So, the dumbasses at BP have totally blown it yet again. NPR reports this morning that while crews connected a pipe that had started drawing oil from the main leak, two “robots” that were present to take photos of the process crashed into each other and broke it off. You cannot make this shit up.
Meanwhile, the cleanup effort can no longer suppress what organizers don’t want us to see. Scientists are finding enormous plumes of oil under the surface—one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick.
Also, why does every solution attempted so far involve BP reconnecting to the source? What about just clamping the thing off from the get-go? It’s starting to sound like nuking from orbit might just be the best solution. Confidential to Barack Obama: You’re tanking.
UPDATE: BP released a statement claiming: “Technicians have fully inspected the system and have re-inserted the tool,” however, WSJ notes:
It’s still unclear whether the new siphoning operation will work. Even in the best-case scenario, the tube won’t capture all the leaking oil.
Obama needs to convene a Manhattan Project-level team of scientists and engineers from academia, industry, and the military, and grant them authority to requisition all necessary equipment. Public sentiment will build for assessments/taxes/what-have-you to make sure this work is paid for up front, as it becomes clear that oil exploration, fisheries, and tourism (not to mention the natural environment) in the whole region will be severely affected for a long time.
Funny how the Gulf, which once seemed like such a vast expanse of water, is looking more and more like a clogged toilet bowl.
That sounds nice, rob, but the Manhattan project took years to produce a useful result. Even with unlimited manpower and materials, some problems just can’t be solved quickly. In fact, sometimes too many hands will just slow down the process.
To see firsthand* pictures and video of the spill, visit bpoilslick.blogspot.com.
*or if you’re Dominic, first-hand.
Why is the words “robots” in quotation marks? Do you think there weren’t really robots there? Do you think they sent scuba divers down to take pictures instead? In any case, the robots were pretty dumb or poorly-operated.
it’s all bullshit. the federal government should go in there and send conventional torpedo explosives down on the sit or dump about a billion gallons of quick setting underwater concrete on the whole thing and stop it from gushing pronto.
It’s a skinny pipeline that goes way beneath the ocean floor. The site can be crushed easy stopping the flow but the oil company WANT THE FRIGGIN OIL and that’s why they’re not doing it that way.
BP is engaged in criminal trespass and malicious mischief and toxic crimes every fucking day, we need to take over the entire company and put them all in jail. What they are doing now is trying to KEEP THE OIL FLOWING AND GET IT with their greedy piggy corporate paws.
And our government and this means Obama, doesn’t have the guts to stop them.
@2, you make many excellent pity comments, but this wasn’t one of them–if you jump in the (oily) soup, you’ve got to add some seasoning.
Things are working poorly right now. BP has been, as Grant notes, obstructing access to underwater video footage, perhaps with the complicity of some government agencies. When enough got out for a number of independent experts to provide estimates of spill rates far in excess of BP’s, the oil company tried to shoot it down. Moreover, BP has been using the notoriously inaccurate method of measuring the area of surface sheen using satellite imagery, while simultaneously trying to avoid responsibility by emphasizing that the satellite data is from NASA and NOAA.
Obama railing against industry executives has maybe another week of usefulness tops. The sooner he starts leading, the better for him and us.
Re: 5, PITHY comments, not pity. That was pithed poor.
Grant, you feckless pussy, get off of Obama’s back.
He has Been On Top of This from DAY ONE!!!!!
See, it’s a problem when a surge of voices throw all this fucking up at the ecological level upon the executive government office when, absent such a catastrophe, no one wants any tier of the federal government muckraking in potentially disastrous activities of an ecological nature. To wit, historic obstructions to changing oversight of the EPA from an agency to a cabinet administration with more direct oversight and enforcement. Obviously, just having an interior department is not doing the trick.
In short, Americans are not thinking. Not new. Dear Americans: totally impossible to want it both ways. Let one work or the other, and suck it up if the choice made comes with bad, bad consequences should things go awry.
Thanks for that, dear Tesla Grills.
This post is a good example of the unintended consequences of Obama playing along with the “hero/messiah” angle during the campaign. With oil spewing into the gulf, popular resentment grows every passing day Obama fails to part the Red fucking Sea with a wave of his staff.
What does “nuking from orbit” even mean? We don’t have space-based nuclear warhead deployment, and even if we did, what on earth makes you think that would work?
The Russians used nukes to stop similar leaks. Its not that crazy an idea. You basically collapse the whole thing and seal it back up.
@10: It’s the joke everyone keeps saying about the situation: “Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” from Aliens.
The only responsible thing we can do is pay the other companies to dig in the same area and suck up all of the oil before it leaks out.
We should also grant them permission to drill along all of our coastlines so never again will the evil oil leak out of its underwater lair and poison our precious energy supply… err, bio-sphere.
@9: I was referring to citizens, not presidents. Ultimately, it’s the schizoid electorate of Americans who self-sabotage good intentions time and again. It’s the American electorate which has held as a unit, a contributing agency in the preventive welfare of everything from food to securities to ecology. The constant “vote ’em out” mentality is the stuck groove that assures this public agency is never productively acted upon for the long-term assurance to thwart the mistakes of yore.
Stupid is as stupid does.
In breaking news, BP now says that the “fix” worked and they’ve stopped the leak.
Another angle the media hasn’t picked up on yet (if they ever will) is the disastrous effects of so much natural gas leaking along with the oil. In fact the ratio of natural gas to oil is 3000 to 1. That means there could be up to 210 million cubic feet of natural gas spilling into the gulf per day.
The gas is absorbed by the water, which prevents the water from absorbing oxygen. There’s already a dead zone down there every summer from agriculture runoff entering entering the gulf by way of the Mississippi River. Well, you can expect that to get much, much, much bigger and stick around all year.
Congratulations, BP. You’ve killed the Gulf of Mexico.
@14, I resemble that remark.
@15 – forgive me if I don’t get too excited. BP won’t even tell us exactly how much oil is leaking per day (there’s no way to figure it out! yeah right) and now they are saying that this new smaller pipe is capturing “some” of the oil. So basically they are getting an unknown percentage of an unknown quantity of oil gushing from the pipe. That sure is confidence-inspiring.
@14: A constant vote them out mentality? Now that’s news to me.
Let’s get real. BP is now obviously profoundly guilty of trying to solve this catastrophe only in its best interest– the salvage of access to the oil. It is now time to do the unthinkable, seal the well.
BP knows exactly how much ground they need to dig through to get from the bottom of the ocean to the reservoir of oil.
If they could seal the well, they would. They still have rights to drill the area, and they have all the equipment they need to drill it again.
Has anyone ever sealed a well under these conditions before?
We might have had a lot more useful information to deal with this crisis (baseline data, wetland dynamics, ecosystem and population structures in both deepwater and coastal environments, experimental remediation, etc.) if:
The National Biological Service, created by Bruce Babbitt under President Clinton in 1993, hadn’t been hamstrung only three years later by Newt Gingrich and the Republicans’ “Contract with America.” It was buried in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), making the animal and the vegetable subservient to the mineral.
In addition, federal grant funds for biological research were chopped mercilessly from 1995-2008.
Just remindin’.
@19: snicker.
@11: They won’t nuke it, ala the Russians, because they would never, ever, ever be allowed to drill there again, making them lose a metric ton of money. And no corporation will do that.
Our government is going to have to FORCE them to fucking do it, and that is the only way. Now, do I think our government will? Eh, maybe. But more likely they are going to let them try and find a way to cyphon it (even if it means some leaking) so that they can get money. Which is total bullshit. But whatever, I have lost faith that anything will be done in a timely manner.
I have not heard that news yet. Jesus Christ. These stooges should not be trusted in stopping this emergency. I’m willing to bet our military, some how, could have stopped this by now. It is an outrage that we are leaving this challenge to BP. I have suspected for some time now that they’re just trying to stop this gusher in a way that allows them to salvage oil. And not stop it altogether, no matter what. Seriously, how would previous presidents have dealt with this? Um, besides Bush?
Notice that ever solution BP has tried so far involves pumping the oil into a tanker. They are not trying to stop the oil, they are trying to recover it, and their profits. The government needs to take control and figure out a way to fucking stop it. If that includes detonating the well, so be it.