Obama: Ongoing Oil Spill 'Enraging,' 'Heartbreaking'

Obama's biggest boast of his being engaged, in charge, was the he, himself, order BP to drill a second relief well.



BP has stopped the drilling of that second relief well. Not on anyone's orders but their own.



I guess you're unaware of what took place during Obama's 3 hour visit on Friday. It was a photo op, carefully staged, on a beach where BP had brought in 300-400 workers in haz-mat suits right before Obama's arrival, as "atmosphere", and as soon as Obama left, the workers did, too.



Thad Allen needs to be replaced. And making 2 or 3 agencies out of MMS does nothing to stop the corruption, the cozy relationship that Big Oil has with MMS's employees.



I could list many others, like Carol Browner, Ken Salazar, etc., but ultimately the problem is Obama himself. He's NOT the one we were waiting for. He's far too cozy with the Corporatocracy himself, doesn't have the will or the desire to fight to save the nation from their continuing assaults.
About Gulf Oil Spill
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Obama: Ongoing Oil Spill 'Enraging,' 'Heartbreaking'

Super tankers should have been (& still should be) moved into the Gulf to siphon up the oil. The only reason dispersants are used is to hide the oil, sink it beneath the surface from view of the media and the People.



All offers of help, both foreign and domestic, should have been accepted on day one, instead of turned down. Massive quantities of boom should have been sent to the region on day one, instead of waiting to see what might be needed. There still isn't enough.



Building berms around the barrier islands should have been authorized and expedited -- Not announced after being forced by this press conference to act.



All of the efforts to shut down the gusher should have been put into place and tried sequentially, immediately, after the initial blow-out. They shouldn't have been spending days building a top-hat (not an original idea, but one that had failed in a previous blow-out -- It was called "a sombrero"), seeing if it would work before starting on the next idea. Pumping mud/cement should have been initiated as soon as the blowout happened.



Obama needs to shut down all offshore oil rigs - Especially BP's Atlantic operation. That is NOT being done!



The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 requires oil companies to be FINANCIALLY responsible for the damage & repairs, but does NOT transfer require/transfer the responsibility for fixing the problem and clean-up to oil companies.
About Gulf Oil Spill
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Obama: Ongoing Oil Spill 'Enraging,' 'Heartbreaking'

"It may not be possible to fix this. What that means is that if it isn't fixed, that well will continue to gush until there's no more oil in it or the pressure gradients have matched up. It will take 9000 days (30 years) for this well to run dry, and waiting until August for the relief well to be drilled is too late to save the Gulf, the east coast of US and the N. Atlantic Ocean."



-Matthew Simmons, one of the world's leading oil experts to Dylan Ratigan this week.



Joining Ratigan and Simmons, Captain Dave Ballay and Eliot Spitzer, who talks about what Obama must do.



Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYc0CAtrP-A



Simmons & Spitzer are on Part 2:

Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE2LIimGMQM



If this is so, this is not a job for a foreign oil corporation, but for the US government, the US military (the Navy and Army Corps of Engineers).
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

BP Says So Far, Gulf Well Plug Isn't Working

And how much oil would that be? Via the New York Times:



BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, has estimated that the reservoir tapped by the out-of-control well holds at least 50 million barrels of oil.



That would be about 2 billion gallons of oil. If all of this floods out, it would be the biggest oil spill in history by a huge margin and 20 times bigger than the biggest previous spill in the Gulf of Mexico. From the National Geographic piece: "The 1979 Ixtoc oil spill, also in the Gulf of Mexico, took nine months to cap. During that time the well spewed 140 million gallons (530 million liters) of oil — and the Ixtoc well was only about 160 feet (49 meters) deep, noted retired energy investment banker Simmons."



Even if the well is capped, this is going to be a huge spill. The spill rate, originally estimated at 50,000 gallons a day and then 210,000 gallons a day, might actually be as much as a million gallons a day — or maybe even more. But it's hard to tell because BP is using chemical dispersants to send most of the oil to the bottom of the sea. This keeps it off the shore, but might end up doing more damage in the long run. Nobody seems to know for sure.



http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/05/biggest-oil-spill-history
About Gulf Oil Spill
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

BP Says So Far, Gulf Well Plug Isn't Working

Is it going to be possible to ever cap the Deepwater Horizon oil blowout? Maybe not, says National Geographic:



Such recovery operations have never been done before in the extreme deep-sea environment around the wellhead, noted Matthew Simmons, retired chair of the energy-industry investment banking firm Simmons & Company International....Slant drilling — a technique used to relieve pressure near the leak — is difficult at these depths, because the relief well has to tap into the original pipe, a tiny target at about 7 inches (18 centimeters) wide, Simmons noted.



"We don't have any idea how to stop this," Simmons said of the Gulf leak....If the oil can't be stopped, the underground reservoir may continue bleeding until it's dry, Simmons suggested.



KEEP READING
About Gulf Oil Spill
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

BP Says So Far, Gulf Well Plug Isn't Working

Is it going to be possible to ever cap the Deepwater Horizon oil blowout? Maybe not, says National Geographic:



KEEP READING
About Gulf Oil Spill
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

BP Says So Far, Gulf Well Plug Isn't Working

No, I don't think we're basically in agreement. Your "anger" seems like lip-service, like Obama's: Complacency, "What can we do? It's the price we pay for our need for oil, and we're just going to have to be patient -- But we're still going to drill offshore." And a false belief that relief drilling, months away, is guaranteed to work. It isn't. And in case you didn't know, that second relief well that Obama "ordered"? BP has stopped drilling it.



I've been hearing all morning from Obama's surrogates that "we should wait, until after a commission report, etc. Damage control, attempts to slow down the environmental movement, avalanche, to move the nation off of oil and to green, sustainable energy.



And all across the news this morning, from oil corporation surrogates and their media spinners, "This blow-out was a fluke". "Thirty years of no accidents", "no spills" (nonsense).



And from David Gregory, Candy Crowley, Jake Tapper? "It's these deepsea wells, and perhaps we should just drill in shallower water" (Ixtoc was in shallow water, and as we're seeing, the technology for repairing these blowouts has not changed, not improved).
About Gulf Oil Spill
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...