Oil Spill

Gas prices are falling in North Carolina as well.

I heard that BP was considering the nuclear option.

Maybe there is a Scandinavian JCer who knows more about this than I do, but I read that in Norway, oil rigs are required to have a type of emergency shut-off valve that is only voluntary here. It's also expensive and of course, this rig didn't have it. The Norwegians have drilled in the North Sea with no problems. We need to start requiring that shut-off valve on oil rigs here. I actually have no problem with domestic drilling as long as we are going to be using oil as our primary source of energy, which will be for the next decade at least (and that's a very optimistic estimate, I'm thinking more along the lines of 20-30 years). But we need to be taking every possible environmental precaution to protect our oceans and wildlife.

I'm less interested in playing the "You clean it up!" "No, you clean it up!" game that the media seems to be playing, than in trying to figure out how we can prevent this from ever happening again.

 

While I doubt this idea would have a high probability of success, at this point I'm willing to try anything. I'd like to see BP and the government release every scrap of information relating to the oil leak- schematics of the well, all the current information on how fast the oil is coming out, pressure, whatever- and offer some sort of reward for workable ideas, with a bonus if its used successfully. Hire some grad students or newly graduated engineers/scientists to sift through the ideas for plausible ones to pass to their higher ups in the government.

Would it yield a solution? Probably not. But there have got to be a ton of really smart people out there who aren't working on the problem, and this gives them an incentive to do so. The more intelligent people focusing on the leak, the better.

 

This isn't just about oil. This leak is directly impacting many other industries along the Gulf, which is really where the most damage will be done. Energy is only one component of a very complex economy, but this is a disaster in which food, tourism, shipping, and other such industries will have the greatest setbacks.

This leak will be hard for BP to deal with, but the majority of the economic damage is yet to come.

 

I'm less interested in playing the "You clean it up!" "No, you clean it up!" game that the media seems to be playing, than in trying to figure out how we can prevent this from ever happening again.

I think that's actually a less relevant question. Nobody wants anything like this happening again, it's a no-win situation. It's not a controvertial topic: there were safety regulations that were not followed and people will want them followed in the future. There may be moratoriums on offshore drilling.

Unless you're doubtful that people do not have thier own best interests at heart, it helps to put this in perspective that nothing like this has ever happened before and that this is something everyone is going to stribe to keep from happening again. It will be a long time before standards lapse to the point of this again.

In other words, the questions of whether or not to flip the 'stop' switch when the red lights start going off is not something anyone not involved with government regulations or the oil industry should be very concerned about.

If regulations are lax becuase of collusion, that's more relevant.

But I think the most relveant point about all of this is how, for the second time in recent memory, the notion of anti-regulation has entered freefall due to flying without a net. It would be very nice if we could just sit about and pretend that a private corporation is motivated by safety concerns before profit or that a private industry can be expected to manage it's own 'footprint' on socierty, but the truth is that a corporation's viewpoint is limited. The concerns of a corporation stop and end with the corporation: this is not a comment on Greed, although it's commonly manifested as that, but a comment that neither the ecological state of the Gulf of Mexico nor the economy of the United States is on the agenda for any given corporation, be it BP or Fannie Mae, despite the fact that they directly affect them.

These corporations presume government is the body that looks after these larger issues and it is, in theory. But by pushing back on all regulations equally under the notion that they affect your profit line wihtout some honest admission that not all regulation is equal and that you can't just insist on a Reaganist attitude of all regulation being economically harmful, you disable the government's ability to address the question of the bigger picture.

The US has been under-regulated for a while now, overall. It should be time to stop having a knee-jerk reaction to regulations and start actually thinking about which ones are harmful in the long run, and what ones stop situations like this from taking place.

 

So it has come to this. The spill got so out of hand that we have to resort to nuking the ocean floor.

And nobody thought of the implications of doing this? Isn't there anybody in BP that knows that motion in water causes waves? And an atomic bomb would create a big wave? And a big wave in the ocean is called a tsunami?!

Come on, BP! If the bomb doesn't work and something does go wrong, we could be talking about ANOTHER disaster! Don't mess the situation up any further!

 

Uhh, what's this about nukes? I don't see how such an idea would work, and even if it would it doesn't sound like a very appealing option.

Anyway, we used to do a bunch of nuclear tests underwater, and we even had nuclear-tipped torpedoes on our warships....so I'm sure if detonating a nuke underwater caused tsunamis we would know about such an effect.

 

I don't think that is at all the level of displacement of water you'd need for a tsunami.

 

They're bringing in James Cameron? WTF?

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/director-james-cameron-called-in-to-stop-oil-spill-20100602-wvt0.html?autostart=1

 

Hahahaha....

Hahahaha...

Oh...wait...

They're serious..


Man, this oil spill is making everyone crazy.

 

That is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard in terms of a government action. James Cameron? Really?

 

Hm. Newsweek recently reported on BP's attempts to impose restrictions on media coverage of the spill. It sounds like they even have the Coast Guard and local governments running interference for them, which I find troubling.

I can understand BP wanting to limit their press exposure, but I don't think it is in the public's best interest for them to be allowed to do so. Especially since the restrictions sound like they're also hindering the scientists measuring the impacts of the spill.

 

Next week, they're sending Tom Hanks to the moon, and Hugh Jackman is going to go fight Dracula.

 

I see the spill as potentially being most similar to the Iran hostage crisis, which sapped the energy and prestige from Jimmy Carter's presidency.

 

Unlike that situation, Obama DOESN'T have the power to do anything about this. Unless you think he could do something differently?

All he can do is push for that Energy bill.

 

You're talking about Day 30 and Day so on of the spill. Yeah, I've noticed Chris Matthews and a few others in the TV media have already started doing that.

 

Carter couldn't do much for the hostages either (though he did tell Tehran that if the hostages were harmed, it would be turned into a parking lot).

Shane, I don't watch any political stuff on TV (nor can I). It's just an observation, nothing more.

 

Yes but I think you're right. It will be a trickle of political damage.

 

It makes sense in context. A large number of experts in underwater technologies were brought in to act as a think-tank, to see if any of them could come up with any ideas to fix the problem. It wasn't JAMES CAMERON TO THE RESCUE!!1!, it was that his experience in filming at extreme depths and his ownership of a number of submersible vehicles capable of operating at the depths required meant that he had valuable know-how that could potentially be applicable to the task at hand.

Put it this way, his knowledge base makes him more likely to come up with an effective way to solve the problem than Obama.

 

Raven
Put it this way, his knowledge base makes him more likely to come up with an effective way to solve the problem than Obama.


True but Cameron can't make a movie for less than 200 million so this cleanup will probably cost 200 trillion dollars.

 

Uh... don't you mean 200 billion? And if someone could have spent that much for a solution at the time it happened, it would have been worth it.

The point is that you can't really put a value on stopping the oil leak, so long as the solution works. That's what's being sought.

 

I think Obama is terrified that this will become his Katrina/Iranian hostage rescue, a disaster largely beyond his control but which will forever be associated with him. If anything this spells out the limitations of the power of both president and goverment?

 

I don't think the spill can be understood without understanding BP's longstanding culture of safety violations (refinery explosion, Prudhoe Bay pipeline spills) and its relationship with Federal regulatory agencies. The cozy relationship between the oil industry and regulators isn't Obama's fault, but he'll be expected to do something about it. Reforming MMS is just part of the picture.

Renegade Refiner: OSHA Says BP Has ?Systemic Safety Problem?
97% of Worst Industry Violations Found at BP Refineries

Apparently, BP is the undisputed industry leader in "egregious willful citations" and "willful citations" which suggests a longstanding corporate culture of cost-cutting through disregarding safety concerns.

 

Now this is why I just love Americans. Have a disaster? Don't know what to do? Easy, just call in a Hollywood director!

Seriously though, I'm not surprised about BP cutting corners for profits. After all, the British upper "Clueless Class" are well known for being ruthless regarding money and selfishness. Why the colonies had their revolution is a perfect example. Then there's the fact that the British governement were using native English children as slave labour right up until almost the 1970s!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/6574900/Children-were-sexually-abused-and-treated-like-slaves.html

http://www.japantoday.com/category/world/view/uk-prime-minister-apologizes-to-children-shipped-to-former-colonies

So no, I'm not surprised at all by BP's cold blooded cost cutting. As a matter of fact I've decided that the whole load of 'em up the top are quite evil. Always have been always will be. The British upper classes are like the proverial leopard. They'll never change their spots.

 

Never mind the fact that BP really aren't a British company anymore, that seems to have slipped America's mind.
I don't recall the British blaming them for the North Sea oil rig disaster that an American company was responsible for. The company is to blame, not the country that it originates from.

The environmental impact is terrible, I hope it will finally show the world the dangers of deep sea drilling to get oil. I hope it will also give a reality check about the dependance on oil that the western world has and how we need to make more effort to find alternatives or our desperation in getting more of it will lead to more risky drilling and more disasters like this happening again.

 

I haven't seen anyone blaming the British for this, just BP. And the CEO is British.

I actually don't think this is BP's worst mistake. Their worst mistake was convincing the British and American governments to overthrow democracy in Iran (which Obama admitted). Setting off a long chain of reactions that destabilized the Middle East, dealt a crushing blow to developing democracy in the region, created hatred and distrust of America, took away Israel's only ally in the region, helped encourage the modern radical Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, helped lead to the rise of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and of course directly led to the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979.


1953 Coup in Iran

The crushing of Iran's democratically elected government launched 25 years of dictatorship under Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi, who relied heavily on U.S.-trained secret police SAVAK[2] and U.S.-supplied weapons to hold on to power until he was overthrown in February 1979.[3] "For many Iranians, the coup demonstrated duplicity by the United States, which presented itself as a defender of freedom but did not hesitate to use underhanded methods to overthrow a democratically elected government to suit its own economic and strategic interests", the Agence France-Presse reported.[4]

In 1951 with near unanimous support of Iran's parliament, Mosaddegh nationalized the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). "The 1933 agreement under which it was operating was widely regarded as exploitative and an infringement on Iran's sovereignty.[5][6] Iran's oil was the British government's single largest overseas investment.[7] Moreover, the AIOC had consistently violated the terms of the 1933 agreement and was reluctant to renegotiate, even as Iran's movement for nationalization grew in the late 1940s.[8] Even though AIOC was highly profitable, "its Iranian workers were poorly paid and lived in squalid conditions." The AIOC, which was 51 percent owned by the British government, bankrolled disruptive tribal elements in Iran, some politicians and clergy with the purpose of bringing down the government. Iranians blamed Britain for most of its problems and public support for nationalization was strong.[9] Despite Mosaddegh's popular support, Britain was unwilling to negotiate its single most valuable foreign asset, and instigated a military blockade of Iran and worldwide boycott of Iranian oil to pressure Iran economically.[10] Initially, Britain mobilized its military to seize control of the Abadan oil refinery, the world's largest, but Prime Minister Attlee opted instead to tighten the economic boycott.[11] With a change to more conservative governments in both Britain and the United States, Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to overthrow Iran's government.[12]

The U.S. spy agency tried to persuade Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to dismiss Mosaddegh, and at first he refused. The Central Intelligence Agency pressured the weak monarch while bribing street thugs, clergy, politicians and Iranian army officers to take part in a propaganda campaign against Mosaddegh and his government.[13] At first, the coup appeared to fail when, on the night of August 15?16, 1953, Imperial Guard Colonel Nematollah Nassiri was arrested while attempting to a