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Prominent Oil Industry Insider: "There's Another Leak, Much Bigger, 5 to 6 Miles Away"
Matt Simmons was an energy adviser to George W. Bush, is an adviser
to the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, and is a member of the National
Petroleum Council and the Council on Foreign Relations. Simmon is
chairman and CEO of Simmons & Company International, an investment
bank catering to oil companies.
Simmons told Dylan Ratigan that "there's another leak, much bigger, 5 to 6 miles away"
from the leaking riser and blowout preventer shown on the underwater
cameras:
I
have no idea whether or not Simmons is right. The government should
immediately either debunk or admit his claim.
If accurate, the
bigger leak could have been caused by the destruction of the well casing
when the oil rig exploded. That is Simmons' theory.
Or it could
be caused by a natural oil seep, although the odds of a seep of that
size occurring right around the time of the Deep Horizon disaster is
nearly zero.
There is another possibility.
It is well-known that there were previous accidents at the Deepwater
Horizon rig. For example, as AP notes:
From
2000 to 2010, the Coast Guard issued six enforcement warnings and
handed down one civil penalty and a notice of violation to Deepwater
Horizon, agency records show.
On 18 different occasions during that
period the Coast Guard cited the vessel for an "acknowledged pollution
source."
And as 60 Minutes reports:
[Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician
on the Deepwater
Horizon, and one of the last workers to leave the doomed rig] said
they were told it would take 21 days; according to him,
it actually took six weeks.
With the schedule slipping, Williams says a BP manager ordered a
faster pace.
"And he requested to the driller, 'Hey, let's bump it up. Let's bump
it up.' And what he was talking about there is he's bumping up the rate
of penetration. How fast the drill bit is going down," Williams said.
Williams says going faster caused
the bottom of the well to split
open, swallowing tools and that drilling fluid called "mud."
"We actually got stuck. And we got stuck
so bad we had to send tools
down into the drill pipe and sever the pipe," Williams explained.
That well was abandoned and
Deepwater Horizon had to drill a new
route to the oil. It cost BP more than two weeks and millions of
dollars.
"We were informed of this during one of the safety meetings, that
somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 million was lost in bottom hole
assembly and 'mud.' And you always kind of knew that in the back of your
mind when they start throwing these big numbers around that there was
gonna be a push coming, you know? A push to pick up production and pick
up the pace," Williams said.
Asked if there was pressure on the crew after this happened, Williams
told Pelley, "There's always pressure, but yes, the pressure was
increased."
But the trouble was just beginning: when drilling resumed, Williams
says there was an accident on the rig that has not been reported before.
He says, four weeks before the explosion, the rig's most vital piece of
safety equipment was damaged.
It is therefore possible that there has been another ongoing leak
which BP has tried to cover up.
»
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+100. heard an NPR interview of Aalaskan fisherman - in areas of the Sound where they let nature fix things, actually things have recovered much faster. In areas where lotsa steam cleaning/chemicals were used its still lifeless. 20 years too late and herring is still not back..
ewwwwwww wtg!!
It's a moot point, the Top Kill operation failed.
What amazes me through all of this, BP & the financial meltdown, is the pathological lying on the part of everyone involved... it has become the accepted SOP on the part of anyone in a position of authority (govt & private sector). Knowledge is power.
Great point.
I think it's also the pervasive idea that "reality doesn't REALLY exist".
Everything will be fine as long as something can be redefined, spun, and have a pleasant euphemism invented for it.
When did we cross that boundary into such soft thinking?
NO MORE LIES!
Hard to imagine Deepshit Horizon cavalierly ignored "six enforcement warnings ... one civil penalty and a notice of violation." I wonder if they had to break a c-note to pay that penalty.
Warning to recreational boaters: this may not work for everyone, so don't try to jettison your stash when a CG cutter points that 50 cal at you.
When did the safety award come along in terms of these other bits of notoriety?
And had a HEATED CONFORTATION between people before the thing blew up...
Maybe they have heated conversations all the time on these things. If not for all the CYA and lawyering, maybe someone will do an awesome, book length piece of investigative work on this, along the lines of Blackhawk Down, or that study of the Challenger disaster, where Morton Thiokol workers driving to work that morning were discussing when the Challenger would blow up, odds-on for it blowing up on the launch pad, vs the 90 odd seconds it actually flew.
Is that Jenna Fischer on the Carbonite ad?
Must have been the work of one of those missing Nork subs, earning a little spare cash for Mr. Kim from Soros and gang to further the green cause of shutting down all offshore drilling in or near US waters.
Can't say that I didn't think of something along those lines. *Adjusts tin foil cap*
Okay: Great work, boys!
In case you're interested, the MMS Director Elizabeth Birnbaum is....
a Harvard educated....
Lawyer.
As MMS Director, Birnbaum administers programs that ensure the effective management of renewable energy, such as wind, wave, and ocean current energy; and traditional energy and mineral resources on the nation’s Outer Continental Shelf, including the environmentally safe exploration, development, and production of oil and natural gas, as well as the collection and distribution of revenues for minerals developed on federal and American Indian lands.
http://www.mms.gov/ooc/newweb/directorspage/birnbaum.htm
Lawyers are trained to drill for all kinds of shit including their own.
Read the bio, Miss E. Unbelievable. How on earth can they put someone in charge of MMS or EPA, for that matter, that does not have a scientific/engineering background? I weep for my country.
you could have saved all that and just wrote she is a whore.
You're doing whores a disservice here. It was already stated that she's from Harvard. What more do you need?
Exactly: comparing whores to lawyers is insulting to honest, decent, sex workers everywhere!
that would be former MMS Director... they all need to go
HARVARD? that about says it all. forget about the gulf.
a sub would be nice. but all you really need is a good set of satellite pix. if they can read off your license plate, they know (pretty damn close) where the primary leak is.
If they had integrity, we would not be so easy to believe this stuff. Do I think they are capeable of focusing our attention on one leak (one they can publicly maybe plug) to divert us from another===>YES!!!!!
Quit fucking around hoseheads.
focusing attention... how rare
In the words of Bret Maverick's pappy: You can fool most of the people all of the time, and all of the people most of the time -- and son, those are mighty good odds.
now there's a T-shirt that I'd wear.
This is an outrage.Do we now fuck up at everything we do? Where are the fucking adults?
Whether its financial, energy or this massive disaster, all that the people who know how to handle these problems get are interviews..They are never allowed anywhere near the problems themselves..fucking outrageous....incompetents have taken over completely..
"....incompetents have taken over completely.."
But, but, but, our analysis suggested otherwise. Today there is a clear definition between experience and education. Unfortunately one overrides the other.
You got that right. Experience means absolutely nothing where I work...
So Hulk,
I am reminded of the pendulum, my fear is the problems we attempt to model these days can really phuck some shit up. Don't know the answer, but the pendulum really needs to start coming back - IMHO...cause its everywhere.
By the time the pendulum comes back this time, it may be way too late...Everywhere we turn, we are looking at massive problems that we needed to start working on about 40 years ago... Lots of pain dead ahead...
why eat the food when you can stare at the menu?
Hulk,
There is no common sense anymore. IMHO, part of the problem in certain industries like oil for example, is the emphasis on college education for management.
I use oil as an example, because I'm a pipeliner. All of the old school management is gone, or about to be. No longer do they promote the best from the field, you know, the ones with the actual know how.... They hire young inexperienced, still shitting green engineers, and management types, who don't have the first fucking clue how the industry works. When the SHTF, which is more often than most people know, they stand there with their thumbs up their collective asses, too afraid for their jobs to make a decision. Then when somebody finally does, it is 100% based on covering their ass. Meanwhile, any run of the mill laborer with a couple of years under his belt could have told you what the actual problem was, and/or how to fix it.
I was talking with a couple of other foremen the other day. Even though we run the work, and have the actual experience, nobody from the companies will listen to us. Not on efficiency, not on planning, not on squat. And it gets worse everyday.
My dear Colonel: I agree with you 155% - and this is pretty much in every industry.
I work in I.T. (system/network administration), and my experience is pretty much the same: experienced people get replaced by younger, untrained interns. Not to mention outsourcing to India is now the rage everywhere. Good luck explaining an urgent problem when the guy at the other end of the line has no idea what you are talking about, not to mention a very limited knowledge of English.
I have seen so many people mess up machines, or even entire networks, just because upper management has decided so-and-so (with less than 6 months of experience - if that) is the one in charge. When you are dealing with critical systems, just half an hour of downtime can cost you millions of dollars. But, hey, we are saving big bucks by outsourcing!
People who behave like this are penny-wise and pound-foolish as they say.
Yep. Hubster and Dad are both engineers. Measure twice, cut once types. In plant design, for example, the mechanical engineering wiz kids can sketch up CAD drawings lickety split. Of course, their design planned for doorway installation before the big mechanical systems...whoops! Dad took one look and told off the fools. Very narrow focus and specialization. Along with a reliance on what their programs or guidelines tell them, not their eyes and logic.
yup, its all about the ivy league schmucks f'ing everything up. we live in an elitist circle jerk; common sense and merit have no place in todays world. this will be our downfall.
we live in a stratified, feudalistic joke of a society.
+ <National Debt>
When you remind yourself that these guys are the losers of their class--that the Great Successes are making their lives on Wall Street--you vomitously comprehend the sheer ballslessness of it.
Honor gets lost in nothing so quick as it does in a suit.
"Honor gets lost in nothing so quick as it does in a suit."
That is so true and true at multiple levels. I quit wearing suits 10 years ago and my life started getting better (harder, but better) ten years ago. I see a temporal connect.
People in suits (and ties, especially ties) tend to lie a lot.
And if I may repost what I'd written on a different thread...
An interesting, sideways look at the spill.
For a long time now, we have been done in by industry in insidious ways. They have killed, maimed, poisoned or otherwise dis-eased millions upon millions of people through various products of convenience (always convenience, such a terrible word, I suggest you do the etymology, Con-Venue, coming together to do great harm, believe or not).
So we've had Non-stick cookware, aspartame, cars (cars, terrible things, have killed and maimed so many, but as long we remain statistically safe, we continue to use them, so convenient after all), microwave ovens (really really bad), Mobile telephony (terrible curse, no doubt a sickner, but so convenient), GMO, GM foods in particular....the list goes on and on and back in history.
All these deaths by a thousand cuts were released to the public backed by spurious studies telling us they were safe, quelling a vocal minority on the disastrous after-effects of said introduction.
But this Deepwater Horizon (such an apt name, so powerful) cannot be denied. Will not be denied. It is out there, gushing away, washing ashore, day after day, week after week.
This might truly be the tipping point because the effects of the industry's lack of anythign (morality, conscience et. al.) are in our face and cannot be denied. Hard to argue with dead, oil soaked birds, dead oceans and goo streaked beaches. No PR can spin this positively. If I may pun, hopefully aptly, this is Industry's watershed moment and ours.
And such a choice it puts before us, eh? How many of us stopped driving to work or play because Oil is such a disaster, literally and figuratively and metaphorically?
Oil is the basis of our convenient lives. So all this tooth gnashing but no real action. Till it hits the pump (higher price than I can afford), or sweeps into my home, environment or food chain, I'll just be a harried bystander.
Much more convenient that way.
We can all justify convenience, much harder to justify action.
Well said.
Same thing going on in my industry, accounting. And when the idiots coming out of the schools these days fuck up it's almost as catastrophic as this oil geiser. But the more I look at the situation down here in the Gulf the more it appears like it may be a fiasco of biblical proportions.
You describe it perfectly. I see and experience the same thing in my field of expertise in the federal government. (I was in the private sector for the first 20 years of my career and what I see on a daily basis would gag a maggot on a gut wagon)
I could tell by watching the video that Matt Simmons is outraged too. I have followed Matt for years and never heard him say hell or act so perturbed...
In a related topic- related because precious metals ie silver track oil, precious metals are taking off heading into Asia :)
+1 been watching that bounce !
Gold is in a tighter trading range than I have ever seen, and with silver on the upside, and platinum moving there, it is setting up nicely.
"Basically they are chasing a mouse and there is a tiger behind them." -Bill Simmons
"Military operation needed."
Barry screwed up big time.
Dylan, he didn't say elephant, but I digress....
George I agree, the government should weigh in on Simmons' theory. Let us see Simmons vs. White House, or in other words, astuteness vs. incompitence.
You see, the problem with a room full of animals is that one can be a human, but that will not change the group behavior too much.
BP DEEP DRILLING PORN
Hey George W and Tyler D check this out!
the official BP DEEP DRILLING PORN report
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9030433&contentId=...
'Drilling Outside the Envelope'is a freaking section heading!!!
You have to get this one on the front page gents...
Its the sick ideology of mindless testosterone driven
self justifying greed in its perfect essence by our stars
at BP. They screwed up thinking* like this...these asses
should be in cages forced to eat their own shit.
The report is a confession of intentional reckless
endangerment just for itsy bitsy starters....
____________
*"thinking" perhaps generously and loosely applied here.
Any discussion of whether "BP" spells "Morons" should end
here. -Maybe "Sick Morons"
Let's Ride the Thunder Horse of the Oilpocalypse!
I would dearly love an independent camera! Cant fix it till we know how deep the hole is...oh wait, that was true of the economic problem.
Misery= derivative of greed.
AUDIT THE ROV
Misérable, the perfect name for the new world currency?