective work and starting to ask British Petrolium some embarrassing questions. And BP's silence is the worst response possible. I wonder how long it's going to take them to realize that? It's just getting worse the longer they take. And now Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has made public criticisms of their responses. It's only going to get worse.

Louisiana governor critical of oil spill response efforts

[Ben Lahnger]

While Transocean and British Petroleum still struggle with efforts to stop the flow of oil from the broken pipe in the Gulf of Mexico, the following article about a similar problem off the shore of Australia gives us an idea about how long it may take to fix this thing,

Relief Well Was Used to Halt Australian Spill

While BP tries various short-term efforts to plug a leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, the company is preparing to drill a relief well as a backup plan. BP hopes to drill that well diagonally to intersect the original one below the seabed and then flood it with mud and concrete to stop the uncontrolled flow.

Although the idea sounds simple, the experience with a similar spill last year near Australia shows just how difficult it can be to execute the maneuver.

“It’s like finding a needle in a haystack,” said Rachel Siewert, an Australian senator who is a member of the country’s opposition Greens Party and is critical of the oil industry.

The Australian accident, known as the Montara spill, began Aug. 21 with a blowout of high-pressure oil similar to the one in the gulf. With the well spewing 17,000 to 85,000 gallons per day, precious weeks passed before the relief wells were started. When efforts got under way, the first four attempts — drilled on Oct. 6, 13, 17 and 24 — missed the original well.

A fifth attempt finally intersected the original on Nov. 1, and about 3,400 barrels of heavy mud were pumped through the relief well into the base of the original well. The spewing oil finally stopped Nov. 3 — more than 10 weeks after the original explosion.

BP intends to drill a similar relief well close to the site where the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew up and sank in the gulf nearly two weeks ago. The company says the well could take months to complete. In the meantime, the well continues to leak 210,000 gallons of oil a day, according to the latest official estimates.

The Montara accident resembled the Gulf of Mexico accident in that both started with problems in the well itself, and it proved very hard to stop without resorting to further underground drilling, said Elmer P. Danenberger III, who was the top American regulator of offshore oil drilling until his retirement on Jan. 2.

“There are clearly some similarities,” Mr. Danenberger said.

Drilling the relief well proved tricky in the Montara spill, which was located in Australian waters in the Timor Sea, between northwest Australia and Indonesia.

The drilling team was trying to hit a well casing less than 10 inches in diameter at a depth 1.6 miles below the seabed, according to testimony this spring before an Australian government commission of inquiry.

The BP well has an even skinnier casing, reportedly measuring seven inches in diameter.

(more of this article at the link in the headline above)

[blindNsect]

Isn't Obama responding pretty slowly? Where are the ppl who bashed Bush for slow Katrina response times?

[creature6]

That's just really sad.

[Still Jack]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

We as a species must hurry up and move on towards using all electric vehicles as soon as possible. This would not only benefit the environment, but lessen the driving forces that result in terrorism.

Problem with electric vehicles is that they are quite frankly shit. They have next to no range. They take an eternity to charge up. They create problems for handling because the batteries are so heavy it messes with the centre of gravity. The batteries are anything but environmentally friendly and replacing the current stock of vehicles is just as stupid as the scrappage scheme. You can crush as many cars as you want but where are you going to put the wreckage. It does nothing but pollute the environment and worsen the metal shortage. Hybrids are an even more fucktarded idea. Toyota Prius as an example, lugging around 2 drivetrains. I get better mileage in a 1.4l VW golf 3. The only viable technology in my opinion is recycled biodiesel and supercharged+turbocharged engines.

/2cents

[Ben Lahnger]

Originally Posted by blindNsect

Isn't Obama responding pretty slowly? Where are the ppl who bashed Bush for slow Katrina response times?

CBS News - White House Dismisses Katrina/Oil Spill Comparison

USA Today - Obama, Katrina and the oil slick

Huffington Post - Will the BP Oil Spill be President Obama's Katrina?

It took me one minute to find 3 articles, and you'll note I didn't even have to go to the most likely source, Fox News. Do try to do just a smidgeon of research before you make this kind of statement.

[blindNsect]

I didn't see anything in there to support your side.

This was interesting though:
"Katrina proved to be a political calamity for Mr. Bush that will forever mar his legacy."

LOL as if that one mistake will mar his legacy. Truthfully, the only reason Katrina is a big deal is because Dems made it so.

[blindNsect]

Obama dozent care ab white ppl

[blindNsect]

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger

CBS News - White House Dismisses Katrina/Oil Spill Comparison

USA Today - Obama, Katrina and the oil slick

Huffington Post - Will the BP Oil Spill be President Obama's Katrina?

It took me one minute to find 3 articles, and you'll note I didn't even have to go to the most likely source, Fox News. Do try to do just a smidgeon of research before you make this kind of statement.

Sorry Ben I misread you. When I said "the people who abshed Bush" I meant the exact people, not Repubs doing what Dems did during Katrina.

[creature6]

Originally Posted by blindNsect

Obama dozent care ab white ppl

Truth.
He only cares for his own.

[Ben Lahnger]

Originally Posted by blindNsect

Sorry Ben I misread you. When I said "the people who abshed Bush" I meant the exact people, not Repubs doing what Dems did during Katrina.

Well, that's why I picked articles suggesting criticism of President Obama and comparisons to Katrina from news sources with supposed liberal bias. If I'd wanted to look for conservative quotes I'd have looked to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, who have also made similar points.

[Ben Lahnger]

Originally Posted by creature6

Truth.
He only cares for his own.

shutuptroll!shutuptroll!shutuptroll!shutuptroll!

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger

Shut up, troll!

[Deadmanwalking_05]

That's nothing,the Exxon Valdez spill was surpassed in 2000 in Martin County Kentucky,the slurry spill.


Nobody really cares about that but "Oh Noes the little fishes and birdies are going to die boo fuckin' hoo" never mind the human deaths from after the sludge spill have been mounting for the past ten years,god damned media black out on that.

[Deadmanwalking_05]

Originally Posted by Deadmanwalking_05

That's nothing,the Exxon Valdez spill was surpassed in 2000 in Martin County Kentucky,the slurry spill.


Nobody really cares about that but "Oh Noes the little fishes and birdies are going to die boo fuckin' hoo" never mind the human deaths from after the sludge spill have been mounting for the past ten years,god damned media black out on that.

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

306 million gallons (1.16 billion liters).

I out ran it that night (Technically it was early morning).

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Deadmanwalking_05

That's nothing,the Exxon Valdez spill was surpassed in 2000 in Martin County Kentucky,the slurry spill.

...Goddamn media blackout on that <--LINKS!

That's nothing, the Martin County Kentucky slurry spill was surpassed in 2008 by the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill

Nobody really cares about that but "Oh Noes the little rednecks and hillbillies are going to die boo fuckin' hoo" never mind the human deaths from after the sludge spill have been mounting for the past 2 years, god damned media black out on that.

[Deadmanwalking_05]

Originally Posted by Despanan

That's nothing, the Martin County Kentucky slurry spill was surpassed in 2008 by the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill

Nobody really cares about that but "Oh Noes the little rednecks and hillbillies are going to die boo fuckin' hoo" never mind the human deaths from after the sludge spill have been mounting for the past 2 years, god damned media black out on that.

Why are you so damned easy?

[Despanan]

I don't know. I'm still wondering how you could possibly outrun anything.

[Ben Lahnger]

Originally Posted by Despanan

I don't know. I'm still wondering how you could possibly outrun anything.

Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hahahahahahahahahahaha!

[Renatus]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

We as a species must hurry up and move on towards using all electric vehicles as soon as possible. This would not only benefit the environment, but lessen the driving forces that result in terrorism.

Yep, though I wouldnt mind if we kept using gas powered Harleys, an electric Harley wouldnt feel right.

[Deadmanwalking_05]

Originally Posted by despanan

i don't know. I'm still wondering how you could possibly outrun anything.

fail!!!!!!