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[Gulf Coast Oil]: Spill, Baby Spill. Volunteer Info at the top of OP
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But they are full of delicious meat. How can you hate them?
But like I said- I have been calling for the end to offshore drilling for years. This is just validation for me.
I'm interested in finding out what the root causes for the problem were. While it's reasonable to expect a leak to happen, the issue is how and why the shut-off systems failed. I work in an industry that deals very regularly with oil companies and I'm familiar with the work that goes into safety and reliability of equipment.
The fail shut part of it is pretty much standard. Any valve installed will either fail open or shut depending on what needs to happen in an emergency.
I think it had to do with the fact that the entire rig blew up and sank, which bent and broke lots of the pipes.
a modern super tanker carries 2 million barrels. the Exxon Valdez incident spilled about 250,000 barrels
this is (supposedly?) leaking 5000/day
The emergency valve is at least partially blocking the leak or it would be 'orders of magnitudes worse'.
therefore
5000 barrels/day times 50 days = Exxon Valdez Alaska Spill levels of bad.
so we aren't there yet, but it'll take time to get the equipment needed to fix this on site, I imagine this is going to be leaking for another week minimum and 50 days doesn't seem out of the question.
Basically I'm just saying that things could be worse.
Yes, but why did it blow up?
Maybe Hugo Chavez did it!
It's also supposed to be not quite as difficult to clean up as the heavy black oil you often associate with oil spills, being more of a low density crude. Still poisonous though, but perhaps not quite so bad for the land and beaches themselves.
I'm calling for an end to drilling in places where it makes no sense. The proposition to put rigs 8 miles off of Florida's coast is just silly. It's limestone and has already shown in tests to hold little gas or oil. It's also a bit dumb to place lots of platforms in a region that is basically guaranteed to see a hurricane at least once a year.
I understand that drilling is necessary right now but you have to be smart about it. What we're seeing now is leagues away from smart.
That would be comforting if those beaches and land weren't the major source of our economy. Nobody wants to walk down the beach and have to wash their feet off with turpentine. I know, I've done it in the past and it sucks. You also get these annoying spheres of oil that wash up for years later.
Yes, but there is a difference between say the fail shut off in your car (worst case, you die) and the fail shut off here. This valve should have been tested under deliberate sabotage conditions. Hell it should be torpedo hardened, nuclear shut off systems are. It shouldn't require anything to work other than the simple laws of physics.
You're proposing shutting down an entire industry because of one accident.
Rigorous Scholarship
Any gamers in the Danville, PA area? PM me if you're interested in some tabletop gaming.
Only if we can build beach resorts in Arizona when California and Seattle fall into the ocean.
How many gulf coasts do we have available?
Honestly, I was a supporter of these platforms since I believed (as is true for modern nuclear plants) that an accident like this is impossible, even with deliberate sabotage. I thought that there were multiple tiers of independant safety systems, each 100% capable of fully shutting down the well in the even of a disaster. If that is true, then fine, drill away.
But clearly it is not the case.
Oh man, finally some good news!
The valve installed there is probably closer to something used in a nuclear shut-off system than something installed in a car.
I'm not defending anything. The best way to prevent something like this in the future is to understand how it happened.
Okay listen you are missing the point here.
Yes I am proposing shutting down an entire industry, but not because of this accident, previous accidents, or future accidents.
The accidents just help to accentuate my point that "Hey, oil really is not the best resource to base an enormous portion of the global industry and infrastructure on."
Not only is it dangerous and destructive to harvest both on land and at sea, the transportation carries risks and the USE of it causes damage to every single ecosystem we can think of.
Burn it? Atmospheric damage
Make plastics that don't get recycled? Landfill problems, fish kill, disruption of food chains, general pollution
There is so much wrong with this resource that while there are good things (the medical and scientific industries could honestly not operate without plastics) maybe it is time to give much more serious thought to how much of this one resource we use, and start considering alternatives.
Realistically I know we will never end the use of petrol products as fuel and in various industries, but at the same time that does not mean we can't lessen the EXTREME level of dependence on their existence we have created for ourselves.
And these accidents just help me further my point.
And even if you don't buy all that hippie bullshit (for the record, I do buy it, but still): it's fucking retarded geopolitically. What with all the awful regimes sitting on top of oil (Putin, Saudis, Iran, the mess we've created in Iraq, Venezuela, Alaska)
EB for Secretary of State.
If faith is just a silent tribute, mine is just a desperate act.
I'm with you on the US need to reduce our dependence on oil. We should be investing in alternatives, and research.
But the alternatives aren't ready to take the load yet, and until they are we NEED the oil as a country. This should be an opportunity to look at safety issues, and regulation. Find out where the failures happened. But shutting down drilling in the gulf at this point would not so much be shooting ourselves in the foot as sawing it off at the ankle. We aren't alone in the world, and China for one certainly does not have our scruples (yet).
I suspect that BP needs to be slapped hard over this though. "It was a well we were renting, it isn't our responsibility!" as a first reaction to this was/is pretty reprehensible.
(and now I wander away for an hour or so... not ignoring replies.)
Well, don't you guys get most of your foreign oil from us? (Canada). I mean, Stephen Harper is a dick, but he's not that bad.
Of course, then you're dealing with the tar-sands.
I see what you did thar.
For nuclear shut offs to fail you'd need to say, stop gravity or heat transfer working, that's the degree of safety I'm talking about with these 'mega disaster aversion' safety features
It's more a general indictment of oil based economies world wide than a US specific problem. But yeah, Canada and Mexico are the top two, I think. Mexico might be third.
46% from OPEC countries.
in thousand barrels
1. Canada 912,263
2. Saudi Arabia 559,750
3. Mexico 476,366
4. Venezula 435,029
....
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_a.htm
30% of US produced oil is from off shore oil drilling.
but if we increased off shore drilling similar to what mccain/palin suggested we would get this:
Edit: Moral of the story is we are not going to gain energy independence by getting more oil ourselves. We need to power our industry, power plants, and vehicles through rainbows and hope. LOTS of it.
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
Good luck over there guys. I doubt we are much further behind on the Ms./Al. coast.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100429/ts_alt_afp/usblastoilenergypollution
Steam - Talon Valdez : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk
Full article.
According to the article, some are claiming that this is going to be worse than Exxon-Valdez.
This is a goddamn nightmare. We're going to be feeling this one for years, I think.
Ouch
Don't worry it will only take BP about 2 decades to pay an order of magnitude less than what they are ordered to pay in punitive damages by the courts.
I wish as a private citizen I could just tell the court that I'm just going to pay them in a decade and pay 1/10th of what they ask me for speeding tickets.
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
Will BP have to foot the bill if the US government is involved in the cleanup?
Yes, everything I've read so far plainly states that they are responsible for the cost of clean up. Whether they can be made to stick to that obligation remains to be seen.
But like you said, it did happen, which is very worrisome obviously to everyone affected by the aftermath of the explosion and oil leak, but also to other operators offshore. The big question is, what happened to the Blow-Out Preventer? We don't know exactly what happened, but it's been speculated (by Transocean themselves even) that the initial explosion was caused by a huge blowout at the wellhead. However, the BOP is a staple in drilling that has only become more and more advanced and reliable through the years. So why did this one fail? I can understand that the issue now probably has to do with the damage done from the rig sinking, but the BOP should have sealed in the well from the beginning and prevented the explosion from happening.
I don't know. If you'd told me a few weeks ago that this was possible, I'd have called you crazy. Now that we all know it's not only possible but that the worst did in fact happen, it makes me very nervous about what other safety gaps might exist out there. I will be very interested to see the results of the eventual investigation into the root cause of the explosion that started all this.
WiiU NNID: BigDookie
Apparently they don't hate them enough to design a better rig system...
Anyway I haven't seen anyone point this out yet, but the Gulf is already in pretty awful condition from years of drilling, shipping, poor runoff water quality from the land, etc etc. There's actually a giant dead spot in it where nothing can live because of the above. Something like this on top of all the other crap going on there really does have Epic Disaster Potential, like it or not.
If you're serious, check with your EPA for coordinating efforts. They'll probably provide protective gear and such.
As far as I can tell it's actually a pretty good idea. I mean, we were going to burn that oil anyway.
Well... der. The Exxon-Valdez was one ship in the middle of nowhere. you're dealing with a much larger volume of oil in a much more vulnerable location.
To not be all doom and gloom, I'd like to point out that cleanup technology has progressed quite a bit since those days, at least.
The dead zone is pretty much down to modern farming practices I think. Yay corn.
The Gulf is pretty dirty just in general though, yeah.
Hmm, actually if you look at the dead zone & the oil slick... they kinda sorta overlap. Good? Maybe? I dunno... funky. Ok, no more stream of conscious replying to The Cat.
Swapping air pollution for water pollution?
Apparently there are spray-on dispersants that can be helpful, but only in calm seas.