'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

[Nordic]

Check out this post about the seafloor around the blow-out starting to really fall apart:

http://monkeyfister.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... below.html



Scary stuff.

[82_28]

Fuck an A. It truly is a portal to hell. That link Nordic, is terrifying.

[ninakat]

ABCNews clip -- Cousteau Jr.: "This is a Nightmare...a Nightmare."

[2012 Countdown]

edit- crazy talk. Nevermind.

[seemslikeadream]

7 Seized in Anti-Drilling Protest
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF

Greenpeace
Greenpeace activists painted and posted anti-drilling messages in big letters on the bridge of a ship that is scheduled to depart for Alaska to support drilling operations in July.
Charges have been filed against seven members of Greenpeace who boarded an offshore drilling support ship in a Louisiana port and painted anti-drilling slogans in crude oil on the vessel’s side on Monday afternoon.

The ship is docked in Port Fourchon, La., an area affected by the BP oil spill in the gulf, and is to sail to the Arctic this summer to support Royal Dutch Shell’s company’s exploratory drilling plans there, Greenpeace said. Activists rappelled down the side and painted the phrase “Arctic Next?” on the vessel. They also lowered a sign saying “Salazar: Ban Arctic Drilling” before being seized by the port police.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was visiting the area at the time and was the intended recipient of the message, a Greenpeace spokeswoman said.

Amid the furor over BP’s so-far unsuccessful effort to stanch the well blowout in the gulf, plans continue for Shell to drill offshore in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. The company has been granted several permits and could begin drilling as early as this summer.

The activists were charged with unauthorized entry of “critical infrastructure” and of an inhabited dwelling, according to the Lafourche Parish sheriff’s department. Both counts carry a maximum penalty of six years in prison.

The activists were released on bail early Tuesday morning.

A Greenpeace representative argued that the charges were disproportionate. “It is outrageous that prosecutors would confront peaceful protesters with such a heavy hand while not a single BP executive has been charged for the devastation they have wrought on the Gulf of Mexico and the people and animals that depend on it,” Phil Radford, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

In an e-mail message to a Dow Jones reporter late Monday, Shell confirmed that its ship had been targeted and said it was “disappointed” by the tactics used by Greenpeace.

A spokeswoman for the Lafourche Parish sheriff’s Office, Sgt. Lesley Hill Peters, suggested that the protesters could also face terrorism-related charges. The New Orleans Joint Terrorism Task Force “is looking into the matter,” she said.

[DoYouEverWonder]

BP-owned Alaska oil pipeline shut after spill

May 25, 2010

The accident comes at a difficult time for BP -- the largest single owner of the pipeline operator, holding 47 percent -- as it struggles to plug a gushing Gulf of Mexico oil well.

The shutdown followed a series of mishaps that resulted from a scheduled fire-command system test at Pump Station 9, about 100 miles south of Fairbanks, said Alyeska Pipeline Service Co, the operator of the 800-mile oil line.

The power outage triggered opening of relief valves, causing an unspecified volume of crude oil to overflow a storage tank into a secondary containment. There were no injuries, but the approximately 40 people at the work site were evacuated, Alyeska spokeswoman Michele Egan said.

North Slope oil producers have cut their flow into the pipeline's Prudhoe Bay intake station to 16 percent of their normal rates, Egan said. There is enough storage capacity to allow the line to be shut down for 48 hours as long as producers maintain the 16 percent flow rate, she said.

It is unclear how long the shutdown will last.

"We're going to take as long as we need to make sure the site is safe before we start back up," Egan said.

The volume of spilled oil is unknown. "We've estimated the spill is several thousand barrels," she said. All has been held within the secondary containment, which has capacity to hold 104,500 barrels, she said. The amount spilled is "nowhere near" the containment area's capacity, she added.

Alyeska is a consortium owned by five oil companies. Major owners are BP, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil. Unocal and Koch hold minor shares.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which runs from Prudhoe Bay to the tanker port of Valdez, normally ships about 667,000 barrels of oil daily.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64P04U20100526?type=domesticNews

[Jeff]

Spewing Oil Darkens; Could Be Bad Sign

11:00 am CDT May 25, 2010

Live video of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill shows the underwater plume getting significantly darker. A top oil engineering expert said that suggests heavier, more-polluting oil is spewing out.

The color of the oil gushing from the main pipe has changed in color from medium gray to black. Two scientists noticed the change, which oil company BP downplayed as a natural fluctuation that is not likely permanent.

But engineering professor Bob Bea at the University of California at Berkeley said the color change may indicate the BP leak has hit a reservoir of more oil and less gas. Gas is less polluting because it evaporates. Bea has spent more than 55 years working and studying oil rigs.

...

http://www.wdsu.com/news/23669752/detail.html

Wait a minute: Gas is less polluting because it evaporates? I guess, if the atmosphere doesn't count.

[Simulist]

Homo sapiens means "wise man" or "knowing man."

We may want to revisit that idea.

[Perelandra]

The Gulf Deepwater Oil Spill - the Top Kill Attempt

The next attempt to shut off the flow from the leaking BP well in the Gulf is still aimed to occur early Wednesday. The attempt will use the “top kill” method to try and kill the well. While I have described this in earlier posts, the Unified Command have put out a video animation of the process, and there was an earlier diagram. So I am going to use these, which are simplified explanations, with some additional comments and tie it in to more facts that came out of briefings today, to try and give a more detailed explanation.

Technical Stuff (and some good graphics)

Even you atheists, think clean water thoughts. If this doesn't work, it will go on for months, if not longer. Thanks and best wishes to you 2012 CD.

[smiths]

i was considering the problem of the oil,
obviously if you want to deal with it you need it on the surface,
it seems likely that BP have worked to keep it under the surface,

it struck me that the way humpbacks catch fish might work quite well to coral the oil into a narrow shaft all heading to the surface,
if you could surround the leaking gusher with a curtain of air bubbles it might contain and raise it, you could burn it as it got to the surface or even try and suck it up and separate it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hfiFfJH ... re=related

around the 6 minute mark

[Occult Means Hidden]

Russia's advice is to Nuke it: http://trueslant.com/juliaioffe/2010/05 ... hat-slick/

Obama sends nuclear experts to tackle BP leak: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... -leak.html

Pressed further about the meeting, he said they had "come up with one good idea" but declined to elaborate.
The five include 82-year-old Richard Garwin, who designed the first hydrogen bomb, and Tom Hunter, head of the US Department of Energy's Sandia National Labs

The Nuclear Option? : http://www.viewzone2.com/oilnuke.html

Soviets nuked gas wells:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162- ... 01465.html

They've tried nearly everything else to seal the disastrous oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, so why not just nuke it?

This option is no longer seemingly fringe.

[2012 Countdown]

Good source for up to the min. operations, which have been delayed-

http://twitter.com/jgrindal

I would like to point out one thing.

.@Crimson_Cougar Anxious right now. Most of us are confident in our solution, but we have to be careful, we only get 1 shot at this.
9 minutes ago via web in reply to Crimson_Cougar
..@americanpapist Everyone is getting pressured on this, a decision will have to be made within a few hours. #oilspill #topkill
10 minutes ago via web .Executive Mgmt had a few concerns on risk due to the high flowrates. Additional data being collected and sent to them in real time.
12 minutes ago via web .Just got the call. Top Kill delayed for the time being. Additional tests requested. #oilspill #topkill
about 2 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone

Okay, now remember how they said. 'oh, we didn't place a priority on flow rates as that really isn't important to solve the problem'?

As fucking if!

============

'Political Stupidity': Democrat James Carville Slams Obama's Response to BP Oil Spill
Democratic Strategist Said White House Should've Acted Quickly: 'We're About to Die Down Here'

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/bp-o ... d=10746519

[jingofever]

Good source for up to the min. operations, which have been delayed-

http://twitter.com/jgrindal

jgrindal's latest:

Wow, just got a scathing call from mgmt, requesting I tone down my twitter info...

[seemslikeadream]

Bill Nelson: Obama Should Send In Military If BP Can't Stop Leak Today

With frustration mounting over the inability to stop the oil spilling into the Gulf, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fl.) on Wednesday became the first senator to explicitly call for the Obama White House to take over operations should immediate response efforts fail.

"If this thing is not fixed today, I think the president doesn't have any choice, and he better go in, completely take over," Nelson said on CNN this morning. "Perhaps with the military in charge, not because the military can do this, but the military has the apparatus, the organization by which it can bring together the civilian agencies of government and to get this thing done."

A fierce skeptic of offshore drilling and one of the most outspoken critics of the response to the current crisis, Nelson's call for military intervention reflects just how heated the debate over the oil spill has become. Briefing reporters in the Senate Press Gallery on Tuesday, the Florida Democrat hinted that he wants the Obama administration to take on a larger role. Speaking to CNN the next morning, he deemed the effort by BP to plug the leak by pumping a thick mud on top of it the company's last chance.

But he didn't end there. "I think the president is gonna have to have [Interior] Secretary Salazar clean house in the Minerals Management Service," he told CNN, "which has had such a cozy, incestuous relationship with the oil industry, and basically let the oil industry rule the roost."

Just two days ago, the Obama White House held a press briefing with Adm. Thad Allen -- the official in charge of coordinated response -- in which they insisted that federalizing operations in the Gulf would have little practical impact.

"To push [the responsible party] BP out of the way would raise the question: Replace them with what?" Allen said.

This, technically, may be true. But as the president continues to entrust BP to clean up the mess, his critics have grown only more aggravated. On Wednesday morning, longtime Democratic strategist James Carville called the administration's response to BP "hands-offy."

[Jeff]

BP starts 'top kill' by injecting mud into well

"The oil giant said the operation started at 2 p.m. ET."