Few people in the world know more about oil drilling disasters than Dr. Robert Bea.
Bea teaches engineering at the University of California Berkeley, and has 55 years of experience in engineering and management of design, construction, maintenance, operation, and decommissioning of engineered systems including offshore platforms, pipelines and floating facilities. Bea has worked for many years in governmental and quasi-governmental roles, and has been a high-level governmental adviser concerning disasters. He worked for 16 years as a top mechanical engineer and manager for Shell Oil, and has worked with Bechtel and the Army Corps of Engineers. One of the world’s top experts in offshore drilling problems, Bea is a member of the Deepwater Horizon Study Group, and has been interviewed by news media around the world concerning the BP oil disaster.
Washington’s Blog spoke with Dr. Bea yesterday.
WB: Is BP sharing information with the government?
Bea: No. BP is using a “cloak of silence”. BP is not voluntarily sharing information or documents with the government.
In May, for example, Senator Boxer subpoenaed information from BP regarding footage of the seafloor taken before the blowout by BP’s remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). We still have not received a response 12 weeks later.
[Bea subsequently clarified that he’s not sure whether BP has failed to release the information, or Senator Boxer’s committee has sat on the information. My bet is on BP. Indeed, BP has refused to answer some very basic written questions from Congressman Markey, chair of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. See this and this. Indeed, it is unclear whether BP is sharing vital details even with Thad Allen, Secretary of energy Chu, or the Unified Command].
WB: Might there be problems with the relief wells? I know that it took a couple of relief wells to finally stop the Ixtoc leak, and it has taken as many as 5 relief wells to stop some blowouts.
Bea: Yes, it could take repeated attempts.
WB: Are there any conditions at BP’s well which might make killing the leak with relief wells more difficult than with the average deepwater oil spill?
Bea: That’s an interesting question. You have to ask why did this location blow out when nearby wells drilled in even deeper water didn’t blow out.
You have to look at the geology of the Macondo well. It is in a subsalt location, in a Sigsbee salt formation. [For background, see this and this]
The geology is fractured.
Usually, the deeper you drill, the more pressure it takes to fracture rock. This is called the “fracture gradient“.
But when BP was drilling this well, the fracture gradient reversed. Indeed, BP lost all pressure as it drilled into the formation.
WB: Is it possible that this fractured, subsea salt geology will make it difficult to permanently kill the oil leak using relief wells?
Bea: Yes, it could. The Santa Barbara channel seeps are still leaking, decades after the oil well was supposedly capped. This well could keep leaking for years.
Scripps mapped out seafloor seeps in the area of the well prior to the blowout. Some of the natural seeps penetrate 10,000 to 15,000 feet beneath the seafloor. The oil will follow lines of weakness in the geology. The leak can travel several horizontal miles from the location of the leak.
[In other words, the geology beneath the seafloor is so fractured, with soft and unstable salt formations, that we may never be able to fully kill the well even with relief wells. Instead, the loss of containment of the oil reservoir caused by the drilling accident could cause oil to leak out through seeps for years to come. See this and this for further background].
WB: I know that you’ve previously said that you’re concerned that there might be damage to the well bore, which could make it more difficult for the relief wells to succeed.
Bea: Yes, that’s still a concern.
WB: I have heard that BP is underestimating the size of the oil reservoir (and see this). Is it possible that the reservoir is bigger than BP is estimating, and so – if not completely killed – the leak could therefore go on for longer than most assume?
Bea: That’s plausible.
WB: The chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon said that the Macondo well was originally drilled in another location, but that “going faster caused the bottom of the well to split open, swallowing tools”, and that BP abandoned that well. You’ve spoken to that technician and looked into the incident, and concluded that “they damn near blew up the rig.” [See this and this].
Do you know where that abandoned well location is, and do you know if that well is still leaking?
Bea: The abandoned well is very close to the current well location. BP had to file reports showing the location of the abandoned well and the new well [with the Minerals Management Service], so the location of the abandoned well is known.
We don’t know if the abandoned well is leaking.
WB: Matthew Simmons talked about a second leaking well. There are rumors on the Internet that the original well is still leaking. Do you have any information that can either disprove or confirm that allegation?
Bea: There are two uncorroborated reports. One is that there is a leak 400 feet West of the present well’s surface location. There is another report that there is a leak several miles to the West.
[Bea does not know whether either report is true at this time, because BP is not sharing information with the government, let alone the public.]
WB: There are rumors on the Internet of huge pockets of methane gas under the well which could explode. I’ve looked into this rumor, and have come to the conclusion that – while the leak is releasing tremendous amounts of methane – there are no “pockets” of methane gas which could cause explosions. Do you have any information on this?
Bea: I have looked into this and discussed methane with people who know a tremendous amount about it. There is alot of liquid and solid methane at the Macondo site, but no pockets of methane gas.
WB: That’s good news, indeed.
Bea: But there was one deepwater leak I worked with where tremendous amounts of hydrogen sulfite were released. We had to evacuate two towns because of the risk. [I didn’t ask Dr. Bea if there were any dangerous compounds which could be formed from the interaction of the crude oil and methane with chemicals in the ocean water or dispersants].
And with the Bay Charman oil leak, more than 50% of the oil stayed below the surface of the ocean. [As I’ve previously pointed out, the US Minerals Management Service and a consortium of oil companies, including BP, found that as little as 2% of the oil which spill from deepwater wells ever makes it to the surface of the ocean. And the use of dispersant might decrease that number still further].
WB: I have previously argued that nuking the well would be a bad idea. What do you think?
Bea: [Bea agreed that nuking the well would be counter-productive. He told me a story about a leaking deepwater well that he was involved in killing. A nuclear package was on its way to the well site but – fortunately – the well stopped by itself before a nuke was deployed. I’m not sure whether this is classified information, so I won’t disclose the name of the well. Bea also discussed alternatives in the form of high-pressure, high-temperature conventional explosives, echoing what Bill Clinton said recently].
WB: Thank you for your generous time and for sharing your expertise with us, Dr. Bea.
Bea: You’re welcome.
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If you are interested in the BP blowout, and would like to get your information at a location where there is a knowledgable and critical audience, I suggest you get at a web site called “The Oil Drum”. I don’t know much about drilling hazards myself, but I teach petroleum prospecting at Stanford University.
“I don’t know the hazards, but I teach prospecting!”
I think that says it all.
The Oil Drum is infiltrated with BP sponsored posters that toe the party line.
Yes there are some BP supports, but I disagree with you that they corrupt the site. On any site supporters are usually obvious and transparent, a sophisticated reader can quickly cull them out. The detail information and tech stuff along with links to validate are usually there for your review.
The BP propagandists on Theoildrum.com have taken to insults, personal attacks, and other nasty tricks to bully anyone that disagree with the party line.
Go to the site, look at the key points of contention between the “pro” vs. “not party line” BP views, and you will see.
They have largely driven the non-BP line people away.
Oh… the site also took donations from anyone, no questions asked.
Yves
The piece assumes that BP is evil and therefore everything they are doing is evil and if we can’t see the evil they must be hiding it.
This kind of hysterical witch-hunt nonsense devalues your financial work.
BP have fixed the well and will pay for the clean up; eos.
Actions prove good or evil. Evil is as evil does. That’s the only measure. So what actions have we seen here?
*Leaving aside whether or not offshore drilling should ever have been undertaken in the first place, BP and its fellow rackets systematically sought to socialize all risk and cost;
*they completely subverted such regulatory structure as still existed once they had finished eviscerating the law;
*BP has an especially evil record on safety going back decades;
*they collaborated with the administration in the anti-sovereign seizure of the Gulf and hijacking of the Coast Guard and other public property;
*they’ve anti-constitutionally seized vast public property in the form of full information on every aspect of the eruption (we the people own all the information, and total sunshine is our right as is full access and eyewitnessing);
*they’ve systematically lied every step of the way about the nature of the event, the magnitude of the eruption, the expected and actual efficacy of every “corrective” measure taken;
*they dumped vast amounts of the Corexit poison, with God knows what future murderous effects;
*they suborned an anti-public interest propaganda campaign in the American and espcecially the British MSM, as well as whining from Biritsh politicians and astroturfs;
*to this day they’re still lying about the disposition of the oil which already erupted, and how stable the current solution is;
*as for “paying for the cleanup”, we’ve already seen such promises from Exxon, which were never anything but lies playing for time. And we’ve already had the criminal Feinberg springing the surprise news on the ex-fishermen hired to help with a cleanup: “Ha ha, suckers! What you’re being paid for your work comes out of your settlement!”
That last item lays bare not only the extent of BP’s evil, but of the meanness and smallness of it.
Yeah right and Obama is a muslim.
“This kind of hysterical witch-hunt nonsense devalues your financial work.”
Here’s a ‘financial’ blogger you might like better. He appears to be recommending SLAPP suits to squelch Free Speech and political dissent against corporate giant BP. Its a good example of an indirect little piece of ‘rule of law’ going to get you fear mongering …
Excerpt;
“I don’t believe as a matter of legal principle or reasoned fairness BP can be held responsible for the rants, on The Internet or elsewhere, of a cadre of environmentalist whackjobs who have as their primary goal the cessation of all petroleum production and consumption – and who simply don’t give a good damn about thermodynamics, science, natural processes or the businesses they harm through their paranoid delusional rants.
So hold BP responsible for the actual loss caused by the actual oil.
But if you’re looking for the people who were running doomsday scenarios predicting that the entire gulf coast would be inundated with oil many-feet-deep, that the entirety of the Gulf Coast would have to be evacuated and FEMA was “prepared to move everyone” (presumably to the alleged REX-84 camps) and similar nonsense, trying to scare the everloving bejeesus out of the public and away from the gulf coast, you are going to have to, in my opinion, look for someone other than BP to send that bill to.
Bankrupting a few of these nutters (perhaps including the estate of those who had the bad taste to die their hottub before they could be held to account) might go a long way toward both compensating Florida and deterring future similar abuses.”
http://market-ticker.org/archives/2593-An-Interesting-Quandary-BPFlorida.html
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
I suspect tourists would have stayed away from Florida’s Gulf of Mexico despite the histrionics of fringe elements. Bathing in toxic waters or eating contaminated food are highly salient issues with most people, which precipitate immediate action:
Ironically, Sinclair’s purpose in writing “The Jungle” was to establish a call to action for his socialist agenda, not to force reform of health and safety standards. Yet he later commented that Americans are more concerned about their stomachs than about their hearts.
–Barry Sears, Afterward to The Jungle, Signet Classics edition
What’s it like to live in a fact-free universe?
The evidence that MMS, NOAA, the Coast Guard and the Fish and Wildlife Service, working hand-in-glove with BP, engaged in a massive cover-up is overwhelming.
The evidence that Obama is a Muslim, however, is all but nonexistent.
That’s a distinction that’s lost on those who live in a defactualized world.
It is not a matter of BP being “evil or good”. A corporation’s fudicary responsibility is to maximize profit, in any legal manner they can. BP is doing this, and I think working within our laws and policies. You are mixing up your “moral codes”, one of my first lessons working with the “oil patch boys” is “nothing personal, it’s just business..” (sort of like the godfather, remember?).
The Oil Drum is a very good site, lots of thoughtful blogs. and views on oil supply, demand, prices etc… This is probably the most cerebral site for this topic.
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
— U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
Did Lincoln suffer from the Cassandra Syndrome?
How many ex-corporate lawyers currently sit on the supreme court?
L Racine said:
It is not a matter of BP being “evil or good”. A corporation’s fudicary responsibility is to maximize profit, in any legal manner they can. BP is doing this, and I think working within our laws and policies. You are mixing up your “moral codes”, one of my first lessons working with the “oil patch boys” is “nothing personal, it’s just business..” (sort of like the godfather, remember?).
I think you’ve been reading too much Richard Dawkins and Ayn Rand.
Who is more “evil”? BP? Or the rogue government agencies like NOAA, MMS, the Coast Guard and the Fish and Wildlife Service? These agencies are charged with protecting the public interest, but instead have become the chief enablers and propagandists for the multi-national oil conglomerates.
Nowhere is this become more evident than where the battle lines have been drawn. It’s the US government vs. the independent scientists. BP’s chief-propagandist-in-charge, Thad Allen, lashed out against the non-government scientists yesterday:
Meanwhile, Thad Allen, the government’s point man for the oil disaster, responded Thursday on CNN to two recent studies that appeared to contradict the government’s estimate that about 75 percent of the oil has been cleaned up.
Researchers at the University of South Florida have concluded that oil may have settled at the bottom of the Gulf farther east than previously suspected — and at levels toxic to marine life. In addition, a team from Georgia Sea Grant and the University of Georgia released a report that estimates that 70 to 79 percent of the oil that gushed from the well “has not been recovered and remains a threat to the ecosystem,” the university said in a release.
Allen said the government has determined the flow rate to have been about 53,000 barrels a day, or a total of 4.9 million barrels.
“The next question is, what happened to it?” he said. “There are certain things we know for certain. We produced almost 827,000 barrels that we collected and brought ashore.” The government also knows how much oil was skimmed, how much was burned and how much was affected by dispersant use. When that is added up, it leaves 26 percent still in the water, Allen said.
The most “evil” part of this entire affair is that there is no public advocate for the public interest. NOAA, MMS, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Coast Guard have all played leading roles in the cover-up. They have absolutely no credibility. They are not to be trusted.
Down,
The cumulative effect of 30 years of less government – less regulation in conjunction with the “colonization” of the federal bureaucracy by individuals with like-minded dispositions. Whatever professional competence there was – EPA, OSHA, MMS, etc – has been marginalized, exiled into a meaningless office/location in the federal gulag, resigned in disgust, or retired, and been replaced with individuals more “politically loyal” to the current flavor of less government – less regulation. This entire process was and remains part of the strategy to “starve the beast” – not only of funds/monies – but also of professional competence/expertise. Hence, when a federal response to a disaster, natural or man made, is required, witness Katrina and/or the oil spill in the Gulf, it is so lame and ineffective as to reinforce the belief that “government is the problem, not the solution.” Short of war-making, the federal government no longer has the expertise to challenge the private sector – an inevitable consequence of less government and less regulation. Regulatory capture is nothing new, but it is now more akin to regulatory dependence in the hope that private self-interest will constrain the participants. If the latter adopt a feed now and get out before the shit hits the fan… it’s your problem attitude we are all too familiar with the consequences. Short of a national oil company with sufficient expertise in deep water drilling – PETROBRAS or STATOIL – the federal government cannot challenge BP. It simply does not have sufficient resources at its disposal. Indeed, the recent consortium of private oil companies set up to establish a response team for future oil spills of this sort is intended to thwart federal efforts in this direction, attesting to the political astuteness of the players involved. It is wholly consistent with the less government – less regulatory theme that has dominated this country for the past 40 years.
While an incoming administration is responsible for making political appointments to steer policy, it is the “grunts” in the bowels of the bureaucracy that actually do the implementation. To believe that “housecleaning” of the latter is accomplished every four years is another one of the “myths” proffered by the MSM. Such turnover would impede the development of any expertise whatsoever, actually render it more susceptible to capture, seriously compromise its effectiveness, and make business planning all but impossible with disastrous consequences for the economy. Anyone who has worked in the bowels of a large organization – public and/or private – for any length of time understands this. Real systemic change to transform the organizational culture takes time. On occasion the new CEO/Secretary wields an ax hiving off, outsourcing, ea piece of the organization in an effort to make it more efficient so as to improve the bottom line, but not without consequences that show up AFTER he/she has left the executive suite. This too has occurred with the federal government with very little oversight as to the actual cost/policy effectiveness doing so. But there’s many a private contractor who has fed at the public trough of federal largesse all the while decrying “big government” in favor of less government and less regulation.
The fact that people still look to the federal government to ameliorate/mitigate a disaster – hurricane, oil spill, tainted food, drugs with dangerous side effects – or have the expectation that it should exemplifies the “cognitive dissonance” at work. Less government – less regulation means that there is no “public interest” separate from the “private interest” that will police itself because it is in its own self-interest to do so, exemplifying the “confusion” that pervades the body politic. But this confusion also works to the advantage of the “status quo” in that it impedes the development of the critical mass within the body politic requisite to the formulation of a coherent set of policies intended to correct this situation.
Even positing that there is such a thing as the “public interest” separate from the “private interest”, that “government” has interests different from those of the private sector that justify intervention in markets, is a hard sell. After all, it is the business of government to facilitate commerce – not impede it – and to ensure that profits are privatized and costs are socialized. If BP “proves” that it has capped the well – that it isn’t leaking – is the oil seepage from the sea floor fracture in the area BP’s responsibility? Proving that this oil seepage from the sea floor, if it is indeed occurring, is a direct consequence of BP drilling the Macondo well and its legal liabilities as a consequence will take years, particularly as Transocean and other third party contractors will also be pulled into court. And when the case finally makes it to the SCOTUS, it remains to be seen if the company would be held liable. I wouldn’t bet against it given the EXXON precedent and the Robert’s Court’s current position toward business interests.
Mickey,
Jesse has been hammering away
along the same lines that you are:
Americans may not trust government as a recent tenet of dogmatic faith, but in doing so they are entrusting their futures to other people’s governments, and soulless multinational entities who are in fact using globalization and the ‘free markets’ to aggressively advance their own ends and benefits, which are probably antithetical to yours.
See also Jesse’s post here.
Don’t get me wrong. I am no anti-government type. It is going to take an extremely strong government to stand up to the BPs of the world. The lone individual stands absolutely no chance when pitted against a multi-national corporation. Government is the only game in town when it comes to mustering sufficient power to counter the power of these behemoths.
But those like me who favor government reform find themselves in quite a predicament, no? In order to spur on government reform, it is necessary to call attention to government failures and inadequacies. But when one does that, it provides fodder for the anti-government forces. What to do?
Could my predilections be due to the fact that, even though I no longer profess to be a Christian, I was raised in the Christian Church and was shaped by some of the beliefs of the early Christians? Here’s how David Sloan Wilson put it in Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society:
There is a policy of extreme altruism and forgiveness toward the downtrodden (even if they are not likely recruits), and a policy of unyielding opposition toward those who are in league with Satan. But who is in league with Satan? For Jesus and the authors of the Gospels, the main Jewish religious institutions were the most important enemy, not the Roman empire.
If BP is Satan—-the Roman empire—-then our government is like the Pharisees in that it is in league with Satan. My ire, just like that of Jesus, is therefore focused on those in league with Satan—-the Pharisees—-instead of on Satan himself.
And talking efficacy in lieu of theology, I don’t see any way to stop the BPs of the world other than for the people to recapture and reform their government, which will also restore it power. And I don’t see any way to do that other than pointing out government’s failures and inadequacies. It’s a risk, and it’s a conundrum. But I don’t see any other way out.
“If BP is Satan—-the Roman empire—-then our government is like the Pharisees in that it is in league with Satan. My ire, just like that of Jesus, is therefore focused on those in league with Satan—-the Pharisees—-instead of on Satan himself.
And talking efficacy in lieu of theology, I don’t see any way to stop the BPs of the world other than for the people to recapture and reform their government, which will also restore it power. And I don’t see any way to do that other than pointing out government’s failures and inadequacies. It’s a risk, and it’s a conundrum. But I don’t see any other way out.”
Commenting on the analogy …
Satan in the aggregate owns the Pharisees globally, and worse, owns the global propaganda shaping machine that is fast destroying past gains of the masses by shaping the newer divisive global perpetual conflict culture.
Pointing out government’s failures and inadequacies must ALSO include the role that Satan plays in the process of orchestrating government’s failures and inadequacies. This is the nub of the problem. Satan is well organized globally; through central banks, corporate structures, co-opted Pharisees (governments), and ownership and control of media.
The masses are still stuck emotionally in the old Vanilla Greed constructs of their individual nation states. Though many are fast awakening.
Reform from within an individual Satan co-opted nation state is no longer possible. At some point the masses will have to awaken to the systemic global nature of the threat and engage in massive election boycotts as a vote of no confidence in their respective co-opted crooked governments. The lesson is increasing in intensity — the lesson is the rot spreading and the crumb supply being throttled down. When the student is ready the master will appear.
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Read Jesse’s post the other day…. The trick in pointing out the failures/inadequacies of government is to provide an explanation as to how we got where we’re at so as to encourage people to investigate on their own and invite/bring them into the dialogue without discouraging whatever interest they might have in “participating” in the political process – even if different from our own. If pointing out the inadequacies/failures of government only results in turning people away, turning them off, then it plays right into the hands of the reactionary forces that stand to gain by their not participating.
Sometimes we become trapped in our own groupthink of negativity, pessimism, and resignation – DEFEATISM – that nothing can be done to thwart the ascendance of the neofeudal corporate world order, unwittingly playing into the hands of the latter and facilitating its ascendance. If we only look for faults and the negative we will surely find both – in SPADES! There are positive things afoot that fly beneath the radar that occur daily – when the “light bulb” comes on. Just wish it would happen more often and burn much longer when it does.
In the early days of Christianity, I suspect many a Christian despaired of his/her faith, but eventually that faith conquered the Roman Empire. Looking beyond one’s own lifetime to something much larger than oneself in scope and time is difficult when the “eternal present” surrounds us.
Cuidado!
Concur with you and DS save your last point, Rome used Christianity firstly as a scapegoat only to turn around and co op it for their poliltical gain (senator garb for priestly robes), see IONTBP point.
Skippy…when R. Murdock leaves this world I will both rejoice and lament…his prodigy is a *real winner* see ONE-TEL and his burgeoning gambling empire. BUSH I…BUSH II dilemma.
Downsouth has a point, NOAA having informed yesterday that the
‘volume’of the oilspill is to be released within months,
following the August 4 th report, which everyone knows is already ‘fudged’. Tmho, the states involved should sue NOAA,
EPA ( for allowing the Corexit bleach-out )and MMS.
As far as following the cover-up, George is way ahead of his league, Robert Cavnar ( http://www.nakedhurricane.com ), and Mother Jones provide up-to-date information
If there are in fact two wells leaking, one out of control, the other “capped” by placing the blown out well’s BOP on it, then, Matt Simmon’s 120,000 barrel per day estimate is pretty close.
See:
http://bklim.newsvine.com/_news/2010/08/14/4884549-dwh-blowout-csi-why-it-could-not-have-happened-as-reported-by-bp-
and
http://bklim.newsvine.com/_news/2010/08/17/4913304-the-art-of-mass-deception-part-1-ballistic-analysis-of-dwh-riser-wreck
Here comes the icing on the cake:
‘BP oil spill: US scientist retracts assurances over success of cleanup
NOAA’s Bill Lehr says three-quarters of the oil that gushed from the Deepwater Horizon rig is still in the Gulf environment while scientists identify 22-mile plume in ocean depths
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/19/bp-oil-spill-scientist-retracts-assurances
Is it possible you are confusing Mat Simmon’s rant with Dr. Robert Bea? Dr Robert Bea has a sterling reputation and is a very level cool head.
Isn’t it interesting this poster “L Racine” is here to spread Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt on the comments.
“BP oil spill: US scientist retracts assurances over success of cleanup
NOAA’s Bill Lehr says three-quarters of the oil that gushed from the Deepwater Horizon rig is still in the Gulf environment while scientists identify 22-mile plume in ocean depths”
This article have nothing to do with Matt Simmons (he is not even mentioned), nor Dr Robert Bea.
It is about Dr. Robert Bea:
“Bill Lehr, a senior scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) departed from an official report from two weeks ago which suggested the majority of the oil had been captured or broken down.
“I would say most of that is still in the environment,” Lehr, the lead author of the report, told the house energy and commerce committee.”
This kind of behavior is exactly what was seen on theoildrum.com
Posters that intentionally divert the issue from the one at hand, or harang other posters.
Agree with BigBadBank above… this authors work is has been discredited numerous times. I am/have been very skeptical of BP and us.gov on any info surrounding this issue. However, this writers hysterical non-sense is a disservice to this blog and others who seek rational PROVEN information. Just look back at what has been written by him/her in the past – hadn’t the seafloor shattered and the BOP disappeared into the hole sometime back in June?
C’mon Yves, you and your blog can do better.
Is it possible you are confusing Mat Simmon’s rant with Dr. Robert Bea? Dr Robert Bea has a sterling reputation and is a very level cool head.
Discredited numerous times?
Like in this post where George Washington was branded a “crank” and “conspiracy theorist” who operates in some “parallel universe”? Painting GW with the face of evil is of course done without citing a scintilla of evidence.
How is it that the BP shills always resort to name calling instead of countering with the evidence that George Washington presents?
Oops!
Should have read:
How is it that the BP shills always resort to name calling instead of countering the evidence that George Washington presents?
Sorry to disappoint you – I am not a shill for BP. Just someone who mostly likes this blog. I just think GW material is highly sensational and a lot less reasoned than most of what is on here. Like this…
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/08/dead-fish-washing-up-everywhere-due-to.html
What? Corexit is killing fish in MA? Sorry if my comment offends you, but don’t think everyone who disagrees with you is a “shill” for BP.
“What? Corexit is killing fish in MA?”
Well yes. That’s the hypothesis. And, if one actually takes the time to look at GW’s post, the idea was not as “highly sensational” as you would have us believe.
What GW provides are a number of reports of fish die offs along the Atlantic coast from MSM sources.
GW then asks the question whether Corexit could have caused these.
He even provides a transport mechanism for how the Corexit could have gotten there.
What we know is that Corexit is highly toxic
. How much Corexit BP sprayed in the Gulf of Mexico is a mystery, even though BP admits to having dispersed 1.8 million gallons.
Your comment fits the rhetorical strategy used by the BP shills to a Tee. GW makes a well-documented case, and asks a valid question. It’s a long ways from the unsubstantiated and “highly sensational” claim you make it out to be. So when you say you are not a BP shill, I find that difficult to believe.
DownSouth,
I don’t want to get into a long examination of the GW posts, but I think anyone who reads back through them with a critical eye would see I have a valid claim. They are not up to the standards of most everything else on this blog and I think they do it a disservice. GW has been pursuing this fractured seafloor line for months and there is just no “there” there. Sorry.
GW heavily hawked the Simmons line in a June post – which turned out to be total crap and put up several other highly sensational BP that I could point out if I wanted to take the time.
You are the one had to resort to name calling (which I didn’t do) and have referred to me as a BP Shill, which I am not, solely because I do not agree with your perspective.
BP sucks. The government isn’t just lying they are telling myopic stupid lies that they will get caught for in short order, Corexit is clearly a toxic substance, and this spill is a catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions. I get that.
However, GW’s hyping dubious information and creating reports from cut and paste articles doesn’t do us any favors. I don’t understand why Yves post it here.
Why is “R Racine” posting the identical comment as a reply to 2 different comments on here?
Unless it is their job to spread smoke and mirrors for BP?
Yeah, listen up, bigbadbank speaks for what Ken Saro-Wiwa called the indigenous colonizers. Their job is to exploit their home for official preferment and bribes, and help extractive industries get the proceeds offshore into corporate hands. The government works for them. In Nigeria, the indigenous colonizers made a poisonous wasteland of Ogoni. They framed and killed Ken Saro-Wiwa. But here in Nigeria on the Mississippi they’re just going to shout you down and get away with the money before we notice all the two-headed babies being born in the South.
OK, label me as an oil company shill because I pointed out early on that none of what Simmons said made any sense and the whole case of using a nuclear weapon was tin foil.
I looked at some of the material referenced above and go huh! The link shows the BOP being blown off of the well. There is nothing, I mean nothing that I have heard saying the BOP was blown off of the well and early on in the blow out they attempted to shut the well in by closing the BOP but were unable to do this manually using the robots.
In fact the methane traveled up the riser into the rig where it was ignited by sparks off of motors so the BOP had to be attached at this time. The rig blew up and disconnected from the riser so the BOP was still attached at this point.
On the other well that would mean they drilled an 18,000 foot well and then left it. Huhh, has anyone heard this.
All of that is pure nonsense and make believe. Move on to 2012 folks.
By the way, when I heard the statement that 75% of the oil in the gulf was collected I thought WTF. How do they know how much was spilled. I felt that statement was far out of bounds and unsupportable.
As I indicated early on, that oil is hot coming out of the well but it is hitting near freezing water at the depth of 5,000 feet. I would very much expect the more solid components of the oil (oil consists of a number of different components from light molecules like methane down to substances like tar) to stay close to the bottom of the ocean and to flow like a river.
>The piece assumes that BP is evil and therefore everything they are doing is evil and if we can’t see the evil they must be hiding it.
Well, they’re not helping their case by withholding information, are they?
That British Petroleum is evil has been proven; but there’s more. British Petroleum is, after all, among the largest companies in the world. So, its policies have a large effect and produces imitators, making them among the biggest evil doers in multinational corporate land. Details follow here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Browne:
“Browne [British Petroleum’s Chief Executive, Baron Browne of Madingley who resigned on May 2007 after 41 years]is described by journalist and author Tom Bower as responsible for a “ruthless” programme of cost-cutting that compromised safety, and thus the man most responsible for a string of major accidents including the Texas City Refinery explosion (2005) and the Deepwater Horizon explosion (2010). Bower also accuses Browne of tolerating only “sycophants” in his “corporate court”, said to include Tony Hayward who succeeded him as BP Chief Executive. Browne has rejected Bower’s account, saying that he (Browne) increased the number of engineers appointed to BP.”
You may have missed certain goings on in India…
http://www.timesnow.tv/US-on-defensive-denies-pressure-on-India/articleshow/4351978.cms
US on defensive, denies pressure on India
http://www.timesnow.tv/Debate-US-linked-Bhopal-to-aid-1/videoshow/4351921.cms
Debate: US linked Bhopal to aid-1
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/us-seeks-to-bail-out-dow-over-bhopal-liability/405041/
US seeks to bail out Dow over Bhopal liability
http://www.hindu.com/2010/08/19/stories/2010081966611400.htm
U.S. tries to armtwist India on Dow issue
Myarticlenetwork seriously isn’t totally free until authorities is minimal. There is certainly an obvious lead to and result below that’s a great and expected for a law of physics: As federal government expands, liberty contracts. -Ronald Regan