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New BP Insertion Tube Isn't Working
BP's new insertion tube inside the leaking oil pipe - unfortunately -
isn't doing very much.
Specifically, the Miami Herald points
out that - according to the Coast Guard - the spill is getting worse in spite of the insertion
tube:
The
massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill is growing despite British Petroleum's
effort to siphon some of the spewing crude from its ruptured deepwater
well, the U.S. Coast Guard official leading the cleanup warned Tuesday.
BP
doubled its estimate of the amount of crude being captured by a
mile-long recovery tube to 2,000 barrels per day - but what percentage
of the spill that is remains uncertain. BP has said it thinks that 5,000
barrels of crude a day are leaking from the well, but a video made
public Tuesday after the tube was placed inside the broken pipe showed
clouds of crude oil still billowing into the sea.
Another video
provided the first public view of a second leak much nearer the runaway
well's failed blowout preventer spewing oil, too. A BP robot took that
video on Saturday and Sunday.
The Coast Guard commandant, Adm.
Thad Allen, said that despite the siphoning, the spilled oil is
spreading and now stretches from western Louisiana to Florida's Key
West. The extent of the spill was straining even the substantial
resources deployed for one of the worst ecological disasters in recent
history, he said.
Kevin Grandia explains:
Two new videos
have surface showing footage of the BP oil leak at the source 5,000 feet
down at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
These new video are
important because they show footage (if the time stamp on the video of
May 17th is correct) taken after the oil company responsible for
stopping the leak - British Petroleum (BP) - had
inserted a tube into the leaking pipe in an attempt to
siphon off some of the oil and pump it up to an awaiting ship on the
surface.
Looking at this video there remains serious question
about the exact
amount of oil that is actually flowing from the burst pipe as well
as how much is being captured by the inserted siphon:
***
Another video has also been released showing the leak from the
riser that is described on US
Senator Bill Nelson's website as video footage of the plume "after
the intervention" - you can clearly see in the video a large kink in the
riser that is spewing oil. The first half of this video is marked May
15th - the day before the insertion tube was placed in the leaking pipe.
The video then switches (at about the 2 min. 30 sec. mark) to a
close of shot of the leak time stamped the next day, May 16th after the
insertion tube was put in place:
Compare
this to similar footage posted last week:
Indeed, BP either doesn't know or
won't tell how much oil is leaking. As the Miami Herald notes:
Under
sharp questioning from Nelson and other lawmakers, Lamar McKay, the
head of BP America, said the company was focused on sealing off the
spill but couldn't offer estimates of how much oil was flowing into the
ocean.
And see this.
BP has refused to let independent scientists inspect the site so that
they could estimate the rate of the oil leak.
BP's next plan is to try to seal the leak
using heavy
drilling fluids and then cement:
BP likely
will try to shut down the well completely late this week using a
technique called “top kill,” BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles
said at a news conference Monday. The process involves
pumping heavy drilling fluids through two 3-inch lines into the blowout
preventer that sits on top of the Macondo wellhead a mile underwater.
This would first restrict the flow of oil from the well, which then
could be sealed permanently with cement.
»
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... or you could put/short some BP like what I've been doing.
Probably not a bad idea. This is going to cost BP a fuckofalotta money.
Not only that, but they're screwed regardless. The south is about to get greasy crap all over its shores, and the south is full of Republicans. So they've pissed off all the hippies on the left *and* barfed oil all over JesusLand. They're fucked.
Not quite yet... BP just released this video showing a fish cutting the hydraulic lines to the BOP... see? nobodies fault!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHUH_Ixv9JA&feature=related
Hey, that was Charlie Tuna. They saved Charlie Tuna. (A very stupid Charlie Tuna.)
Yeah, hooray for BP.
PR magic... how could you possibly fine a company like that!
Unless you read this...
Remember those unconfirmed reports a couple of days ago about Schlumberger getting it's crew the hell off the platform hours before the explosion?
It's baaaack!
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN19267283
Original unconfirmed story...
http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2010/05/smoking-gun-bps-deep-horizon-mess
When we got into a position like that we would just take the rig off contract. Would really piss off the company man. Nobody likes being told that their millions ain't worth shit.
The other reason to suspect this story is true is that the existence of the company man appears to be well concealed. Have to laugh now at the Senate and House hearings and the blather from the BP mouthpiece. The company man will know exactly what transpired, what was done on the well and the reasons it was done or not done. In other words he has the answer to every possible technical question. That he has not been ordered/permitted to testify suggests BP has a significant legal problem on its hands.
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/costly_time-co... (much more at the link, including a great graphic) Costly, time-consuming test of cement linings in Deepwater Horizon rig was omitted, spokesman says A spokesman for the testing firm, Schlumberger, said BP had a Schlumberger team and equipment for sending acoustic testing lines down the well "on standby" from April 18 to April 20. But BP never asked the Schlumberger crew to perform the acoustic test and sent its members back to Louisiana on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight at 11 a.m., Schlumberger spokesman Stephen T. Harris said. "It looks pretty on paper, but you can't accomplish that successfully and have a good cement job," said Tom McFarland, a cementing consultant from Marrero who has decades of experience cementing oil wells. "The chance of getting a good cement job on that is nil." McCormack, the University of Texas professor, isn't so sure that the blowout went through the annulus, rather than breaching the center of the well and blowing out the top. But either way, he was baffled by the diagram Halliburton gave to Congress. He was so surprised by the lack of an O-ring seal that he wondered if it was an error. "There's a free path all the way to the top of the well bore. Normally you wouldn't do that," he said. "If the well was completed as designed, I think that would be an issue the way it's shown there." McFarland said a cement bond log is costly and takes time, but it would have told the crew right away whether the annulus was exposed to hydrocarbons
over on the oil drum, poster 'roccman' (worthy) said about the schlumberger rumor - if not vociferously denied, it's verified.
thanks for the article, hopefully now we can get them out of the drivers seat.
The only insertion tube that's working is the one BP has up our butts.
IF YOU OWN R.E. ON THE GULF...
Maybe the Fed should open a new window and give 100% of mark to make-believe for USA citizen's RE. Usually it would be BP to pay, but we all know BP lawsuits will get so deep that their bank will be empty well before the little guy gets penny one.
that's funny, I was thinking of sending them something that looks like dark crude
LMAO! Exactly what I was thinking! Solar bitchez!
+10000 ROFL
Some NASA pictures of the gulf.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=44006
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/44000/44006/gulf_tm...
From here:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?project=gulfofmexico
Hey thanks, I was searching for pics. Is that big black spot the huge underwater blob headed for the gulf stream they were talking about?