Sancho Panza is copyrighted.

Oh.

For those interested in the technical details, and perhaps offering suggestions about potential responses, here's DOE's Deepwater Horizon Response page:
http://www.energy.gov/open/oil_spill_updates.htm

This page contains links to containment system details, drawings of the BOP, well configuration, riser packages, etc. plus some videos, pressure data, and other interesting information:
http://www.energy.gov/open/oilspilldata.htm

Note that the file "Pressure Data within BOP" (xls or ods formats) includes a drawing of the BOP with the pressure labeled at various points.

Even if you're not interested in the technical details, the videos are interesting (and you can watch them in high definition and full screen).

Completely irrespective of any other context, this is a ridiculous question. These decisions are made by a beaurocracy. In the best of situations for political appointments, Obama wouldn't have had a new MMS in place in a month.

And this is not the best of situations for political appointments.

Excellent stuff HLJ.
Irrespective of the partisan crap surrounding it.

Whats the difference?

6,000 miles?

pretty much.

I found this a couple weeks ago. Must have forgotten to post it

Link

Considering that Congressional Republicans were obstructing something like 70 Obama appointments, it was difficult to get any agency cleaned up.

MMS knew BOPs failed about 45% of the time. That BOPs were not designed for operation at these depths. That BOPs had numerous single point failures. And that now standards existed to verify BOP operation.

When Obama's people asked MMS for evaluation on deep water drilling, the 200+ page report barely even mentioned BOPs - when that was virtually the only protection for a blow out. The report never once mentioned what was well known in MMS - BOPS were a disaster waiting to happen. Those same MMS people knew BOPs were ineffective in 2003.

It takes time to reeducate people to work for America - not for a political agenda. A problems being addressed in many other agencies beyond MMS. MMS was used to lying even about facts known in 2003. That was the attitude from that White House. Therefore reports in 2009 could not bother to report how dangerous deep water drilling really was. That BOPs routinely failed.

BOPs have only one blind shear. If a pipe joint is at that shear, the pipe cannot be cut and sealed. It happened previously. MMS people knew this had caused previous failures during the 2000s. But the attitude throughout 2000s was, well, Saddam also had WMDs. Honesty was not encouraged when it contradicted the political agenda. White House lawyers even rewrote science papers to agree with their reality.

Cleaning house is required all through government now that we have learned what happens when the political agenda is more important than working for America. When an administration even all but protected bin Laden for a political agenda. MMS is simply the next in a long list of government agencies subverted in the name of their deregulation. Always tell the president only what he wants to hear (right out of Sec of Treasury Paul O’Neill’s book. Conclusions routinely changed by Cheney. One could get fired for telling the truth. MMS knew all through the 2000s that two blind shears were necessary for every BOP. Tests suggested even those would not operate reliable in deep water. So MMS did the administration policy. Stay quiet. Don't create waves.

I was wondering why the deep water drilling was halted for six month. Now I understand. Virtually all BOPs provide ineffective protection. These things have numerous potential single point failures - no redundancy. (Same problem brought down a MN highway bridge.) Throughout the 2000s, MMS never reviewed any of these designs. Now virtually every BOP must be significantly redesigned or scrapped on an emergency basis.

Any BOP that does not have at least two blind shears is virtually useless. About half do not have even that simplest requirement. And almost none are tested at these extreme depths and temperatures.

The industry must redesign everything in six months to fix what should have been corrected and what could not happen for seven years.

But as any good MBA president understands, that was good because profits were higher. Then the economy looked better. Nothing partisan. Just an engineer with contempt for those whose politics all but encourage disaster. They could not even demand a second blind shear - because that contradicted a White House political agenda.

Blind shears. Another smoking gun example of why George Jr administration thought nothing of MMS having sexting parties paid for by the industry.

I think it is more than 100 appointments obstructed up by secret holds.

And sex and drugs, not sexting.

Golf is less attractive?

This story crossed way over the line into class envy. I'm all for beating up these clowns but this looks like a different agenda.

It was funny watching the White House spokes person try to defend that very question at a press conference. He had to use some cleaver spinnning trying draw a difference between the President going golfing and the BP man spending time on his boat.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vid...a_golfing.html

Well at least MSNBC is not hiding the fact they are working for the White House in reporting the news the way the White House wants it reported...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vid...ng_points.html

All she did, apparently, is make up a list of questions to ask the white house because she believes that Guliani lied to them last week when he was on.
I found it disturbing that she readily admitted to it only after accidentally saying something and then it turned into just a list of questions ... the story kept changing.
I still like that show in the am better than the three boobs on Fox or the meh couple on CNN.

I agree - It looks like the plan is to deflect any and all criticism from the Administration to BP. I find that rather frustrating. There are(at least) two issues here.

1) BP - cause of the spill. No one, NO ONE is denying blame - BP has admitted publicly that they are responsible.

2) Containment and clean up. This is much different and rests solely upon the administration. Obama said repeatedly that he was in charge. Criticism on this facet belongs squarely upon him and this administration... And there is plenty to go around.

That grilling of the BP Exec was a joke - othing more than political grandstanding. A bunch of suits showing how angry they can be.
That was like asking the president of McDonalds if he knew why there were 3 pickles instead of two on the cheeseburger at your local McDs. He has no idea - thats not his job - at all.

Top Ten Ways Tony Hayward Can Improve His Image
Letterman's Top Ten


10.Catch Osama

9.Contaminate waters around a country like North Korea

8.Reveal secret behind his soft and lustrous curly hair

7.Apologize on The Golf Channel

6.Shoot new BP commercial where he viciously is pecked by angry pelicans

5.Join team Coco

4.Get a job at Poland Spring; accidentally dump a billion gallons of water into the gulf

3.Improve his image, are you kidding? He's doing great!

2.Hang out at BP station, let customers inflate his ass with air hose

1.Dial it back from "arrogant bastard" to "smug pr***"

BP seems to have problems all over

BP responsible for gas spill in Constantine
http://www.wndu.com/localnews/headlines/96845664.html

I wonder how common that type of thing is.

I lol'd that they spelled the name of their state wrong tho or is that a city there?

Michiana is a term used to describe the area of Southern Michigan and Northern Indiana :)

gotcha - after I posted I was thinkin it had to be something like that.

Judge halts Obama's oil-drilling ban
Here we go . . . . WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

View from space.

If oil was the same density as water it probably wouldn't seem like such a big deal. Problem is that it floats to the top and we are basically measuring surface area instead of volume.

http://www.greenlivingtips.com/blogs...il-spills.html

Bobby Jindal is happy that the moratorium was overturned. I wonder how loudly he'll blame the fed gov if there's another spill.

Loudly and with full conviction of finger-pointing and grandstanding, as per usual.

Lots of evidence points to the fact that oil disperses much deeper than the surface, and that has been aided by the chemicals they have been spraying on to facilitate that process.

At what cost? We still don't know WTF those chemicals are doing to the environment.

I don't know, and I don't think anyone else does either. But there is a lot of speculation out there on the issue of the use of disbursants.

I'm not doubting that. I'm sure it affects marine life no matter the depth and I recently read an article about how the oil spill will be harmful to deep sea (no sunlight deep) marine life. My post was just a response to xoxoxoBruce's post, where many of the statistics pointed out the oil to water ratio is actually EXTREMELY small. Most of the oil floats to the surface, our main vantage point, so it seems much worst in that respect. And I'm sure even an extremely small ratio of oil to water is harmful to most marine life.

Yes the ratio of oil to water is small, but it only takes a little oil to fuck up a lot of water.

I only posted that quote as an example of the information war afoot.

Here's another.
Endangered Sea Turtles Burned In BP Spill Clean-up.

IMHO. The disbursants we used back in the 70s were to sink the oil, so no one could see the slick and report it.

Well after 2 months we have our commission.

Dispersants, people. A disbursant would be something quite different, nor am I sure it is a valid word, as disburser covers the matter. Sure, they're spending a lot of money... but those chemicals are still dispersants. Which make a dispersoid, ya wanna go that far.

Unhappy count

The Fish and Wildlife Commission puts out a daily count of dead animals due to the oil spill. Here's the count for the last 24 hours:

429 sea turtles
1,128 birds
51 dolphins and other mammals

http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse....010.715539.pdf

Multiply these numbers by the days the oil spill has gone on and will go on. The poor critters! How many of them will be left by August (or whenever)? :(

What are the baseline numbers from prior to the spill?
Those numbers are terrible, but can be quite misleading as well.
Of those 429, only 9 were visibly oiled.
Whats with the 338 pending? How hard is it to tell if there was oil on them or not?

Pending seems to be awaiting a determination of whether the critters died because of the oil spill, but I don't see how that would affect whether they were "visibly" oiled, or not?

I'm a bit :eyebrow: at the "dolphins and other mammals" category. A rat is a mammal.

No doubt, though, that this is a grade one eco-SNAFU, however you count it.

Absolutely - I knew long ago this disaster was going to be far worse than the Valdez or Katrina, maybe even both combined.

We're all going to die.

http://daviddegraw.org/2010/06/will-...sonic-tsunami/

I'm going to buy some gulf coast beach front property - in South Carolina! ;)

I saw one article somewhere that stated that dispersants might make it possible for oil to evaporate, and some people are claiming that their crops are being ruined by oily rain. The article was a bit skeptical, though.

I found the following quote in the Wickipedia article on the oil spill. What a sense of humor those BP boys have:

Right. :eyebrow:

If they/he said it, to whomever, it should have raised all kinds of red flags. Ohh - It was to the MMS apparently.

Wiki is the ONLY place that quote is available. I see no reference to it anywhere else. Oh wait - got 'em ... Here and here.

reading the pdf now - the other is kinda iffy....

ETA - I couldn't find that exact info in the PDF, but there was plenty of comments that seemed more than enough to be seriously questioned. I guess they were too busy with tw & the sexting parties.

For those that don't click on the links - this is from the article referenced by Wiki.

Not everyone agrees...

Who needs a fishing industry, anyway? Let them eat oil!

There are people who pimp their daughters, too. Sometimes you just don't need to make money that badly or that way.

As always, Urbane, let me thank you for your thoughtful and informative link. We now return you to regular discussion. :rolleyes:

Krauthammer is nothing if not thoughtful. I pay attention to the man. The unintelligent avoid doing that. Spares them the trouble of losing a syllable. :rolleyes:

After only 70 days and letting the oil hit land ... FINALLY

Link
<Rant on>This was handled so poorly, that I'm amazed. What the hell took so long to accept help. Why did this administration wait until so much damage was done. Why are they seemingly hampering every single thing that the local people are trying to do - berms, booms, vacuums, people.... This is unbelievable. Why weren't experts from EVERY industry, nation, business, everything called in the first week. WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF <Rant off>

You're a guy who espouses less government, yet here you are complaining about less government.

As for your facts, Well
from here

From here

My favorite sig line is morethanpretty's:

Republicans: working for government small enough to fit inside your bedroom.

(I would add...except in cases where "bigger" government serves their purpose. Who came up with the whole "oooh, big government" crap anyway? :lol: Another tagline that people lap up like sheep at the trough.

My mom is on the coast with a shovel as this is posted. Though I appreciate her efforts and hope she doesn't get hurt; wtf?
BP and the administration are on my list of "baddies".

Good for her Cic!

Do you consider users of illegal drugs that are coming from or through Mexico to be partially responsible for the current troubles in that country?

For those who are interested ...

The Facts about the Jones Act and the Gulf Oil Spill
Good FAQ's in that one

Link

My math may be off, but April 20th to May 23 is more like 53 days, not 70.

BP should have and should be doing more, and more quickly.

Just saying.