Rolling 2010 Oil Spill Thread

Loosely "libertarian" in that I'm generally opposed to governmental middle-class income transfer subsidies/entitlements like Social Security & Medicare, as well as subsidies to the millitary-industrial complex like the Cold War buildup or elective wars like those in Grenada, Panama, Columbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Excluding middle-class income transfers, overspending on the military, and concomitent interest on entitlement/MIC produced deficits leaves about 20% of the US federal budget as actually elective, the pie-slice that has been argued over for the past 40 years.

Once one takes as the principle that we should leave a better world for successive generations, and to not do so will only make their liabilities worse, then wealth transfer entitlements and military spending become obstacles to steering the ship of state as great as that of corporate preferences.

I'd love a market economy in which balancing human needs and environmental externalities were considered engineering optimization problems. Unfortunately, we're ruled by lawyers and not engineers, so we'll get "solutions" supported by Goldman Sachs and law partnerships rather than incentives that actually work. Noted GW scientist Jim Hansen has spoken at length on this.

Its a two party system. I still support the party that is more amenable to pragmatism & rationalism than that which clamps its hands over its ears. That doesn't mean I like all of my fellow supporters.

apologies in advance for the irrational sidebar on an otherwise rational thread, but a secret kremlin report detailing the north korean torpedo attack responsible for the rig explosion! waaay more exciting than discussion of energy policy, and more plausible than 9/11 conspiracy theories to boot.

(ugh repost, sorry, mods can delete at will)

Libertarianism means a lot of different things to different people. But one unifying feature (I thought) was that it stresses the primacy of individual action over that of the State. But of all the arguments against libertarianism, I always thought that the history of man's interaction with the environment was perhaps the #1 case against it. After all, environmental policy is so difficult precisely because of the paradox that people, acting in their own private interests, will destroy the environment that they depend on, due in part to the temporal and spatial discounting that I rambled about over here on the impending end of the world thread.

Corporations are artificial life-forms.

OTM. Skynet has been happening for 100+ years now.

xp Z S: Exactly.

The major fault of classical libertarianism with respect to my concerns is that doesn't take into consideration economic externalities. My neighbor can build a pork concentrated animal feeding operation, its atmospheric and surface water effluents will destroy my own well-being and property value, and classical libertarianism has nothing to say about it. The same is true of industries, nations, and individuals releasing greenhouse gases into our common atmosphere. Its no stretch to say that many current crises are in Garrett Hardin's phrase, Tradgedies of the Commons. The linked essay should be required reading for anyone in elective or high executive office by the way.

So, if you see the primary and central role of government as ensuring our and our descendants survival and well-being, then within native/market economies the most effective tool is for government to place a price on externalities. Put a price on C02, and tax carbon consumption and exhaust rather than income from non-carbon intensive income, etc.

Governments can't do everything, and to no small extent, they much chose priorities. In the US we have archeological strata perverse incentives who all have their own lobbies. We encourage housing separation of family generations (since the elderly expect to receive independent income), reverse wealth transfer from the poor to the rich (the elderly are now the wealthiest demographic slice), health cost inflation (since we demand coverage rather than insurance), increasing debt (federal deficits are now funded by Fed Reserve "quantitative easing" (read printing)), and I could go on and on.

In time, we will change our incentive structure. If a country like China can wholly transform itself in 30 years, so can we. But to think we can do everything is youthful idealism. We choose priorities, and I choose leaving my nephews and nieces a better world (environmentally) than the one I inherited.

archeological strata of perverse incentives which all....

I shouldn't essay whilst taking breaks from lawnmowing....

On a lighter note:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWuuXpeqNNw

I LOVE that clip. Just used it to defuse a heated political argument (and simultaneously make my point!) with a family member on FB.

loooooooooooooooool

I thought I was maybe being pessimistic with 25,000 barrels/day, but...

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen said the volume of crude oil spewing from the damaged well could climb to 100,000 barrels a day, with 60 days to 90 days needed for BP to drill relief wells to stem the flow. He spoke to the obvious urgency of stopping the flow of crude.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/gulf_oil_spill_has_our_full_at.html

nice

British Petroleum has withdrawn one of its waiver forms after fishermen in Venice, a town bracing for the arrival of an oil slick from the company's leaking rig, complained BP was trying to “pull the wool over our eyes” by asking them to sign away all rights to sue.

The waiver form was distributed Saturday at a Venice public school, where the company was offering a health and safety class for locals whom it says it will hire. Though a spokeswoman said the company does not yet know exactly what positions it's hiring for, it was accepting applications and, with them, the signed waivers

...

Many were frustrated by the paperwork and bureaucracy, citing frequently BP's lack of local staff.

“We got a certificate of completion that doesn't even have my name on it. Come on, now,” said Bret Ainsworth, 51, a crab fisherman...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/bp-pulls-forms-asking-fishermen-to-sign-away-rights-to-sue/article1554200/

There are a number of international 'suspects' who might want to do something like this. They range from Muslim terrorists to the Red Chinese

Whew, glad Chiang Kai-Shek isn't involved.

Man, this whole situation has me seriously depressed.

It's mindboggling that there isn't a regulated safety procedure in place in case of such an event. Like, no one sat down and said "if this device fails, x amount of oil will flow out at such and such a rate - let's devise a way to cap it." What other safety.procedures are not in place for activities with potentially catestrophic results?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/ag_bp_trying_to_get_alabamians_to_give_up_right_to.php?ref=fpblg

They're still trying to cheat in Alabama, though. xxxp

Who's to blame for the oil spill? Dick Cheney
By Alex Pareene

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill could end up being the worst American man-made environmental catastrophe of this generation. With the oil still spilling and investigations into the causes yet to come, it's too early to neatly assign blame to any one person. But for now, let's hold Dick Cheney personally responsible for the whole thing.

Here's the evidence: The Wall Street Journal reports that the oil well didn't have a remote-control shut-off switch. The reason it didn't have a thing that it seems every single offshore drilling rig should have? According to environmental lawyer Mike Papantonio, it's because Dick Cheney's energy task force decided that the $500,000 switches were too expensive, and they didn't want to make BP buy any.

Is that not enough reason to blame the former Dark Lord of the Naval Observatory? Guess what: Halliburton is involved, too! The Los Angeles Times reports that BP contracted Dick Cheney's old company to cement the deepwater drill hole. Cementing the hole was, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, "the single most-important factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period." And Hallburton is already under investigation for faulty cementing in an Australian well last year.

The spill will very likely destroy the fragile economies of at least five states and it could even plunge the nation back into a recession. So thanks, Dick. Nice work.

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/05/03/dick_cheney_halliburton_oil_spill/index.html

lol @ that conspiracy link:

To the reason for North Korea attacking the Deepwater Horizon, these reports say, was to present US President Obama with an “impossible dilemma” prior to the opening of the United Nations Review Conference of the Parties to the Treat on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) set to begin May 3rd in New York.

This “impossible dilemma” facing Obama is indeed real as the decision he is faced with is either to allow the continuation of this massive oil leak catastrophe to continue for months, or immediately stop it by the only known and proven means possible, the detonation of a thermonuclear device.

Looking forward to "Loose Change 2: NK-Ultra"... actually, I was writing a big long post about how that conspiracy theory is tailor-made for libertarians and other free-market types so they don't have to deal with the cognitive dissonance this tragedy should trigger in their credulous, tiny minds. But this whole thing is so depressing I just don't have the heart right now.

Things could be looking much more positive by the weekend:

May 3, 2010
BP Says Crews Make Progress Stemming Oil Leaks
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and HENRY FOUNTAIN

NEW ORLEANS — BP reported some glimmers of progress on Monday in its efforts to stem oil leaks from an undersea well off the Louisiana coast that have created what President Obama called a “potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.”

Bill Salvin, a company spokesman, said that crews had finished building a containment dome, a 4-story, 70-ton structure that the company plans to lower into place over one of the three leaks to catch the escaping oil and allow it to be pumped to the surface. The other two domes would be completed on Tuesday, Mr. Salvin said, and crews hoped to install all three domes by the weekend.

“That will essentially eliminate most of the issues you have with oil in the water,” he said.

Basically, while the relief wells are drilled to clog the reservoir around the first well (this rig was contracted the day Deepwater Horizon sank, and has been on station since Tuesday), they'll pump up collected oil/sea water collected in these 70-ton domes up to a barge, separate out the oil (this is done cheaply with centrifuges), and offload at intervals. The manufacturer of the collector domes is Superior Well Services, who had a handful of these already fabbed for just such an event.

From someone who is a regular on a number of energy and energy investment related boards, the sense is that this leak will be much, much smaller than either Valdez or IXTOC 1, with most of the consequence being political. It will be very difficult to expand US drilling, so most of the rigs present in the GOM will be moving to the Mexican side, Brazil, or West Africa, and 5-10k or so jobs will be lost.

I saw that article earlier today, and while it's about 100x more optimistic than anything thing else I've read (and not so coincidentally relies on the optimism of the BP spokesman), maaaaaaaaaan I hope they're right and it works.

I suppose owners of BP-branded gasoline stations will be hurt as well by boycotts, organized or not, as happened in the aftermath of the Valdez incident.

Most (all?) BP stations are franchised and not owned by the company, and in the US, gasoline is transported through regional distribution hubs shared by all refiners and retailers. When you fill up your tank, the oil may have come from an Aramco well in Saudi Arabia, transported on Frontline tanker to a Valero refinery, with gasoline shipped on Energy Transfer Parners pipes to a distribution facility in your city, then trucked out by a BP truck to a BP station. The various brands differ only in the additive mixture added to the tanker trucks at local distribution facilities. Its a highly rationalized and vertically segmented industry, so boycotts only hurt the owner of the retail station, who more often than not is not the company you wish to boycott.

I hear this guy is hiring

This is so cool:

http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/loopcurrent.gif

Figure 1. The Loop Current flow northwards into the Gulf of Mexico. Every 6-11 months, a bulge in the current cuts off into a clockwise-rotating eddy that then drifts slowly west-southwestward towards Texas. Image credit: NOAA.

I had always assumed the flow was clockwise more or less throughout the Gulf...

Spill, baby, spill!!

The PB Atlantis rig (photo) is the world's largest and deepest submersible oil and natural gas platform -- it can produce 8.4 million gallons of oil a day. It is situated in the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite the present disaster, concerns that had been raised about the safety of Atlantis have not gone away. Rather, they are a giant step closer to having been validated. Food and Water Watch made this statement about Atlantis as early as July 2009:
BP has repeatedly skirted the law in developing the Atlantis project. BP’s own database from November 2008 shows that it does not have the required engineering certification for 85 percent of the project’s subsea piping and instrument diagrams and many of its safety shutdown systems’ logic diagrams....

Tell Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to launch an immediate investigation and, given the seriousness of the situation, immediately suspend production at the Atlantis. Ask your member of Congress to call for oversight hearings on MMS regarding the regulation of the Atlantis and what role the Bush Administration played in allowing BP to operate the platform without proper safety documentation.

http://jotman.blogspot.com/2010/05/why-us-must-order-bp-to-supsend.html

Looks some scientist share my concerns about the chemical dispersant (my emphasis):

The dispersants are designed to break down crude into tiny drops, which can be eaten up by naturally occurring bacteria, to lessen the impact of a giant sea of crude washing on to oyster beds and birds' nests on shore. But environmental scientists say the dispersants, which can cause genetic mutations and cancer, add to the toxicity of the spill. That exposes sea turtles and bluefin tuna to an even greater risk than crude alone. Dolphins and whales have already been spotted in the spill.The dangers are even greater for dispersants poured into the source of the spill, where they are picked up by the current and wash through the Gulf.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/05/dispersant-deepwater-horizon-oil-toxic

And that's for the new, approved dispersant. The article makes it clear that BP would probably run out of these and use their old backup supply, which is a more toxic substance that hasn't been approved in the US.

....all so that they avoid the 'bird covered in oil' photo op

These guys really have their safety bases covered don't they. Jesus fuck. And there I was on the politics thread like a month ago going "well, drilling isn't necessarily a bad thing, hem, haw, blah". Fuck me.

I just read up on this thing and it's rly depressing me. What sort of impact is it going to have on the environment over the next year? How is it going to affect peoples' health, and will you even be able to fucking go to the beach anymore?

What sort of impact is it going to have on the environment over the next year100 years?

:(

wait, their rig is called Atlantis? After the mythic city lost in a disaster that sank it to the bottom of the ocean?

Oh i meant to add "Next decade?" to that.

I was young but experienced the IXTOC 1, in which 454,000 tonnes were spilled, about twelve times as great as the 37,000 tonnes spilt by the Valdez in Prince Edward Sound. Beaches from Brownsville to Galveston had crud, which was cleaned up by volunteers and tide over the course of 3 months. There was little/no evidence of the spill even on the nearest Mexican beaches within 3 years.

The Gulf is pretty resilient, and crude is disposed of by bacteria, heat, and waves much more rapidly than the Arctic. Every year, about 600 natural oil seeps release about 2 Valdez spills worth of oil into the Gulf every year. In fact, the largest oil field in the Gulf was discovered in 1976 when a fisherman named Rudesindo Cantarell noticed abnormally oily patches on the surface. Pemex named the Cantarell field, responsible for about half of Mexico's production for many years, after him.

There are environmental disasters that have much longer lasting consequences. Dioxin in groundwater. Near permanently poluted rivers from mining (especially in China and Eastern Europe). Global warming. But they don't produce newsworthy photographs.

So far, the engineering discussions are looking fairly positive for this one being contained. Besides the containment "domes", it appears some bright guy at Cameron or BP figured out how to repurpose the blow-out preventer to pump heavy mud into the top of the well, rather than waiting for 2-3 months for the relief well to touch-down near the site of the bottom-well plug failure.

Don't worry, the Gulf coast oil industry will suffer. In fact, most of the deep-water rigs are being bid much higher dayrates to work in other basins. After all, the Gulf was only producing about 1.5 million bbl/day (about 8% of U.S. consumption), and we can afford the additional $130 million to buy it from elsewhere. China's still extending credit. Right?

The IXTOC spill took place hundreds of miles from the Texas coast, and didn't end up impacting the TX coast for several months, correct? Again, comparing your experience with that spill to Exxon Valdez on the current spill is apples and oranges.

I'm not sure why you linked to the study about 2 Valdez spills worth of oil in the Gulf every year. The article itself notes that the oil spilled out in this manner is a hundredth of a millimeter thick, and "impossible to see with the human eye and harmless to marine animals". So what is the point you're trying to make? Oil in water isn't a big deal? Against all evidence?

I suppose maybe you're trying to make a point about coastal resiliency to oil spills, but again, that assertion flies in the face of evidence of ruined communities, economies and ecosystems.

"Don't worry, the Gulf coast oil industry will suffer." ? The only, ONLY potential "bright side" of this whole debacle was that potentially it could help to spur on desperately needed energy/climate legislation. A lot of the consequences of climate change are difficult for people to comprehend either because they come in the form of warnings about the future, or increases in the probabilities of events such as severe weather, droughts, etc. In other words, a lot of the issue is difficult to communicate because it's somewhat abstract. This oil disaster, on the other hand, is concrete and undeniable, and thus serves as a potential turning point for a lot of closed minds. But in response, you repeatedly opine about how oil spills aren't a big deal and worry about the health of the oil industry?

What's your point?

I simply wished to counter the speculation about decades or a century of devastation above.

It's potentially going to be pretty lousy for some coastal marshes and barrier islands from Grand Isle to Mobile, but the Gulf is warmer and not nearly as enclosed as Prince Edward sound. In Alaska, the spill washed ashore almost immediately, without any time for weathering. Here, most of the volatile components (like the gasoline fraction) evaporate off, leaving heavier tarballs that mostly sink to the mud and get eaten by bacteria. The Gulf eddy current presently active will tend to draw a good deal of the spill into a clockwise rotation that will send the much of the spill away from shores to deposit in the abyss. There's also a huge difference in that whereas Prince Edward sound was roadless wilderness with little infrastructure, Houma and Morgan City are two huge centers for the service industry and only about 150 mi away, so the response has been an order of magnitude faster.

I understand the desire to have some press focus on environmental concerns. I think its a great idea to wean ourselves from carbon fuels. But I spent quite a bit of time investigating the issue when I first studied peak oil issues around 1998-2001. We have enormous investments in housing sprawl and transport infrastructure for which green alternatives, even when economically competitive, will only scale with great difficulty, and 3+ decades of intense investment. I suspect the political will to do so, however, will come from sustained $200+/bbl oil. At which point oil industry will do just fine without access to the U.S. Gulf, though most of the jobs will migrate to countries nearer the more prospective basins.

By the way, I'm the environmental nutcase on energy boards. I guess its only fair that I'm viewed as the industry apologist around here.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/05/while-oil-slick-spread-interior-department-chief-of-staff-rafted-with-wife-in-grand-canyon-.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwQOD_Ir2vQ

http://www.matteroftrust.org/programs/hairmatsinfo.html

so the first shot at using the "containment dome" didn't work.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6430AR20100509

The problem is gas hydrates, essentially slushy methane gas that would block the oil from being siphoned out the top of the box. As BP tries to solve it, oil keeps flowing unchecked into the Gulf in what could be the worst U.S. oil spill.

"I wouldn't say it's failed yet. What I would say is what we attempted to do last night didn't work because these hydrates plugged up the top of the dome," Suttles said.

"What we're currently doing, and I suspect it will probably take the next 48 hours or so, is saying, 'Is there a way to overcome this problem?'"

even though it may very well wind up being completely useless, i gotta say i'm impressed with how quick this four-story tall, 100+ tons structure went from being a lightbulb in some engineer's head to grounded on the ocean floor in less time than i've taken to write a two-page paper. can't figure out what purpose the scaffolding-looking stuff on all sides of it is, though.

http://www.treehugger.com/containment-dome-468.jpg

can't figure out what purpose the scaffolding-looking stuff on all sides of it is, though.

hold on, let me find a diagram that explained its purpose...

Here we go:

http://i40.tinypic.com/20b049h.jpg

hey, thanks. ok, that's what i assumed it was, just to stop it from sinking in too far to the sediment-rich floor, but then i couldn't figure out why the opening to allow the pipe in wouldn't rise up a little bit further than the flaps, so it doesn't pinch it. in all the pictures i've seen, the flaps look about even with the top of the opening. oh well!

wow.

David Rainey, BP’s VP for Gulf of Mexico exploration, was on the rig celebrating its safety record when it blew up. Although 11 workers were killed, Rainey and the other BP employees on the rig safely escaped the inferno.

can picture him doing a homer simpson-esque "WE ARE SO SFE! WE ARE SO SFE! S-F-E! I MEAN S-A-F-E!" dance

yes but what does he really mean by 'S-A-F-E'?

hmmm probably means he is a place where people can store valuable objects

also maybe they were participating in an impromptu game of whiffleball and he narrowly avoided being tagged out by the unusually good blowout preventer technician

Hay should help:

http://www.wimp.com/solutionoil/

The next tactic is going to be something they call a junk shot," Allen told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "They'll take a bunch of debris -- shredded up tires, golf balls and things like that -- and under very high pressure, shoot it into the preventer itself and see if they can clog it up and stop the leak."

http://i37.tinypic.com/2wgd4ee.jpg

when my sink gets clogged, it's because rice and pasta have accumulated at the bottom of the sink and have covered the drain -- maybe they should try that

fuck yeah, Sisko!