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Gulf of Mexico oil spill

Great article, for all the wrong reasons sadly...Looks like they are doing all they can to stop access to some beaches..workers instructed not to speak to the media etc..


When everyone saw the oil coming in as clear as day several days before that, BP insisted it was red tide—bacteria. Chaisson says he's half-Indian and grew up here and just wants to protect the land. When I tell him BP says the inland side of the island is still clean, he spits. "They're fucking liars. There's oil over there. It's already all up through the pass." The spill workers staying at my motel later tell me they've been specifically instructed by BP not to talk to any media, but they're pissed because BP tried to tell them that the crude they were swimming around in to move oil containment boom was red tide, dishwashing-liquid runoff, or mud.

The next morning at breakfast, the word at Sarah's Restaurant is that the island will have to be shut down; the smell of oil was so strong last night one lady had to shut all her windows and turn on her AC; if her asthma keeps up like this, she'll need to go on her breathing machine tonight.

Local workers make ten dollars an hour cleaning up the same beach again and again.Local workers make ten dollars an hour cleaning
up the same beach again and again.I've corralled Irvin Lipp, who drives me and a few wire photographers out to Elmer's. (He tells me ruefully that he has history with Mother Jones, having once been a flack for Dupont.) The shoreline is packed with men in hats and gumboots and bright blue shirts. Nearly all are African-American, all hired from around New Orleans. They tell me they've been standing in these exact same spots for three days. It's breathtakingly hot. They rake the oil and sand into big piles; other workers collect the piles into big plastic bags, and still other workers take them to a plant where the sand is separated out and sent to a hazardous-waste dump and the oil goes on for processing.

Then the tide comes in with more oil and everybody starts all over again. Ten dollars an hour. Twelve hours a day. When I joke with one worker that he should pocket the solid gobs of oil he's digging up to show me how far beneath the sand they go, he stops dead and asks me if BP's still trying to use the oil they all collect. "Aw, I knew it!" he says. Another leans on his rake to ask me, "Have they at least shut the oil off yet?" He randomly picks three spots in a three-foot-wide expanse of sand that he's already raked clean and drops his rake in an inch deeper to show me how the oil bubbles up from underneath. He can't count how many times he's raked this same spot in the 33 hours he's worked it since Thursday, but one thing he's sure of, he says, is that he'll be standing right here tomorrow and the next day, too.
Click to expand...

http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/05/oil-spill-bp-grand-isle-beach
 
Dear god what have we done to these poor innocent creatures?

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http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisiana_shores.html
 
And the way BP are trying to keep the seriousness of this on the low down. They should be publicly fucking flogged and hung.
 
I understand why, but it's a shame this thread isn't in the General Forum. It's sad that such an important topic is being marginalised in here...

Anyhow...

The latest video footage of the leaking Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico show that oil is escaping at the rate of 95,000 barrels — 4 million gallons — a day, nearly 20 times greater than the 5,000 barrel a day estimate BP and government scientists have been citing for nearly three weeks, an engineering professor told a congressional hearing Wednesday.

The figure of 5,000 barrels a day or 210,000 gallons that BP and the federal government have been using for weeks is based on satellite observations of the surface. But NASA’s best satellite-based instruments can’t see deep into the waters of the Gulf, where much of the oil from the gusher 5,000 feet below the surface seems to be floating.
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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/19/94467/engineer-oil-spill-videos-show.html
 
That's just re-reporting the flow estimates made from video earlier in the month. Gas expansion adds an unknown factor to the apparent velocity of the venting oil, so it's impossible to get an accurate reading that way.
 
Live cam of the attempt to stop the flow of oil via the Oil Drum site.

There's lots of seemingly knowledgeable people on that site so it might make for interesting reading.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6508#more

Edit : Amazing that we take the live cam feed of a ROV operating at 5,000ft below the sea almost for granted….
 


The video BP doesn't want you to see. From the grandson of Jacques Cousteau, and ABC's Sam Champion.
 
Fingers crossed, they've started "Top Kill"

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Engineers have begun the "top kill" maneuver aimed at stanching the gush of oil from a blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, BP and U.S. Coast Guard confirmed.

The much-awaited procedure began at 1 p.m. Central Daylight Time, according to BP.
The maneuver, which BP officials warned could take hours or days to complete, would attempt to overpower the upward flow of oil by pumping drilling fluid -- and eventually a cement mixture -- at high pressure down the well. Several hundred engineers in Houston have prepped for the effort for weeks.

If executed incorrectly, however, the top kill could blow the fail-safe systems, dramatically increasing the flow of oil.
Click to expand...
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-top-kill-procedure-begins.html

Jesus to fucking fuck I hope this works.
 
somebody on the Oil Drum website noted,

It would take 87.5% of the mud injected being lost to leaks, for it to take 22 hours to fill the well, and that would indicate that the leakage rate was 25,000 bd.
Click to expand...
 
the worry about the 'killtop' appears to be whether the BOP and pipes carrying the mud to the base of the well are strong enough to hold out before an equality in pressure (between mud going down and oil & gas coming up) can be reached, this stopping the oil coming out. People watching the video are concerned at the developing holes due to erosion. It appears there is a delicate balance being struck between pumping it fast in order to get it down there and at the same time not putting too much pressure to blow the BOP and pipes.

It does appear to be working, but from what i can read it doesn't mean that it will work....fingers crossed and kudos to the engineers on this, it's amazing stuff 5,000 ft down.
 
BP worker takes 5th, making prosecution a possibility

WASHINGTON — A top BP worker who was aboard the Deepwater Horizon in the hours leading up to the explosion declined to testify in front of a federal panel investigating the deadly oil rig blowout, telling the U.S Coast Guard he was invoking his constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.

The move Wednesday by BP's Robert Kaluza raises the possibility of criminal liability in the April 20 explosion that killed 11 and five weeks later continues to spew hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day.
Click to expand...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/26/94884/bp-could-be-held-criminally-liable.html
 
Matt Simmons is talking about the possibility that the casing has blown out and that a much larger volume of oil is escaping via a natural fracture to the sea floor kilometers away. A research vessel found a huge plume some distance away, and the size of the surface plume is consistent with a flow rate of 100,000+ barrels a day, much larger than could come from that 6/7inch tear in the the videos. If that is so, then there is no possibility of success - there is no integrity with which to form a seal with cement. Red Adair used to insert an explosive into the well bore and they might have to try the same, although that is probably some kind of military operation. We'll see this afternoon ...
 
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