THANK YOU RACHEL!

Now, if you get a chance can you hunt around for information on a follow up story… what was the ultimate fate of the oil? what happened to the flora and fauna and human communities affected? what lingering effects remained after 31 years?

And thanks David for bringing this to my attention. I don’t watch much TV.

Elizabeth Birnbaum, director of the U.S. Minerals Management Service, President Obama told me to tell you to pick up your shit and GET THE HELL OUT!

Salazar should be gone as well.

Is she a scapegoat? She’s only been there a short time.

Cheney’s embeds need to go. But this will be too little too late corporate regulation.

We can fire Salazar tomorrow.

Nothing wrong with spreading out the pleasure and satisfaction over a couple of days.

Issa (on MSNBC) said she’d been there during Clinton and wasn’t collecting royalties- as part of the reason

Watch for the big Republican pro-environment ads to start any minute now…

Liz Birnbaum was appointed by Salazar who was appointed by President Obama.

Where would you like the buck to stop?

OK, nobody jump on me for these questions. I’m asking from my heart. This oil gusher has made me sick since the day it started, and I truly believe it’s a larger catastrophe than anyone is letting on (corporate or gov’t).

However. I watched this report on Maddow last night. I got the just of it – that we are trying things that didn’t work then and likely won’t work now.

But, my question is: if this large catastrophe happened in the Gulf 30 years ago, how did they clean the Gulf? To me, that’s an important issue. No one seems to be talking about it. I read an article earlier that said marine life was back to nearly normal in about 2 years.

In no way am I defending these crooks – BP, Transocean, and Halliburton should be out of business. The gov’t is being ridiculous. The attempt to keep reporters from the scene is alarming and sickening.

However, I’d like to have some hope that we haven’t destroyed the Gulf or possibly a large part of the freaking ocean – because I’ve been pretty certain for days that this thing has done us in.

So, does anyone have info or opinions or anything about this earlier oil spill – and why no one is discussing how we managed (or possible Mexico managed) to fix the problem then, after the gushing did stop?

it’s basically a pressure battle

Not quite. It’s Pressure vs Gravity. I have a lot confidence in gravity.

the director of the Minerals Management Service has been fired.

So where’s the new job? Massey or BP?

Could be difficult for her, these are somewhat testosterone driven industries.

It appears a trait of Obama’s to close the barn door after the horses have made their escape.

As pleased as I am that the director is being fired, that is the tip of the iceberg. If there is not a complete employee dump of MMS, then she is surely a scapegoat.

Can we expect to see Inhofe hugging a tree do you think?

How about Delay eating his own bug killer?

Yes, In a bathroom stall in keeping with R traditions?

Shall we contribute towards his tappy shoes?

Lots of spill news….”officially the worst in history…” BP cut corners/caused the explosion.

From Wiki:

Aftermath

In the next nine months, experts and divers including Red Adair were brought in to contain and cap the oil well.[6] Approximately an average of ten thousand to thirty thousand barrels per day were discharged into the Gulf until it was finally capped on 23 March 1980, nearly 10 months later.[7] Prevailing currents carried the oil towards the Texas coastline. The US government had two months to prepare booms to protect major inlets. Eventually, in the US, 162 miles (261 km) of beaches and 1421 birds were affected by 3,000,000 barrels (480,000 m3) of oil.[7] Pemex spent $100 million to clean up the spill and avoided paying compensation by asserting sovereign immunity.[8]

The oil slick surrounded Rancho Nuevo, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which is one of the few nesting sites for Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles. Thousands of baby sea turtles were airlifted to a clean portion of the Gulf of Mexico to help save the rare species.

Hurricanes/storms helped break it up (but also pushed it to TX but with enough advance notice they were somewhat prepared.)

This spill didn’t hit the Loop Current although apparently some of the concern about that is diminished now with seasonal changes.

This blog is helpful on both topics:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1492

I remember they airlifted the baby sea turtles to a safe part of the Gulf.
We also had about 2 month to prepare the Texas coast for the oil to hit. Sorry, that is about all I remember – nothing about clean up.

It would be excellent if they’ve really stopped the gusher. Hopefully, they can seal it permanently.

Thanks for posting this. I remembered correctly about the baby sea turtles and it always is a good day when I remember something correctly so I was really please to see this confirmation! :^)

I believe the Obama folks would like to ignore the appointment line to Obama and claim the Clinton’s made him appoint her via Salazar.

Shores that are already fouled by oil will probably benefit from a hurricane, but the oil cleaned off of those shores then becomes someone else’s problem.

This was no time for play
This was no time for fun
This was no time for games
There was work to be done

All that deep, deep oil
All that oil had to go

Bugs (bacteria) eat the oil over time – a very long time when it has gotten into marsh and under rock and God forbid, into the well water.

During the 30 plus years you get to out of sight – but fish/animals don’t come back (Alaska herring is nowhere to be found near that spill) and other animals deform.

Santa Barbara has natural oil seepage – so not all spills are oil industry caused – just the massive ones that the bacteria choke on because of the size of the meal they are expected to eat.

Birnbaum’s firing is distraction and misdirection, an attempt to redirect responsibility away from Obama and Salazar on to someone lower down the totem pole. There was someone else at MMS who retired recently. If Birnbaum had been smart, she would have left as well. Of course, she might have thought this other retirement would have been sufficient and so she didn’t notice Obama and Salazar lining up behind her so they could push her under the bus. I mean it isn’t like she didn’t deserve to go, but it is clear she was carrying out the policies of this Administration while she headed MMS. It wasn’t incompetence. Until this literally blew up, she was doing exactly what Obama and Salazar wanted her to do.

She’s an unknown bureaucratic technocrat that will be a sacrificial lamb. Salazar should also go but being a high profile member in good standing of the plutocracy he will benefit from the prime directive of the plutocracy, “to the greatest extent possible do no harm to fellow plutocrats.”

I smell full tilt panic mode. Spinning like mad to make everything about this horror vanish from our minds. I don’t think it’s gonna work for long as oil keeps gushing out and creeps around to the shorelines of Florida. Good Luck on that one Barack. You might run but you can’t hide.

Of all people to announce this, sheesh.
Adm. Allen has been the BP mouthpiece. He has zero credibility and a guaranteed position with BP lined up beginning next month.
(I made the last part up but who wants to make a wager?)

Huge new plume discovered

AP

Marine scientists have discovered a massive new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, stretching 22 miles from the leaking wellhead northeast toward Mobile Bay, Alabama.

David Hollander, associate professor of chemical oceanography at the school, says the thick plume was detected just beneath the surface down to about 3,300 feet. He says it’s more than 6 miles wide.

Scientists say they are worried the undersea plumes may be from chemical dispersants used to break up the oil a mile under the

Was reading this morning that scientists are predicting 7 major hurricanes this season.

Hmmm…Birnbaum had extensive experience in the Clinton Administration, holding a number of positions. Salazar’s a Colorado Democrat.

It’s a little tricky guessing how the Administration’s going to spin all of this in terms of assessing blame…oops, sorry-I mean responsibility.

Of course, you start with Bush and Cheney.

Birnbaum, as noted, is already gone.

Now…what about Salazar?

Hmmm…

Professor Goose at the oildrum reported @ 11:08 AM EDT, that

I’ve gotten two unconfirmed email reports that cementing will begin within two hours. Can anyone else confirm?

Heading Out said @ 11:26 AM EDT, that

That may be the amount of time that it is going to take to connect up the cement lines, and they may have already made the decision to do so. If this is the case they are going to cement with the drill pipe (DP) still in place. Since I conjectured that they had the well roughly balanced out at 9 pm last night, then if this was correct then they have had about 12 hours of stability, which sounds a good number to have under your belt before moving to the cement job.

Both are experts.

The gas/oil/water blowout stopped when the downward pressure in the well caused by the mud pumped into the BOP was equal to or greater than the upward pressure exerted by the gas/oil/water. The engineers could tell that equilibrium had been reached when the color of the stuff spewing out of the three tears in the crimped riser just above the BOP turned light brown, which is the color of the drilling mud BP is using.

That was just the beginning because their goal was to push the gas/oil/water back down the well and into the reservoir, which is some 18,000+ feet below the sea bottom. In theory they could stop pumping mud at that point because it could contain the upward pressure exerted by the gas/oil/water. However, they didn’t know if the well was intact. What if, for example, the casing was blown out a couple of hundred feet down from the BOP and they were pumping mud into a giant hole in a porous salt formation that might take forever to fill? If they shut off the pumps, there wouldn’t be enough mud in the pipe to prevent the gas/oil/water from blowing out again. Therefore, the engineers needed to incrementally reduce the rate at which they were pumping mud as they carefully monitored the situation for any leaks. That’s what Heading Out meant when he referred to a 12 hour period of stability.

The decision to start cementing means that they have decided to forego the somewhat lengthy and risky process of removing the drill string and drill pipe in favor of gittin ‘r done, which is probably a good idea. Assuming all systems are go, the cementing process should begin right about now.

Your humble scribe snaps fingers.

Isn’t it time to just look forward and insure this doesn’t happen again. Holding people accountable is so pre-Obama.

Prediction.

In less than 24 hours they’re going to be somehow forced to come clean that they thought it was plugged, but it didn’t work.

You’re so practical.

And dead on.

With Obama…we’ve transcended accountability.

And besides…you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right?

Do you suppose mycelial network solutions would help?

http://biomassauthority.com/mushrooms-break-down-oil-and-plastic-in-bioremediation/

Instructive exchange begins here.

Amrita

First post, so please forgive my ignorance and delete if inappropriate to this thread. Can anyone tell me why they waited over a month to attempt this top kill?

Professor Goose

Mostly Amrita, it’s because the engineering to do this took a very long time to get right. The pressures and other difficulties under the water made this a logistic nightmare–it was unprecedented. Worse, it was a one-shot game–they screwed it up, this thing gushed until the pressure eased.

Slatz:

It took them time to determine that pumping in 10-12,000 psi mud into the BOP wouldn’t fail it and make a terrible situation even worse.
They also had to design and fabricate specialized fittings that would latch onto the various ports on the BOP, that would hold up to 10-12000 psi.
They probably did in 4-5 weeks what any sane engineer would have quoted 6-12 months to do under normal circumstances.
You really ought to check out some of the prep that went into this by the ROV’s. Simply amazing what they can do.

Ah, the notorious thallophytes, gordonot.

Bring ‘em on!

DW

I saw Rachel’s piece also and thought it was great.

I was disappointed that she gave no credit to Reuters for running a print version of the same story about three days ago.

Thanks for the post providing updates. I missed RM’s piece last evening, so kudos to her as well.

Birmbaum being “fired”? Meh. Although some level of “satisfaction,” she’ll just move on to working directly for the corporations, rather than indirectly. As Cheney would say: SO???

Plus too many incompetents and corporate lackeys riddled throughout that Agency (and far too many others). I think we’re screwed no matter what; it’s also just 3 card monte, with some scapegoat having to take the “bullet” and get kicked out. The buck stops with BHO anyway. I won’t hold my breath for Mr. Cowboy Corporate Hack Salazar to get the boot; ain’t gonna happen.

BP deserves to be criticized, but take a minute to congratulate the engineers who have done an incredible job no one had attempted to do before and they are close to pulling it off.

If they succeed, I think this effort certainly rivals NASA’s effort to return the Apollo 13 astronauts safely from the Moon.

They may have saved our planet and they deserve our thanks.

I’m definitely pulling for the engineers! They will be heroes if they pull this off. But I will always despise BP’s management and PR flacks.

I agree.

It’s an extremely important distinction to make.

THE ENGINEERS WHO PULLED THIS OFF ARE HEROES.

Thanks for the link. That helps a lot. I see now that things weren’t so rosy in the Gulf after 2 years. It was just weird to me that no one even mentioned the previous spill until Rachel Maddow brought up. Thanks

thanks for the info. I knew I probably shouldn’t get too hopeful that things would be OK. Besides the fact that this oil “spill” is larger than they’re saying, it really is impossible to predict how nature will react. And, of course, the Gulf is different now than it was then.

yes, quite a feat,

and let’s hope they apply this much discipline to future risky oil drilling operations.

Our worship of technology and engineering helped get us into this situation in the first place. How many of those engineers have been following BP/Transocean/Halliburton/whoever’s orders for years, in the surely many not-so-heroic events that led up to not only this particular blowout, but the whole field of deep-ocean drilling?

Thad Allen just proves that forty years does not a brain trust make.

As Obama told us today we have the best and the brightest working on this, and the results show the best and the brightest can we completely inadequate.

We in this Country always look to experts and people we consider as smart.
We are supposed to have all these people yet the Country has all it’s problems and none get fixed. Other Countries all over the world are making us out to be fools, by advances in things we were at a time supposed to be leaders on.

We can’t build ships, most of our cars, televisions, consummer goods, air planes, computers, telephones, and even our toys are made and developed overseas. The biggest atom smashers, fusion generators, and many other really scientific things we are being bypassed by other Countries. We are becomming what we are, a Country of blowhards, and money grubbers, that think their powerful Military makes us great.

If Thad Allen is the best we can muster to handle the Gulf spill, maybe we aught to just give the F#&K up.

With all due respect, I don’t think that’s a relevant consideration today. I’m looking at this job, how difficult it was, and what was at stake. They had to invent the wheel, so to speak, by working with robots in total darkness at the Gates of Hell with zero margin for error: 5,067 feet underwater at 4 degrees Centigrade and 2200 psi in the midst of a virtual snowfall of extremely volatile methane hydrates.

Not much was at stake, except for the planet and all of its life forms.

Oh, although I don’t know, I don’t believe any of the engineers and scientists who pulled this off had anything to do with causing the explosion, or any of BP’s policies.

New wrinkle.

Posted by Heading Out.

The operation has already used all the mud on one of the supply boats, and has moved to the second (there is a third standing by so they won’t run out). The concern, however is now with the volume of cement that will be required for the seal.

The high volume that is leaking would require that additional amount to the volume needed for the seal itself, and that may be closer to the available capacity of the system that they have in place, or the supplies that they have on site to achieve the seal. If that is the case, one can understand the desire to at least partially plug the leaks in the BOP, and to wait until the mud column fully balances the pressure in the oil reservoir before starting this phase of the operation.

If that is the case, one can understand the desire to at least partially plug the leaks in the BOP, and to wait until the mud column fully balances the pressure in the oil reservoir before starting this phase of the operation.

Ah, yesssss, The fabled Jam Shot.

And what would that be?

A shot o jamf?

No, dummy!

Then what?

Go to the high tech department at Walmart and bring me back a bunch of

rubber strips and small spheres in the hope that these will lodge in the flow path within the BOP and reduce the leakage of fluid.

OK, Boss.

Meanwhile the plot thickens, as one of my trusted sources on the street related this conversation between Professor Goose and Rockman:

Goose: Hey ROCK, what’s your thoughts on already having gone through a tanker of mud in 8 hours? That’s a lot of loss right?

It seems to me this thing may be far from over… :(

ROCKMAN: Goose — I KNOW nothing but I suspect it might not be working. I thought of a way folks could look at the effort in a manner they can more easily visualize. Here goes: there is a fire hydrant open full force. Putting out 7 ppg water at 80 psi at a RATE OF 500 GALLONS PER MINUTE.. Now I want to stop that water from coming up the main by pointing another fire hose at it. Unfortanately I can’t connect the hose directly to the hydrant because the threads are messed up (i.e. bad BOP). So all I can do is hold the end of the hose close to the opening of the hydrant. My hose is putting out 500 gallons of 16.5 ppg mud at a pressure of 80 psi. So can I stop the water flowing from the hydrant? Nope…the pressures are the same. At best the two streams hit each other and the total flows out of the gap.

This is the problem I’ve had with the top kill from the start. I’ve been on rigs where we’ve pumped a successful kill pill. But the well was shut in. All we had to do was pump in at a pressure greater that the shut in pressure of the well. The pressured mud would push whatever was in the well downwards. But the BP well isn’t shut in…it’s flowing. How much force do you need to apply to a river to make it flow upstream? I know folks were holding out for the top kill to work so I didn’t want to be too negative. But if they couldn’t get a very tight seal on the BOP I couldn’t envision how they could get the flow to stop let alone flow backwards down the csg. But as I’v said before I’m not an engineer…just pretend to be sometimes on TOD.

Link.

Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water.

Arghhhhhhhh!

Houston, we’ve still got a problem . . .

This just in from aliilaali

this is not going well….

they’ve been pumping for 27 hrs now at avg rate of 19.2 gal/min ……30000 bbl of kill mud out …this is starting to look like SIDPP/SICP equalization is not going to happen here ……bullheading is not working here folks….

and wellbore has to be exhaling/breathing by now …..

always was a long shot bullheading a flowing well…..can’t blame em’ for trying though ….

Press conference underway.

They had to invent the wheel, so to speak, by working with robots in total darkness at the Gates of Hell with zero margin for error: 5,067 feet underwater at 4 degrees Centigrade and 2200 psi in the midst of a virtual snowfall of extremely volatile methane hydrates.

I’ll be sure to record the Discovery Channel tribute special, then.

Oh, although I don’t know, I don’t believe any of the engineers and scientists who pulled this off had anything to do with causing the explosion, or any of BP’s policies.

That would be nice to believe. And do they also have nothing to do with enabling drilling in our oceans, period?

They stopped pumping last night at midnight and will be restarting the pumping process in a few hours because the “well is still flowing.”

They had to restock on mud and now they have another 19,000 barrels available.

Therefore, they’ve postponed the cementing process.

(This is not good news)

They will be pumping bridging material and the Junk Shot tonight.

(Translation: The first effort failed. They did not force the gas/oil/water back into the reservoir and now it’s leaking again.)

The big pipe they are pumping into is 21 inches in diameter, and the pump line only a couple inches in diameter. Unless the open end of the big pipe is restricted enough, they could pump mud till doomsday and it will all be pumped out that big open hole.

Then they tell us their engineers have all this worked out.