an interesting tidbit of information: BP only owned the rig. A little company named "Haliburton" built and operated the rig. IT'S ALL BUSH'S FAULT!

5/4/2010 7:08:29 AM

Quote :

"Im not going to read this thread because I hate oil hating hippies"

Since I am not a "hippie" by most any definition I am not sure how qualified I am to respond to this directly, but I, for one, don't hate oil. I hate the pervasive mentality that we NEED oil to survive. I am not denying the convenience that oil has afforded humans to expedite the destruction of habitat in the name of progress. Just realize that some humans are capable of considerations that exist outside of their anthropocentric bubble.

It's worth passing along Rachel Maddow's coining (as far as I know) of the Republican's "Heart Attack on the Moon" Strategy as it pertains to oil philosophy. Reference: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#36952306 I am pretty sure this is the correct clip.

But hey, if you don't care to engage in cogent discussion please feel free to continue spouting unfounded generalizations.

[Edited on May 5, 2010 at 7:40 AM. Reason : .]

5/5/2010 7:39:43 AM

Obama and company did this so they could overturn their idea of offshore drilling...it's all a conspiracy

5/5/2010 8:48:53 AM

i didn't realize this but...

Exxon Valdez spill ~ 250,000 barrels of crude oil

Recent spill: Steve Wereley, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, told CNN's "American Morning" that the spill could be as big as 20,000 to 100,000 barrels a day

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/20/gulf.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=T2

5/20/2010 6:18:38 PM

just because he says it, doesn't mean it's true... i, too, can pull numbers out of my ass, you know

5/20/2010 6:43:18 PM

its not a perfect review, but it was a somewhat peer reviewed video analysis. can you pull that out of your ass?

probably not, but i bet you can get into a semantics argument about it

[Edited on May 20, 2010 at 7:02 PM. Reason : .]

5/20/2010 7:02:09 PM

somewhat peer-reviewed.
as in, not really peer-reviewed.
as in, pulled out of the ass.

you've got an estimate range that is an order of magnitude in difference. that's pretty much pulling it out of your ass.

is the original estimate wrong? more than likely. is it an order of magnitude wrong? probably not. is it two orders of magnitude wrong? FUCK NO.

5/20/2010 8:29:44 PM

the guy holds two patents in image particle velocimetry, its not like he is some random science dude. and even the lower estimate is much higher than what BP is saying, the reason for the large range is because it's uncertain how much methane is mixed in.

BP admittedly isn't even trying to measure it at the leak, they admittedly were only concerned with oil at the surface. this ignore a lot of oil.

at this point i am just trying to figure out if you are purposefully obtuse for the purpose of being contrarian or if you are just an idiot in general

5/20/2010 8:43:47 PM

aaronboro defending bp? of course

just in case anybody had any hope in him being credible...

Steve Wereley has been doing this kind of work for almost 20 years and is the most qualified person to give an estimate. His range is so large because its a 100% certainty range.

5/20/2010 8:46:09 PM

wow. he holds a patent. that surely makes his seat-of-the-pants estimate valid Nothing in that article says how he arrived at his estimate. It just says "he says X". forgive me if I am not swayed by a liberal news-outlet trying to be sensational about something regarding the environment. Just as I don't take FoxNews as gospel on it, either.

^ I'm not defending BP. troll on somewhere else, little girl.

5/20/2010 8:56:18 PM

dude, you're dumb

5/20/2010 8:58:39 PM

you are naturally protecting bp by questioning the fact they the downright LIED about the scale of the spill from the get go.

5/20/2010 8:58:44 PM

they didn't lie. They gave a rough estimate, probably based on production totals for that well. That's not a lie. It's an estimate. don't be obtuse. did they low-ball it? maybe. but what the fuck good does it do to know that it is exactly 6,792.56814 barrels a day? not all that much.

^^ nice ad hominem. I guess you have no other defense for sensationalist numbers, either

5/20/2010 9:00:42 PM

here's a better description of how he came to his assessment:

Quote :

" An independent scientist says the Gulf of Mexico oil spill appears to be even larger than he previously thought, based on analysis of a video released by the Senate. The video shows a dramatic gusher of oil coming from near the well's ill-fated blowout preventer. Steve Wereley went from being a respected but little known engineering professor at Purdue University to being the center of attention last week after he produced a startling new estimate of the size of the spill. Using a well-established scientific technique to measure flow from the biggest of three leaks near the seafloor, he determined that the flow coming out of the end of the pipe could be 10 times the size of the official figure. Wereley has now analyzed video of a second leak. At a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, he said that leak alone appears to be bigger than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day. "What I get is 25,000 barrels a day coming out of that tiny hole — that's a 1.2-inch hole," he said, adding that it seemed "incomprehensible." Wereley says the oil in this part of the pipe is under tremendous pressure. Add his current figure to last week's estimate of about 70,000 barrels a day, and his total approaches 100,000 barrels a day. And, there's another leak he has yet to analyze. Wereley's flow rate includes both gas and oil, so he says his figures may come down once he sees enough video to be able to quantify the amount of gas. "But from what I see in the videos, I don't see the numbers coming down that significantly," he says. "

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126975907

And FTR I wasn't posting the article to try to say anything about BP lying. I was merely trying to do a comparison with the exxon valdez spill and this one.

5/20/2010 9:10:15 PM

i don't know if BP was lying, but what they SAID was that they were NOT measuring the oil at the flow and WERE ONLY INTERESTED IN MEASURING THE OIL AT THE SURFACE. this is not conjecture its WHAT THE TOLD REPORTERS.

5/20/2010 9:16:51 PM

sooooo....is it fixed yet?

5/30/2010 8:46:57 AM

Yeah, I put a piece of duct tape on it.

5/30/2010 11:16:33 AM

serious question:

since it looks like this won't be fixed until august (when BP installs the relief well), will the US be able to tell them to fuck off and that they have lost their drilling privileges in the gulf? can we put them in timeout for a while? because i seriously think that once the relief well is put in place, BP will continue drilling, get some media outrage, and then everyone will forget about it until the next big fuck-up.

5/31/2010 9:31:07 PM

Quote :

"U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says he has launched a criminal investigation into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill."

6/1/2010 4:05:27 PM

Quote :

""Extreme Greenies: see now why we push 'drill,baby,drill' of known reserves & promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR? Now do you get it?""

- Sarah Palin

:facepalm:

6/2/2010 1:07:46 PM

Quote :

"since it looks like this won't be fixed until august (when BP installs the relief well), will the US be able to tell them to fuck off and that they have lost their drilling privileges in the gulf?"

Do you guys realized that they are in charge of a majority of the production wells in the GOM?

6/2/2010 2:31:48 PM

^^That's not why people push "drill baby drill," but it would probably be better to drill for oil in places other than deep in the ocean.

6/2/2010 2:57:11 PM

^^ like where? they dont drill in the ocean because its cheap and easy

6/2/2010 3:10:45 PM

Wow, Shepherd Smith on Fox News sure does have a boner for the Gulf Coast and for making digs at BP.

I mean, yeah, I like the Gulf Coast, too...but he comes across as either having an unhealthy obsession, or some sort of agenda.

6/2/2010 3:13:02 PM

people reporting the news have an agenda????

say it ain't so

6/2/2010 3:57:06 PM

FYI - Shep's from Mississippi, and spends damn near every weekend in Oxford. He's got a vested interest in the area. He's a good dude from what I hear from folks in that area.

6/2/2010 5:00:05 PM

shep smith owns

6/2/2010 5:12:57 PM

Quote :

"Extreme Greenies: see now why we push 'drill,baby,drill' of known reserves & promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR? Now do you get it?"

Haha I saw that tweet from her yesterday and definitely said "oh fuck off" out loud to myself.

6/2/2010 5:26:29 PM

When that bitch (and Hannity for that matter) can actually say Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge I might pause for more than five seconds to hear what they have to say. Until then, boiling down wildlife refuge to merely an acronym gives a certain distance from the gravity of the statement.

6/2/2010 6:54:32 PM

^good point.

6/2/2010 9:24:12 PM

The diamond saw thing failed. back to square one with the top hat.



Seriously, BP is just running in circles until they get that relief well put in. It's time to relieve them of their duties, bring in foreign governments that have dealt with this before, and send BP the tab. This shit is criminal.

[Edited on June 2, 2010 at 10:23 PM. Reason : ]

6/2/2010 10:20:38 PM

i really have the sinking feeling that everything is being done to preserve this well's future earnings instead of just plugging and abandoning that damn hole. i'm going to be sick to my stomach when i find out in a year that the same pipes that were involved in this catastrophe are being used for further drilling.

[Edited on June 2, 2010 at 11:07 PM. Reason : ]

6/2/2010 10:51:38 PM

^^ Won't the foreign governments (short of Russia telling us to nuke it) do the same things BP is doing? I mean it's my understanding that they're putting in a relief well, but that takes time so they're doing everything else in the mean time. It's sort of what I was getting at in the other thread. For as much shit as Obama is getting in this mess, there really isn't much more than can be done that isn't already. Maybe accelerating past some red tape, but beyond that, what more could be done?

6/2/2010 11:49:40 PM

Pretty much my take on it. Options are severly limited at those depths. Plus it makes a lot more sense to have bp pay for it than to try to send them the bill later if someone else took over.

6/3/2010 12:02:04 AM

Yeah, the whole "Obama isn't doing enough" seems purely partisan to me. What we don't want is him pushing some sweeping, ill-thought-out regulation bill that ends up driving up prices for oil across the board. BP needs to be held accountable, and possibly banned from drilling offshore, but it's times of crisis like this that bad legislation gets passed with no objections, in the dark of night.

6/3/2010 2:10:37 AM

Robert Reich was all up on Marketplace yesterday talking about how the government ought to put BP's domestic assets into temporary receivership to force them to work for the public good in an accountable way. I'm in.

6/3/2010 7:18:20 AM

nuke that shit

6/3/2010 7:26:43 AM

6/3/2010 10:15:37 AM

Quote :

"nuke that shit"

i think conventional torpedoes are sufficient

6/3/2010 12:26:49 PM

Quote :

"Robert Reich was all up on Marketplace yesterday talking about how the government ought to put BP's domestic assets into temporary receivership to force them to work for the public good in an accountable way. I'm in."

See I just don't get this. What is it that people think should be done that isn't being done currently, and would be accomplished by seizing BP's assets?

6/3/2010 12:58:34 PM

He lists five good reasons: http://robertreich.org/post/650145579/why-obama-should-put-bp-under-temporary-receivership

6/3/2010 4:04:16 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, the whole "Obama isn't doing enough" seems purely partisan to me."

except there is a significant amount of calls of incompetence on this is coming from Majority Congressional leadership, not to mention the Minority. If you're a politician anywhere NEAR the gulf coast you're throwing the pres under the bus regardless of party affiliation.

6/3/2010 4:13:36 PM

Quote :

"He lists five good reasons"

1. We are not getting the truth from BP like we can get the truth from the gov.
2. We have no way to be sure BP is devoting enough resources to stopping the gusher pretty sure they dont want the publicity or the lost of oil so i would think they are spending as much as they have to
3. BP’s new strategy for stopping the gusher is highly risky. depends on who you are asking, plus what ever strategies the government would come up with would involve talking to the kinds of experts that work at BP
4. Right now, the U.S. government has no authority to force BP to adopt a different strategy.
okay this is true but again i dont
5. The President is not legally in charge again is this the best option?

6/3/2010 4:36:05 PM

The only thing the government should do is remove the cap on liabilities.

6/3/2010 4:44:22 PM

^

6/3/2010 6:23:36 PM

6/3/2010 7:18:00 PM

Quote :

"He lists five good reasons"

His five good reasons boil down to an assumption that the government can better manage the clean up than BP. I see nothing to believe this assumption to be true. Further I see no reason why we should muddy the waters (no pun intended) with the legal wrangling over seizing BP's assets when, if we truly believe the government should be managing everything, we can simply send in the marines so to speak and send BP the bill later and seize any assets then. As to his argument over the "truth" from BP, the answer is it isn't relevant to the situation at hand, what matters is getting things plugged up and cleaned up, not how much oil is flowing currently (except in so much as it relates to the tactics used to plug the hole).

But to be honest, I don't think he really feels the government could do better, he just wants to punish BP, like most of the people criticizing the president. He wants BP to be publicly spanked over this. They will, but this is not the time for that.

Quote :

"The only thing the government should do is remove the cap on liabilities."

+1

6/3/2010 7:33:51 PM

Quote :

""This is not an environmental disaster, and I will say that again and again because it is a natural phenomenon," Young said after Congressional hearings last week. "Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries, will continue to do it. During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilt from ships, and no natural catastrophe. ... We will lose some birds, we will lose some fixed sealife, but overall it will recover." -Rep. Don Young (R) Alaska"

How the fuck is a man made oil platform exploding and causing the largest oil spill in US history a "natural phenomenon"?

6/11/2010 2:19:28 AM

^but duh oil dun come from duh grounds. and duh grounds is bonafide all-natural nature right thur. yep.

6/11/2010 2:26:55 AM

BP Spills Coffee!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AAa0gd7ClM

6/11/2010 3:00:23 AM