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[Gulf Coast Oil]: Spill, Baby Spill. Volunteer Info at the top of OP
Posts
Second of all, you don't work in the oil industry, much less engineering design, do you? You don't. test. valves. in. the. field. Not this sort of test. You shop test them when you buy them and you make sure you have a trained engineer inspect the valve and (ideally) be present for those tests. I'm not trying to be snide but I do know what I'm talking about. I can assure you that this is not a test that should have gone wrong the way it did.
I do love how you use Subway and Axe as your primary examples, because the world of TV advertising has something to do with the world of process engineering. (oh sarcasm! this snideness is entirely intentional)
Let me be a little more clear: Valves are not outer space climate orbiters, or BOPs in the world of deep sea drilling - both of those fields are using cutting edge technology and research is ongoing, we are constantly pushing the boundaries with those fields. In none of your examples - from Subway and Axe to outer space and deep sea - did you manage to come up with an example that's anything like this situation. In services like an oil pipeline, valves are entirely a known technology. You can pick up a 10 or 20 year old book on a certain brand of valves, and the numbers in that book will still be applicable today because the things really don't change. Could you get a "lemon" valve? Well, with the fact that they perform their tests, then have you sit in on the tests, then have you and them and a third party inspect the valves... it's incredibly unlikely. Unlikely enough that you would never, ever waste time, money, and energy inspecting valves in this fashion in the field. Not to mention this test explicitly stated that they were testing the available power (i.e., THEIR generation systems) not the valve itself.
Thirdly, substandard welds and the like can be tested (and should be tested) through field tests such as this... but once again that's not what they were testing. They were testing whether battery/backup generator/etc. power would be sufficient to run their process, if grid power was lost. I'm not sure why this is so hard to comprehend; it's stated in the article after all.
edit: Also you test for things like substandard welds using hydrotesting before you start up a unit or process. They do double check certain functions of the valves, but that occurs at startup, not mid-process. Testing a valve in this fashion is utterly inane and would not happen, period. Hence why they weren't doing that.
And for the last time, it is utterly ridiculous that such a simple planned test could go so stupidly wrong that you actually have a release. It is indicative of poor planning, poor systems design, and poor engineering. They were testing one thing: Is power sufficient? It's a yes or no question. If the answer is yes, great! If the answer is no, then what are you going to do? For some godforsaken reason, they clearly didn't bother to answer this question sufficiently before they started the test. And for that reason the test was a failure.
...Unless, of course, you want to argue that the REAL test was whether or not they were idiots. In which case, the answer was yes and the test was a success!
edit 2: In any event the crux of what we're arguing is whether or not the test was a success, and obviously two different people are going to have two different metrics. I will never call a test a success when it results in a recordable event, with associated fines, when all of those problems could've easily been avoided with slightly better planning. I mean, hey, I guess they got their answer, but I'm not a fan of the "ends justify the means, who cares if we fuck ourselves getting a simple answer" school of thought.
I'm not sure what to think about that.
They said we wouldn't know for 24 hours, and that's 11 minutes away. I don't think we'll know until they stop pumping mud in to see if oil comes out.
Dredging this up from a few pages ago, but the guy's talking about talking to the police, i.e. providing information to the state. This is not testifying in front of a federal panel. Like, I'm pretty sure that guy isn't suggesting that you not testify in court....
Edit: Bah, it's over!
There is a very small part of me that is morbidly curious what would happen to their stock if 5 hours from now, the top kill suddenly failed spectacularly. I'm sure BP's stock will contine to climb little by little until it's officially announced what the result is; if it failed, I think it would plummet but just how far?
Also I think it'll be several days until we know for sure whether it's successful, right? After the mud is in, won't they put cement (or something to act as a plug) over it? That's got to cure and whatnot, right?
It means the expectation of BP's future earnings has improved. As in, less of their profits will now be eaten up by damages. But let's put that 7% in perspective.
Edit: changed the verbiage for precision.
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
Yeah, but pleading the fifth may be held against you, whereas refusing to talk to police won't... so long as you don't end up pleading the fifth in court.
I'm just saying, that professor in the lecture was talking about a different thing.
http://boingboing.net/2008/07/28/law-prof-and-cop-agr.html
There is a link to the video a few pages back.
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
Can you explain what you mean here, because I don't see a clause in there that provides any exceptions.
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/27/AR2010052703302.html
I didn't hear the entirety of the press conference, but I wasn't exactly thrilled with what I heard. The president is still deferring to Salazar and Allen, who seem to be at the mercy of BP.
From Wikipedia:
That being said:
But my point is that a jury can go, "If he was innocent, he'd have testified." You can invoke the Fifth, but a jury's left to their own devices in interpreting your invoking the Fifth, AFAIK. Refusing to talk to the police is, I think, a markedly different situation than refusing to testify in court when subpoenaed because of the parties involved. While the "Right to Remain Silent" does extend from the Fifth Amendment's right to refuse to self-incriminate, I'd imagine that they're received very differently by juries, as noted by Justice Brandeis.
If by "can" you mean "are allowed to," then no they cannot. It's as legal as convicting someone because they are black. Which of course happens.
And as for this part, in a civil action if the other side offers evidence and you offer nothing then of course you lose.
Edit: Also, do not confuse civil law and criminal law. They have entirely different rules. In a civil action it is not you versus the government, it is you versus the opposing civil party.
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
I did say can, not may
Also, I don't know. I'd be surprised if there haven't been studies, either psychological or statistical, on the effects of pleading the fifth, but I can't find any at the moment. The wording of the Fifth Amendment almost implies guilt though, because it's the right not to be a witness against oneself; if the withheld testimony isn't self-incriminating, then technically the Fifth Amendment could not be invoked, no? Unless the withheld testimony is self-incriminating for another uncharged crime as opposed to the ones currently being tried, but...
Look, all I'm saying is that not testifying in court isn't what the professor in the video lecture was talking about, if I recall correctly. He was talking about not talking to the police. Whether one should or should not invoke the Fifth Amendment in different cases is something I'm not knowledgeable of; I'm simply stating that it's a different thing.
Edit: And I very much did not confuse civil and criminal law. Hence the two separate quotations, and the Fifth Amendment does expressly say the self-incrimination clause applies only to criminal proceedings. Although a federal panel isn't either, right, so I'm unsure of what the implications of pleading the fifth are in that situation or even if you can if it's not a criminal proceeding? Isn't that why you can be held in contempt of Congress if you invoke the Fifth, because you technically can't?
Ongoing edit: Weird double posting action!
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
Also there are more and more conflicting reports that the whole mud thing is working, or is half working.
I'd never seen the cop portion of that video, it's nice to hear a cop admit that if a cop wants to, he can find something to pull you over for justifiably - that everyone is a criminal
Yeah, I'm not too confident about it with how jittery the BP guy was and the "well all these people are doing their best" talk. They don't even appear to have slowed down the pumping to check, even though they said we would know within 24 hours (though this might be a misquote or something someone in the press said).
I guess if they can keep pumping the oil down until they get the relief wells drilled, it doesn't matter, but how much of this stuff do they have?
I will be!
If it pleases the court - My client, BP, is really fucking rich.
I rest my case
Judge: Case dismissed
Hee, reporters with balls. I love idealists.
I never had much confidence in the top-kill, but I was pleasantly surprised to wake up this morning to, "We did it!" Of course, when I poked and prodded I found out that they hadn't actually succeeded at anything other than not failing. I was only nervous at that point about whether or not they'd be able to get the cement plug in after having succeeded stabilizing the kill, but now there's skepticism about whether or not they've even managed to do that.
K look I am not a huge BP defender but lets not act like plugging this thing up is easy. It isn't and because we all apparently love italics I will use them too. It isn't at all
Unmotivate - Updated May 17th - "Let's Complain About Nintendo"
The PA Forumer 'Lets Play' Archive - Updated March 25th, 2013
how dare you defend bp
how dare you
how much are they paying you hmm
did you just finish reading atlas shrugged
hurrr
On a serious note, yes, I imagine this thing to be fucking hard. 5000 feet of water complicates things.
Who's acting like it's easy?
SpillBPSpill?
*Facepalm* Why do they try and do things like that when parody is explicitly covered in our laws.
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
I was just making a wild guess. Is that the actual username?
Nope