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Oil Spill Could Surpass The Exxon Valdez Disaster

Quote:

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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)

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by HumanePain (Post 615124)

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by blindNsect (Post 615397)

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.

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.

Obama dozent care ab white ppl

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger (Post 615412)

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by blindNsect (Post 615415)

Obama dozent care ab white ppl

Truth.
He only cares for his own.

Quote:

Originally Posted by blindNsect (Post 615418)

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by creature6 (Post 615422)

Truth.
He only cares for his own.

shutuptroll!shutuptroll!shutuptroll!shutuptroll!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger (Post 615133)

Shut up, troll!

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deadmanwalking_05 (Post 615474)

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).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deadmanwalking_05 (Post 615474)

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Despanan (Post 615480)

Why are you so damned easy?

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by Despanan (Post 615482)

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

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by HumanePain (Post 615124)

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by despanan (Post 615482)

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

fail!!!!!!

No, no, you're confusing your internet lingo. What you meant to type was "pwnage".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Despanan (Post 615482)

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

'cos he's so fat or 'cos he was fucking his sister?

Bill White, the Democratic candidate for Governor of Texas, posted the following on Facebook about his opponent in the upcoming election and current Texas Governor, Rick Perry:

Perry today said that British Petroleum "historically had a very good safety record from my perspective." Asked about the oil spill, he said, "there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented." He also said, "I don't think that a big wave came along at a very inopportune time . . . but I don't know that." See below the report by an panel headed by James Baker on safety at BP, after the explosion which killed 15. A big wave? An act of God?

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_inte...nel_report.pdf

Ben - I hope the idiot just keeps saying things like this ... and that the press keeps reporting on it.

Perry backs offshore drilling, calls spill 'act of God'

Rick Perry warns against 'knee-jerk' reaction to gulf oil spill

Governor Perry Warns Against Regulations for Oil Industry

An uncle and cousin of mine both worked on that rig. Luckily they were on their home rotation.

i have nothing else to add to this discussion besides...how the fuck can anything pertaining to this be blamed on the Obama administration? That is why i detest politics.

Carry on.

A new update on the situation. Earlier on BP estimated the amount of oil being leaked into the ocean to be about 5000 barrels per day. Now they have announced that the new small pipe they've inserted into the leak is siphoning off about 5000 barrels per day!

Since the media has current underwater video to analyze of the spill (with the pipe siphoning off its 5000 barrels) still showing massive amounts of oil spewing from the leak, analysts are now estimating the amount being spilled into the ocean to be somewhere between 40,000 and 100,00 barrels per day.

Here's an ABC news roundup of the subject:

BP Oil Spill: Congressman Says 'Environmental Catastrophe' Worse Than Previously Thought

Real-time video of oil leaking from beneath the damaged Deepwater Horizon rig 5,000 miles under the Gulf of Mexico reveals a disaster many times greater than BP has led the American public to believe, Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., said today.

"Today, BP is claiming that they are siphoning off 5,000 barrels a day," he said. "But if you look at the video you can see plumes of oil spilling into the Gulf far in excess of 5,000 barrels a day. These videos stand as a scalding, blistering indictment of BP's inattention to the scope and size of the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of U.S."

In addition, it turns out that the chemical dispersant that BP has been using to treat the oil spill on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico is toxic, and has been known to be toxic for some time - it was banned 10 years ago in the U.K. - so after dumping over 700,000 gallons into the sea, the EPA has ordered BP to change to a less toxic alternative.

In a statement to ABC News, BP called the chemical "one of the most well-studied dispersants" and said it chose Corexit in part because it could "get a sufficient supply to meet our needs on short notice."

For weeks, the company assured that using the dispersant was safe, with officials describing them like soap suds. But today, others painted a far more sinister picture.

"Any living organism that contacts this stuff, particularly the mixture of dispersant and oil, is at significant risk of acute mortality," said marine biologist Rick Steiner.

In fact, EPA testing released today indicates that where the dispersant had been used, 25 percent of all organisms living at 500 feet below the surface died.

Why is it starting to feel like we have The Three Stooges in charge of responding to this disaster? And how do we deal with this when Congressmen feel that BP can't be trusted?

Where are all the right-wing pundits screaming 'drill baby drill' now?

Whats funny is the right-wing are trying to attack Obama on this issue. They are calling it his 'Katrina'. The irony being, one was an act of God, the other was a man-made disaster that was avoidable, but due to the lax oversight, thanks to bush and his cronies, none of the protections worked.

I also find it funny that the right is attacking Obama saying he is not doing enough, yet, they are blocking his attempts to make the oil companies liable by blocking new legislation they are trying to pass right now involving regulating the industry.

Did anyone see the CBS news where the BP contractors were ordering around the coast guard and telling journalists they couldn't film the destruction, under BP orders?

I didn't know the coast guard answered to BP, but it appears they do.

In fact, they did a follow up last night on that very topic as congress wants to see footage of the leak, but BP is only releasing small edited clips. The coast guard says it has access to live footage, but will not turn it over to congress or the white house as BP has ordered them not to show anyone.

Seriously? I didn't know BP has the authority to block the coast guard from granting requests put through by the president and congress.

Yeah, I think the new Democratic protest sign at Republican rallies should be

SPILL, BABY, SPILL!

Republican responses to this will be taken care of in the fall, although to be fair, nobody's going to be able to tag them too hard on the drilling promotion, since President Obama came out in favor of offshore drilling himself in a very public statement not a month before the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

But at least it should lead to a moratorium on all current and planned offshore drilling until safety measures, regulation and enforcement can be investigated in this industry.

And I wouldn't worry about the BP/Coast Guard thing too much. The Coast Guard is in an untenable position at the moment, but all of BP's sins are coming to light ... and the only thing worse in American Public opinion that screwing up is getting caught repeatedly trying to hide the fact that you screwed up. And the American public is starting to smell coverup everywhere. I can tell the Congressmen and Senators are getting feedback from their constituants by their behavior in hearings and in interviews. There's chum in the water.

I wonder how Republican candidates are going to withstand charges in upcoming elections that they tried to obstruct raising British Petroleum's liability limit so BP can be held accountable for the full cost of this disaster?

Quote:

Originally Posted by blindNsect (Post 615414)

Truthfully, the only reason Katrina is a big deal is because Dems made it so.

By implying that the death associated with Hurricane Katrina are "no big deal" you have posted what has to be just about the most idiotic thing I've ever seen on this board. 3,000 people in New York and Washington, SD.C. are killed by the 9/11 surprise attacks and the country looses it's collective mind. 4,000 people are killed as a direct result of the destruction brought on by a hurricane that was predicted decades ago and track for over a week before it hit...and you seriously think that the impact of this is nothing more than political hype whipped up by the Democratic party?

I've gone into a great amount of detail with this subject in the past on another board, so I won't bore everyone with what I had to say then. However, even a small amount of reading on that hurricane, including the long-term economic and ecological impact, should have been enough to cause you to refrain from such a display of ignorance.

Sorry for the flame, folks, but that level of idiocy really chaps my hide.

Turning back to the topic at hand, it would seem BP's original estimates on the rate of oil flow from the ruptured pipeline were, to put it mildly, ridiculously low. A few days ago, I ran across this article from CBS news:

1 Month Later, Numbers Just Get Worse for Gulf

Here's a excerpt from the article:

"....But one of the persistent storylines is the huge discrepancy between BP's estimate of the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf and those of independent scientists. Since the April 20 explosion, BP officials placed the flow rate at 5,000 barrels a day, or 210,000 gallons - a figure accepted by the government and widely reported as accurate. Those estimates put the total amount of oil spilt into the Gulf at around 6 million gallons.

However, after BP succumbed to pressure to release video footage of the blown-out well, those numbers have fallen under intense scrutiny. Steve Wereley, a mechanical engineer at Purdue University in Indiana, told The Associated Press that he is sticking with his estimate that 3.9 million gallons a day is spewing from two leaks.

"I don't see any scenario where (BP's) numbers would be accurate," he said at a congressional hearing Wednesday.

His estimate of the amount leaked to date, which he calls conservative and says has a margin of error of plus or minus 20 percent, is 126 million gallons - or more than 11 times the total leaked from the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989..."

That's right; after four weeks experts (and no, this guy from Purdue isn't the only one) estimate this disaster is already 11 times worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill...and we're looking at a minimum of 4-6 more weeks before they can cap this thing.

Saying that this spill is "big", or comparing it to those slurry accidents doesn't do justice to the level of pollution this region of the country is facing. This thing already dwarfs any other oil-related incident in human history, and we aren't even halfway done with it.

- Heretic