At any cost?

quote:

Originally posted by dukegrad98:
In spots, the hypocrisy of this thread is almost overwhelming. Get back to me when there's not a drop of fossil-derived lubricant in your vehicle.

Here in the real world, we need oil. End of story.

Yes, we need... or at least use petroleum products.

What about future generations? If we look at life from the time of Christ to today... 2000 years into the future. Will there be any left? The period of the Holocene Epoch, 10,000 years? Or, the estimated lifespan of Earth, 5 billion years?

In this crisis, BP has made many decisions that has prolonged the spill unnecessarily. And, they are torching 20,000 barrels of oil per day. Certainly more than I'll ever have in my crankcase.

And, I have to question whether moving the Helix 1 into position is an adequate response, or why it wasn't done 2 months ago.

As mentioned, the Bonga FPSO (or a similar ship) should have the capacity to handle all the well produces. But, BP has consistently made decisions that leave more oil in the water, and less for fuel production.

Yes, the Bonga FPSO is currently in use. But, if your neighbor's house is on fire, would you unplug your garden sprinkler and loan them the hose?

And, furthermore, for a emergency response plan, why don't they have the necessary tools on hand?

For the cost of this bungled response, BP could have built a dozen ships the size of the Bonga FPSO, and not only saved money, but saved a tremendous amount of unnecessary waste and environmental contamination.

Deep water drilling?
SURE, BUT DO IT SAFELY

That is exactly my point, as posted some time ago all they needed to have was an already drilled relief well as is mandatory in several other countries, this thing would have been over on day 1.5. Twenty years from now, when they may be half finished with the cleanup, they will have paid enough for one million relief wells.

quote:

2000 years into the future. Will there be any left?

Humans will poison themselves to extinction long before then.

Over the next few hundred years oil will eventually become too expensive to use for fuel and the relatively abundant supplies of coal and natural gas will be used.

Or perhaps humans will become smart enough to use PV solar energy to charge electric cars instead of using irreplaceable fossil fuels.

Of course that would require a drastic shift in mind set away from the 'cheaper is best' metric.

I rather doubt if humans as a group have the mental capacity to do that.

The most likely scenario will be an ever growing population concentrated in ever larger urban slums until some bio-bug significantly reduces the population back to what the earth can sustain.

There are a number of things that would have cut the spill down to almost nothing...

• The pre-drilled relief wells (although I'm not sure about the 3 is better than one approach of well drilling), but it would have helped.
  
• Better access ports on the BOP where pressure could have been relieved and the well capped or plugged.
  
• A FPSO ship available for emergency use in the Gulf that had adequate capacity to receive the oil from the well... say 200,000 barrels a day.
  
• not dinking around trying to cover holes in the shattered pipe, and just accessing the pipe at the top of the BOP and capping/plugging it.
  
• Practicing a response before the emergency occurs.
  
• Having a diverter and BOP at the top of the well pipe, so the blowout gets diverted away from the well drilling rig rather than onto the deck.
  
• Having functioning equipment that is tested and rated for the depths it is being used.
  
• Having secondary access/activation methods on the BOP. For example plugging in auxiliary hydraulics from the ship or sub.

As it is... 3 million to 6 million barrels of oil have been spilled...

At about $50 a barrel... that would be $150 Million to $300 Million worth of oil... just gone. The value of the wasted oil alone would go a long ways.

If you add that to the billions already paid out in disaster response, and the billions that will come in the future....

A high capacity FPSO ship could have been paid for, and on standby (or more likely in active use, with provisions to pull the plug and move as necessary).

And a lot of other "safety equipment" could have also been utilized.

I suppose there is a catch in there.

If the spill had only lasted 24-48 hrs...

Or if it hadn't occurred at all.

It would be hard to convince someone that having spent the amount of money necessary to prevent/limit the spill actually was worth it.

I.E. Had they had a BOP that actually worked... then the management at BP would be cursing having wasted the money drilling a blown well, rather than wondering whether they should be looking for new jobs.

John,

Good post about the centrifuges...

I wonder if they get paid double... Paid by BP for running the barge.. and then get to sell the "waste oil" for profit.

Of course, the better approach would be getting the equipment at the wellhead to receive and process the oil there rather than dumping the excess it into the water.

A few more things that would have cut the spill down to almost nothing...

* Federal government inspectors and regulators who had the integrity to do their job instead of succumbing to bribes and influence from BP and other oil companies to turn a blind eye to infractions.

* A federal administration that paid more than mere lip service to the environment and insisted on the proven safety technology that countries like Norway require for all offshore rigs.

* A POTUS with the 'right stuff'


This incident was totally preventable and was caused by nothing more than greed, stupidity, and a prevailing attitude of 'doing it on the cheap' just so Americans can have cheap gas to 'sustain' their wasteful lifestyle.

quote:

Originally posted by john galt:
A few more things that would have cut the spill down to almost nothing...

* Federal government inspectors and regulators who had the integrity to do their job instead of succumbing to bribes and influence from BP and other oil companies to turn a blind eye to infractions.

* A federal administration that paid more than mere lip service to the environment and insisted on the proven safety technology that countries like Norway require for all offshore rigs.

If the answer to the question is "the government," then it was a stupid question to start with. And anyone with the audacity to call himself John Galt ought to know it!

quote:

Originally posted by john galt:
* A POTUS with the 'right stuff'

A beautiful dream, isn't it? Haven't seen one in a good while.

quote:

Originally posted by john galt:
This incident was totally preventable and was caused by nothing more than greed, stupidity, and a prevailing attitude of 'doing it on the cheap' just so Americans can have cheap gas to 'sustain' their wasteful lifestyle.

I'm certain my lifestyle is no more or less wasteful than your own. Apologies if it interrupts your American-bashing. I don't take it too personally.

Cheers, John

No "American bashing" expressed or implied. Don't take it personally unless it applies to you. When "doing things on the cheap" for whatever reason there will be consequences. Since my eco-footprint is less than half the N.American average, then my lifestyle is likely much less wasteful than most.
The entire North American wasteful lifestyle is predicated on the assumption that fuel will always be cheap. If they had to pay world prices for fuel then N.Americans would adopt a more frugal lifestyle, bytching and complaining all the way of course.

quote:

Originally posted by john galt:
The entire North American wasteful lifestyle is predicated on the assumption that fuel will always be cheap. If they had to pay world prices for fuel then N.Americans would adopt a more frugal lifestyle, bytching and complaining all the way of course.

I generally agree with your comments. Here, I would argue that we Americans actually pay closer to market prices for fuel than Europeans or generally anyone else. World prices are greatly distorted by tax load. U.S. prices are among the cheapest because our taxes are the lowest.

Of course, actual subsidies can affect this analysis as much as taxes. Where countries like Germany and UK tax the bugger out of fuel, other places like Venezuela keep fuel artificially cheap. Again I say, U.S. prices are among the closest to actual market prices, and the taxes that we do have are fairly transparent.

Cheers, John

European countries place higher taxes on non-renewable energy and use those tax revenues to create more sustainable infrastructure such as electrified railway networks.

quote:

Originally posted by dukegrad98:
I'm certain my lifestyle is no more or less wasteful than your own. Apologies if it interrupts your American-bashing. I don't take it too personally.

As long as Americans continue to use far more than their share of BTU's per capita, we should expect to be seen as "wasteful". Many many people on the planet live well on much less energy use than the average American.

"Personally" is the only way I care to take it, and therefore I continue to reduce my footprint as a matter of pride. Anything less feels like being a glutton in the front of the buffet line, I *can* keeping piling more on my plate, but only at the expense of others.

Bob in Moncure

Freesoul,
Did you get any feedback about the effectiveness or otherwise about your drum of glycerin degreaser that you sent down?
Jon

Lather! will carry anything coming in on it. So far there has been this articlewritten, but not much else AFAIK. Running into the typical gov't red tape bureaucratic nightmare.

interesting..

the most basic answer is over looked..
the well head didn't fail..its not leaking the blowout preventer is..

why is this not closed?
1. it takes power to close
2. it takes hydraulics to close

this is not failsafe..with the loss of power or hydraulic the blowout should have CLOSED! period..

well closed..no problem..opening it again might be.SO??

the biggest problem..why wasn't this part of the design?
air brakes on big rigs have this 'failsafe' design..and have had it for decades..why not oil rigs?
now we suffer with poor design and poor government rules and controls.

while this does help the OP poster..I have a bunch of glycerin available all demethed if it helps..
does glycerin help with the clean up?

-dkenny

The points you raise were covered earlier in this discussion.



A worker on the Deepwater Horizon tells Panorama's Hilary Andersson that a key part of the rig's spill prevention equipment was broken weeks before the rig exploded.

Tyrone Benton, who is now suing BP and Transocean, said both were informed of the leak in the safety device.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama..._8750000/8750800.stm

This message has been edited. Last edited by: john galt,

Starting to notice a trend on the local tv stations.

The more BP advertising a station runs, the fewer negative stories I hear about BP on local tv. It looks to me like BP is spending millions on advertising on the local tv stations.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BP...&ad=6043334413&kw=bp

However, I'm still hearing about fishermen hired by BP for skimming that rarely or never leave the docks. They have thousands of skimming boats hired and a few dozen actually skimming.

And for some reason, I'm still hearing about US Government road blocks to the cleanup. For instance, after a skimmer sucks up oily water, it can separate out most of the water pump it overboard then continue skimming, but the EPA is demanding that they meet clean water standards. Now isn't that a hoot. They have to stop sucking up oil to take contaminated water back to shore for cleaning oil free to 15ppm. They could be picking up tons of oil, if they could just dump a few hundred ppm back into the Gulf. WTF?