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NEW 4-Mile Long Oil Slick Near BP's Gulf Oil Well
CNN reports:
An oil sheen about four miles long has appeared in the Gulf of Mexico near the site of the worst oil spill in U.S. history, a Coast Guard spokesman said Thursday.
It was not immediately clear where the oil is coming from, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Ryan Tippets. [Although previous oil has been matched as a "dead ringer" to the BP well.]
Coast Guardsmen went to the location after seeing the oil on a satellite image, Tippets said. The response team collected samples and sent them to the Coast Guard Marine Safety Lab in Connecticut for testing.
***
The sheen is near the spot where, on April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded over the Macondo well, killing 11 workers and spewing oil that spread across a huge portion of the Gulf.
(And see this.)
As we’ve noted for years, BP’s Macondo oil well is still leaking … and will leak for years.
For example, we noted in March:
In June of 2010, BP officials admitted to damage beneath the seafloor under BP’s Gulf Macondo well.
Numerous scientists have speculated that the blowout and subsequent clumsy attempts by BP to plug the well could have created new seeps, and made pre-existing natural seeps bigger.
***
Washington’s Blog interviewed one of the world’s leading experts on oil leaks in 2010, Robert Bea. Dr. Bea noted that we may never be able to fully stop BP’s oil leak:
Few people in the world know more about oil drilling disasters than Dr. Robert Bea.
Bea teaches engineering at the University of California Berkeley, and has 55 years of experience in engineering and management of design, construction, maintenance, operation, and decommissioning of engineered systems including offshore platforms, pipelines and floating facilities. Bea has worked for many years in governmental and quasi-governmental roles, and has been a high-level governmental adviser concerning disasters. He worked for 16 years as a top mechanical engineer and manager for Shell Oil, and has worked with Bechtel and the Army Corps of Engineers. One of the world’s top experts in offshore drilling problems, Bea is a member of the Deepwater Horizon Study Group, and has been interviewed by news media around the world concerning the BP oil disaster.
***
WB: Is it possible that this fractured, subsea salt geology will make it difficult to permanently kill the oil leak using relief wells?
Bea: Yes, it could. The Santa Barbara channel seeps are still leaking, decades after the oil well was supposedly capped. This well could keep leaking for years.
Scripps mapped out seafloor seeps in the area of the well prior to the blowout. Some of the natural seeps penetrate 10,000 to 15,000 feet beneath the seafloor. The oil will follow lines of weakness in the geology. The leak can travel several horizontal miles from the location of the leak.
[In other words, the geology beneath the seafloor is so fractured, with soft and unstable salt formations, that we may never be able to fully kill the well even with relief wells. Instead, the loss of containment of the oil reservoir caused by the drilling accident could cause oil to leak out through seeps for years to come. See this and this for further background].
***
WB: I have heard that BP is underestimating the size of the oil reservoir (and see this). Is it possible that the reservoir is bigger than BP is estimating, and so – if not completely killed – the leak could therefore go on for longer than most assume?
Bea: That’s plausible.
WB: The chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon said that the Macondo well was originally drilled in another location, but that “going faster caused the bottom of the well to split open, swallowing tools”, and that BP abandoned that well. You’ve spoken to that technician and looked into the incident, and concluded that “they damn near blew up the rig.” [See this and this].
Do you know where that abandoned well location is, and do you know if that well is still leaking?
Bea: The abandoned well is very close to the current well location. BP had to file reports showing the location of the abandoned well and the new well [with the Minerals Management Service], so the location of the abandoned well is known.
We don’t know if the abandoned well is leaking.
WB: Matthew Simmons talked about a second leaking well. There are rumors on the Internet that the original well is still leaking. Do you have any information that can either disprove or confirm that allegation?
Bea: There are two uncorroborated reports. One is that there is a leak 400 feet West of the present well’s surface location. There is another report that there is a leak several miles to the West.
[Bea does not know whether either report is true at this time, because BP is not sharing information with the government, let alone the public.]
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Akak is MORE than capable of speaking for himself...you're dodging the question posed...again...it was coersion and taxation.
If you're not up to it just say so.
Who owns the Gulf of Mexico, winker?
Those would be anarchists, not Libertarians
So why don't you correct them when they suggest they are libertarians? See akak below. I don't recall you ever calling him out.
Why don't you correct the Kos bots proclaiming if we just had another quadrillion laws & regs & centralized planning (and just print the money from thin air to sustain enforcement of said insane debacle) we would actually NOT have societal and economic bliss?
Because the reality of the above says we don't...even with all of those regs, laws and centralized planning.
I repeately call out that Kos bots (not that there are many here other than straw men like Million Dollar Bonus) who advocate as you suggest. Read what I say sometime.
lol...MDB is mocking progs...you should read him more deeply ;-)
Thanks, Ace.
I personally view anarchists as a small sub-set of libertarians, who nonetheless hold minority views regarding the necessity (or, in their case, non-necessity) of some tightly controlled monopolist of coercion - a government - that would be elected but strictly limited in scope, whose purpose was to prevent the greater coercion that would inevitably arise if such a monopolist of coercion did not exist, and which would have the power to tax to provide non-excludable public goods. It seems to me best if this 'tax' were to be collected in the form of royalties from granting access to natural resources.
How 'we' keep this government from becoming a worse predator over time than the non-State predators it was originally appointed to protect us against is the main problem. As far as I can tell, throughout history every non-predatory government that ever existed either became utterly predatory or got successfully overthrown by one that was.
A continual cycle of periodic revolt seems the lot of mankind.
"No, real Libertarians are not as you suggest, as is painted by the managed press, any more than Tea Party folk desire to eat small black children."
Along with their little fluffy kittens & puppy dogs too...lol.
Some of these people really believe the shit spoon fed by the MSM to them knukles...but I can honestly say, I've never eaten dog meat...O'Barry cannot ;-)
http://www.learnliberty.org/content/externalities
would have happened either way... it was intentional.
"For those who think free markets are perfectly efficient and no regulation is needed, can you explain this?"
The fact is, the rig had been inspected by "regulators" just recently before it blew...within a week if I recall correctly. You need to explain why the regulators failed at their jobs first don't you?
An oil company or a fisherman or even animals (if they could actually reason intellectually) wants oil in the water. It was an accident...unless we want to entertain conspiracies about Obama sending frogmen down there to help out his "green" initiative policies.
Which would be fun ;-)
My opinion is that regulators are going to make mistakes and miss things. They should obviously be fired, and if it's proven negligence they should be put in jail.
But, I'd still rather have regulation on an important, vital resource like a fishery or any body of water than leave it up to free market capitalists to self-regulate. I mean, fisheries like the Bering Sea would be over-harvested and barren right now without regulation. It's hard to imagine how polluted our waters would be (though, not really, because we can look at deregulated countries to get an idea). My point is this: I like the idea of small government. But, a lot of that is because (a) we have massively oppressive and repressive government right now, so the alternative seems ideal (what's that saying about the backup QB being the most popular player on a football team?) and (b) we extrapolate and conclude that regulations don't work all the time because they don't work some of the time. How would everyone in this country feel if we opened up these markets and suddenly our waterways looked like China's?
Again, if you don't think that would happen, just explain why. Based on empirical evidence, I think it would happen on public land where there is no clear stake. I am grateful there aren't more spills in this country, and I am grateful we have clean air and water relative to most countries. I understand the frustration with government but yeah, complete deregulation just doesn't seem like the answer.
"My opinion is that regulators are going to make mistakes and miss things. They should obviously be fired, and if it's proven negligence they should be put in jail."
We agree.
The flip side is true if a for profit company, in the interest of maximizing profit, intentionally shits in his (and his childrens) dinner bucket. Regulations are there as an ATTEMPT to stop bad behavior...but its not a panacea. It will always still boil down to the ethics and morality of the people charged with enforcement...one only has to look at Chicago (for an example, its just the one most corrupt I can think of offhand) of regulatory capture and how the human mind can concieve of ways to maximize THEIR profit...in the case of Chicago...by accepting bribes for the enforcer to look the other way.
I think (possibly) you have been misinformed about how a libertarian mind thinks. It starts with the premise, that the libertarian (like liberals of old) would never seek to do something intentionally to another that they themselves would recoil from others doing to them. There is assumed correct conduct towards society within that. Breaching that, brings law and consequence (codified or not).
As an aside...my pet peeve is seatbelt laws. This was put in place (obstensibly) to keep insurance rates low and protect the public. The result is, the rates haven't gone down and government uses it as a revenue generator.
This is why you will always find libertarians (and many TPér's) saying...no more laws...no more regs. In fact we want to roll back reams of law & regs as encroachments on our liberties. However, realize, I am not an anarchist.
I hope this helped...and it is only my perspective, of course.
If everyone had integrity and a moral compass what you said about correct conduct would be easy to implement. But this country has 300 million personalities. How do you reign in the psychopathic personality who just wants at any cost and has no empathy for anything? You can't reign that guy in. That guy creates a lot of wealth, but he also creates a lot of destruction. If we had moral Capitalist, then we could have free markets, because the capitalist simply wouldn't ruin the publics' resources. We know that's just an ideal, though. So what is an actual solution if not regulation? I am conflicted because I don't like big government, but I don't like polluted water, air, and a plundering cesspool of a country, either, and I see this in deregulated oil producing regions. Regulation is just to tame the amoral/Machiavellian capitalists, and I can't think of any other way to do that, so it is what it is.
There are a thousand ways I could go at this...but what struck me was your use of the word capitalist and "public resources".
Do you really believe you (as a member of the public) have any claim on my private property?
I don't like big governemnt either, I dislike even more those who believe they can dictate through government my use of my property. Believe me, I'm not going to open a toxic waste dump here...lol.
No I don't think I have any claim on your private property.
What I was describing was more of the "tragedy of the commons"...resources that can't be divided and parceled out, such as air, and to some degree water/waterways, etc.
E.g. How do you get an amoral, Machiavellian capitalist to say...not clear cut a forest, not over harvest the Bering Sea in one season, etc? If the answer is to make all property private and then sue, you still have the non-divisible components of that land (i.e. water, air, intrinsic value, etc) to consider. Plus a moral hazard where as a landowner, having a corporation pollute your land and then suing might be more lucrative than the land itself. Doesn't seem like a solution, though I know many are for privatizing everything, up to and including air.
What about that North Korean submarine that the administration knew was down there for months?
(or is that some bad movie I only partially remember... this recovery shit has some lapses in it)
lol ... anaesthetic right?
http://www.eutimes.net/2010/05/us-orders-blackout-over-north-korean-torp...
More likely a Los Angeles Class ran into it at 30 knots, they tend to do that, there's a lengthy list of US subs colliding with objects, both man-made and natural, in the most curious and improbable fashion. And there will definitely be US subs patrolling that area.
Norks, not so much.
http://www.learnliberty.org/content/externalities
Time to go on a shrimp-free diet.
BP Oil: The gift that keeps on giving... Try some Del Taco crispy shrimp tacos today.
the gift is called place your short trade.
I look forward to seeing this on the nightly news.
...oh wait.
deliberately mismanage nuclear and hydrocarbons > shut down west (japan is a piece of the west since ww2) > NWO
Sinkholes?
Did anyone from BP that caused this reckless, needless mess ever go to jail? 11 were killed. Looks like all BP did was pay fines and easily made that plus some with the rise in oil prices.
WTF?
Corporations are people too, except when they aren't, so it's hard to prosecute an entity where blame can be affixed to no single person. Plus, when you can just buy your way out of anything, who is going to prosecute you?
Why not blame the board? Aren't they ultimately responsible for what goes on at the company? Isn't that why they get paid the big bucks?
Capital punishment for Corporations. If BP is guilty of negligent homocide, "incarcerate" BP for 3 to 5 by suspending its corporate charter. If BP is guilty of negligent homocide, and obstruction of justice, and just plain negligence, AND witness tampering, AND murder (of whistleblowers), then CANCEL BP's charter. That will send the right message to other corporations.
There are natural oil seeps all over the Gulf. I remember as a kid stepping on "tar balls" on Pass-a-Grille beach.
Hard to say...its in the vicinty, so it could be leaking...what we do know is the Gulf floor didn't crack open onto a pool of molten magma and destroy the entire planet ;-)
Yeah, like Santa, where's my fucking 'oilycane'?
Didn't happen, was never going to happen.
Yes, you've beaten that strawman to death. Nice one, two.
Teamwork, that's what it's all about.
If you have a valid point or argument to make then make it, otherwise piss off with your BS smears and inuendo.
Obama didn't make that slick....he gots lots of help.
Yea, lots of underwater nukes helped too, to fracture the sea floor and make it easier to get at the oil. OOPs we miscalculaed the pressures and now we have a problem, mission control. No sweat, we will add it the list of lies, and I promise you it will go unnoticed. Okay, its settled, lets get more aggrissive with those arabs and that 1973 dealeo we still have goin over there. That could cause a civil war sir. Trust me private, that will go unnoticed, from the issue of jobs and food inflation, you might say it's baked in the congressional cake, grasshopper.
Seismic waves from underground nuclear detonations have a distinct wave arrival signature at seismic stations, a signature that is that is unlike and is distinct from an earthquake's wave arrival pattern.
That fact is the very reason the global network of seismographs was set up in the 1950s and 1960s, specifically to detect any sort of underground nuclear tests, as a function of the multi-lateral agreement agreements to cease atmospheric tests.
As a result, every time such an explosion occurs, every seismic station on Earth knows about it within the hour, and knows its location with a high degree of accuracy, and the approximate yield range.
Taking pure shit (which amounts to telling lies and spreading dysinfo) about things you know nothing about, does not help.
Correct-o-mundo. And when strip miners fire off timed ANFO explosions which resemble underground testing they have to inform the Russians (indirectly) that they are doing it so as to not create false alarms.
Suntan lotion from tourists covered in oil.