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How Accurate Can Any BP/Unified Command Info Be?
Short and sweet folks.
What, or maybe I should say how, can we believe anything that is said by either BP or the government when it's in the interest of both to mitigate or minimize the severity and extent of the problem Macondo well 1 mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico?
It is clearly in the best interest of BP and the government to downplay the amount of the oil released as well as the severity of the problem. BP assured the government, and the government through the MMS accepted the assurances, that BP could handle a blowout of their well. They clearly could not. Either the assurances were a farce to begin with or the assurances were realistic but BP didn't intend to actually set aside the resources needed to deal with the potential of a blowout.
If BP admits anything, including the so-called "obvious", they're taking on legal responsibility their lawyers are desperate to avoid. Is it any wonder that BP would want the government not only to call the shots and make the big decisions but also to manage the information flow?
I can't think of a greater conflict of interest for all the parties involved than what is playing out in the Gulf of Mexico. And I suspect there are plenty of people on both sides of this fence. So have at it guys and gals.
And please keep the eye scratching and hair pulling to a minimum.
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It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
- Frederick Douglass
Is it not possible that the magnitude of what happened was so far beyond anything they had planned for that although they had planned for what they knew the reality was an order of magnitude greater?
Yeah let's talk about censorship and information control people. George Washington posts some absolutely irresponsible drivel absent ANY research, and then when it is obvious that he didn't know what he was talking about ~POOF~ ... like it was never there.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/well-integrity-test-failing
I had previoulsy raised the issue as to the Tax Impact that the UK and US would have form the BP situation. And we now have it.
The truth of the BP situation is that it is a combined US & BP situation. One in which the US Government was complicit.
The Government oushed BP to take short cuts, The field that has been discovered is the largest world oil find in decades.
Ask yourself a simple question. If this well is flowing at 100,000 barrels per day and they drill and complete 100 of these well which is nothing the daily production is 10 million barrels per day. This amount of production is 1/2 of the daily useage of the US.
Did you ever wonder why the price of oil didnt sky rocket when this situation evolved?
More important, the Government wanted to reprot this "find" at the same time of the coming Iranian attack so as to stop oil from sky rocketing in price.
think what will happen when the world learns of this new marginal additional production? Forget about Solar.
Speaking of goings on in the Gulf, check out this riveting interview of Sean Penn:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/13/sean_penn_on_haiti_six_months
How Accurate Can Any BP/Unified Command Info Be?
As accurate as they decide it should be. After all....its their spin game.
I think this hit the wires about 30 minutes ago:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/07/bp-get-ok-to-pressure-test-new-cap-to-stop-gulf-oil-spill/1
Hats on tight boys and girls. Remember, SHINY SIDE OUT!
No.
10 bux they discovered The Monolith!
20 says atlantis
One of the issues is that the bottom kill, even if successful does not address the pockets of gas in the 12,000 feet of sandstone above it. That sandstone is surrounding the casing, casing that may be (likely is) compromised such that gas will continue to escape at the well head. As bad as the oil is, gas in sufficient volumes isn't much better as it will create vast deep-sea dead zones.
It is quite clear that even with the best and brightest assigned to this disaster, it is uncharted territory. Does anyone remember the junk shot complete with golf balls? Obama, like him or dislike him, put Chu into the mix early on. Now why would he have done that, perhaps optics but I don't think so. Not saying Chu is the right or wrong guy but from the Prez's perspective he was the smartest guy in the room to help with a problem that no one had an answer to. Add the small p and large P politics into the mix and you get what you are now witnessing.
This is perhaps like an accident at a nuclear facility where they thought they had it contained or could contain it and activated the standard PR cover-up BS machine. When the core began to melt down they started scrambling.
And with that they have twice postponed this afternoon's briefing now scheduled for 5pm.
“People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to”
Malcolm Muggeridge
Listening to a conversation between a corporation and the public is analogous to a witnessing the same between a man and a woman. Two completely separate points of view and interests at heart.
From the corporate perspective, completely dominated by their legal mandate to always keep the shareholders profit primary, they are doing what they believe they must. It is this contradiction, the corporate mandate vs the public good that needs investigation. Here you will discover the imbalance that has destroyed nearly every American institution.
spot on man.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0833557/
Is it me or did this new cap with sensors come out of the blue? After top kill failed the story was that they'd march forward with the relief wells. Last week the relief wells were ahead of schedule and all was looking good. Then poof, a few days ago they pull this gigantic sensor ladden permanent cap out of a hat? Was this thing custom built or was it sitting around in Hayward's living room in London as a conversation piece?
My feeling is that they KNOW the well is compromised and are preparing the public for the grim reality that the relief wells are not likely to succeed in stanching the flow. They HOPE the sensor cap stops the leak and that if there are any leaks downline that they are relatively minor and will not amount to much more than the "natural seepage" we keep hearing about but that is most likely the seepage coming out of the 1000 or so abandoned wells in the GOM that haven't been inspected in years and for many, decades.
OR they will announce that the relief wells do not work and the cap doesn't stop all of the flow meaning they will have NO CHOICE but to put the well IN PRODUCTION as opposed to plugging it and forgetting it....
What is further curious to me is the incessant claim that it is not possible to accurately measure the flow of oil out of the well. That the only way to know how much is pumping out is to collect it all, and measure the volume topside. My only addition to the above is that at this point they MUST know the full volume, and (alongside all the other reasons to deny/delay/obfuscate) coming up with a spin on the flow rate is part of the delay.
"Don't cause a panic" is the prime directive in the goobermint, not the safety of its people.
After all, if the people have all the information, they will panic, creating a massive human meat grinder in the South as people elbow each other in frantic flight.
So, you can see the method in their madness..."Don't cause a panic".
"Don't cause a panic" only works and can only be justified in some twisted sense when the information provider is credible and there really is no reason to be worried. It's getting to a point, or will very soon, where people will doubt the "official" information to such a degree that they will either ignore it completely or panic simply because they are being told not to panic and they believe that's the signal to panic.
I remember near the end of the old Soviet Union some (natural or man made) disasters that were made worse because the population didn't believe what they were told because they had been lied to for so long they didn't actually believe the truth when it was told to them.
Just like each dollar of stimulus now provides less than a dollar of expansion, each pronouncement not to panic will create the opposite effect, that of panic.
I'm sure someone is already working on the MBA case study of this titled "How Not to Handle a Crisis." They were clearly trying to reduce costs, especially on safety, while working at the limits of existing technology. Not bright.
"We're really not sure what's going on down there", would be a good start. As long as they speak in government style double talk, we can only believe the worst of them.
Agreed.
When we don't have all the facts, the credibility of those telling us what facts we do have is of paramount importance. Just because someone is an "official" means squat, particularly when those "officials" have every reason to minimize the bad news or even out right lie.
Credibility isn't based upon a person's title or position but upon their history and track record. BP and the government have very poor track records. Let's all apply a little "buyer beware" to these information (propaganda) pushing officials.
just a quick wiki to set the tone. . .
I agree CogDis, that we have an ongoing "credibility gap" - and it's endemic to the current system of corporate governance, in my opinion. . .
if the government operates as a corporation, or is owned by corporations, and certain laws / rules apply, such as "official secrets acts" to protect the sovereignty or laws to protect brands, ingredients, components, etc. - then how can there be the necessary trust to go forward?
an example: if they won't / can't be honest about the ingredients of Corexit, then how can it be used except with the understanding that the environment / humans / animals are all test subjects?
this is an ongoing clusterfuck - the government has to protect all it's secrets, the corporations need to protect their "creations," and humans and/or the environment come waaaaay down the list of considerations. . .
that's just one example of how the trust is continually eroded - the only people who feel safe in this sociopathic hell are the ones who numb themselves intentionally, daily, just to get by. . .
This government (it stopped being "my" or "your" government decades ago) does not trust me.
And I present as evidence the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act to name just a few of the recent legal atrocities brought down on my head without my consent, the fact that the government reads my e-mails and monitors my web traffic and taps my phone (they've been doing this since I became an extremely proactive activist 7 years ago) that they feel they can enter my home without a warrant and detain me without notification or due process indefinitely just by declaring I'm a "terrorist", that audits me 6 years running because they can and so on as proof.
So why in the world should/would/could I trust an incredibly powerful and clearly adversarial entity simply because they are "official" and I am not?
completely agree!
and, I tend to use the generic "the government" to put some distance between myself and IT, lol - no way is it "my"- representative of me - and I only use "your" in a post when someone is obviously defending what they believe to be "theirs" - again, agree with you!
I've no doubt many of us are similarly "tracked" - and with the McCain/Lieberman “Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010,” currently on the table, further eroding the rights of even US citizens, I've no doubt we're on the fast track to. . . chaos.
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s3081/show
take care!
Is this our official notification that official notifications are not to be trusted?
The false flag attacks of 9/11 were your "official" notification that official notifications are not to be trusted.
all i had to do is painfully watch hayward's congressional testimony to know we were screwed
CD, Is this a trick question?
LOL
I got tired of a few posters telling me that "officially" BP nor the government have admitted to any damage to the well, inferring that since it hasn't been officially disclosed, any discussion regarding possible damage shouldn't be believed.
In other words, we should always believe the official masters and to discuss something without official sanction is irresponsible and unreasonable. I'm tired of being told that only information (or the lack of information) from hugely conflicted "official" sources should be credible.
While I agree that stories about massive sea floor collapse or huge methane explosions are way out there, discussion about the very realistic possibility of damage to the well casing is appropriate. And to be told it isn't credible because it's not official is laughable.
CD,
An interesting aspect of this disaster has been to track two lines of discussion, The "official" line, and the "crazy talk" line. My observation is that the official line of any day of the disaster is pretty close to the "crazy talk" line of about two weeks prior. Just look at the constantly changing numbers on the "official" amount of oil leaking.
The conflict of interest is obvious. The subterfuge is obvious. I tend to think that the off-MSM sites have it right that there are serious problems downhole. Don't know what that means. I've been surprised they've been so bullish on the relief wells, and why they tried the new cap (as opposed to the one that was collecting some of the oil). If they knew of the problems, I would have expected a bit more caution.
I think this will be an environmental and economic disaster, even if they cap it, of the first order. Millions of acres of beachfront property will be marked down substantially. Health ramifications for clean up workers will last for decades (with sealed health files). Entire communities will be ghost towns - tourism, seafood, etc.
Or, it could disappear like Haiti in 6 months as people wait in line for iPhone 5.
I think they tried the new cap so they could take pressure and other measurements on the well. Based on reports and the announced delay, perhaps they discovered things are a bit worse than initially thought?
Fascist bastards. Farcism continues, unabated by most.
"Bird dog 'em, ZH!!!!" -LH
From BP/Gov
"As a result of those discussions we decided the process may benfit from additional analysis"
Translation:
We reviewed the data and realized we are completely scr*wed. We can not tell you the real magnitude of the problem, until we create a story of what we are going to do and why we are extremely confident it will work. We need time to get our story straight.
Point on my man. The B.S. not the oil leaking now is the killer. We are confronted with 2 problems. Oil leak and Insane liars.
Where do we go? I am afraid the second problem is ultimately much larger than the first. Milestones.
Point on my man. The B.S. not the oil leaking now is the killer. We are confronted with 2 problems. Oil leak and Insane liars.
Where do we go? I am afraid the second problem is ultimately much larger than the first. Milestones.
"Please continue to tune into the infinitely important LBJ scandal, Lady Magaga psycho babel, and Disney Drugs. Thank you." - Dinosaur King