British Petroleum - desperate for ideas - gave the okay to test six of Costner's gizmos this week, said BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles.posted by jenkinsEar at 9:48 AM on May 20, 2010 [2 favorites]
Costner's high-speed centrifuge machine has a Los Angeles-perfect name: "Ocean Therapy."
Placed on a barge, it sucks in large quantities of polluted water, separates out the oil and spits back 97% clean water.
With at least 655,000 gallons of the chemicals already in the Gulf, it is the largest application of dispersants in the history of U.S. oil spills, according to the EPA.posted by saulgoodman at 10:20 AM on May 20, 2010
What’s more, the EPA and the Coast Guard had allowed BP to spray the Corexit dispersants underwater, near the source of the spill–a method that has never been used and is not the recommended application of the Corexit products, according to the EPA’s website. Independent scientists recently discovered giant plumes of dispersed oil forming in the deep waters of the Gulf and told The New York Times they suspected the undersea application of dispersants were a possible cause.
At least four significant problems have been identified with the BOP:posted by boo_radley at 1:33 PM on May 20, 2010
* There was a leak in the hydraulic system that provides power to the shear rams.
* The BOP had been modified in unexpected ways. The underwater control panel had been disconnected from the bore ram, and instead connected to a test ram. Drawings of the BOP provided by Transocean to BP do not correspond to the structure that is on the ocean bottom.
* The BOP's shear ram is not powerful enough to cut through joints in the well pipe. It is only effective on the body of a drill pipe. Since 10% of the drill pipe is threaded joints, the BOP is expected to succeed on only 90% of the drill pipe.
* Emergency control to the BOP may have failed in multiple ways. Cameron, the BOP's manufacturer, has stated that the explosion may have severed the communication link so the BOP never received the instruction to engage. Before the backup dead man's switch will engage, communications, power and hydraulic lines must all be severed; Cameron, has stated it is possible BOPs hydraulic lines were intact after the explosion, in which case the unit would not engage. Of the two control pods for the deadman switch, the one that has been inspected so far had a dead battery.[47]
Tonight CBS Evening News reported they were denied access to oiled shoreline by a civilian vessel that had clean-up workers contracted by BP, as well as Coast Guard personnel on board. CBS News video taped the exchange during which time one of the contractors told them (on tape) that " ... this is BP's rules not ours."Of course, as others have pointed out, his hand-waving about safety and then his suggestion that "embedded" reporters are already taking care of coverage is a bit worrying.
Neither BP nor the U.S. Coast Guard, who are responding to the spill, have any rules in place that would prohibit media access to impacted areas and we were disappointed to hear of this incident. In fact, media has been actively embedded and allowed to cover response efforts since this response began, with more than 400 embeds aboard boats and aircraft to date. Just today 16 members of the press observed clean-up operations on a vessel out of Venice, La.
The only time anyone would be asked to move from an area would be if there were safety concerns, or they were interfering with response operations. This did occur off South Pass Monday which may have caused the confusion reported by CBS today.
The entities involved in the Deepwater Horizon/BP Response have already reiterated these media access guidelines to personnel involved in the response and hope it prevents any future confusion.
James Carville Takes On Obama On Oil Spill: He's 'Risking Everything' With 'Go Along With BP Strategy'I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, obviously, but politically their response has been similar to the wallstreet crisis. Just let the people who caused the problem handle it. It seems like just now the government is forcing BP to switch to a safer, more efficent dispersant. But one that costs them more (because they own the more toxic dispersant company, apparently)
Carville, the famously outspoken Louisianian who was a chief political aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday that the administration's response to the spill has been "lackadaisical" and that Obama was "naive" to trust BP to manage the massive clean-up effort.
"I think they actually believe that BP has some kind of a good motivation here," he said. "They're naive! BP is trying to save money, save everything they can... They won't tell us anything, and oddly enough, the government seems to be going along with it! Somebody has got to, like shake them and say, 'These people don't wish you well! They're going to take you down!'"
Deepwater Horizon oil spill revealed an industry ill-prepared to deal with 'black swan' eventBlack Swan? Seriously? What the fuck is it with people and that term. It's idiotic to call this a black swan. A Black Swan is something no one could have imagined. This was predicable and predicted. You drill for oil, you sometimes get a gusher. Maybe they figured their technology would prevent the problem, but that's like saying getting a girl pregnant was unimaginable because you were using a condom.
Oil disaster brought to you by deregulation
Oil Spill Clean-Up Workers Getting SickANOTHER BLACK SWAN! WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING!?
The debate concerned BP’s desire to replace heavy drilling fluid with lighter saltwater before the well was sealed with cement plugs.posted by Mental Wimp at 12:08 PM on May 26, 2010
“The driller was outlining what would be taking place, whereupon the company man stood up and said, ‘No, we’ll be having some changes to that,’ “ Mr. Brown said. “The OIM, tool-pusher and driller disagreed with that, but the company man said, ‘Well, this is how it’s going to be,’ and the tool-pusher, driller and OIM reluctantly agreed.”
Barack Obama says the catastrophic Gulf oil spill shows the country must move toward clean energy by embracing energy efficiency, tapping natural gas and nuclear power and eliminating tax breaks for big oil... by rolling back billions of dollars in tax breaks and using the money for clean energy research and development.This is the best news I've heard in weeks.
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posted by klanawa at 7:44 AM on May 20, 2010