They Plugged that Damn Hole.
Adm. Allen, the Coast Guard Admiral in charge of the Gulf spill operation, just said that as of now there is no oil coming out of the leak that BP attempted to stop yesterday with the “top kill” procedure. BP is saying it looks good so far but they’re not willing to say for sure that that’s true. And even if it is it doesn’t mean it will stay that way. But it seems there are some reasons for optimism.
It should not have taken this long. It led to frustration (rightly so). It made us wonder if President Obama should have become the socialist he is always wrongfully accused of being, and nationalized BP of North America and seized their assets so as to take over the operation. But the accusations of incompetence and ineptedness coming from the right and left don’t seem to be true from reading first hand accounts of what actually went into plugging the damn hole:
One thing that might not be clear from watching the news: this isn’t a matter of a dozen guys at BP and a PR team from the Obama administration. A “war room” full of industry experts from over 70 oil companies and drilling technology companies has been working on this problem night and day since the week of the explosion. If you count up the people from EPA, Army Corps of Engineers, and Coast Guard assigned to this issue, the federal government has over 20,000 people involved. The response to this issue has been massive.
BP has done it’s best (by failing to share video and using dispersants) to mask the size of the disaster, but both industry and government have responded to the problem on a scale appropriate the to massiveness of the issue. If if doesn’t look like there’s anything going on, it’s just further evidence of the US news industry’s inability to cover anything that isn’t cut, dried, and packaged according to a well known script.
That said, the size of government and industry response should in no way be comforting. Even with that level of attention, the gusher is in its 36th day and the effects of the oil — both financial and ecological — are only beginning to be felt. The fact that government and industry are responding massively shows only that this kind of deep water drilling is far more dangerous and difficult than the oil industry ever admitted. Maybe even more dangerous than they knew. This isn’t a failure of response. It’s a failure of imagination and preparation in planning for what might happen long before the tragedy aboard Deepwater Horizon.
And it’s a very good reason to extend the ban on deep water drilling far beyond the six months President Obama will propose today.
And from Talking Points Memo from people in Houston on and at the site:
First, BP is not tackling this mess alone. The entire drilling industry is involved, including Exxon (who has a great record when it comes to offshore drilling, not oil shipping). It’s not like only BP engineers are calling the shots, all sorts of experts are involved.
At BP’s West Houston complex, there’s a command center filled with personnel from around the industry working with BP engineers. Several drill ships are in place. Tons of workboats are on site. There are 5 or more ROVs roaming the wellhead monitoring and cleaning things up. They’re already bumping into each other because they normally work solo while tied to a ship by a mile long umbilical cable. They don’t need more ROVs down there adding to the traffic. All these efforts are reported heavily in the Houston Chronicle and nola.com, but doesn’t seem to get much for national coverage. If you only monitor the national coverage, you’d think BP is going it alone while we all sit by, but the reality is this is an industry-wide effort because we all know what’s at stake.
On having Obama “do more,” WTF is he supposed to do? Everybody seems to be calling for more fire in his belly and scary, threatening speeches. What does that accomplish? It’s like people want him to do a dramatic speech like post-9/11 about bringing the criminals to justice. It does nothing to actually plug the damn well. The government does not have the expertise to do more to stop this gusher. It’s in BPs interest to stop the gusher. All the conspiracy theories about wanting to preserve the well for future production are technically wrong and ignore that NOBODY in the industry benefits from this gusher continuing. BP wants what everybody else wants, though I’ll concede that I suspect dispersants are about killing life where it’s less easily photographed. Dispersants aside, the only conflict of interest is regarding the causes of the blowout, not the capping of the well. Fed investigations are already taking care of that part.
On the pace, I’m pissed because I thought top kill should have been the first thing they tried after the ROVs failed to close the BOP. The reason for delay was partly because it looked like a war zone down there initially due to all the debris from a mile long riser coming down with the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. So there was cleanup to make everything accessible. Also, one issue with the top kill is that it does have some risk of making the leak worse by eroding whatever blockages exist to limit the blowout rate. It could also overpressure the wellhead to open up new leaks upstream of the current ones. My guess is they wanted a better understanding on the chance of success before taking those risks.
What this disaster will HOPEFULLY do is end the insane notion that we can drill our way out of our energy problems. What this disaster will HOPEFULLY do is end the insane notion that for profit companies can be trusted with our general safety. Yeah, BP and many different oil companies can be commended on working tirelessly to plug the damn well over the last month. But it is still BP’s fault in the first place that this disaster ever happened. It happened because BP cared more about profit than worker or environmental safety. It happened because our government in the Bush years decided to let the industry regulate itself, and thus filled the Interior department with former industry executives, who referred to themselves as the oil industry rather than a watchdog or an inspector (in my opinion, every single civil servant regulator in the Interior Department should be fired).
The Obama Administration must levy the full cost of this disaster upon BP, through the Clean Water Act, which apparently allows for damages upwards of $13 billion. Excellent. Cripple BP. A new company can buy their assets at auction, and hopefully this new company is more concerned about safety than profit, and hopefully the new regulators we hire are more concerned about regulating than watching porn or whatever the eye they did instead of regulating.
As I understand it, BP is liable for unlimited damages on a per-gallon basis, so that is why they were lowballing the spillage estimates, stonewalling on the video, and using massive dispersants to keep the oil underwater.
I think the biggest problem with the administration’s response has been letting BP stonewall public disclosure.
The question needs to be asked as to why this wasn’t done in the first place. Why was BP more interested in capturing the gushing oil into tankers than plugging the damn hole? (I guess the answer is obvious.) And why was the government in cahoots with BP in withholding information from the public such as the early video of the gusher? And why did the government and the EPA allow these highly toxic dispersants to be used at all?
President Obama has followed my advice (he reads the blog too), and he has fired the head of the U.S. Minerals Management Service, Liz Birnbaum, which is supposed to be responsible for oil drilling oversight.
Excellent, Mr. President. Thank you. Now fire the rest of them.
As far as dispersants are concerned, I think it’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t calculation. If dispersants weren’t used than many, many more tons of oil would be washing up on beaches. The dispersants actually keep the oil in the water, probably thinking that it’s a better choice since it would be diluted more. I think only time will tell if that was a better response.
Actually, I kind of think BP’s gambit has paid off for them some. I think they gambled that out-of-sight is out-of-mind and they’ve largely been right. There has not been a lot of oil washing up on beaches yet (though it’s starting to). Giant plumes of oil under the water is largely invisible to the public.
By the way, even if the government did “not have the expertise to do more to stop this gusher,” it sure as hell should have had validated documentation from the oil companies that ensure that they had the expertise. This whole thing stinks like the pile of dead fish in LA.
If the government were serious about this, they would be shutting down all deep water wells today until a fail-safe plan was in-place. But the “tired debate” was between corporate profits and the environment, and the environment lost. And it is still losing today.
Bulk oil is not likely to be consumed by animals. Oil dispersed into tiny droplets by mixing it with highly toxic chemicals will now be consumed by fish and other wildlife with unknown consequences of the entire food chain.
I think it will be damned if they didn’t and totally screwed because they did.
It might have occurred because one idiot was in a hurry while on his power trip. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704717004575268302434395796.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_news
I have to partially agree with anonone. Oil is a natural part of the environment. This happens regularly in nature. The chemicals to disperse it may have done more harm than the oil or at least as much. Burning it boiled a lot of sea life that would otherwise survive. Containment is the best approach, but that was hampered by high seas. I hope this plug holds while they build a new well.
Republickin david, cyanide and arsenic are also a “natural part of the environment,” but nobody wants it in their drinking water. And please cite just one instance of a massive oil gusher erupting naturally and spontaneously from the ocean floor.
Obama saved us, he said “plug the damn hole”, and they did.
All hail the mighty Obama.
If he was getting the blame he might as well get the credit.
If you’ve been following some of the liveblogs, it is not at all clear that this top kill is successful. This spill might not yet be over.
maybe he should have said “plug the hole” a little earlier, like say the first week.
True anon, although they announced this morning that nothing was coming out of the well. I read we’ll have to wait 48 hours to know for sure.