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Guest Post: Gulf Oil Spill Threatens Halt To White House Offshore Drilling Plans
Submitted by www.oilprice.com
Gulf Oil Spill Threatens Halt to White House Offshore Drilling Plans
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from a collapsed offshore drilling rig could affect White House plans to extend offshore drilling, press secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged as the oil slick threatened onshore sites from the Louisiana wetlands to the Sarasota beaches and disrupted fishing and energy industries.
As oil giant BP mobilized resources to try to stop the leak and to mitigate its damage, President Barack Obama called the spill “potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.”
However, some critics charged that the administration’s slow response to the rig accident and Obama’s decision to take part in the humorous proceedings at the White House Correspondents Dinner as the disaster unfolded has been as bad as the Bush administration’s sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans.
Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson called on Obama to impose an immediate moratorium on offshore oil exploration. “Until we learn what happened, I’m asking that you also call for an immediate halt to test wells and all other exploratory operations in coastal waters,” Nelson wrote in a letter to the president.
Nelson also said he was filing legislation to block the Interior Department from going ahead with the White House plans to lease further sites for offshore exploration.
Freakonomics author Stephen Dubner asked in a blog whether the oil spill from Deepwater Horizon might be for the offshore oil industry what the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant was for the nuclear industry – stopping further development dead in its tracks.
“Could the Gulf disaster be just the kind of tragic, visible, easy-to-comprehend event that crystallizes the already-growing rush to de-petroleum our economy?” asks Dubner, who popularized behavioural economics with his book. “As we’ve seen before, public sentiment can generate an awful lot of energy on its own, for better or worse.”
The oil slick posed a more immediate disruption to the U.S. energy industry, as it threatened to close shipping lanes to oil imports destined for Gulf coast refineries and forced the evacuation of other oil and natural gas drilling rigs, sometimes with a shutdown in production. For now, the main pass into the Mississippi delta, the Southwest Pass, remains free.
Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Gulf-Oil-Spill-Threatens-Halt-to-Wh...
By. Darrell Delamaide for Oilprice.com who offer detailed analysis on Crude oil, Geopolitics, Gold and most other Commodities. They also provide free political and economic intelligence to help investors gain a greater understanding of world events and the impact they have on certain regions and sectors. Visit: http://www.oilprice.com
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Why am I hearing a lot of spec on sabotage being the cause ??
If true, the greens or the crap and tax crowd used a little too much dynamite.
"Why am I hearing a lot of spec on sabotage being the cause ??"
Because Limbaugh is a couple bottles short of a six-pack.
In Australia we would say he is a few kangaroos short in the top paddock, but who's quibbling.
You might say his elevator only goes to the second floor.
is that where the pharmacy is located?
The administration must have thought the same thing, at least at a precautionary level. Otherwise, what were the SWAT teams the president sent to other rigs in the gulf meant to do there? Note that the administration as also a few beers short of a six pack too.
I sleep SO much better at night knowing that if it was sabotage, Big Sis Napolitano is on the case!
From what I've read elsewhere, those "SWAT" teams were in fact oil rig inspectors inspecting safety-related issues on oil rigs, in response. That is to say, they were not military commandos looking for terrorists.
FYI
Meredith W on Bloomberg Radio live for the next hour
http://www.bloomberg.com/audioplayers/playr_go.html?&clipName=Bloomberg%...
I live on the south east gulf coast; we got our last shrimp Tuesday. This massive disaster threatens to turn the Gulf into the Dead Sea. We here in Louisiana got shit on for Katrina; they said we shouldn't even rebuild the city of New Orleans. It's about time this shit hits the rest of the country. It's about time for this to spread to the other states and up the east coast. Let these other bastards feel the pain; those that think the economy is doing great. Looks like my brother may finally find a job cleaning up the mess here which will probably last 20 plus years as the tar balls that for the time being are hidden from the surface roll up on the beaches and kill the coral and marine life. This whole bull shit rally from March '09 has been nothing but a dead cat bounce correction in a down trend and formed the last shoulder on a head and shoulders top. Meltdown USA mofo's!
Hang in there. I agree that this will have terrible consequences for some time to come. You guys have gotten much more than your fair share of pain lately.
Hang in there? Are you nuts? http://www.uhaul.com/ The trend is your friend; more to come. They don't call it Loseriana for nothing.
You might not be laughing if this thing starts spewing 40,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil into the gulf every day with no chance of a cap, which a lot of oil people are saying is a distinct possibility. That's curtains for everybody.
they should better start preparing for the "NON-chrimp coctails"... the horor...
"Looks like my brother may finally find a job cleaning up the mess here which will probably last 20 plus years as the tar balls that for the time being are hidden from the surface roll up on the beaches and kill the coral and marine life. "
OMG! Don't give Harry Wanger any more reasons to be bullish! I can hear him now... new jobs created cleaning up monumental mess in the Gulf... BUY! BUY!
LOVE IT!
Grow up Gekko. Have you really thought about your chances of survival to ever spend your gold in the whole screw the USA, gold to infinity scenario?
I am hoping that he builds a pool with a water slide and has parties on the weekends.
Have em send me his scope dialing targets and I'll issue a survival default swap on him if he's under 1 minute of accuracy.
Yeah, I think this will be Obama's Katrina - though despite its murky, gunky mass I doubt it will stick like Katrina did to Bush. Obama could have done quite a few things -- not the least of which was mobilize the Navy. They could have surrounded the oil slick and ordered it to surrender. But seriously folks, what could have been done other than just more "talk?" At best he might have managed the PR better by at least appearing to throw a TARP over it.
Yes the navy coul have been mobilized and surrounded the oil slick and not ordered it to surrender, but could have burned it off. The military and National Guard could hvae been mobilized to use chicken feathers to mop up the oil. If this had been done on day two or even day five the mass pollution could have been avoided.
Just got KFC on the phone! As we speak, they are contacting Captain Iglo to figure out a plan!
I suppose, but as I understand it the well is leaking over 200,000 barrels a day one mile down. Not much you can do as that oil surfaces miles away in all directions. Burning would have created a huge black oily plume which would have done damage itself and only burned the oil on the surface.
This is a huge mess and the timing just could not be worse. Remember, the GD was exacerbated by dust storms and droughts that made farming impossible and forced 10s of thousands to move to California to seek work. The black cloud of dust even got as far east ast New York and Washington, DC. Black swan events are things that can throw a precarious economy into a tailspin.
But I mainly feel for the people whose livelihood depends on fishing, shrimping and the resort business. I just pray this does not rise to "epic" proportions - but it may already have.
Read that in surface area the spill is already the size of Delaware. But burning can remove 75% or more of the crude, (yeah air pollution but better than the alternative) however the rate the crude is coming out at would require many booms to keep up with. This black swan will be covered in crude, with the potential to poison most of the world's oceans if it gets in the gulf stream. Much like the financial meltdown, epic failure in both private and public sectors from a system in deep capture.
I wonder if air pollution would be the only consequence.
Quite easy to check: take your own flamer or borrow one from one of the many gun ho site regulars and burn it up. You might die in the process but empirical science will grow victorious.
umm, did anyone notice there were awful rainstorms in the gulf for the past couple days. makes it a little harder to burn the oil and has disperesed it even more.
THE BLOB NEVER SURRENDERS!!!!
Loved that movie :)
This is what you get when you vote for change, yet the man you vote for is in bed with the bankers taking miilions in campagin money, and you find out there never was going to be any change to begin with. Americans never do their homework when it comes to voting. Maybe we need to change the system after all.
Unfortunately the other guy in the race was an asshole too.
Unfortunate to the Nth degree. McCain was up to his eyeballs in the Liar Loan racket.
As are they all. Dodd, McConnell, Shelby, Frank, Pelosi ... all of them. I can't name one that didn't take big money from banks and continue to do so. Remember when TARP was up for a vote. There were first hand reports of bank lobbyists hanging out in the bathrooms in the Senate and Congressional Office buildings.
So when was the last time we weren't voting for one asshole or the other ?
This is why I only vote for city and county measures/positions.
America got the change they wanted right?
Instead of going forward, it's now "changed" into going backward.
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=91333
Just passin' this along...
North Korea ?? Now that would not surprise me at all. Tin Foil hat on.
I know its an emotional issue but the facts are most big spills are from tankers. If this had been a big tanker bringing Venezuelan crude up to Gulf refineries it would have been worse. Over a million barrels all at once into the Gulf. So its not as if we end offshore drilling we end risk.
The arithmetic is simple. We have to import over 2/3's of our oil. Its coming in by sea. Stopping offshore production will not change that just deprive the economy of the value of oil produced in our waters.
It really makes you proud that we spend $20-$30 billion a year on the Department of Energy which was going to make us energy independent for ever and ever and ever.
Folks had better start asking just what the hell has the DOE been doing for 30+ years.
Talking about moneypits....
Gingrich said that he was going to shut it down. Dept of Education too. Shame that the class of '94 went so quickly from slightly revolutionary to revoltingly establishment.
What now? Back to the Dick Cheney school of militarised energy policy, i.e. I-RAN?
SSssstttt... don't spoil the surprise!
They don't know it yet, and otherwise they'll hide their weapons of mass destruction.
If you want to see something quite scary, check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Against_Nuclear_Iran
Just a non-partisan charity that campaigns against nuclear proliferation in Iran....except it's made up of former members of the Bush administration, the CIA and Council on Foreign Relations.
Weaving spiders come not here!
Offshore Drilling Plans are a dead issue. Arnold has backed away from it in California and Obama is looking for someway to blame the Republicans for encouraging him lifting a the ban on it.
Yep - that Barry, a real Profile in Courage, he.
Obama doesn't mind, he is a masochist.
There; I fixed it.
No, but try this:
If only the Hawaiian Head Start program would have had more funding, or the U.S. would have given more foreign aid and subsidies to African goat herders like his father, then maybe, just maybe poor little Barry would have developed an ounce of accountability.
What? I can dream.
I could go with either Chumba's or Hedgeless's reinterpretation...
Anyone care to make any bets on "insurance" held by BP to backstop such an unfortunate occurrence? Any bets on who their counterparty may be? Even more evil, was anyone else able to take out "insurance" on this happening to BP.
I've read that they are self-insured through a wholly-owned subsidiary, Jupiter:
http://ifawebnews.com/2010/05/03/report-insurance-will-stem-financial-im...
Too much conspiracy theorising will give you a migraine. The key to wisdom is knowing what is a fact and what is a lie.
"Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland acting up a bit"
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/05/eyjafja...
When it rains, it pours.
I read that some flights were put down again due to a new ash cloud. Iceland's revenge is not done yet!
Smoky Iceland is just trying to get some spotlight back from America's oil fountain
Unpronouncable is in need of a good little lie-down. She has had her big moment on the world stage. An encore is not called for.
Really...no way...you have to be kidding!
Off-Shore Drilling...why bother?
Thorium Reactors...why bother?
Synthetic Biology..."among the areas that are fast becoming a priority for the Pentagon is synthetic biology"...Yeah baby.
Just another reminder that 80% of the populace are non-investable.
I don't know how soon the rig fell but what they could have done was put barges all around the burning rig to keep it from falling over and breaking the pipe.
Sure they could've, if you had some Kamikaze barge operators!
http://www.sunherald.com/2010/05/04/2154078/pentagon-oks-up-to-17500-guardsmen.html
Gosh, is Rahm at it again?.
"Never fail to take advantage of a crisis".
I have some swampland in Phoenix for sale, if you think Obummer was ( EVER) going to allow the oil companies to drill.
When he said Atlantic seaboard, I knew he was full of shite.
About as likely to find oil there as my backyard, or in the Permian Basin.....(again).
Good luck to Tony Hayward and all the other BP people working to mitigate the effects of this accident. A lot of people are sitting on the sidelines almost rooting for an apocalyptic conclusion to this disaster. Some people are enamoured of grief and trouble. An over-interest in a pathology is a pathology in itself however. All the focus should be on solving the problem, not nit-picking, political point scoring or opportunistic litigation. As the saying goes "Many hands make light work". Take note all...Focus comes before action. Self-fulfilling prophecies are dangerous.
So, the WH is a little nervy? Why? They're getting 5-10K barrels of oil per day. just without the barrels.
The amazing thing about this is, that nobody seems to give a shit. I expected the environmentalists to be front page on every news cycle. Guess they are waiting for photo ops with all of the dead shit which floats up on shore.
Another amazing thing is the confidence in the flow rate numbers. I'm assuming the wellhead is in place, but it doesn't function probably due to the riser pipe toppling. Why is anybody assuming that its chokeholds are in place?
This will be a fascinating mess if it gets in the surface current. Those folks in Tampa-St Pete are gonna be loving their red snapper ala 30W, with a side of red beans and rice.
I'm starting to believe we're all braindead from bad news. We're capable of anything, after the past year of Neverland markets.
I'd say let's put Tinkerbell in charge, but I think my get-punked vote, helped put a reasonable facsimile there.
Fuck it. What are the US equity futures looking like....
.
The war against the environment seems to be the only war we're winning - this is a HUGE tragedy...
No, it's one of two wars. We're also winning The War On Poor Brown Children In Other Countries. It's just that we're winning it so well, it no longer makes the news much.
I just spit coffee on the keyboard for that one. Thanks.
The deeper the water and the deeper the drilling, the less we know about what we are doing. Methane gas may have been produced by drilling into Frozen methane hydrates which can contain 170 times their own volume of methane. These frozen hydrates occur in the seabed and have been found in the warm waters off of Southern California. A high pressure zone or heat from cement curing at the casing in the ocean floor could have released methane causing the explosion and blowing out the cement sealing agent in the blow out valve/ well head area. This may be VERY bad.
Bold AND caps? That may be very bad inded.
And this is in the realm of who knows...
So far I'm going with a much more conventional explanation of the blowout, but if some big hydrates deposit got tapped and released, that would be [Peter Egon voice] very, very bad. Like 40 foot twinkie bad.
i wonder how the basin will hold up? oil and gas under much pressure is escaping from below the sea bed. The pressure must be twofold.
1 the weight of the sea bed and water it holds downward force
2 heat from below warming the oil and expanding it.
As the oil comes out, the seabed will likely cave, allowing ocean water to rapidly find its new level . That in itself will be akin to a tsunamy.
I am not a scientist unless being german qualifies me and i hope sincerely that i am mistaken.
Don't hold your breath. German or not, what you're saying is pretty stupid.
It hasn't caved in anywhere else in the 100 or so years we've been drilling offshore. Not to mention the hundreds of years weve been drilling and tapping reservoirs on land.
Oil is trapped in rock. It's not in some magical underground baloon that will deflate and then compress. The rock will still be there after the oil is gone. The reservoir will continue to produce into the sea until the pressure is equalized or they kill the well.
Broken Trades, actuall you are mistaken. Gulf basin has shown evidence of subsidence before this even happened. And yes , its atributed to the removal of oil.
Not quite as stupid as you think
You just found the cure for rising sea levels because of the global warming!
We should have every oil well have a blow out!!
To do this righ and get organised, somebody should mention it on their facebook page and run a poll...
anybody? hellooo!!.....
Perhaps we might talk a bit about the overarching predicament here. That is, why would BP be drilling in 5,000 feet of water to an umpteen thousand PSI reservoir located 13,000 feet further below with all the inherent (and now very obvious) risks involved? Same reason they're spending billions of dollars to frizzle-fry and squeeze a bunch of greasy sand and rocks. Jed Clampett is dead, man. The easy oil is gone (or more precisely, the easy oil that's left is located under people who generally don't like us so much). And unless you remember what you were doing when you heard about President McKinley getting shot, pretty much everything you've ever owned, eaten, or otherwise consumed since the day you were born has been brought to you by easy oil. Not tar sands or oil shale or bio-diesel or algae farts or solar powered hydroelectric nuclear windmills. Cheap-ass land-based oil. As serious as this leak is (and I do believe it is SERIOUS), why they are compelled to drill such wells in the first place is perhaps ultimately much more sobering. Just sayin'. Talk amongst yourselves...
Don't bother. Petroleum engineers you will not find here. Not even interested layman. This is the domain of the lunatic fringe and the electronic crayon set.
Word.
Now go back to the Oil Drum or LATOC and leave these people be. But please do come back in a year or three, when we'll all be partying like it's 1899.
No way, man. Geothermal conversion kits for your Escalade are right around the corner. No lifestyle reduction necessary. All is well.
No one mentioned that Obama released his offshore drilling plan on April Fool's Day. I am still looking for that spaghetti tree.
+100
if anybody ever tries to corner him with that fact, he just has to say:
APRIL FOOL'S!!! :)
TOXIC SPILL CLEANUP COSTS:
http://williambanzai7.blogspot.com/2010/05/toxic-spill-costs.html
Gee, I can't wait until we see Chinese or Russian rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Things will be so much safer.....
you can sleep on your 2 ears...
Russia is only interested in building rigs on the north pole
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1642905,00.html
If they ever have a blowout, nobody will ever see it, because yes: ice is black. Just like they now say it's naturel to have oil leaks and bacteria will eat the oil...
Shut - Down the Dept. of Energy .. send all those people home..
We don't need them... They can't stop this oil leak...!
The leader of the Republican party, Rush Limbaugh, made a clown out of himself and his party by calling on the federal government to do anything. The oil spill is a man made disaster. Halliburton was responsible for the maintenance. Cheney had his secret energy meetings and now has a gigantic public mistake. BP has responsiblity for this. The oil can't be BP's when it's in the tanker but federal on top of the water. Rush has three legitimate topics: Halliburton, BP, and asking for the wives and children to move down there and breathe the air, drink the water, eat the food.
Obama made the right call last night suggesting that the oil companies involved in the spill to hire people in the Gulf area. You want small federal government and no regulation, you got it.