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Re: "We don't have any idea how to stop this"
Time to unveil the Fast Attack Bunker Buster.
Time to unveil the Fast Attack Bunker Buster.
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Re: "We don't have any idea how to stop this"
Mankind will learn how to recover oil from the ocean's depths just as mankind has learned how to fly, to develop energy from the atom, to crack shale and recover trapped oil and gas, to recover light oil from tar sands, to de-salinate sea-water, etc. Mistakes will be made, and BP's mistakes will be part of the process of learning. But mankind should never be afraid of making mistakes and going forward with technology, and that is where I differ sharply with people in the environmental movement.Originally posted by Munger View PostComment
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Re: "We don't have any idea how to stop this"
Expert Is Confident About Sealing Oil Well
Pat Campbell, at right in Kuwait in 1991, is helping BP figure out a way to seal its blown-out well 5,000 feet below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico.
Pat Campbell never met a well he couldn’t kill.
But in his long career of bringing oil well blowouts under control, Mr. Campbell has usually employed a hands-on approach. Fires may have to be extinguished, wellhead equipment repaired, gunk removed. Then, he said, the well has to be told who’s boss: “I’m here, I’m touching you, I’m telling you you’re dead,” is how he describes it. “You just don’t know it yet.”
His latest challenge is a well that only a robot can touch. Mr. Campbell is one of scores of experts working in a command center in Houston to help BP figure out a way to seal its blown-out well 5,000 feet below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico. Rather than just containing the oil as it gushes into the gulf, sealing the well would stop the leak.
Because of the pressure, temperature and remoteness of such deep water, preparations to seal the well have taken time, with the work at the wellhead done by robotic submersibles. There are plenty of things that could go wrong, but Mr. Campbell, an executive vice president of Superior Energy Services whose subsidiary, Wild Well Control, is a leader in the field, is confident.
“Oh, we’ll kill that well,” he said.
Relief wells are being drilled that would do the job in a few months, BP officials say. But the more immediate plan, expected Wednesday, is to try a “top kill,” in which heavy drilling mud is pumped into the well, followed by cement, to overcome the pressure of the rising oil. The procedure may involve a “junk shot,” an attempt to choke off the oil flow by bridging gaps in the blowout preventer, the giant stack of equipment that failed when the accident occurred on April 20.
With more than four decades in the well-control business, Mr. Campbell, 65, has done some bridging of his own, between the days of strutting well-cappers like Red Adair (whose exploits were the stuff of the 1968 John Wayne movie “Hellfighters”) and the current crop of quieter, nearly anonymous well-control experts who do as much work planning to forestall blowouts as wrangling them when they occur.
Mr. Campbell got his start in the oil patch when his high school football coach in Bakersfield, Calif., arranged a summer job for him. But he got his start in big-time well-killing with Mr. Adair and Mr. Adair’s partners, Asger Hansen, known as Boots, and Ed Matthews, or Coots. The three would turn to him to make equipment for specific blowouts.
“They’d say, ‘Hey, fat boy, why don’t you just come along with that stuff and make sure it works?’ ” recalled Mr. Campbell, who occasionally adds a self-deprecating twinkle to the twang in his voice.
In the mid-1970s, Mr. Hansen and Mr. Matthews had a falling out with Mr. Adair and formed a competitor, Boots & Coots. It quickly became very successful.
“One should be so fortunate in one’s life to have the skills that those guys had,” Mr. Campbell said. “But as dominant as they were, they weren’t really businessmen.”
So they asked him to be general manager. “But in those days, being a general manager didn’t mean much,” he said. “I was still going into the field with the jobs every day.”
Mr. Hansen, retired and living in Florida, said Mr. Campbell “made a hell of a good helper.”
He remembered an incident in Texas when Mr. Campbell fell flat on his back while working on a blowout. Dirt flew everywhere.
“I said, ‘What in the hell are you doing?’ ” Mr. Hansen said. “He said, ‘I’m trying to please you.’
“I said, ‘You won’t ever do that. Don’t be trying to do that.’ ”
Between working for Boots & Coots and, later, for Wild Well, Mr. Campbell has gone into the field from South Texas to Sumatra, including a stint in Kuwait after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Kuwaiti officials were convinced that the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, might try to destroy their oil fields and alerted American companies, who prepared to respond based on an estimate of 200 wells. Iraqi troops destroyed more than 900.
“We really thought, he’ll blow up a couple of wells and say, ‘I mean business now,’ ” Mr. Campbell said. “We were all watching CNN just as everybody else was. We could absolutely not believe it.”
Putting out the fires and capping the wells took months. It was dirty work, but not as dirty as it might have seemed.
“It’s black, there’s lots of black soot,” he said. “It looked terrible. But generally, not being dummies, you go to the upwind side and you work in the clean air.”
For the current job, he is working in the conditioned air of an office building. He has been meeting with the submersibles’ pilots to come up with ways for them to do their tasks more easily, and has been testing rubber cubes, golf balls and other materials that may be used to bridge the gaps in the blowout preventer.
Mr. Campbell never went to college — “I’ve got a degree in being a grandpa, that’s all,” he said — but after years in the oil fields, he is at ease talking about subjects like hardness scales, elastomerics and close-packing.
Even without the added complication of deep water, he said, well control is different nowadays. “Today things are done by committees. The executive management gets involved. They may or may not have any technical competence.”
“It generally works out fine,” he said. “It can certainly make things more complicated.”
“For us,” he added, “none of this is theoretical.” At a blown-out wellhead, the earth may be shaking for a quarter-mile around, and the noise is deafening, even with earplugs. “We can’t have someone sit in the office and say, ‘Well, I need you to do this,’ ” Mr. Campbell said.
“You have to go into the field. You have to experience firsthand the difference that certain conditions make.”
So he still occasionally goes out to a job. “The oil company will say: ‘Yeah, Campbell, you’re coming. You’re coming. You don’t have a choice.’ ”
It is not lost on him that with this job, he does not have a choice either. While he is proud of what he called the “absolutely marvelous” preparations for the efforts on the seabed, there is no way for him or anyone else to be there.
“It’s frustrating,” he said.
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Re: "We don't have any idea how to stop this"
Sorry Steve, but I'm afraid mankind's ability to destroy itself is outpacing it's ability to absorb mistakes. I'm no big environmentalist, but this spill has given me and others pause to think. The advent of Nuclear weapons was probably the first time mankind ever had to consider that it now had the ability to destroy the world as we know it. Before that, anything man could do to harm the world was just pissing in the wind. This deep water offshore drilling is serious stuff. Has anyone given thought to what a military/terrorist attack on several of these wells at once could do?Originally posted by Starving Steve View PostComment
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Re: "We don't have any idea how to stop this"
A similar editorial making a similar point was referenced on another Itulip thread about this oil spill. It seems worth making the point one more time.
U.S. needs plan in place for oil disasters
By Mahlon C. Kennicutt II, Special to CNN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS- Mahlon C. Kennicutt II: Oil spills happen every 20 years or so in U.S. waters
- Each time, reactions are predictable; spill initially is minor, then becomes major, he says
- Kennicutt: Next, finger-pointing begins, with government blamed, treatments debated
- Kennicutt: Is this the best we can do? U.S. needs realistic response plan before a spill
(CNN) -- If the debate and blame game under way concerning the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico sounds familiar, that's because it has happened many times before.
The stakes in events such as this are high for all -- politicians, government agencies, private sector companies, the response firms that stand to make millions, the innocent bystanders whose livings are put at risk, and all people who value our natural resources.
Each time oil is spilled into the environment, we seem to debate anew how bad it is or how bad it might get, why such a systemic failure happened, who bears responsibility for the damage, and what is the best way to respond. This is mostly because of politicians' and the public's short attention span -- once a spill is off the front page it is no longer of general interest -- and the lack of historical perspective that might inform the debate.
In U.S. waters, spills of this size happen about once every 20 years or so. Every oil spill has its own characteristics: the quality of the oil, how much was spilled over what length of time, the exposed environments that are most at risk, how natural processes will either exacerbate or mitigate effects, and even what time of year it happened.
But the reactions follow a pattern. The first pronouncements are that the spill is minor and can be quickly controlled.
Next, estimates of the severity of the spill gradually increase and opinions vary widely depending on the perspective of the assessor.
As the public outcry increases, the maneuvering to spread the liability for potential damage begins. Because these operations are almost always complex industrial partnerships, there are plenty of entities to blame.
The government is seen as not merely complacent but is perceived to be in collusion with the energy industry. Regulators and agencies responsible for policing the industry and assessing natural resource damage enter the debate. This setting is ripe for politicians to grandstand, getting their 15 minutes of fame on the nightly news. The more indignant and irate they become, the more attention they get.
In parallel, the response effort gathers momentum, and a secondary debate begins over what is the best response -- skimming, dispersants, burning, bioremediation. The sad truth is that our attempts to clean up after a major spill, once the size of the release approaches millions of gallons, have little effect. However, to decide to take no action is politically unacceptable, even if it might be the least damaging solution.
Thus begins the expenditure of millions of dollars in response with little measurable change in outcome -- in fact, some responses can cause more damage than just leaving the spill alone.
At some point, the response is all but forgotten, and the years of litigation begin. Few injured parties ever receive what they believe is just; companies believe they have been sufficiently punished, and begrudgingly they pass these costs on to consumers who are none the wiser.
Does this sound familiar?
We are only at the early stages of this "kabuki" theater as the Gulf of Mexico oil is still leaking, response has just begun, lawyers are circling the region in search of clients, blame for the Deepwater Horizon spill is still being passed around, and politicians and regulators have only just begun to saturate the airwaves.
In the meantime, the insult to the environment continues and grows, estimates of long-term damage are speculative at best, and, in this case, the oil is just beginning to come ashore. In a technologically advanced and scientifically savvy society, is this the best we can do?
A long-term strategy for such disasters and a response to them should already be in place, liability should be assigned before the drill bit hits the seafloor, formulas for calculating natural resource damage agreed, an endowment set aside for response and damage claims provided by a tax on oil and gas production, and a response procedure for a government-private sector partnership should be poised to react within hours, not days.
Although it is difficult to prove after the fact, surely ecological and economic damage would be minimized by a realistic response, supported by sound methodologies, technologies and scientific foundations. Unfortunately, in 10 to 20 years, when the next accident happens, this op-ed could most likely be rerun with few changes.
Isn't it time the entire risk and reward of exploration and exploitation be fully taken into consideration in the cost of the fossil fuel recovered?
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Mahlon C. Kennicutt II.Comment
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Re: "We don't have any idea how to stop this"
Is There Rehab For This Oil Overdose?
By Carolyn Baker
22 May, 2010
Carolynbaker.net
It's been almost a month since the sirens of the Deep Water Horizon
oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico lacerated the night with tortured
warnings of impending doom. Chief electronic technician Mike Williams,
who nearly perished in the catastrophe, recounted in excruciating
detail on CBS's 60 Minutes on May 16 the horror of that night and the
appalling negligence that contributed to the worst human-made disaster
in recorded history.
Essentially what Williams tells us is that the Deep Water drilling
operation was under unparalleled pressure to drill faster and deeper,
cutting corners and defying essential aspects of the industry's well
established drilling protocol. We can argue about whether BP and other
oil giants are ramping up drilling due to the end of cheap and
abundant oil on this planet or simply because of greed and a voracious
obsession with profits. To engage in that kind of debate, however, is
to ignore the most fundamental issue at the root of this disaster.
Corporate culture, media, politicians, and the misguided American
public are all failing to grasp the issue, and I suggest, are behaving
like enablers responding to an addict's fatal overdose, as well as
failing to recognize the extent to which they themselves are addicts.
Let me clarify: The addict is the oblivious citizen of industrial
civilization who delusionally demands that he/she must at all costs
maintain a lifestyle made possible by cheap hydrocarbon energy. That
citizen overdosed on April 20, 2010 and may have taken the planet to
their grave with them.
Now let me count the ways in which this cataclysmic oil spill is very
much like a fatal drug overdose. In order to fully understand the
analogy, it's necessary to grasp the extent to which the culture of
industrial civilization is addictive. What makes it addictive?
Quite simply, an uncompromising-yes relentless insistence on
maintaining the lifestyle to which it has become addicted, and like
the addict, willing to do whatever it takes to do so, despite
voluminous evidence to the contrary. This includes evidence that the
addiction itself will ultimately and invariably prove fatal for the
addict, for the addict has little interest in rational, scientific
research. He is obsessed with only one thing: lifestyle. It doesn't
matter what it costs him or anyone else. Life is all about the next
fix, period. The fix could be a possession, a person, or a position in
life.
So when the addict, the culture of empire, overdoses and takes
everyone and everything with him, he can use the defense mechanism of
blame. It wasn't my lifestyle that caused this, he says, but the
corporation that pumped the oil. Furthermore, it was the
administration's fault for not adopting tougher regulation. While
these factors may have entered into the equation, they are not the
fundamental issue. Focus on blame works beautifully for awhile to
distract attention from the devastation caused by the addict. But
eventually, it wears thin.
Another favorite distracting tactic of the addict is "Look how I'm
trying to fix it." He mobilizes his enablers to convince the world
that something is being done to reverse the repercussions of his
latest shitstorm. First we'll try a dome structure to cover the oil
leak and capture the oil. Or if that doesn't work, we'll blast garbage
into the leak. Or if that doesn't work, we'll use a siphoning tube. In
fact, even as I write this article, BP is proclaiming that it has
"turned a corner" in the oil spill. This should reassure all the oil
addicts, facilitating their craving and assuaging any embarrassing
traces of guilt. It's all better now; this temporary nightmare is
going to go away. Ya see, human ingenuity, especially of the corporate
kind, will solve all problems and clean up all messes created by the
addict.
Then there's my favorite addict appeasement approach: alternative
energy. Don't worry, says the enabler. We'll get wind or solar or
something online for you as soon as we can so that your lifestyle
won't miss a beat. Yes, that may take fifty years, but meanwhile,
we'll think of something to keep it going for you because this is
America, and the lights never permanently go out here.
Before the addict experiences a fatal overdose and ravages everyone
and everything around him, there is always the choice to end the
addiction and enter treatment. Treatment involves withdrawal from the
substance, then taking a long, exhaustive, meticulous look inside
oneself to confront the demon of the addiction. Much support is
necessary; the addict cannot make the journey alone.
The Transition Handbook frames our dependence on hydrocarbon energy in
terms of an addiction. We can blame, rationalize, project, deny-we can
employ whatever defense mechanism we choose from humanity's vast
repertoire of them, but like the hard core addict, the human race is
committing suicide. It is willing to kill every form of life in the
oceans, cause the extinction of every species on earth, pollute every
cubic inch of breathable air, poison every drop of water on the
planet, and yes, enable an unfathomable cataclysm such as we are
witnessing in the Gulf of Mexico at this moment, in order to
perpetuate the lifestyle to which it feels entitled. Like all
addictions, this one is both irrational and insane.
Every person who has chosen to research Peak Oil, climate change,
global economic meltdown, species extinction, and population overshoot
is not unlike an addict who has some moment of clarity in which he can
actually choose to walk to the nearest rehab facility and fall on his
face screaming for help. None of us can do that investigative work
without the massive support of other "cheap energy addicts in
recovery". None of us can do it without a spiritual as well as a
logistical recovery program which all authentic recovery absolutely
requires.
Like the recovering addict there will be moments of terror about what
the future holds, and the greater the devastation we have created,
such as the largest oil spill in the history of the world, the more
daunting the future will feel. Like the recovery of the addict, our
recovery will require rigorous honesty and a commitment to finding
meaning and purpose, not in the substance, which is killing us and the
planet, but in a different kind of lifestyle. This will be a lifestyle
of simplicity, cooperation, and deep connection with nature and our
fellow humans. It may mean alterations in our behavior that feel like
sacrifices until we realize that the joy, meaning, and contentment
they bring us are what we wanted all along.
Therefore, as we witness the spread of the most devastating and
widespread oil slick in history; as we see the photos of oil saturated
wildlife and watch frantic fisherman in despair because they have lost
their livelihood; as we watch enablers blaming and scrambling to fix
the un-fixable, let us do as they say in Twelve Step programs, and
take a searching and fearless moral (and energy) inventory of our
lives and notice where we are in our recovery from addiction to cheap
and abundant fossil fuels. Richard Heinberg's book The Party's Over
documents how brief in the history of the human race the party was,
how much fun it was, and of course, how lethal it was and is. So while
the enablers are blaming and fixing, it behooves all of us to ask of
ourselves the toughest question of all: What are we doing to recover?Comment
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Re: "We don't have any idea how to stop this"
Burning gas from the damaged Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
BP faces extra $60bn in legal costs as US loses patience with Gulf clean-up
The oil disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico could present BP with much higher costs than previously thought as a result of US government penalties of up to $60bn (£40bn), according to City analysts.
The penalties are in addition to BP's already huge bill for the clean-up mission, which stood at $760m yesterday, and potentially unlimited damages payable by the company to fishermen and other affected local communities. BP also faces billions of dollars of lost earnings as a result of its damaged reputation in the US, which could result in it being barred from bidding for future contracts.
The Guardian has obtained a confidential briefing, from a top-level US environmental lawyer who specialises in oil industry litigation, to stockbroker Canaccord, assessing the financial impact of impending legal action on BP.
He warned that, under US law, BP is liable for $1,100 in civil penalties for each spilt barrel of oil and gas, to be paid to the US federal and affected state governments. If BP is found to have acted with gross negligence – and there is no evidence so far that it has – this fine would rise to $4,300 for each barrel.
The issue of legal liability for the accident is complex, involving US federal and state laws. City analysts' calculations of the bill faced by BP have ignored the potentially ruinous cost of civil penalties.
They also highlight the implications for BP of establishing how much oil is leaking from the damaged pipeline, which is hard to measure – unlike a leaking tanker, which holds a finite amount of oil.
BP had been relying on official estimates for the spill of 5,000 barrels per day, which are based on satellite images taken of the surface of the sea above the leaking pipeline. But BP has been pumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemical dispersant close to the leak, resulting in vast underwater oil slicks. The company recently admitted that the actual figure is likely to be higher and some scientists say 115,000 barrels of oil per day are spewing into the Gulf. BP would be liable for $60bn in civil penalties if oil continues to leak at the highest estimated level for the next two months, when a relief well being drilled to plug the reservoir is completed. With the spill in its fifth week, pressure is mounting as all attempts to stem the leak have been delayed or largely failed.
The Environmental Protection Agency has indicated BP faces fines over the disaster, and there is speculation that it could eventually face a criminal investigation.
BP is preparing to carry out its latest attempt to staunch the flow of oil from the damaged Deepwater Horizon well. The operation, which the firm hopes to start tomorrow, will involve pumping heavy fluids into the broken pipe and then capping it with cement.
The technique has proven successful in previous surface oil spills but it has never been tried at a depth of 1.6km under the sea and BP can only hazard that it has a 60% or 70% chance of working this time. BP said last night it will broadcast live video of the "top kill" during the procedure.
The crisis began on 20 April with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. Eleven workers died in the blast, and a private memorial service was to be held yesterday afternoon in Jackson, Mississippi.
The Obama administration is increasingly feeling the heat over why it has taken so long to contain the crisis. As a sign of how seriously the spill is being taken, Obama will break off a long weekend in Chicago on Friday to travel to Louisiana to witness the clear-up efforts.
Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, is increasingly acting as the conduit of criticism of both the oil giant and the government, vowing to mobilise the local National Guard to protect the sensitive ecosystems on the Gulf of Mexico in the absence of an adequate federal response. "We are not waiting for them," he said.
Senior figures in the Obama administration continued to voice frustration with BP, but also displayed internal confusion about what should be done to deal with the slipping timescale. The US interior secretary, Ken Salazar, hinted that unless BP gets a grip on the crisis the federal government would "push them out of the way". This was almost immediately contradicted by Thad Allen of the US Coast Guard: "To push BP out of the way would raise a question – to replace them with what?"
BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, accepted that the accident had damaged the company's reputation but said that critics should remember that BP was "big and important" for the US.
"The US is a big and important market for BP, and BP is also a big and important company for the US," he said in an interview with the Financial Times.
Svanberg said the company's board felt that chief executive Tony Hayward was doing a "great job", in spite of criticism.
"This is not the first time something has gone wrong in this industry … Of course our reputation will be tarnished, but let's wait and see how we do with plugging the well and cleaning up the spill," he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...bn-legal-costs
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