Surprised we haven’t started talking about British Petroleum’s major fuckup.
Quick recap for anyone living under a rock: Their offshore oil platform 40 miles off the gulf coast blew up and they can’t cap the well. A massive oil slick has been growing by 5000 barrels a day and heading towards shore. It made landfall this morning.
The shrimping and fishing industry down there is fucked now. I can’t even wrap my head around how bad this will be environmentally.
God knows expanding offshore drilling just went the way of the dodo for a good 10 years.
BP is installing almost 100 miles of booms (like our own ice boom) to try to keep it away from land. :cjerk: The coast guard has tried controlled burns. :cjerk:
They’re going to have to drill a new “relief” well to take the pressure off the leaky well so they can cap it, which will take 2-3 months and give this plenty of time to eclipse the amount of oil tossed into the ocean by the Exxon Valdez. (Which would take a total of 55 days at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day.)
So what do you think? Are we fucked or are we really fucked? Is offshore drilling a lost cause now? Did the liberals in go’ment do this to block offshore drilling and save the environment?
I’d say we’re really fucked. I heard from some report the other day that the well was losing way more than 5000 barrels a day. I hope that’s not true. In the end though the politicians aren’t going to block more offshore drilling. Sure initially they will all be against it, but once it’s out of the news, it’ll be back to normal.
Yeah, drilling anywhere new offshore is dead for at least the next 20 years, and I hate to say it but it probably should be if this is the best they can do. A pretty much flawless record drilling in the gulf for all these years and just as we’re about to get expanded drilling rights they fuck it up royally.
It will be interesting to see what the root cause analysis shows happened to all the various safety systems that are supposed to prevent a massive leak like this. It amazes me that with all the technology we have that we can’t find a way to turn off a 5000 barrel a day leak. Someone didn’t plan for this ahead of time? Apparently plan A was the only plan they had. Plan B was basically to cruise around in boats screaming “IT’S EVERYWHERE!”. :picard:
So, which middle eastern country shot the offshore platform with a torpedo to stop new development of the US oil industry? :tinfoilhat:
In all seriousness though, I now find it extremely difficult to support expanded offshore drilling. Even if it extremely un-probable for another event like this to happen, the worse that can come from it is that we save our oil reserves for a very rainy day.
I thought I heard on the news somewhere, that in the US, we do not require to have remotely controlled shutoff valves. Just about everywhere else requires that to be in place on off shore wells.
The U.S. considered requiring a remote-controlled shut-off mechanism several years ago, but drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, according to the agency overseeing offshore drilling. The agency, the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, says it decided the remote device wasn’t needed because rigs had other back-up plans to cut off a well.
The more I read into this, the more of a giant fail it becomes. How’s that part I bolded working out for you now assholes?
You should buy BP stock. GS just changed them to a buy. There was an article in the WSJ I was just reading about how the overselling from this panic is driving their stock artificially low, and after the disaster companies typically outperform the market for the next 6 months.
I was just thinking this morning that my “little” problem of a gallon of paint not matching the previous gallon someone bought is pretty miniscule compared to the shit those guys have to deal with.
The sad thing is this isn’t the best they can do. The best would have been installing this sonar shutoff valve for $500k and after the rig blew up they could have pulled up in a boat, dropped the pinger in the water and turned off the valve. Salvage the rig so the diesel fuel it has doesn’t leak out, get check from insurance company for a new rig, profit. But noooo… some lobbyist convinced the US that mandating these shut off valves was a waste of time. Now our local oil resources will go untapped for years and years because BP handed the anti-drill movement all the ammo they need.
Yeah, but this other type, specifically designed to work from the surface and mandated by other countries, isn’t being used. See WSJ link I posted earlier.
Having one of those pre-built and ready to go would be stupid. I prefer to wait until I spill a gallon of oil in my garage to head over to amazon.com to order some Oil-Dry with 6 day shipping, because keeping it at hand is just a waste of money.