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Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Below the Gulf's Surface

An anonymous reader sends in a NY Times article about the spread of oil from the BP gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. Quoting: "Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide, and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given. ... The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes. Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. ... [Scientists on the Pelican mission] suspect the heavy use of chemical dispersants, which BP has injected into the stream of oil emerging from the well, may have broken the oil up into droplets too small to rise rapidly. ... Dr. Joye said the findings about declining oxygen levels were especially worrisome, since oxygen is so slow to move from the surface of the ocean to the bottom. She suspects that oil-eating bacteria are consuming the oxygen at a feverish clip as they work to break down the plumes."

483 comments

  1. We should call BP big polluter now! by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 5, Funny

    We should call BP big polluter now!

    1. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 5, Funny

      In other news, the chairman of Goldman Sachs sent the chairman of BP a nice thank-you-note.

      --
      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    2. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Obama is the politician who has received the highest amount of contributions from Goldman Sachs.

      Now, I am sure there is an explanation for this, which will be forthcoming.

    3. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by WrongMonkey · · Score: 2, Interesting

      He also was the prime recipient of millions of dollars from BP. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36783.html The pattern is more than a bit disturbing.

    4. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1, Funny

      We should call BP big polluter now!

      Spill! Baby, Spill!

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    5. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's disturbing because BP knew Obama would be president when the thing broke?

    6. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by Lars+T. · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He also was the prime recipient of millions of dollars from BP. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36783.html The pattern is more than a bit disturbing.

      By millions you mean $71,051. Frankly, the 3.5 million dollars over 20 years BP has spend is peanuts, and only make it to 106 on the Heavy Hitters List. But it is unusual that he appears on the top of the list of recipients of BP as well as #2 of the Exxon list, when both companies favour Republicans. But then, even combined they wouldn't be among Obama's Top Contributors

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    7. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by new500 · · Score: 1

      You mean:
      Beyond Pollution
      oh, and change their splodgy yellow/green logo to yellow/brown. Yup, this is a branding shop's dream. "100 mil to redesign your logo sir? But really, it cost you 20 billion to make it that way . . . i think you're lowballing us . . "

    8. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by michaelhood · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But it is unusual that he appears on the top of the list of recipients of BP as well as #2 of the Exxon list, when both companies favour Republicans. But then, even combined they wouldn't be among Obama's Top Contributors

      I disagree, the large companies tend to back whomever is favored to win when they don't have a "preferred" (someone they have a relationship with) candidate. That should tell you something about the similarities of the politics between both major parties, as perceived by companies who can/do spend tens of millions analyzing politicians.

    9. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eh. If you really cared, would you drive a car?? Cost of doing business... We'll forget in a few months...

    10. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by sac13 · · Score: 1

      I disagree, the large companies tend to back whomever is favored to win when they don't have a "preferred" (someone they have a relationship with) candidate. That should tell you something about the similarities of the politics between both major parties, as perceived by companies who can/do spend tens of millions analyzing politicians.

      Exactly... It's not the party they're supporting. It's the system that pretends to "regulate," but really is just about making sure the politicians get a big enough cut to let big business keep rolling and prevent the smaller guys from having any chance of entering the market.

      The party stuff is just there to keep us distracted enough to not notice that they're all for sale to the highest bidder. BP may get slapped around in public for a little while, but when the heat is off later, they'll all be nice, cozy buddies once again.

    11. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by Lars+T. · · Score: 1

      I disagree, the large companies tend to back whomever is favored to win when they don't have a "preferred" (someone they have a relationship with) candidate. That should tell you something about the similarities of the politics between both major parties, as perceived by companies who can/do spend tens of millions analyzing politicians.

      It would be interesting seeing the spending over time during a campaign.

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    12. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by shnull · · Score: 1

      I still wanna call a vote NOT to blow up the entire planet or even considering that option ... we've survived a few ice ages, we can survive another oil crisis

      --
      beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
    13. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know what they say, "Drill, baby! Drill!"

    14. Re:We should call BP big polluter now! by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      Because he gets to keep his gold man-sacks?

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  2. Worst Catastrophe In History by curmudgeon99 · · Score: 2, Informative

    New York Times: "Scientists Find Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf" * gushing 80,000 barrels a day * The well is 5,000-feet down. * The shallowest oil plume is 2,300 feet down. * The deepest bubble of oil is 4,200 feet down. * Will bubble up for decades. * At most 5% of the spilled oil will ever be recovered. "one big oil bubble is 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick."

    1. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      has slashdot really sunk so low that halfassedly regurgitating a handful of quotes from the article with zero insight or original text of any kind gets you a +3 informative?

    2. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by russotto · · Score: 4, Funny

      Great. So the oil is nicely contained in dense plumes. BP just needs to stick a giant straw into the plumes and suck that stuff right up :-)

    3. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As an immigrant from a 3rd world, and after watching American and British and lately chinese interests eat away resources such as forests and minerals, and watching western oil companies pollute and then using economic blackmail to suppress voices, I personally feel this is a positive thing.

      Crap close to home seems to be the only way Americans learn - so some pollution close by is always good.

    4. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Apparently, yes. Now at +4 Informative

    5. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He has taken the article and twitarded the important portions, a very useful service for slashdot. Even the laziest and stupidest amongst the denizens of slashdot cannot claim TL;DR now for it is in little bite size chunks to suit their attention spans and intellect.

    6. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by roman_mir · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There is a possibility, but the current oil collecting ships like this one from the German Navy collect water by opening a wide 'mouth' on the ship from the top of the water, I wonder if they could install a pump and a long hose to do what you are proposing.

    7. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm pretty sure his comment was more than 140 characters, though.

    8. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by nomadic · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hell, it's slashdot, if he READ the article that should give him an automatic +5.

    9. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by maxume · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Only because history has been relatively boring.

      The human impact of the 1918 flu will almost certainly be much larger than the human impact of this thing.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    10. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by curmudgeon99 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That would work! They just need to repurpose something--say the Top Hat--into a "plume" of oil and drink it all up into a ship. Remember, doing a "Junk shot" is still considered a serious solution to this spill...

    11. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by negRo_slim · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I've been thinking the same thing, this just might be the catalyst to get us the battery technology to effectively use todays renewables.

      --
      On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
    12. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      If Americans are so evil, why did you come here?

    13. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then you could put a whole bunch of oversized centrifugal separators on the ship to get all the water out of the emulsion and dump the oil into store tanks... Hey, we just might have something here!

    14. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by jimicus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Crap close to home seems to be the only way Americans learn - so some pollution close by is always good.

      It's the only way anyone learns - to borrow an IT analogy, there are two types of people in this world. Those who take backups and those who have never lost any data.

    15. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by phantomfive · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Strangely, you sound more like an apologetic, somewhat ignorant first world American than the immigrants (and citizens) from the developing world that I've talked to.

      --
      Qxe4
    16. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by RobertM1968 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There is a possibility, but the current oil collecting ships like this one from the German Navy collect water by opening a wide 'mouth' on the ship from the top of the water, I wonder if they could install a pump and a long hose to do what you are proposing.

      While possibly a valid idea, there are the economics to consider. The "leak" is spewing over 210 million gallons a day, while an average to large oil tanker can store about 62 million gallons (assuming my math guesstimate is correct). That means (at 100% efficiency, inotherwords, 100% oil collection 0% water/sediment/etc collection) it would take almost four tankers a day to collect the spewing oil to prevent an increase in the amount of uncontained oil from increasing.

      It would also take an equivalent amount (of gallons) worth of storage and/or processing facilities to deal with the "dirty oil" that was collected. None of this takes into account whatever percentage of the liquid they collect is not oil (ie: say, using such a collection method results in a 60/40% oil/water ratio) - which increases the cost (number of tankers, size of storage/processing facilities, etc).

      While I think that BP and those other companies involved should be put on the hook for whatever it takes to prevent this catastrophe from growing any further, the simple fact is that no one at BP is going to even consider or "think up" a method of dealing with this situation in a manner that so adversely affects their bottom line. I also seriously doubt that the government, who is dependent on BP's revenue for taxation, is going to think up such a scenario as well. That is where the economics involved come into play.

      Sometimes (often maybe?) the economics of such a situation prevent the better methods of dealing with the environmental aspects from even being considered. Sadly, the reality of human greed of those in power usually trumps environmental needs or the needs of the "not so rich" who get adversely affected by situations such as these. It's far cheaper for them do to nothing, or spend lotsa time "analyzing" the situation to come up with lame-brained but cheap solutions than to actually do something to fix it if the economics are not favorable to the "powers that be" involved in the crisis.

    17. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      "Only after the last tree has been cut down,
        only after the last river has been poisoned,
        only after the last fish has been caught,
        only then will you find, that money cannot be eaten."

      (Cree prophecy)

    18. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by reformedengineer · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Supposedly, the Saudis already successfully deployed super tankers in conjunction with something like the oil collecting ships mentioned above to deal with an absolutely massive spill that happened there in the 90's. The guy in the article claims they were able to recover 85% of ~800 million gallons that were spilled. http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/could-cleanup-fix-for-gulf-oil-spill-lie-in-secret-saudi-disaster/19476863 Could this work on the gulf, or is the oil too widely dispersed for it to be effective? Or is is just too expensive?

    19. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Crowspiracy+Theorist · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I agree with this sentiment. Oil companies rarely take into account the negative externalities they create by drilling for oil. It would be nice to see this oil spill become such a huge disaster that the entire market changes the way they do business. However, the pessimist in me thinks that regardless of how bad this looks for BP, it will not affect the status quo.

    20. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by budgenator · · Score: 1

      Using a boat like that to clean up the oil spill in the GOM would be like trying to piss-out a forest fire! Great idea for picking up spillage from naval refueling at sea but the BP spill is way out of it's class.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    21. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by budgenator · · Score: 1

      Do you mean like BOB the Big Ol' Battery in Presidio Texas?

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    22. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      Sure, it's small, probably all of the existing ones should be used on this spill, no matter how big or small at this point, it's the total amount that can be reprocessed that counts at the end, and it will take years to clean up this mess even with all the machines we have.

    23. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by endymion.nz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      He was probably sick of working for pennies for an American company in his third world country...

      --
      mediocrity rules, man
    24. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was thinking about this. If the oil is in big, underwater 300 foot thick layers, why not drive a tanker out there, drop a hose, and pump it in to fill up your tanker, then go sell the oil. Free oil. Any takers?

    25. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      If the poster has good karma (seems to come pretty easy unless you are a total idiot or a deliberate troll) then they post at +2 (unless they deliberately turn off karma bonus) so a +3 just means ONE person with modpoints thought the post was worthy of modding up. Hardly a high bar.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    26. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by StrategicIrony · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hah. Because in the 3rd world, American trash gets dumped right in your backyard, rather than down in Texas where nobody gives a shit. :-)

    27. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dependent on BP revenue for taxation?????????

      What the fuck are you talking about. BP doesn't pay taxes.

    28. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by RobertM1968 · · Score: 1

      BP, through their US subsidiary, pays no taxes to operate in the US? Weird... never knew. Nor do I believe it.

    29. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Guess again. One of the perks of having a business operating in several cities is picking which one will give you the most tax incentives. One of the perks of having a business operating in several states is laundering all your profits through Delaware. One of the perks of having a business operating in several countries is not paying taxes to anyone.

      They still pay people, who pay payroll, social security and medicare. They may also pay a pittance as royalties and pay fees for permits and stuff. But that supposed 35% of their profits to the US Treasury? Forget it.

      Obama has promised to make them pay for cleanup. Additionally, they may be fined $3000 per barrel of oil dumped in the water (it's usually $1000, but the fine is tripled in case of gross negligance). I doubt they will have to pay the fines, but, in the off chance that they are forced to pay, it is in their interests to lowball how much they're dumping and refuse to let anyone get a closer look.

    30. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm from Brazil and I've lived 16 years in the amazon jungle and never saw anyone but Brazilians destroying the forest, no British, no Americans let alone the fucking Chinese,

    31. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by nsheppar · · Score: 1

      I foresee a new oil mining industry developing consisting entirely of companies trying to mine these oil bubbles out of the gulf. It could lead to some pretty innovative tech.

      --
      Correctness matters. Mercy matters more.
    32. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by michael_cain · · Score: 3, Informative

      The "leak" is spewing over 210 million gallons a day...

      At 42 gallons/barrel, that would be 5 million barrels per day. TTBOMK, no oil well in history has ever come within an order of magnitude of that sort of flow rate. BP's estimate is 5,000 bbl/day, often converted to 210,000 gal/day by the media. Even the nightmarish estimates some academics are putting out are on the order of 80,000 bbl/day, or 3.4 million gallons/day. You appear to be off by a factor of anywhere from 60 to 1,000. Using BP's estimate of the flow is rate, and your estimate of tanker capacity, it's about one tanker every 300 days.

    33. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by WindBourne · · Score: 3, Interesting

      While I have mod points, I feel the need to comment here (I wish that the AC had had some courage).
      The AC's point was that America does not care when it is out of sight, out of mind. AC is 100% correct.
      The problem is that AC limits it to just America. That is a mistake. It absolutely should include EU as well as Russia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and most of all, China. Basically, it is the industrial nations that are doing this. Now, most of the west has cleaned up OUT nations, but a big part of that was done by outsourcing. It is hypocritical on our part to do that. It needs to change. That is why I keep speaking out against the EU approach on Climate: that is for the west to tax ONLY our goods. That is the dead wrong approach. Instead, every nation should be taxing ALL goods based on the pollution (start with CO2) that is in the area for the good as well as the largest sub-component. After time, change the CO2 to include Mercury, and other pollutants. THis approach is the ONLY way to clean up the world.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    34. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by curmudgeon99 · · Score: 1

      Should be a question of aim. Aim for the center and use one of those centrifuges to separate oil from water.

    35. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by witherstaff · · Score: 1

      NRP had a story about this the last week. I don't remember the facts enough to find a quick link but the example they used was an American pharma company sells a drug in the US, but they pay licensing fees to a subsidiary in another country with better tax laws. So they basically break even in the US so pay no taxes here. It costs a lot in lawyers but when you're talking billions it makes financial sense to do this. Also after the Valdez spill congress put a cap of 75 million for economic damages from an oil spill so I don't see BP getting hurt too bad from this.

    36. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by RobertM1968 · · Score: 1

      The "leak" is spewing over 210 million gallons a day...

      At 42 gallons/barrel, that would be 5 million barrels per day. TTBOMK, no oil well in history has ever come within an order of magnitude of that sort of flow rate. BP's estimate is 5,000 bbl/day, often converted to 210,000 gal/day by the media. Even the nightmarish estimates some academics are putting out are on the order of 80,000 bbl/day, or 3.4 million gallons/day. You appear to be off by a factor of anywhere from 60 to 1,000. Using BP's estimate of the flow is rate, and your estimate of tanker capacity, it's about one tanker every 300 days.

      You are correct... somehow I misplaced a decimal point. Though, more recent surveys are estimating up to 4.2 million gallons a day...

      Still not nearly the range I mis-quoted above - apologies for my screwup.

    37. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by RobertM1968 · · Score: 1

      The "leak" is spewing over 210 million gallons a day...

      At 42 gallons/barrel, that would be 5 million barrels per day. TTBOMK, no oil well in history has ever come within an order of magnitude of that sort of flow rate. BP's estimate is 5,000 bbl/day, often converted to 210,000 gal/day by the media. Even the nightmarish estimates some academics are putting out are on the order of 80,000 bbl/day, or 3.4 million gallons/day. You appear to be off by a factor of anywhere from 60 to 1,000. Using BP's estimate of the flow is rate, and your estimate of tanker capacity, it's about one tanker every 300 days.

      Seems there are others who feel it's more than the 4.2 million gallon claim.

      Steven Wereley, an associate professor at Purdue University used a computer analysis (particle image velocimetry) yielding a rate of 700,000 barrels (29,000,000 US gal) per day

      Or a tanker every other day... ah well. Either way, it's an evironmental disaster with no real solution yet in planning.

    38. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by alexhiggins732 · · Score: 1

      Actually, Saudi Arabia used this exact same technique to clean up a spill that released much more oil that this. You are correct that their are economics to consider, which is why BP won't do it. Specifically, BP would have to use its fleet of super tanks which are currently full of their other supplies of oil and empty them out and use them to collect the oil and ship it to shore. This was suggested to BP, who responded with a threat to sue those who suggested if they made the idea public.

    39. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good point. Americans are not evil - americans are just blindingly ignorant and impressively selfish.

      Most people at startups come from large companies a la Microsoft, Sun, google etc. You gotta know the weaknesses first and then you recognize how to exploit them.

      It doesnt hurt that I get paid for it.

      Oh and when I go back, I will get paid more than the locals cos I know how american selfishness can be used to our advantage.

    40. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Remember those scenes (movie, TV, ext) where someone wins the Jackpot, and everyone else scrambles around to pick up the coins off the floor? Pushing and shoving in the process of course. Well, I say BP hit "Jackpot", and America should allow any nation and oil company to come on in and scoop up the spilled oil. Fuck BPs bottom line. They should have had a bigger bucket to begin with.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    41. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 0

      The "leak" is spewing over 210 million gallons a day

      What the fuck, a couple days ago it was a million barrels a day, now it's 5 million barrels a day? How do people come up with these numbers? It's not fucking possible!. The well would bleed out in a day or two and the problem would have been over a month and a half ago. The peak production of the Gulf of Mexico, for every rig in operation combined was 1.7 million barrels a day, and it happened eight years ago. The entire Gulf of Mexico output has been declining for years, and as of last year was about 1.3 million barrels a day. That's with about 800 wells currently active.

      How the fuck can a single well produce almost four times the total daily output of 800 fucking wells (an average of 1600 barrels a day per well)? What planet do you live on? What bullshit have you been reading? It's not fucking possible.

      Seeing these bullshit wildly inflated numbers that are not just exaggerated, but completely outside the realm of possibility.

      This well is pumping out somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 barrels of oil a day, and you can double that to be extra conservative. It's not physically possible for it to hit the 100,000 barrels a day range, there is nowhere near enough pressure, let alone something in the millions of barrels. Only someone who is completely ignorant of how oil works could believe such a ludicrous idea.

      The whole US only produces about 8 million barrels a day, and that's with tens of thousands of active wells. Saudi Arabia only produces 10 million barrels a day, with their thousands of wells. To say a single well could producing half the output of the highest oil producing country in the world is insanity.

      BP's total daily oil production is about 650,000 barrels a day. This is the fourth largest company in the world. The idea that a single well could be producing almost ten times the company's entire daily output from thousands of wells is so outside the realm of possibility it is ludicrous.

      Please, please, just shut up.

      5,000-20,000 barrels a day is already a horrendous amount of oil pumping into the ocean, there is no need to inflate it to absurd, almost comical if the situation weren't so serious, levels.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    42. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      The problem isn't sucking it up, for an oil company that is a no-brainer.

      The problem is you have hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil in a solution that is 90% water. To suck up 100,000 barrels of oil, you need to suck up 1 million barrels of oil/water mix. One of these tankers, with a 62 million gallon capacity, can basically only handle about 120,000 barrels of oil total, and it's going to take it a very long time to pump up 1.4 million barrels of solution, be it near the surface or a thousand feet down, it doesn't matter. It's going to take a lot of time.

      To get a picture, a very prolific well under high pressure just shooting oil through an oil pipe won't produce more than 40,000-50,000 barrels of oil per day, and that's a very, very good well. A well that has to be pumped produces more like 1,000 barrels a day, which is what you'll see with your suction rig.

      It would take four years to reclaim 120,000 barrels. By then the light stuff will have evaporated away and the heavy stuff will have sunk to the bottom of the ocean, and anything left over will have been consumed by bacteria, solving the problem for you.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    43. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      And it's total bullshit.

      Nobody is that stupid. Sure they'll be happy to fuck up your shit, but they'll make sure theirs is nice and pretty, which means the last tree will never be cut down, the last river will never be poisoned, the last fish will never be caught, and we already know money cannot be eaten.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    44. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by michaelhood · · Score: 1

      thanks for reading (and linking!) aolnews.com.

      signed,
      the last guy working at aolnews.com

    45. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by michaelhood · · Score: 1

      He was probably sick of working for pennies for an American company in his third world country...

      He's welcome to go right home with his sentiment, too..

    46. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by spongman · · Score: 1

      , yet.

    47. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by MartinSchou · · Score: 1

      I seem to remember an ad in an old computer magazine.

      First picture is of a very proud admin standing in front of three racks of equipment. "Real men don't use backups."
      No indication of any kind of brand or anything. Nothing on the next pages either.

      Some 50 pages later, we see the same admin in front of the same racks. Now the racks are on fire, and the guy is covering his face, tears rolling down his cheeks: "Real men use Kleenex!"

    48. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      While I think that BP and those other companies involved should be put on the hook for whatever it takes to prevent this catastrophe from growing any further, the simple fact is that no one at BP is going to even consider or "think up" a method of dealing with this situation in a manner that so adversely affects their bottom line.

      The techniques exist, and have existed for years. The method of dealing with these situations is to not let them happen by following good drilling practices.
      What technical information is available in the industry discussion lists suggests that someone was trying to do two or three linked jobs at once, trying to save a few thousands of dollars (at most) on hire charges for a boat. Each job not particularly difficult or dangerous, but in the past they've been done : complete job one, then start and complete job two, then start and complete job three ; someone has the bright idea that we can start job two before finishing job one, then start job three before finishing job three as well, and suddenly no one knows what the fuck is going on.
      Someone, somewhere, has been trying to shave a few bucks off a big operation, and you can see the cost savings washing up on some foreigners coast. Impressive payback - give that man a pay rise!

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    49. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by maxume · · Score: 1

      A relief well is highly likely to work and is well underway.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    50. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by michael_cain · · Score: 1

      Seems there are others who feel it's more than the 4.2 million gallon claim.

      Steven Wereley, an associate professor at Purdue University used a computer analysis (particle image velocimetry) yielding a rate of 700,000 barrels (29,000,000 US gal) per day

      Or a tanker every other day... ah well. Either way, it's an evironmental disaster with no real solution yet in planning.

      During initial testing of the well, it was found that the produced fluid contains some 3,000 cubic feet of natural gas (at standard temperature and pressure, the gas is obviously highly compressed in the reservoir). Some analysts assert that when the expansion of the gas associated with the pressure drop as the fluid leaves the pipe is accounted for, the particle velocities are consistent with 5,000 bbl/day. The cynic in me wants to point out that while BP has incentives to underestimate the flow, outsiders doing independent estimates have incentives to overestimate it.

      As you say, either way, this is not an estimate that anyone wants to be making.

    51. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by LanMan04 · · Score: 1

      To work towards a positive change in America?

      These people are our future, just as Irish/Italian/German immigrants were 100+ years ago.

      --
      With the first link, the chain is forged.
    52. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by Red+Flayer · · Score: 1

      I'm from Brazil and I've lived 16 years in the amazon jungle and never saw anyone but Brazilians destroying the forest, no British, no Americans let alone the fucking Chinese,

      Who is buying the soybeans from the farms that used to be jungle?

      Whether or not China and other countries are directly cutting down the forest, they end up sponsoring the deforestation by buying the soybeans and other crops.

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
    53. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by treeves · · Score: 1

      as opposed to not working? Oh, I guess the American company forced him to work there as well, and he could be making more working working for a local company if he had a choice.

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    54. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by endymion.nz · · Score: 1

      American companies don't force people to work at *gunpoint*... They just buy all the land and necessary government officials they need and then make it unprofitable for local companies to operate.

      --
      mediocrity rules, man
    55. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by endymion.nz · · Score: 1

      Pretty sure that big statue still says, 'Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free...' Shame how little time it took a country founded on principles of progress and social development to revert to the old 'keep the status quo!' ways. You fucked the world, economically and culturally, this is the world America built. Don't complain if you don't plan to help fix it. :)

      --
      mediocrity rules, man
    56. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by michaelhood · · Score: 1

      this is the world America built. Don't complain if you don't plan to help fix it. :)

      Fix it to whose definition? yours?

    57. Re:Worst Catastrophe In History by endymion.nz · · Score: 1

      Err... yeah? Is everything fine and dandy from your perspective?

      --
      mediocrity rules, man
  3. That's a big problem by Kohath · · Score: 0, Troll

    That's going to be a big problem for all those people who live below the surface of the water in the Gulf of Mexico. Also for the people who live in boats floating over 5000 feet of water. What are all those people going to do?

    1. Re:That's a big problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They're going to starve because there is no fish to eat.

      And then they are going to be poisoned by exotic, toxin producing life that will take hold in the 'dead-zones' resulting from the oxygen depletion and eco-system wiping.

    2. Re:That's a big problem by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Please forward us all the news reports from the famine. And the mass poisonings. I'll be holding my breath waiting for them.

    3. Re:That's a big problem by endymion.nz · · Score: 1

      Don't worry, it's already happening. You can breathe again. Oceans' alarm: Jellyfish swarms

      --
      mediocrity rules, man
    4. Re:That's a big problem by Kohath · · Score: 1

      No people were harmed in that story. How is it even remotely related to the topic?

  4. Where's Sarah Palin by PedoPope · · Score: 0, Troll

    Haven't heard her say "Drill Baby Drill" in weeks. C'mon teabaggers - I can't hear you!

    1. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Clover_Kicker · · Score: 3, Funny

      Sarah Palin...
      is out parasailin'.

    2. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by TheKidWho · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The insistence of the political mainstream to stick to slogans is so backwards... This includes both the conservatives and liberals.

    3. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by burni2 · · Score: 1

      At the moment of now she's 5000 ft underwater at the center of the well, she will be used as the nuclear option.

    4. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      I'm in FL, and I can assure you the teabags are still saying it here. I guess Faux news isn't covering it or hasn't told them what to say.

    5. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      Blow baby, blow?

    6. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So, you're saying that because a company got greedy, wasn't regulated well enough, and fucked something up, that means we should stop doing it? Wow, that's rational. So I guess if I fall down the stairs today everyone should stop using stairs? Yeah, we as a society should be hellbent on renewable energy and kicking the oil addiction, but in the meantime, I'd prefer to drill locally instead of bleeding out money in the form of foreign oil imports. Really, are you making the argument that because things can go wrong they shouldn't be done under proper regulation, or are you being irrational to accuse Palin of being stupid? So yeah, I'll say it: drill baby drill...along with the less popular 'regulate baby regulate' and 'research baby research'.

    7. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Beelzebud · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you can't handle the leak, you shouldn't be drilling that deep underwater. Period.

    8. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Seraphim_72 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      No. You don't get to get away with this one. The left may spew slogans, but the right produces mantras. Mantras that are to be chanted until they become truth. This was one of them. They need to eat every one of those words.

      --
      Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
    9. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      You're right. The Chinese will handle it better if we stay out of there and let them explore and drill instead. Which they will.

    10. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 1

      No. You don't get to get away with this one. The left may spew slogans, but the right produces mantras.

      If you don't believe the Left produces mantras, then you might be too close to the problem. All extremes in the political spectrum use the same basic strategies. These slogans / mantras / memes are one of them.

      If you ever want a sanity check for what one side's "mantra" is, find out what their critics parrot back at them when things aren't going well. When you have a saying that one side uses in earnest and another side repeats in scorn, you probably have yourself a political slogan.

    11. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Banichi · · Score: 1

      Blow baby, blow?

      I thought it was Liberal party not Libertine party?

    12. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by sonicmerlin · · Score: 5, Informative

      There is no "extreme left" in the United States. Liberal in the US is the equivalent of centrist to slightly conservative in Europe.

    13. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well to be fair it "worked" for nuclear power, and hey, we weren't even the ones who fucked up that time.

    14. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Damn I don't know if you can feel that at your momma's basement, but our country, the De-united States of Amerikkka are in the brink of a Goddamn civil war!!!! Hispanics are getting armed and organized at the same rate the KKK and all the supporters of the Nazi Republic of Arizona are.
      So, as all tea partiers are going to their rallies with loaded AK-47s (like they did in Virginia and Maryland) and yelling on TV they going to kill the nigro president, send the Blacks back to the Plantation and the Hispanics back to Mexico, the Hispanics are doing the same in Florida, NY, Illinois and California.
      I saw trucks arriving with machine guns, RPGs and other heavy combat weaponry in all Hispanic neighborhoods across Florida. People are getting ready to respond when the white Tea partiers decide to attack their houses and their families.
      As I was driving two days ago by I95 I saw one of Miami-Dade Cuban American cops pulling a car with an Arizona license plate over. He took the driver out of the car (the driver was a white redneck meth-head looking as all the white crackers usually are), and he used his taser gun three times on the poor cracker.
      Black and Latino cops are doing that all the time in Florida. THAT IS A CIVIL WAR! And your ignoramus retarded Sarah Palin is the mother of it!!!
      All serious international companies that I know (and I know many as I provide corporate investment advice) are pulling out of the US because they don't want to risk their money on a country that will be soon dissolved on a bloody civil war...
      Well, the poor fish and birds dying without oxygen in the Gulf will be the less of our problems very soon... Thanks goodness I got my European passport so I can flee to Europe when the US disappears in blood and fire because of the white racists and their FOX Lies...

    15. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is no "extreme left" in the US just like there is no "Left", "Right", "Extreme Right", or "Central".

      All of these terms are made up to make us think that we still have a choice. To make us think that this isn't for all intents and purposes a one party system.

      --
      "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
    16. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by carp3_noct3m · · Score: 1

      Exactly, we will never be able to make any large amounts of progress in Us politics until (among many other things) people can stop just blaming and demonizing the "other side". Conservatives, democrats, and everything in between and outside of that is currently involved has been tainted and is not to be trusted. Imagine for a second that all of a sudden no politician could be called a democrat or republican, or left or right, and people had to actually judge people on their stances on issues. Ah but that takes too much effort. Keeping up with what politicians really think, from local to state to federal levels takes time and effort on the citizens part, and this is why most people are "idiots". They don't want to know the truth, they just want to be able to say, "ah, that guy looks and talks like me, is from the same state, I agree with him no matter what!" I fear it is a underlying problem that will not be solved in my lifetime, if anyone has any ideas let me know.

      --
      "It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
    17. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Beelzebud · · Score: 1

      So what is the left's version of Drill Baby Drill?

    18. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      I am an EXTREME Liberal when it comes to Freedoms and Choices.

      I am an EXTREME Conservative when it comes to Free Markets.

      I think there are many people in US who share this way of thinking.

    19. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by antirelic · · Score: 0, Troll

      Ironically, havent seen the libtards give up their cars and every modern convenience that relies on oil.

      Come on Libtards!

      --
      20th century Marxism is not progress...
    20. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by roman_mir · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are almost right except this: No amount of Government intervention (regulation) can do anything about all possible ways someone may fuck up in all different companies in all different sectors of economy.

      Have the Government do what it should do on behalf of the People: Sue the Shit out of BP, Halliburton and Transocean, get the damages, cleanup and x100 or x1000 liability as a way to scare the fuck of all the other companies who are pumping oil, gas, digging coal etc etc etc

      Do this: destroy the fucking BP if necessary and also, screw the corporate protection, arrest the management, arrest whoever wasn't doing the job right and also put every single prick from MMS (that's the Government agency literally is fucking with the corporate whores, literally) to jail for 10 consecutive life sentences. Or shoot them Chinese style.

      You have to do it. Have to distribute the punishment to the guilty and be consistent about it. That's the way to avoid the future 'calamities' like this one.

    21. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 1

      There is no "extreme left" in the United States. Liberal in the US is the equivalent of centrist to slightly conservative in Europe.

      And I bet Europe's even-more-left-than-the-USofA has some nice slogans and mantras of their own.

    22. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 1

      So what is the left's version of Drill Baby Drill?

      I'm not sure the left has a version of "Drill Baby Drill" per se. I've never heard of a alternative energy / evironmentalism / anti-offshore (or whatever would be the counter-point to "drill baby drill") drilling phrase being thrown around.

      If you want a leftist meme... I'm sure if you hang out around FOX News or their ilk, it won't take long to figure it out.

    23. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course, you've never actually said that to a liberal's face... especially mine. If you had, you'd be spitting teeth.

      It's funny how a stint in the military under Bush can turn a moderate Republican into a liberal.

    24. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      So, you're saying that because a company got greedy, wasn't regulated well enough, and fucked something up, that means we should stop doing it? Wow, that's rational. So I guess if I fall down the stairs today everyone should stop using stairs?

      If you falling down stairs involved not just hurting yourself but instead killed a dozen people, threatened the livelihoods of thousands of people and the environment of hundreds of miles of coastline then that is different. Your assertion implies that other oil companies apart from BP are less greedy, somehow exist under better regulation and make no mistakes and therefore should be allowed to drill seems a stretch.

      The main discrepancy with those chanting 'drill-baby-drill' is that they do so in complete ignorance of the risks and dangers involved while at the same time bemoaning the scope and size of governmental regulation.

    25. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by RoccamOccam · · Score: 1

      "Bush lied. People died."

    26. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by BlindRobin · · Score: 1

      Oil developed in the US does not necessarily stay in the US, it goes into the world oil market just like oil from every where else and is sold to who so ever has the paper for it. Plus potential production form off-shore in US waters drilling is a pitifully small fraction of US consumption at current rates. I'm not saying that these fields should never be developed, but using what is a now scarce resource they way we have in the past is completely irresponsible. When they are developed it should be done in a rationally regulated manner where maximizing profits to the detriment of proper risk abeyance is at ther very least a hanging offence.
      Oh and Palin may not be completely stupid, but she is an ignorant, credulous, self serving con whose only real talent is playing the punters for all they're worth. It this implys that you Mr. AC are a punter well, OK then.

    27. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So what is the left's version of Drill Baby Drill?

      My body, my choice? (kill baby kill)

      This message brought to you by a quasi-socialist, pro-choice humanist who still has ability to laugh...

    28. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So when Apple and Google all merge together with a hypothetical merged Verizon and ATT and and start controlling access to large chunks of the Internet in order to gain competitive advantage, does your head explode? What if they establish a data sharing agreement with United Health Care to farm the web and emails for relevant health information about you?

      Do you support someone's choice to have sex with a 12 year old, who consents to this? Or do you think there should be some higher limit on the ability to provide affirmative consent? (You know, the "extreme" liberals in the Netherlands, Japan, Mexico and Spain all decided that the limit should be age 12 until a few years ago)

      Do you support my right to carry an AR-15 in a sling across my back in downtown Boston? you know, in case of bear attacks...

      Do you support Halliburton's right to decide that disposal of toxic waste is simply too arduous to conduct properly and is much more profitable to dump into international waters? Wow, that one captures both free markets AND free choices, neat.

      Personally, I strongly support the freedoms of individuals, while strongly opposing the freedom of corporations and governments.

      If the government hadn't stepped in, we would currently be living under the government of "Standard Oil". John Rockefeller was very clear that he had no interest in ceasing to pursue business agglomeration until he owned America outright.

      Not sure I support that......

      I think that the concept of "extreme" political views is shallow at best.

    29. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by StrategicIrony · · Score: 1

      But those are two facts.... simply strung together.

      Is it a mantra to repeat two facts? hmmm...

    30. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by vertinox · · Score: 1

      So I guess if I fall down the stairs today everyone should stop using stairs?

      You falling down the stairs doesn't make your neighbors fall down the stairs.

      If it did, then your neighbors would politely ask for you to stop using them.

      --
      "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
      -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
    31. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by StrategicIrony · · Score: 1

      I personally have reduced my use of gasoline by almost 4 times from that of the lifestyle my parents lead by making choices in my own life. I use about 1/8 the electricity of my parents. It's really not hard, if you give a fuck about anyone other than yourself.

      I'm planning to spend a year on the ocean, living on a small yacht "off the grid", a life based exclusively on wind and solar power in a few years. What have you done to improve the life of your progeny? (and I'm talking about 10 generations from now, which rules out spewing spittle while pointing at the size of your 401K).

      Do you realize the level of the absolute asshattery (or perhaps ignorance) that you have demonstrated with the "YOU GUYS ARE STUPID POOPYHEADS" tone of this comment?

      Lay off the Limbaugh crack, it'll make you smarter and generate more salient debates, rather than regurgitated internet flamebait.

    32. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by bzipitidoo · · Score: 1

      So you're saying that because one nuclear bomb didn't kill all life on the planet we should keep using them? If you can compare massive oil spills to falling down stairs, then I think I'm even more justified in comparing them to nuclear war. Nuke baby nuke! "I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

      There are things for which the consequences of something going wrong are so dire that we shouldn't even try them.

      --
      Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
    33. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Beelzebud · · Score: 1

      Now, was that protesters saying that at demonstrations, or was is the Democratic party platform, chanted at their convention?

    34. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by InfoJunkie777 · · Score: 1

      I agree with all you said, totally. Getting our own oil by drilling in the gulf means buying less from rogue nations (mostly). Why is it the oil is in the hands of bad people? But essentially, the point is moot; we use 25% of the worlds oil, and possess only about 3% of the global reserves. I am sure anyone would agree that is not a sustainable model.

      --
      Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert A. Heinlein
    35. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by OakDragon · · Score: 1

      I use about 1/8 the electricity of my parents.

      You still use electricity? You, sir, are worse than Hitler.

    36. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by bloobamator · · Score: 1

      No. Massive, ecosystem-wrecking oil spills are not even in the same ballpark as your dumbass falling down a flight of stairs. Comparing your booboo to one of the worst natural disasters in recent history, in which 11 people were killed and no one even knows how many billions it will cost us, is just plain inane.

      If you fall down the stairs then perhaps only you should stop using stairs. The rest of us can manage. But if you fuck up huge swaths of precious natural resources then you lose your right to exploit said resources.

      There is no safe way to drill that deeply. The risks outweigh the rewards. No amount of regulation is going to make it safe. And instead of pouring finite research dollars into deep-drilling technology to try to make it safe, we're better off funneling that money into renewable energy.

      --
      "Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
    37. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So what your *really* saying is that Europe is fucked in the head, and American should follow their lead? Nice one jackass!

    38. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by StrategicIrony · · Score: 1

      Glen Beck approves of your Hitler reference. :-)

    39. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go back to your conspiracy theories please, and step out of your basement every once in a while. I know the Day Star is scary but it's not so bad.

    40. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      aww, how cute! somebody who thinks that there exist politicians who actually represent their interests!

      they are so cute when they are so naive.

    41. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about Spill Baby, Spill

    42. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      ... it goes into the world oil market just like oil from every where else and is sold to who so ever has the paper for it...

      I seriously question your understanding of economics.

      You see, if the highest demand for a product is local (which is the US), the greatest profit can be had by selling locally. Texas Oil is not sold anywhere outside the US except in the form of plastics and other goods manufactured from oil. Period. The US is the #1 world consumer of oil by a vast margin, and is only capable of producing about 1/4 of its needs. Far and away the most profitable place to sell oil produced in the US is in the US. There is no economic situation that can change that fact unless the US suddenly stops buying oil.

      Period.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    43. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      so we might as well not vote at all. aka rape is easier if you just shut up and let it happen.

      live by that if you like, but don't expect everyone else to.

    44. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by TheKidWho · · Score: 1

      The left's version is "Drill Baby Drill"...

      Both sides use their own catch phrases/memes to get back at each other... It's incredibly childish.

    45. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Planesdragon · · Score: 1

      "No Liberty without Representation!"

      "Live Free or Die!"

      "Remember the Alamo!"

      Slogans is how the gestalt of democracy works. You hear the slogan, compare its implied argument towards your understanding of the facts, and either cheer or boo. This is not new, and I suspect if the ancient greeks and romans had better record-keeping (and movable type), you'd be able to find similar slogans as well.

    46. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      Your first example shows what government regulations do to the competition. Phone companies are provided government backing and monopoly on laying cable across public and private lands without paying taxes or royalties. Health Insurance industry has become the monstrosity that it is due to government policy on taxes, it used to be a normal practice to buy health insurance with a large deductible and to pay for most minor things out of pocket. efore Nixon it was possible to buy health insurance with 500 dollar deductible for a year for 25 dollars for a family. As for companies like Google and Apple - nobody forces you to provide them with your private information, that's your personal problem.

      Sex with a 12 years old? It is absolutely not a problem. Many countries have the age of consent from 12. I do not see your point.

      AFAIC you can have any weapon you like. I can too. That's all there is to it.

      Halliburton can do what they do, however I am not an anarchist, the Government has the right to start Class Action Lawsuits on behalf of the public against anybody who is destroying common public resources. Ocean is a common public resource, it does not belong to Halliburton. I am NOT for socializing harm and privatizing the profits. The cost of any operation must include the cost of conducting it in a way that does not do harm to public resources and private citizens.

    47. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      I just noticed I missed the last paragraph of your diatribe there.

      In a Free Economy John Rockefeller would not be able to conglomerate that way without plenty of Government assistance, so he colluded with government officials specifically to set up the Federal Reserve to have access to Free Money and he colluded with the Government Officials to set laws and regulations that would make him a Monopolist in more ways than one. He used the Government to destroy competition and to get access to cheap huge wads of cash.

      So go ahead, tell me how Government will protect your interests. All huge monopolies of the world use Governments to protect themselves from competition and use Governments to get Free Money.

    48. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by TheKidWho · · Score: 1

      Yes well the Roman slogan was "panem et circenses"

    49. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      If you introduce a viable, usable, public transport system (not asking for much, just regular, frequent (every 20 minutes OK?), buses, running from, say, 6am to 11pm, with bus-stops within half an mile of every populated part of the cities) here in and around Stuart, Florida, I'll use it. If you can make those buses run all night, and ensure adequate links to other cities, so much the better.

      Alas, the Right has been in charge of transportation policy for the last few decades, what buses there are are run on a charity basis and are neither frequent nor likely to go where you need them to, planning policies make it uneconomic for private industry to run proper bus services, and as for other alternatives like cycling, the car centric planning makes cycling extremely dangerous in this area. Walking five miles to work every day is equally unrealistic.

      Oh, and before you come up with the usual crap about how I'm just saying it or whatever, evidence shows the opposite. People in cities with real public transportation tend to use it in preference to cars where they can. In Britain I didn't bother having a car, I didn't want one, bicycles, buses and trains took me everywhere I wanted to go, while cars were expensive, stress inducing, and unpleasant.

      I *hate* driving. Anyone sane and rational does. There's a reason why property prices within cities with good PT systems tends to be sky high, even now. Alas, transportation policy has never been set by the rational, and within the US public transportation has been deprecated and in large part made barely usable by people with ideological attachments to one of the worst forms of transportation ever invented.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    50. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by spuk · · Score: 1

      You're fun in a sad way.

      --

      "Video bona proboque; deteriora sequor." -- Ovid
    51. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      because that works so well in China...

    52. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Red+Flayer · · Score: 1

      You have to go back a few decades, but "No more nukes" might fit the bill.

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
    53. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by yurtinus · · Score: 1

      Risk mitigation and risk aversion - Just because something is dangerous doesn't mean you don't do it. Thousands of people die daily in car accidents, but we still drive. Well, *you* may not drive, but I accept the risk and take reasonable steps to mitigate that risk. While I'm certain some failings will be identified, you can be damn sure BP did a greater risk assessment before drilling than I did before driving to work this morning. Fact is you really don't get anywhere unless you're willing to accept *some* risk. Sure, BP may have taken on too much risk - but "this might be dangerous, don't do it. Period." is a terrible knee-jerk response.

      --
      +1 Disagree
    54. Re:Where's Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What we DO have in the US is "Up", "Up", "Down", Down", "Left", "Right", "Left", "Right"

  5. Help me understand oil dispersants by MyLongNickName · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been reading a little about oil dispersants. I understand that basically they help to break down oil so that microorganisms can do their thing and use the oil as food. Maybe an oversimplification, but that is what I got out of it.

    So now if you use oil dispersants, do you end up exacerbating the oxygen problem? If the microorganisms go nuts on the food supply, does this kill off even more of the ecosystem?

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    1. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't know the exact composition of the dispersants. But in all likelihood, they are just tensids - they do not "break down" the oil, they just help with forming an emulsion of tiny droplets rather than an oil slick on the surface. Out of sight, out of mind...

      If that is indeed the main mechanism, I fail to see how they would help with bacterial breakdown of the oil. Sure, the emulsion presents a larger surface, but that surface is not actually oil, but a monolayer of the dispersant molecules encapsulating the oil droplets. If the bacterial breakdown still works, the consequences depend on the nature of the bacteria at question. If they are aerobic, i.e. oxygen breathing, your scenario might actually be a problem - eutrophy, oxygen depletion, formation of death zones. The gulf has enough of those already anyway fed by the runoff of the Mississippi.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    2. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by rrossman2 · · Score: 1

      Dawn?

    3. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Assuming that the biological dispersants respire I would assume that the surrounding environment would recover easier polluted by an overabundance of CO2 (recovering through photosynthesis) than an overabundance of unrefined oil blocking sunlight.

    4. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by TubeSteak · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So now if you use oil dispersants, do you end up exacerbating the oxygen problem? If the microorganisms go nuts on the food supply, does this kill off even more of the ecosystem?

      It's like an algae bloom, but with oil-eating bacteria.
      Might as well nuke the gulf, because a mid-ocean bloom is the organic equivalent.

      I think the problem is not so much that they used oil dispersants, but that they'd never really injected it 5,000 feet down and consequently didn't know what the oil would do.
      In any future deepwater disaster, I imagine they won't be injected oil dispersants right next to the well head.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    5. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 3, Informative

      The wee beasties consume oxygen while metabolizing the oil. It's called respiration.

      These "giant plumes" are total hyperbole. A few miles is NOTHING in the context of a body of water the size of the Gulf of Mexico.

      Of course the press doesn't sell advertising by putting things into perspective, so we see this sort of nonsense. Which would you rather have? Biodegradation of the oil, or the oil lying around as a permanently available toxin?

         

    6. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      That's actually the rationale. The truth is it's mostly to mask the oil by breaking it up into smaller particles so they are less easy to see. They don't magically make the oil go away or break it down into component parts like carbon. As far as the microorganisms they consume very little of the oil and the dispersants have little to do with that process. The excuse is it gives them more surface area to attack but it also uses toxic chemicals that kill the same microorganisms. The most effective way to promote the little oil eaters is to add a few nutrients the oil is lacking like phosphorus. It's actually one way to look for oil is to look for areas that are poor in certain nutrients. It's why some oil isn't eaten in the ground and some is eaten. Inspite of how serious it is notice BP's priorities. First find a way to get the oil into a tanker, translated how do we still make money off the oil rather than wasting it as it escapes. Second use dispersants to hide the scope of the problem by keeping it from making it to the surface and spreading it over a wider area. The problem with spreading it out is it just spreads out the problem it doesn't make it go away. Anyone remember the old method of getting rid of nuclear waste? They'd dump it into the ocean because they found the radiation levels were still low. That was until plankton ate it then fish ate the plankton then bigger fish ate the smaller fish. They found the radiation was low in plankton but very high in the fish we'd tend to eat. A similar process happens with mercury. It's why certain fish have very high levels, they are at the top of the food chain. Expect lots of toxic chemicals in the fish from the Gulf for many years to come. Oh the government tests for that! No actually they don't. They test to see if fish are spoiled and randomly test some types for mercury but they don't regularly test for much else. Odds are the oil will be broken down by then so you won't be able to detect the oil yourself but the toxic chemicals will still be there.

    7. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by roman_mir · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What you are saying is correct, it is truly an 'out of sight out of mind' situation with dispersant solution being used at that depth and at that volume of flow, the BP should NOT have used it but let the oil come up instead where it could have been collected easier (there are machines that can collect it, like this one, but for BP at least it is all about making it look better, well, less worse than it really is.

      If people are mad right now, thinking it is 5000 barrels a day, wait until the truth actually comes out. That's why BP was spewing pure nonsense that it is not important to know the actual volume of the flow and did not allow the scientists with measuring equipment to approach the area.

    8. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 5, Interesting
      The guys over at The Oil Drum forums have done some back-of-the-envelope calculations based on a frame-by-frame analysis of the videos that have been released, basically trying to judge the outflow velocity of the oil from the leak. Most of them end up in the 20k-30k barrel per day range. For some reason, I trust them more than the official figures. Most of the more vocal posters there are petro engineers themselves and know what they are talking about.

      On a related note, why exactly does BP have a say in who gets to do what at the spill site? Why do we let them control this?

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    9. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Vellmont · · Score: 1


      I've been reading a little about oil dispersants. I understand that basically they help to break down oil so that microorganisms can do their thing and use the oil as food. Maybe an oversimplification, but that is what I got out of it.

      Not really. Dispersant merely help the oil mix with the water, they don't break it down in any real way. Your laundry detergent is an example of a product that does this. Normally oil and water don't mix very well because water is a polar solvent, and oil is a non-polar solvent. This leads to the oil floating to the surface, and eventually washing up on land. By allowing the two to mix, the oil gets dispersed over the full volume of the ocean rather than separating at the surface.

      So now if you use oil dispersants, do you end up exacerbating the oxygen problem? If the microorganisms go nuts on the food supply, does this kill off even more of the ecosystem?

      Good question. I guess we're going to find out.

      --
      AccountKiller
    10. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Millions of gallons of oil leach into the Gulf every year through natural processes. There is a whole ecology of critters and flora down there that thrive on a certain amount of oil, which is a natural part of the ecosystem. This doesn't absolve BP at all for the huge volume of the leak they have created, but it also seldom gets mentioned by the 'any amount of oil is bad bad bad' crowd who seek to capitalize on the crisis. 'Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste' after all.

    11. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Vellmont · · Score: 1


      These "giant plumes" are total hyperbole. A few miles is NOTHING in the context of a body of water the size of the Gulf of Mexico.

      That's assuming all parts of the Gulf are equal. Are you sure they are? Might it just be possible that some parts of the Ocean are more important to us than others?

      --
      AccountKiller
    12. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by jmtpi · · Score: 3, Interesting

      NPR got some experts to use various techniques to analyze the flow. They came up with numbers around a factor of 10 higher than the 5000 bpd estimate.
      http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126809525

    13. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by miracle69 · · Score: 1

      That would put it on par with Ixtoc I, which went on for 9 months and didn't kill the gulf.

      --
      Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
    14. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 1

      Clearly the shore is far more biologically productive. In fact a salt marsh is the most productive ecology there is. Keeping oil away from shallow water areas is obviously the correct choice.

    15. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is that your way of saying, "psshhh, everything will be just fine".

    16. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Exactly what I was wondering.

      Why doesn't some government official step in and say, 'look, idiots, get off your asses and find out exactly how much oil is pouring out of there'. Where's the outrage? Where's the talk of 'millions in fines per day? Why is this all being basically looked past and swept under the rug?

      I suspect this thing will be shooting oil until the reservoir it is coming out of goes dry, My guess is 5-7 years before it stops on its own, or gets to a manageable PSI.

    17. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by careysub · · Score: 4, Informative

      That would put it on par with Ixtoc I, which went on for 9 months and didn't kill the gulf.

      That would put it well ahead of Ixtoc 1, which at its worst had only half the current best estimate of 50,000 barrels a day for Deep Horizon. Ixtoc 1 in the end released 3 million barrels over 9 months, the largest accidental oil spill in history. Deep Horizon should only take 60 days to break that record, and we are now on day 30.

      It should be remembered that Ixtoc 1 was just off the southern Gulf coast of Mexico, hundreds of miles from U.S. waters. Before dismissing the effect of Ixtoc 1, examining studies of what happened in Mexican (not Texan) waters would be in order.

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    18. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What you fail to take into account is that natural seepage and massive release are on such opposite sides of the spectrum that "it happens naturally" is not going to make anyone but yourself feel better about this spill.

      Happens naturally: a woman's period.
      Massive release: getting shot.

      Get the point now?

    19. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The other cool feature of the dispersants is that they are, themselves, strongly suspected of being quite toxic to certain oceanic species. Like, say, soft corals, of which there is a rather large collection in the vicinity.

      They are quite good for keeping the oil where it won't show up on satellite/aircraft photos, and possibly off the beaches where the press would otherwise have a field day taking pictures of oil-soaked baby animals; but they aren't something you do because you care about the marine ecosystem.

    20. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by nedlohs · · Score: 2, Interesting

      microbes also eat the dispersant chemicals. And yes the massive increase in accessible oil causes the ones that eat oil to go nuts and use up all the oxygen.

    21. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by wiredlogic · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why do we let them control this?

      Because if we don't they can blame any further failures on somebody else.

      --
      I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
    22. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by tsotha · · Score: 1

      On a related note, why exactly does BP have a say in who gets to do what at the spill site? Why do we let them control this?

      Legally, BP is on the hook for the entire cost. They have to pay to fix the leak, they have to compensate fishermen and beach communities for lost revenue, and they have to reimburse the government for whatever it is the government is doing. So they certainly have the motivation to contain this. They also have the expertise.

      I assume when you say "we" you mean the US government. If "we" take over the operation, with our relative lack of expertise and propensity for making big problems bigger, then BP could quite reasonably sue in federal court to have its liability reduced.

    23. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Vellmont · · Score: 3, Insightful


      Millions of gallons of oil leach into the Gulf every year through natural processes.

      Really? Does that happen all in one spot, just off the coast of Louisiana over a short period of time, or is it spread out over the entire Gulf of Mexico over an entire year?


      but it also seldom gets mentioned by the 'any amount of oil is bad bad bad' crowd who seek to capitalize on the crisis.

      Maybe it doesn't get mentioned because it's a really terrible comparison to what's actually happening? I'm really getting tired of this continuing trend among some people to merely assume everyone is as bad as everyone else, as if everyone in the world has some seedy angle. Child labor laws? That's just a product of people who want to "capitalize" on a less available labor such as Unions and the like. Public libraries? Pushed through by "big learning" and educational institutions so they can get people hooked on learning, and then will need higher education.

      Not everything is a special interest. I object on a very basic level to your attempt to imagine some group of people and try to paint them as into a tiny, somehow relevant opinion. Who is this "any amount of oil is bad" crowd, and when did that one point become the over-riding opinion they hold? If they do indeed exist, do they really have any more relevance than the crazy guy down the street who worries about the government mind control rays?

      --
      AccountKiller
    24. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by budgenator · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Since the microorganisms use up oxygen to digest the oil the answer is yes and yes.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    25. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by celtic_hackr · · Score: 1

      These "giant plumes" are total hyperbole. A few miles is NOTHING in the context of a body of water the size of the Gulf of Mexico.

      Agreed, one oil plume 10x3x0.057 miles long is nothing. Now, multiply that by a 1000 and you have 1700 cubic miles of oil slicks spread across the Gulf which is 559,000 cubic miles big. In other words more than enough to form a single slick running the entire North-South length of the Gulf one mile wide and one mile deep, but leaving a whopping 99.7% of the Gulf oil free. Of course, it's not even that bad, because I'm sure the plumes aren't that size on average and I used that one size as the average, and even that plume is probably not that big on average, just the maximum. Then it's not pure oil either. We don't really really need that 0.7% of living sea anyway.

      Besides, there's the current down there that will pick up the oil and spread it along the Gulf Stream, around Florida and up the coast, over the North Atlantic and down along Europe, then back across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Plenty of ocean to spread it out and share the load. No worries.

    26. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know your right. I had read miles and though OMG. But putting that into perspective is open google maps zoom out so you can see the whole thing and put your mouse cursor over it. The area covered by your cursor is HUNDREDS of square miles.

      Right now they are trying to 'recover' all the oil. But in the end they are going to have to blow it up. Not with nuke but probably something a bit more conventional. This is how MANY oil leaks are fixed. Good old c4 and a lot of it.

    27. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      So they certainly have the motivation to contain this. They also have the expertise.

      So they have the motivation to lie about the problem to minimize cleanup costs. They also have the expertise.

    28. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Trepidity · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't think it's purely to make it look better. Dispersants are usually used in large spills, on the theory that a lot of the damage we most want to avoid (and that costs most to clean up) is large oil slicks washing up on shores, and dispersing the oil is one way of preventing that.

    29. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by jayveekay · · Score: 1

      Why do we let them control this?

      Because if we don't they can blame any further failures on somebody else.

      They are already blaming someone else. BP is blaming Transocean. Transocean is blaming Halliburton. Halliburton is blaming... Actually I think Halliburton has a blanket immunity from any wrongdoing ever so they don't even need to bother with the formality of pointing a finger.

    30. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by riskeetee · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure I get it. Can you make a car analogy?

    31. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Imagine you have a very very slow leak in one of your tires, that allows you to keep driving for another few weeks, let's say until your next paycheck. That would be the "naturally occurring" oil seepage.

      Now imagine you're driving behind a pickup truck carrying a load of badly secured bricks.

      Well, the driver also happens to be on his cellphone, swerves, knocking some bricks off the truck, bouncing off the highway at an angle that smashes through the windshield and hits you right in the fucking mouth while you're scratching your chin, leaving you unable to ever post to slashdot again.

      Get the point now?

    32. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by endymion.nz · · Score: 1

      :P Happens naturally - post mix of oil and fuel before injection into rotary engine lubricates rotor seals. Massive release - oil injection rate increased an order of magnitude by mutant rotary enthusiast stops combustion of fuel and operation of engine.

      --
      mediocrity rules, man
    33. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      more like...

      one woman has her period and dies

      another women gets shot and dies

      the population of texas doesn't even blink, and goes on living

    34. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by sjames · · Score: 1

      But officer, I'm not littering! I'm applying a dispersant to this big pile of paper!

    35. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by sjames · · Score: 1

      Sure, but all that oil leaks in over a very large area, not all from one hole in the ocean floor. Salt is an essential nutrient, but swallow a pound of rock salt and you'll have problems.

    36. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by lotho+brandybuck · · Score: 1

      Yeah. And you don't hear anyone in Congress or Obama screaming about changing federal law and going after them for more than their contractual obiligations. I wonder why not?

    37. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      Go back and ask if they've account for the fact that the material exiting the well contains a high percentage of natural gas - which is going to expand as it exits the pipe, and thus increase the apparent flow rate.

    38. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by dlgeek · · Score: 1

      No, legally, their liability is limited to $75M USD by federal statute. However, they have publically pledged to cover the entire cost.

    39. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by InfoJunkie777 · · Score: 1

      I found a good article in the Scientific American re dispersants. The article says they are a tool in the shed, but often be part of the problem. As you say, the dispersants increase the surface area of the oil and this increases the bacteria who eat the oil, depleting the oxygen, sending the oil in three directions and making some of it sinking to the bottom where is coats and is ingested by shellfish. It can even kill fish eggs. Here is the link: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=spill-clean-up-chemicals&page=2.

      --
      Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert A. Heinlein
    40. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by CopterHawk · · Score: 1

      the current best estimate of 50,000 barrels a day for Deep Horizon.

      Where do you get 50,000 barrels a day? I have seen many estimates, those that are backed up by any credible facts/math range between 5000 and 30,000 barrels a day.

    41. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by ZosX · · Score: 1

      Ixtoc 1 also destroyed 160 miles of US coastline. It likely affected us more than them. The mexican government has refused to accept any financial responsibility in the matter, and I'm afraid that it looks like BP is as well.

    42. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by ZosX · · Score: 1

      I'm truly beginning to think that haliburton may be the most evil corporation in the history of the united states. I mean they are connected to so many things it boggles the mind. They are like an octopus with their tentacles touching nearly everything. A powerful, government sponsored octopus. One that as given the largest no-bid contract ever at a time of war to basically become the supply line for our troops while at the same time swindling everything they could. Now they are responsible for the worst man made disaster in history. Way to go guys!

    43. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know the exact composition of the dispersants.

      neither does the government. it's a trade secret. The main mechanism is to make it sink so it doesn't hit the beaches, the added surface area and hope-for-bacteria bloom is a secondary distraction. After tests the UK has banned this chemical for coastal use, and anything living on the sea floor of the Gulf is pretty much fucked (out of sight, but not out of smell once all the dead stuff starts to rot). Long and mid term effects are unknown.

      have a nice day :-)

    44. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by ZosX · · Score: 1

      You know...use extremely toxic dispersant that is worse than the oil itself to keep it far below the surface? Nah, they wouldn't do that. Or lie to the public, saying its only 5,000 barrels a day, even though they could probably calculate a far more accurate flow rate than all these scientists now trying to guess based upon small smounts of evidence? I remember reading early on one of the execs as being quoted that the spill wasn't that bad at all, and that most of the oil was a light oil and not heavy crude. (Yeah, the lighter oil floats to the top faster, dumbass) Yeah, I'd trust what BP and their "experts" have to say about this spill about as much as I'd trust GW Bush that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. They are the experts right?

    45. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by vaporland · · Score: 1

      These "giant plumes" are total hyperbole. A few miles is NOTHING in the context of a body of water the size of the Gulf of Mexico.

      Well, hey then, nothing to worry 'bout at all. I'm sure the same was true at Chernoybl. Those whales and dolphins have echolocation, they can just swim around the oil. Why even bother cleaning it up - after all, it's only "a few miles of oil" floating around...

      Except, it's going all end up somewhere unpleasant. The flow has not abated. It's likely ten times the volume being reported. A month from now, they'll still be struggling to stop the flow. The technology to "fix" this does not exist.

      Why is BP still in charge of this mess? Why isn't the US Navy using the same tech to fix this problem that they used to tap undersea communication cables? We're paying for all the secret military tech - time to pull it out of the closet and turn it on.

      Keep in mind that you have to wear a hazmat suit to handle the oil, as well as the dispersants, due to their toxicity. People who cleaned up Exxon Valdez are still suffering the ill heath effects of exposure to petroleum and dispersants, 20 years later. This is not the open ocean, its a gulf. Nobody knows how dispersants will work a mile below the surface - they're designed to work on the surface of the water. This is the world's biggest fucked-up science experiment, with disastrous consequences for getting it wrong.

      Where will all this stuff end up? Whether it sinks to the bottom of the gulf or washes ashore, it ends up in your water, killing your food, putting fumes into the air you breathe. A year from now, gulf-coast property values will have plummeted to zero, all recreational and fishing activities will completely cease and the Gulf of Mexico will resemble a clogged toilet. ONE THIRD of fish consumed in the US originates in the coastal waters of the gulf - those wetlands are not coming back in our lifetimes.

      We are not being told the truth about any aspect of this disaster, because the reporters (media, government, business) think they can avert a panic by keeping people ignorant. This is the greatest ecological disaster to ever hit the Earth, capiche?

      This is going to be THE issue of the next presidential election. It has the capacity to wreck the US Economy. You are entitled to your opinion, so let's check back in a year from now and see where things stand.

      --
      Ask Me About... The 80's!
    46. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Compaqt · · Score: 1

      No, actually BP doesn't seem to be legally responsible for all the damages. It'll only be responsible for $75 million of it.

      That's the cap on oil spill liability that was imposed after Valdez in return for oil companies contributing 8 cents a barrel to a cleanup fund.

      --
      I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
    47. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The oxygen problem is likely not related to the oil.
      There have been reports like this one http://www.bloggernews.net/19038 for a long while now.
      the Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_%28ecology%29 explains that the largest dead zone on the planet is in the gulf of Mexico where the Mississippi dumps land based runoff into the gulf.
      This is exactly where (38 or so miles off shore) the BP well is. no surprise that the dead zone was discovered there.
      Now if this disaster some how compels us to find a workable replacement for oil this is great as I for one look forward to not being in the middle east for the next 100 years to defend our energy supply.
      We do however need to make sure that when we spot off about the environment dangers of this or that we are not making things up as eventually its gets called and the whole movement loses as a result.

    48. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      Why doesn't some government official step in and say, 'look, idiots, get off your asses and find out exactly how much oil is pouring out of there'.

      What's more important, finding out exactly how much oil is spilling out so we can be really extra angry about it, or stopping the leak?

      If you think BP is sitting on their asses, you're a dumbass. I work on the North Slope of Alaska (check a globe, those of of you educated by the public school system probably won't understand where Alaska is from a simple map of the US, the North Slope is at the very top) and most of our Incident Response Team is in the Gulf of Mexico right now working to clean up the spill. The same of true of all US based IR teams, and probably a good portion of their global IR teams.

      They are literally developing new technologies that have never been used before on the spot to fix this thing. To say they are being lazy about the cleanup is to be willfully ignorant of their efforts.

      To put it another way, BP's continued operations in the United States are riding on how well they clean up this mess, and it isn't going well. You can bet your ass they are doing their damnedest to get the leak stop, and clean up the spill.

      I suspect this thing will be shooting oil until the reservoir it is coming out of goes dry, My guess is 5-7 years before it stops on its own, or gets to a manageable PSI.

      Based on your demonstrated ignorance and lack of ability to prioritize (and therefore obvious lack of judgment), I would rather trust a fortune teller than you to guess how long it will continue.

      Especially considering the fact that the leak is now capped and being siphoned off from the well head as we speak.

      Dumbass.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    49. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 0

      What you fail to take into account is that natural seepage and massive release are on such opposite sides of the spectrum that "it happens naturally" is not going to make anyone but yourself feel better about this spill.

      Except the average amount of oil that leaks into the ocean by non-natural processes every year is about 100 times that which is leaked by things like oil spills.

      You'll see a sharp spike, and you'll get pockets that are very high in tasty microbes but very dangerous to swim in for fish for a while, but even on a timescale of 5 or 10 years this becomes a non-event.

      To relate it to the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the vast majority of the spill affected region bounced back almost completely within a year - in fact, one of the biggest impacts on the eco-system was the fact that fishers took a season off for fear of the oil, and the fisheries became over populated, which damaged fish populations for several years after. The oil itself had zero impact on the fish. You can still find small amounts of Exxon oil in some areas, but there is no measurable environmental impact that has lingered.

      This is a very bad thing, and BP needs to be severely punished for allowing it to happen, as should TransOcean and Haliburton for actually causing the problem. However, the long-term impacts (not even super-long term, just 5-10 years) are going to be minimal. It's not the end of the ocean because a few hundred thousand barrels of oil spilled, millions of barrels already spill naturally, and it is something that should be kept in mind.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    50. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      Sure, it's like when Toyota screws up and creates cars that automatically accelerate, killing 34 people in the US in 2009.

      However, 34,000 people died in automobile accidents in the US in 2009, so while Toyota needs to be punished for killing 34 people, in the grand scheme of things those 34 people have no actual impact on the number of automobile deaths in the US.

      Toyota = BP, the US = the Ocean, and automobile accidents = natural oil seeps.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    51. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by MartinSchou · · Score: 1

      Because if we don't they can blame any further failures on somebody else.

      Even if the blame is dumped squarely on their shoulders, they're not going to end up paying for much of it. 75 million dollars keeps being waved around as a limit, and that's a drop in the ocean of the actual costs/losses involved for others.

      Socializing risks, costs and damages at its finest.

    52. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by 1+a+bee · · Score: 1

      Thank you for that excellent joke. I'm still laughing..

    53. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by cavebison · · Score: 1

      heh.. "a woman's period".. heh.

    54. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why is the post of the eric conspiracy (20178) marked as informative? It seems to me its rather ignorant.
      Indeed, a few miles is nothing in context to the Gulf of Mexico, but you fail to take into account that there's a large nursery only a few miles from the oilleak.That nursery is indeed threatend a lot by this oilspill.

      But ok, we're talking hyperboles, I got one for you:

      A bomb that destroys about 900 square feet is nothing compared to the size of the earth...right? Ok, now imagine that bomb dropped on your house....is it still a small bomb?

    55. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      Got it. The second one is preferable. Good to know.

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    56. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      That would put it on par with Ixtoc I, which went on for 9 months and didn't kill the gulf.

      The irony is the oil spill won't kill nearly as much it otherwise would because a lot of the Gulf is already dead.

    57. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Mr+Bubble · · Score: 1

      I would rather have had safeguards and contingency plans in place - or better yet, an electric transportation system, conservation and alternative fuels - including nuclear. This spill is what peak oil looks like.

      Giant plumes is not hyperbole. They estimate they are as much as 10 miles long by 4 miles wide and hundreds of feet thick. And there are a lot of them. This is different than your normal micron-measured surface event. We have never had this much oil come up from depth before.

      I don't know if the dispersants are a good idea or not, but they aren not benign and they may or may not facilitate bacterial ingestion of the oil. What they DO do is cause 800,00 gallons of, essentially Windex, to be dumped in addition to the spill and cause oil to hang around at depth where it will be sucked into the Gulf loop current and interact with the environment in ways we haven't seen before.

      Also, the press says whatever they think will make BP happy - cause BP is one of their major advertisers. BP kind of set it up that way, you know? I have seen very little about this spill in the news and everyone is quoting the bullshit 5,000 BPD figure. CNN and their ilk knows that the public will start yawning if the oil isn't actually on the beach. Everything else is too abstract for all the Homers out there. BP knows this too.

      --
      "The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
    58. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Mr+Bubble · · Score: 1

      Any amount of oil we release due to negligence IS bad. The stuff that seeps out is bad too - but it seeps out slowly and there are colonies of bacteria which have sprung up to deal with it. Volcanos, earthquakes and hurricanes are natural also, but we wouldn't want to do anything to replicate their affects. I didn't bother to click on your link, but I will get no capital from this mess and it deeply offends me.

      --
      "The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
    59. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup just like global warming is okay, because the earth was once molten rock. These any-warming-is-bad-people are so much stupider than we are.

    60. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by treeves · · Score: 1

      Your linked article says:

      "The Gulf of Mexico dead zone is an area of hypoxic (less than 2 ppm dissolved oxygen) waters at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Its area varies in size, but can cover up to 6,000-7,000 square miles."

      Wikipedia says:
      "The gulf basin is approximately 615,000 mi (1.6 million km). "

      That means the dead zone is approximately one percent of the area.

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    61. Re:Help me understand oil dispersants by nadaou · · Score: 1

      The wee beasties consume oxygen while metabolizing the oil. It's called respiration.

      And once they suck all the oxygen out of the water everything dies. It's called anoxia.

      --
      ~.~
      I'm a peripheral visionary.
  6. Some Good News by value_added · · Score: 5, Informative

    As reported by the WSJ

    BP PLC successfully inserted a tube into the broken pipe leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico early Sunday, a person close to the containment operation said, increasing the chances that the company will be able to siphon off much of the oil now gushing into the sea. ...

    It's still unclear whether the new siphoning operation will work. Even in the best-case scenario, the tube won't capture all the leaking oil.

    1. Re:Some Good News by jav1231 · · Score: 1

      That sucks! Oh wait...

    2. Re:Some Good News by Nerdfest · · Score: 1

      The best thing to speed along a solution to this problem would be a massive increase in the price of oil.

    3. Re:Some Good News by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      Not a chance. All of the deep sea drilling in the Continental USA may get in the range of 2% of the world oil reserves, how can a problem with something so small cause a huge jump in oil prices exactly? Oil prices are not set by BP anyway.

    4. Re:Some Good News by Loadmaster · · Score: 1

      Nope, they're basically set by OPEC which will use ANY reason to increase the cost of oil. Your logic is sound when thinking of pure supply and demand, but oil is run by a cartel outside the reach of US law.

    5. Re:Some Good News by Bueller_007 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Oh, thank goodness. They found a method of containing the leak that actually allows them to continue collecting the oil.

      I was very worried that all the precious oil might just go to waste.

    6. Re:Some Good News by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      You are wrong about it though, OPEC was doing quite a lot to push the costs down only a year ago. They were not interested in reducing total consumption of oil due to very high prices because it is the US consumer who burns most of this stuff and they saw a reduction of usage.

      No worries though, the Oil prices will go up eventually but not because of this spill at all, just because the USD will go down and the Euro will go down, nobody will want to trade in those currencies (probably USD first though) and Oil will cost something unimaginable in dollars and later in euros.

    7. Re:Some Good News by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      The other option is to just plug it up...

      In which case they just come back later and start sucking the oil out. It would be a lot more efficient to plug it and then put an actual production rig on top of it to suck the oil out. That's actually how it is normally done - a drill rig (which is what the Horizon rig was) drills the hole, then plugs it up with cement. That rig moves on to drill another well, and a production rig moves in, unplugs the hole, and starts collecting the oil.

      The last thing an oil company wants to see is oil leaking freely into the ocean. Their ultimate goals (ignoring the PR goals and other regulation induced goals) are naturally aligned with the environmentalists - they don't want to see a drop of that oil hit the ocean.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    8. Re:Some Good News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thats not true. Their ultimate goal is to extract as much oil as is cost efficient. When the cost of extraction increases beyond their bottomline they don't care what happens to the remaining oil.

    9. Re:Some Good News by yurtinus · · Score: 1

      Were you even awake two years ago?

      --
      +1 Disagree
  7. She's in Arizona by NixieBunny · · Score: 1

    telling all of us how much we should appreciate our fine new immigration law.

    --
    The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
    1. Re:She's in Arizona by davester666 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well, in all fairness, I'm sure that rig was manned by illegal immigrants, rather than properly trained Americans(TM). She's working the root of the problem.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    2. Re:She's in Arizona by wiredlogic · · Score: 1

      They were probably Muslim too.

      --
      I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
  8. Re:i LOL by beerbear · · Score: 4, Informative

    BP. British Petroleum.

    --
    Hold my beer and watch this!
  9. ... Hear no evil. See no evil. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From TFA:

    Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.

    The government has "top men" working on this. Who? "Top men".
    Besides, it's silly to think there could be oil elsewhere than the surface.

    BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.

    "The answer is no to that," a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. "We're not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It's not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort."

    Yes, there's no value (to us) in trying to determine exactly how badly we've screwed things... It's not like a better estimate would be useful in calculating a level of effort for the cleanup, possibly quantity of cleanup materials, or potential ocean chemistry changes.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by game+kid · · Score: 1

      For BP, "response effort" means "when the fuck can we start pumping again?" Things like "calculating a level of effort for the cleanup, possibly quantity of cleanup materials, or potential ocean chemistry changes" are not relevant to their business. (Those are good things to do, yes, but their business is not "doing good things", its "selling the black gold".)

      --
      You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
    2. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well I can tell you one thing - the oil flow rate is no where NEAR 80,000 bbl per day. Only 3% of the oil FIELDS in the world produce more than 100,000 bbl per day, and these fields have dozens to hundreds of wells. The average well in Saudi Arabia, with it's immense deposits of light oil produces 5,000 bbl per day. A new field with a productive capacity of 100,000 bbl per day would be very unusual, and this is only ONE well.

      The estimate of 5,000 bbl per day actually sounds high to me. This well is a mile down under immense pressure and in water barely above the freezing point. Not only that, it's a restricted flow because of crimps in the riser. There is a reason BP said 1000 bbl/day at the beginning of this event - that would be a typical flow rate from a well of this type.

    3. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Peach+Rings · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I can't understand why:

      • BP still has the authority to say "no you can't study the ocean floor." BP is the worst possible entity to be in charge of cleanup since there's no conceivable reason to expect them to be honest about the extent of the damage. This is an emergency, the military should be all over it. How can a corporation say that anyway, like they own the ocean floor? They operate at the will of the government, who grants them access to public resources like the seafloor...
      • Anyone even bothers asking BP for comment. The article presents them as an authoritative source on the matter. You might as well cover a criminal trial by asking the defendant about details of the crime.
    4. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Pharmboy · · Score: 1

      For BP, "response effort" means "when the fuck can we start pumping again?"

      I'm betting that they will never be pumping from that well ever again, and they likely know this. They are going to have to plug this hole up tight to make it stop leaking, and there is a trashed rig over the hole. It would be easier and cheaper to drill a new hole a few miles away.

      --
      Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
    5. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by maxume · · Score: 1

      That is their primary plan for stopping the leak.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    6. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      There is a reason BP said 1000 bbl/day at the beginning of this event - that would be a typical flow rate from a well of this type.

      Though, that would be a controlled flow rate, not the fire-hose w/o a nozzle shown in video. The fact is, no one actually knows how much oil is spewing from the well. I cannot imagine that attempts to accurately measure the actual flow rate would be a bad thing - except to BP, Transocean Limited, and Halliburton.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    7. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      So, what's up with the South these days? I mean, comments from BP like this just call for a good old-fashioned lynching... Come on, guys, you are supposed to be good at that. Having a couple of bastards like this Mueller guy dangling from trees would probably speed up the efforts...

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    8. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Gorobei · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hmm, given that

      1. BP used an inapplicable methodology for initial flow rate estimates
      2. BP is injecting tons of dispersants at depth (so the oil will not reach the surface for years)
      3. BP denied access to scientists wanting to do flow measurements,

      I'm guessing BP knows they are closer to 50Kbbl/day than 5Kbbl/day.

    9. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They operate at the will of the government

      No, that would be authoritarianism. The government can't just kill an entity because it feels like it.

      who grants them access to public resources like the seafloor

      Public resources are public. Anyone can use them without asking the government's permission. I can send a robot down to the bottom of the ocean without anyone's permission. Nobody could stop me.

    10. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by WrongMonkey · · Score: 1

      The reason BP can say "no" is because they (and the rest of the oil cartel) control a resource that we depend on. If the government starts to play hardball, they can turn off the oil faucet and the whole country will come to a screeching halt. How many people and congressmen are going to stick to their principles when gas is $10/gallon?

    11. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by roman_mir · · Score: 4, Insightful

      See, you don't know what you are talking about. Public resources are public and thus under the public protection, otherwise any asshole would be 'sending a robot' to drill on the ocean floor for a common resource. Of-course today the Government is bought by corporations, including the oil companies, so they get easy and basically free access to mine those public resources without giving back much of anything and thus gaining unimaginable profits.

    12. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Beelzebud · · Score: 1

      Too busy chanting Drill Baby Drill.

    13. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Pharmboy · · Score: 1

      A relief well might be used temporarily to take pressure off the original well, so it can be capped, but that doesn't mean it will be maintained as a full time well, and likely not, as the goals is to make a quick, dirty well. Not to install a full time platform and rigging, which would take considerably longer to do. They will be doing this in weeks, and the normal schedule to just get permission takes longer than that.

      --
      Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
    14. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "BP still has the authority to say "no you can't study the ocean floor.""

      Because if you've got half a dozen ROVs, each with their own umbilical cable down there trying to fix the problem, the last thing you want is scientists or fishermen trolling across the area as if there was no issue with them deploying their gear too. It's probably challenging enough to keep half a dozen surface ships/rigs on-site and a bunch of ROVs from bumping or tangling with each other.

      For as long as BP is in charge of the cleanup/well control effort, "no you can't study the ocean floor" near the site is the right answer. If someone else were to take charge of the cleanup/well control effort, the correct answer would still be "no you can't study the ocean floor". The gear involved with trying to stop or collect the flow has priority for obvious reasons.

    15. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm, go let set off a bomb in NYC. I bet the government won't touch you, because that would be authoritarianism.

    16. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      umm, Thunderhorse in the very same gulf, produced a max of 300,000 bbl per day from 7 wells. That's ~42000 bbl per day from each well. Look up the numbers for the current leaking well, it was 'producing' 8000 bbls per day, and it was not even in production yet.

      Ah, but those are just facts.

    17. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by NixieBunny · · Score: 5, Informative

      That video of the leaking pipe shows stuff coming out of it at a rate of about two pipe diameters per second, if you just watch how fast the moving stuff moves. Some simple math puts that flow rate, for the 20 inch diameter pipe that it's said to be, at 80,000 bbl/day.

      The math: the pipe area is ~2 sq ft, the flow rate is ~3 ft/second, the volume per second is 6 cu ft, which is about 45 gallons or one barrel per second. That's ~80k bbl/day.

      If my math is wrong, please show me how it's wrong. It's the same math that the univ professors are using.

      --
      The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
    18. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by royallthefourth · · Score: 1

      How can the government work well without a little injection of market efficiency?

      hahahahahahahahaha we're all so fucked man

    19. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by genican1 · · Score: 0, Troll

      For BP, "response effort" means "when the fuck can we start pumping again?"

      I'm betting that they will never be pumping from that well ever again, and they likely know this. They are going to have to plug this hole up tight to make it stop leaking, and there is a trashed rig over the hole. It would be easier and cheaper to drill a new hole a few miles away.

      They do not know this. Hence the 'siphoning'. They could STOP the flow if they wanted, they are trying to RECOVER the oil.

    20. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by sznupi · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I wonder what the end effects of such quantites & potential creation of much more vast (than they already are) "death zones" might be; after all, the prevalence of (particular type) of life tends to influence a lot of things...

      And for starters, this is an area where hurricanes get their last injection of energy. Or where Gulfstream largely originates.

      Hopefully bacteria won't reminds us just yet who is the real ruler of this planet.

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    21. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by imbaczek · · Score: 2, Interesting

      it's not all oil, it's also water and natural gas.

    22. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by stevelinton · · Score: 1

      They could STOP the flow if they wanted, .

      How exactly?

    23. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who is "the public," and whose interests do they represent? What makes your interests any better or worse than BP's? Would it be somehow better or worse for me to drive out into the Gulf and dump garbage? What if we all did it? When does the public protection stop? Can you tell me what to do in my own apartment if some member of "the public" deems it destructive? What is destructive to them? Is Sodomy destructive? What about cooking Haggis or making Sauerkraut? What if I had a really loud girl over one night? Is the difference that I wasn't profiting on my escapades?

      Access is not free. Do you know how much it costs them to build, staff, and maintain a drilling rig in the middle of the ocean? You will never see that much money in your lifetime. They lay claim to those resources because they are the only people with the wherewithal and resources to acquire those resources. If we as "the public" were to take their rig away from them and use it ourselves we would run it into the ground within a week.

    24. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Peach+Rings · · Score: 1

      If someone else were to take charge of the cleanup/well control effort, I would respect their answer of "no you can't study the ocean floor."

      But BP can't be trusted to make that judgment. There's no reason to believe that any of those concerns are legitimate. I mean come on, you should be a little suspicious of the people responsible for the disaster of the decade denying access to the site...

    25. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I work as a Petroleum Engineer. The thing about flow in oil and gas wells is that the natural gas has a density that varies with pressure. When the pressure decreases as the fluid flows up the pipe, it increases in velocity and the volume that the gas takes up increases. When the fluid exits the pipe there is going to be a large pressure drop and will give the appearance of a much larger flow rate with small droplets of oil. The flow of hte fluid out of the pipe in the video is not one continuous phase of oil. Gas to Oil ratios in producing wells commonly range from 500 scf/ BOPD through 50,000 scf / BOPD.

    26. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by cvd6262 · · Score: 1

      I'm no petrol engineer, but I would venture that a gusher a mile underwater is under a lot more pressure than a comparably-sized gusher on the surface of the Arabian Peninsula.

      --

      I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.

    27. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      You are right, if every single person decided that the public can go suck it and everybody was doing the same thing, then there would be no reason to have this conversation. However understand that today you are alive and tomorrow you are not (figuratively for now) but a new person is born just as you were croaking someplace. That new person is also 'the public'. They did not make a decision to go dump a bunch of steamy garbage into the ocean.

      So as long as 'the public' does not all at once decide: to hell with everything and with the children we are having here, who didn't have a chance yet, as long as that is not the prevailing attitude, then you are in the wrong, and quantitatively speaking you are in the wrong. Most people understand not to go and destroy things that people own as a collective.

      Here what is happening is that a machine - a corporation is a machine - decided that in order to make money it will do anything, including destroying a common resource. So this machine is bad, we must either fix it or destroy it. Seems like with the current political situation none of that will happen though, but not from the lack of outcry from 'the public' you seem to dismiss so easily.

    28. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by JSG · · Score: 1

      This looks like a really helpful post. Please elaborate: I liked the naiive analysis by Nixiebunny above, combined with the AC's (IAAPE) knowledge should give a good idea of what the flow rate actually might be.

      However, what the hell is a scf/BOPD as a unit?

    29. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Backward+Z · · Score: 1

      The government has "top men" working on this. Who? "Top men".
      Besides, it's silly to think there could be oil elsewhere than the surface.

      They're called that because they're so good at spinning a story!

      Get it! Spinning! Top! Oye...

    30. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Pharmboy · · Score: 1

      They could STOP the flow if they wanted, they are trying to RECOVER the oil.

      It isn't often that I say this, but you truly are an idiot. If they could stop it today, they would, regardless of cost. Even if the leak is 10x the estimate, 50,000 barrels a day, that is less than $4.5 million a day at $85 a barrel. That is nothing compared to the $20 to $100 BILLION or more it will take to fix this.

      They are not worried about "losing" the oil. In 2007, the US used 20,680,000 barrels per day (cite). If this leak is 10x larger than reported, that would mean it equals .2% of national consumption. Not even a drop in the bucket. Do you realize how many hundreds of thousands of wells the US has, both on the sea and on land? And that most of our oil doesn't come from here anyway? The loss of this well doesn't hurt BP financially. Cleaning up the mess *does*.

      --
      Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
    31. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by DeadboltX · · Score: 1

      I think they point they are trying to make is that everyone is better off if they spend 100% of their efforts on stopping the leak rather than 75% on stopping it and 25% on discovering how much of an impact the spill is having. You can always spend effort on that AFTER the leak is contained.

    32. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by lotho+brandybuck · · Score: 1

      Why'd this get modded troll, it's wrong, but I wouldn't call it troll. I don't think they can just stop it becuase (at least in my understanding) the riser's not rated for the ultimate pressures the reservior can produce, even in good condition, and the riser has a big kink in it coming out of the BOP. The worst leak site where they're pulling from is actually where the riser tore in half. If they plugged it, it'd blow out at the kink, or maybe somewhere inaccessable and worse. I don't think we ought to be drilling unless we can make the whole process intrinsically safe against inacessible underwater lost wells like this.

    33. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by sjames · · Score: 1

      Go build a house on public land and see how it goes.

    34. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A barrel of oil corresponds to 5.6 cu ft. I also saw it reported that BP was removing gas to oil at a ratio of 3000:1 from this well before the explosion.

      Since the pressure at 1 mil is about 160 atm that means about 20 cu ft of gas per cu ft of oil at depth. So right there the naive estimate of 80,000 is cut by a factor of 20.

      In other words about 4000 bbl/day.

      And that doesn't take into account the fact that the pipe is not just cut off and open to the ocean. The leak is through something akin to an orifice.

    35. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      I think they point they are trying to make is that everyone is better off if they spend 100% of their efforts on stopping the leak rather than 75% on stopping it and 25% on discovering how much of an impact the spill is having. You can always spend effort on that AFTER the leak is contained.

      Not exactly. The scientists would be spending time and effort measuring the flow, not BP, and it will be pointless to measure the spill flow *after* stopping the leak...(the flow will be different when constrained).

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    36. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by StrategicIrony · · Score: 1

      They could STOP the flow if they wanted, they are trying to RECOVER the oil.

      Wow, srsly?

      I won't say anything other than... CITATION PLEASE.

    37. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by budgenator · · Score: 1

      the 21 inch riser is 18 3/4 inner diameter, the casing inside is reported to be 7 inches if that's OD, then the inner would be closer to 5 - 6, not sure how thick 15,000 psi pipe is at that diameter.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    38. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by michael_cain · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's probably challenging enough to keep half a dozen surface ships/rigs on-site and a bunch of ROVs from bumping or tangling with each other.

      Indeed. According to reports, the first insertion of the siphon pipe was successful, but the siphon was subsequently knocked loose when two of the ROVs collided with each other, then with the siphon.

    39. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by okmijnuhb · · Score: 1

      BP corporation only considers this to be a disaster because profits are being wasted into the sea.

    40. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Plumes of bullshit forming at BP headquarters

    41. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Relief wells don't relieve pressure on a well by pumping oil out of the reservoir, it would take years to measurably reduce the PSI.

      What relief wells do is push material in to the well along the pipe column of the original well. The idea is to plug the well up with debris (mud and rocks, stuff that his much more dense than the oil) and thereby reduce the pressure so you can cap the well.

      It's not relieving pressure like a relief valve in a pressure cooker, it is relieving pressure like cholesterol in a clogged artery.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    42. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      The GP's argument is asinine, BP has already spent more on the cleanup ($450 million) than the rig itself was worth ($350 million), and that rig was used to drill multiple wells, not just one.

      The losses in their stock price dwarf that.

      No, recovering the oil is the least of their concerns.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    43. Re:... Hear no evil. See no evil. by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Scf is standard cubic foot - a measure of volume of gas at a pressure of 1 atmosphere, BOPD is industry jargon for Barrel of Oil Per Day, I believe he meant bbl, which is the unit for a barrel of oil. Scf/bbl is also simply called GOR, or Gas to Oil Ratio.

      According to wikipedia, anything less than 10,000 GOR is considered an oil well, and anything over that is considered a gas well.

      I have heard that this particular well was very gassy, but I did not hear anybody getting picky about calling it a oil well instead of a gas well so I'd assume it's under 10,000 GOR.

      The gist of it is, even experts - who may know a whole lot about about calculating flow rates with various methods - cannot give you an accurate estimation of the flow rate if they don't take into account the various additional factors that are unique to oil. Calculating the flow of an incompressible liquid is a lot different than calculating the flow of a compressible liquid when you come from great depths, and the details are critical for a remotely accurate estimate.

      In other words, the fact that it came from an expert doesn't make it any less of a wild ass guess if said expert does not have all the relevant information.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
  10. Call my a cynic... by Joce640k · · Score: 2, Informative

    }"substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given"

    Was there ever any doubt that it would be worse...?

    --
    No sig today...
    1. Re:Call my a cynic... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Multi-national corporations and governments lie. Completely unexpected, I tell you!

  11. Re:i LOL by clarkcox3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, that evil, American oil company: British Petroleum.

    --
    There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
  12. So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    If humans never (or, say before humans did so) drilled for oil, wouldn't the oil still be there, and occasionally be released by events such as earthquakes?

    It's basically a natural organic substance, not a product of man (like artifical pesticides, nuclear waste, etc), so wouldn't the earth's ecosystem have dealt with it before/if we wern't around?

    Or is there something done to prepare the oil before it's extracted (like injection of chemicals) that makes it unnatural?

    I'm not saying this isn't a terrible disaster, but, disasters just happen sometimes.

    1. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are tar pits all around the world where this happens naturally. They tend to be a feature of the local geology. This is nothing the earth cant handle naturally over a few decades. The local ecology changes. Indigineous species already under threat from invasive outsiders may have to bite the bullet, finally. Instead of crab and oyster, we end up with snakehead fish and carp.

      This isn't so much a disaster for the earth. This is a disaster for seafood lovers and tourists, and the people who depend on those industries for their livelihoods.

    2. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, the earth adapts and gets through disasters, except.... the dinosaurs didn't come back, did they? Wooly mammoths? Where are they now?

    3. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by nomadic · · Score: 2, Informative

      I remember reading an article quoting scientists who state that this does in fact happen, and marine organisms in areas where it does occasionally happen have evolved ways to metabolize the oil. I think the question becomes, does it ever, absent manmade drilling, release that quantity of oil into the water all at once? I'd guess no.

    4. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's like saying if humans never invented thermonuclear technology the sun would still be there. If we don't nuke ourselves to death the sun will eventually do it for us because it just happens sometimes.

    5. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by CyprusBlue113 · · Score: 1

      What exactly do you think adapt means? Here's a hint: it doesn't mean return to status quo.

      --
      a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
    6. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      That's absolutely right. It's like how 9/11 wasn't so much a disaster for all the people who died in the attack as it was for the hot dog vendors, and tourists who liked to visit the buildings.

    7. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is no doubt that the earth's ecosystem can handle such a disaster. There have been far worse extinction-scale events in Earth's history. It is just that it will take time, and we don't really know how long, for it to return back to normal. In the interim, the oceans we are accustomed to may not look the same, may not support the same level of fishes, etc. So it's bad for us during our short lifespans, as we find it hard to adjust when our shipping lanes are affected, when oil supplies are constricted even further, when food supplies change.

      It is a very bad idea to fall back on the biosphere's resilience to environmental change, as such resilience is usually demonstrated over geological time, not human timescales. The Cretaceous asteroid impact event was a huge catastrophe that wiped out basically all the large animals on the planet. It has taken millions of years for large land mammals to evolve and take the place of the reptiles.

    8. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's basically a natural organic substance... so wouldn't the earth's ecosystem have dealt with it before/if we wern't around?

      All that is natural is not necessarily good or something that can have (anthropomorphic) checks and balances.

      Take for example black holes. They are natural but lethal and have irriversable effects for people that come too close to them. Extinction is also natural, but it isn't (necessarily) good for the species who become extinct. Yes, the "earth's ecosystem" will deal with anything, including when our sun becomes a red giant which will then (likely) destroy all life on earth when that event occurs (assuming there is still life around to be destroyed).

      A more passive and natural approach to disaster is learned helplessness; when you realize it's easier to accept pain and hardship rather than fight against it, like the dogs in Martin Seligman's experiments who were constantly electrocuted but weren't given an opportunity to escape. When there was an eventual opportunity to escape they would just lie in their urine whimpering instead of jumping to freedom. This is a natural reaction, but not healthy or evolutionarily beneficial.

    9. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by HiThere · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's a bit worse than that, though not substantially worse. (Depending, of course, on just how much oil is released.) This may be enough additional stress to convert the entire gulf into a dead zone, rather than the partial dead zone that we've dealt with previously.

      If enough oil is released it could also spread a dead zone up the Gulf Stream, though I feel this is doubtful. OTOH, the ocean off-shore the coast is already home to many dead zones, so it might not require that much additional stress.

      This could be a disaster to the fishing industries, which are already nearing collapse due to over-fishing and improper fishing. (Again, just adding a bit more stress to something that's already overstressed.) This, of course, will cause other food prices to rise, which they were already doing due to the increases in the price of oil.

      Nothing here looks like a disaster to the Earth, but it's a pretty big disaster to the humans that happen to live near the area...and to some that don't live that near, but were already under near limiting stress. Also to some species. Some have probably already been wiped out. More probably will be. These were generally species that had already been pushed near extinction, and this will have been just the final blow. Others only live/d in a restricted area, and when that area is rendered uninhabitable, they die.

      Just to put things in perspective, a nuclear war that killed off all humans and most other mammals wouldn't be a disaster to the Earth. Only to the people. But as a person, I would find it a major disaster. (Presuming that I lived long enough. Quite unlikely as I live in a major metropolitan area.) Saying that something isn't a major disaster just because it isn't a disaster to the Earth is stupidly unreasonable. Only the collision that split off the moon has counted as a major disaster to the Earth. Even the incident that killed off 90% of all species (genera?) wasn't a major disaster to the Earth.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    10. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by smaddox · · Score: 1

      What? That is not at all what adapt means. If the world suddenly froze over, and humans adapted, they would not be returning to the status quo. To adapt is to survive in a new environment, or to become better suited to a habitat.

    11. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If humans never (or, say before humans did so) drilled for oil, wouldn't the oil still be there, and occasionally be released by events such as earthquakes?

      http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=aUqFB_GbhRYM

      Haiti's 7.0 earthquake "may have cracked rock formations along the fault, allowing gas or oil to temporarily seep toward the surface, [Stephen Pierce, a geologist] said yesterday in a telephone interview."

      What earthquakes do not do is drill a hole 18,000 feet deep.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    12. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by gmuslera · · Score: 1

      People die sometimes... but somewhat people consider different to die by natural causes from being killed.

    13. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Livius · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The disasters would happen, but they wouldn't all happen in the same century.

    14. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      It probably sucks to own a Red Lobster or 'Long John Silver' franchise these days. I remember seeing a sign in Red Lobster on one of the few occasions I've eaten there something to the effect of 'if it swims, we serve it.'

      This will definitely affect the big seafood restaurant operations, which probably shouldn't be selling so much 'harvest' in the first place.

    15. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by CyprusBlue113 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Who said anything about the dinosaurs adapting? The *Earth* adapted.

      --
      a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
    16. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But in the case of disasters, the way nature usually deals with things like this is countless trillions of organisms dying over large spans of time.
      And in the case of pre-human drilled oil was before we killed off loads of other species that usually kept the ecosystem stable despite some losses in the food chains every so often.

      This is more of a wake-up lesson in all honesty.
      You'd expect a race who managed to free itself from its own containing planet would be capable of at least preventing some huge disasters like this from happening.
      And you'd expect one of the richest companies on this tiny little blue hole in space would care more.
      Oh wait, did i just put "care" and "business" together? What drugs am i taking? Painkillers, lots of them. Damn toothache is murdering my cheeks.

    17. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yep oil would be released by other natural events and mother nature would deal with it in time. But, now we have humans with an interest - both commercial and aesthetic - in that area it now becomes a real issue.

    18. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Charliemopps · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Meteors hit the earth pretty regularly as well. That doesn't mean we should start mining asteroids by crashing them into coastal wetlands.

    19. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by StrategicIrony · · Score: 1

      Well, actually, while the number of seafood restaurants will decline, the remaining ones will be able to charge a MUCH higher price.

      After all, there are sustainable farming operations for ALMOST all types of fish, but the quantities are limited. The few that can't be farmed may never be widely available again (whale, crab, and a few others come to mind).

    20. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      If humans never (or, say before humans did so) drilled for oil, wouldn't the oil still be there, and occasionally be released by events such as earthquakes?

      Oil seeps naturally into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of about 22 million barrels per year.

      If you use the doom and gloom "expert" estimates of 50,000 barrels a day non-stop, in a year this spill would not be able to match it. The truth of the matter is it's probably somewhere between the 5,000 barrels BP gives (probably the most conservative estimate they felt they could get away with) and the 50,000 barrels a day which, frankly, is one hell of a gusher for an oil well. The average flow rate for a Gulf of Mexico oil rig is 1600 barrels per day. You expect newly drilled wells to be significantly higher, and for this particular well to be profitable it would need to produce a minimum of 13,000 barrels per day. A safe guess is that BP was expecting to get more than 20,000 barrels a day from this well, but I could not tell you how that translates to the flow rate of a broken off pipe flowing freely at the bottom of the ocean.

      Since recent efforts to siphon the well seem to be going well, as it stands today you can expect that the spill will likely be under control (as in, no longer leaking) in the next couple of weeks, with a permanent solution to cap the well in the next few months. Worst case estimates (frankly ridiculous 70k-80k per day estimates) put that at 4.8 million barrels. By BP's estimates it's more like 300,000 barrels. I sizable surge for Gulf of Mexico oil content, to be sure, but not something you'd expect to cause serious damage to the Gulf of Mexico.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    21. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      GP: To adapt doesn't mean return to status quo.

      You: What? Adapt doesn't mean return to status quo.

      In other words, learn to read. You agree with the person you are arguing with.

      Dumbass.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    22. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Darkman,+Walkin+Dude · · Score: 1

      The earth is a ball of insensate rock, its not adapting to anything. Your comment is meaningless to the point of absurdity.

    23. Re:So, if we wern't drilling for oil... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. I've said the following in my petroleum geology class many times (or something like this): "The ultimate destiny of >90% of the oil and gas generated in the subsurface is to leak to the surface and be destroyed by biological degradation processes. Our goal as petroleum geologists is to find the rare exceptions that haven't yet leaked completely away."

      The thing is, most natural seeps (e.g., the La Brea in Los Angeles) don't flow as quickly as a blowout -- not even close -- although there can sometimes be intermittent "eruptions" that flow faster for a little while. There is fairly good information on seeps in the natural environment on land and sea because they are often a clue that additional oil and gas lays buried beneath the surface somewhere. Seep surveys are a pretty common exploration tool [PDF] and say a lot about the nature of a petroleum system. Read the PDF file for loads of technical details on the seeps in the offshore of California. They're pretty impressive. In a way, all humans are doing is short-circuiting the natural process to extract oil and gas that otherwise would have taken many millions of years to leak out, and converting most of it into CO2 by burning it, but that doesn't make it natural even though it emulates the natural process. We are doing it at rates far in excess of the natural process for a given area. For example, natural seeps in the Gulf of Mexico are on the order of 2000 barrels/day of oil. By contrast the artificial production from the Gulf of Mexico averages over a million barrels per day collected from thousands of wells.

  13. Free Market Man is here! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    The free market will fix this. People will stop putting BP gas in their car and BP will go out of business. Leading others to clean up the spill, garner goodwill with the public, and have consumers put that company's gas in their car.

    Right?

    Right?....

    1. Re:Free Market Man is here! by arogier · · Score: 1

      As gas station's branding says nothing as to what company actually pumped and refined the oil into gasoline and other products. All of it passes on commodity markets and gets traded and homogenized and sold in lots.

    2. Re:Free Market Man is here! by thelexx · · Score: 1, Troll

      What is your alternative proposal? Centralized planning of the economy? Government ownership of the means of production? Price controls? Tariffs? Rationing? I can't help but think that all the folks on slashdot decrying a free market economy weren't alive to watch that thinking fail spectacularly in the USSR. And aren't paying attention to the countries still doing that stuff and their epic levels of fail now (USA included). Like freedom itself, there must be safeguards, but to throw the baby out with the bathwater is just stupid.

      --
      "Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
    3. Re:Free Market Man is here! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As gas station's branding says nothing as to what company actually pumped and refined the oil into gasoline and other products. All of it passes on commodity markets and gets traded and homogenized and sold in lots.

      He was sarcastically implying that the Free Market(TM) myth is bullshit and doesn't work in real life ;)

    4. Re:Free Market Man is here! by Jedi+Alec · · Score: 1

      What is your alternative proposal? Centralized planning of the economy? Government ownership of the means of production? Price controls? Tariffs? Rationing? I can't help but think that all the folks on slashdot decrying a free market economy weren't alive to watch that thinking fail spectacularly in the USSR. And aren't paying attention to the countries still doing that stuff and their epic levels of fail now (USA included). Like freedom itself, there must be safeguards, but to throw the baby out with the bathwater is just stupid.

      Honestly? There's no area inbetween what the US does(the corps own the politicians, and you the people are their collective bitches but you're too fucking stupid to figure it out) and the former USSR(the politicians own the corps and the people were their bitches and they bloody well knew it)? Black and white much?

      --

      People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
    5. Re:Free Market Man is here! by s122604 · · Score: 1

      Correct, the retail portion of the petroleum business is the absolute ass-end, redheaded stepchild part of the business..

      Like my Republican friends who think they can make some stand against hugo chavez by boycotting Citgo.. Yes, I suppose you are denying him those last few pennies of retail markup, but newsflash, you're still buying his oil..

    6. Re:Free Market Man is here! by Elbow+Macaroni · · Score: 1

      What difference is that going to make? They already destroyed the entire Gulf of Mexico?!

      --
      -------------------------------------
      Technically, we are beyond survival.
  14. Right or Wrong, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Big Oil doesn't care. How much money are they losing by this accident alone? You think that would be enough motivation for them to take proper steps to prevent or contain this sort of event rapidly.

    The sad truth is, the Oil industry is the untouchable vector. Since every other sector of society depends on it, you cant regulate it like any other market. At best it is handled with kid gloves, at worst, it isn't handled at all, and in fact given green lights by the powerful elite for unthinkable exploration ventures.

    It is a clear indicator to me just how much the Oil industry cares when Exxon is still trying to weasel their way out of the Valdez spill. Having the BP President come out and state they would cover 'legitimate claims' was a publicity stunt to quell present and future locale economic fears, nothing more. When this is all said and done, and the pen hits the check book, this will head to court and be fought out there over the span of years, if not decades. I've seen no behavior by the Oil industry to give me reason they won't re-neg that 'verbal stop-gap'.

  15. they better stop it pretty damn soon by FudRucker · · Score: 1

    or they could end up poisoning the oceans globally, you know that ocean's circulates and what is in the gulf of mexico will soon be in the atlantic and mediterranean, and eventually find its way in to the indian and pacific oceans,

    even if they stopped it today i wont trust seafood anymore ever.

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
    1. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's an oil spill, not a disaster movie. Not even half as big as Exxon Valdez, but in an economically more important biome. Get a hold of yourself.

    2. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by Cathoderoytube · · Score: 1

      "even if they stopped it today i wont trust seafood anymore ever"

      I don't trust it already. The whole industry is regulated by old one eyed fishermen in Salwesters who just spit on the floor all the time.

      --
      I have nothing compelling to say
    3. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by maxume · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's a bit silly. If you round the spill up to 10 billion gallons, by the time it fully disperses, it will constitute much less than 1 part per trillion of the ocean.

      I can see being wary of gulf catch, but why worry about stuff from New England?

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    4. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      uhhm ok that's just stupid.

      The likelihood of an oil spill in the gulf traveling to the pacific is just ... well impossible.

      This sort of thing has happened before and guess what .... the oceans survived

    5. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by maxume · · Score: 1

      Sorry, 10 billion gallons would be something like 30 or 40 parts per trillion in the ocean.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    6. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by dunkelfalke · · Score: 2, Funny

      Don't tell that to the homeopaths.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    7. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      8.17 * 10^18 barrels of seawater in the oceans. How much oil do we need to poison that?

    8. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by sznupi · · Score: 1

      It would be much bigger problem than average concentration would suggest. Oil doesn't disperse evenly, not even close.

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    9. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by sznupi · · Score: 1

      Nevermind poisoning many other areas via circulation - I wonder how much density and viscosity of sea water (+ oil) has to change before that circulation starts to be altered. There's one important ocean current nearby...

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    10. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by maxume · · Score: 1

      Sure, but my point was not to try to gauge the exact effects of this spill, it was to downplay concerns about a few million gallons spilled into the Gulf of Mexico contaminating fisheries in the Atlantic and Pacific.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    11. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by Abcd1234 · · Score: 1

      or they could end up poisoning the oceans globally

      ROFL, good one, that's hilarious.

      Wait, you're not joking, are you?

      You know, this post is a classic example of the human mind's inability to grasp scale. The ocean is fucking *huge*. I mean, mindbogglingly big. It would take *far* more oil than what is currently being released to "[poison] the oceans globally".

      Seriously, get a grip. This disaster is bad. Really really bad. But it's not "oh shit, we're all gonna die" bad. Not even close.

    12. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by sznupi · · Score: 1

      Well, "contaminate" is a bad word certainly. But who knows how it can eventually, if we fail to contain it, distrupt foodchains on which those fisheries depend.

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    13. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by harley78 · · Score: 1

      and as it disperses it becomes less of an issue because the [total] drops. As others have said, this is a Gulf issue and more is released naturally every day. I will still eat seafood; just maybe not prawns from LA anytime soon.

    14. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by maxume · · Score: 1

      Well, if it disperses, it doesn't seem very likely that a few parts per billion is going to demolish any food chain, and if it doesn't disperse, a few hundred gallons per square mile seems equally unlikely to have much impact (it would likely have some nasty localized effects, but not 'ecosystem destroying effects' by the time it reached the Atlantic or Pacific).

      Also, the relief well seems like it is a pretty sure thing (it seems like it failing would be roughly equivalent to the initial disaster), so I'm not real worried about the 'if we fail to contain it' scenario.

      Elsewhere, you worry about the viscosity and density of the oil impacting circulation. Do you really think that something mixing at a few parts per thousand (at the most) is going to disrupt the massive energy flows of the ocean?

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    15. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by sznupi · · Score: 1

      But the thing is it doesn't disperse uniformly...

      It concentrates in more or less patches near the surface. That's the place where the foodchain starts in the ocean. First one place, then another, and so on.

      Similarly with wondering about circulation. Don't paint like it's about "few parts per thousand"; it can be a lot more in some very localised area (and depth), conditions in which normally influence one current or another.

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    16. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by cdavidneely · · Score: 1

      If the oil was going to be distributed completely through the volume of the ocean you would be correct. However, the oil won't be a homogeneous mix but will instead float on top.

    17. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by maxume · · Score: 1

      What do you mean 'don't paint it'?

      Ocean currents are driven by massive energy flows, not by subtle local effects.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    18. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by maxume · · Score: 1

      Okay, but there are still several square miles of ocean (something like 20) for each gallon of oil.

      So the biggest harm is going to be in the Gulf, before the oil has begun to disperse much. The rest of the ocean is barely going to notice.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    19. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by sznupi · · Score: 1

      So you think local effects don't influence how, in what way this energy flows?...

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    20. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by maxume · · Score: 1

      What does influence mean? I mean, if you piss into the wind, your piss has some influence on the wind, but not quite as much influence as the wind has on your piss.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    21. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by sznupi · · Score: 1

      Look at the map of ocean currents. Now look at the map of atmospheric circulation. See any big differences? The individual influences are very local. Change one of them...

      Plus quite limited areas from which most of the energy in those currents comes from (accidentally, the spill is one of those). Look, I'm not saying it needs to have an influence. But if it would go on, how can you know arbitrarily what level of density (that is all that's driving "normal" currents) and viscosity change would be safe?

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    22. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by Elbow+Macaroni · · Score: 1

      All this to make a few extra dollars over at BP.

      --
      -------------------------------------
      Technically, we are beyond survival.
    23. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by yurtinus · · Score: 1

      Personally, I rather enjoyed the blanket claim that oil is a poison and utter disregard for the natural seepage that happens (and is delt with) naturally.

      Yes, big problem. Yes, we (of course by "we" I mean "somebody more qualified than /.") need to deal with it. No, I'm not going to stop eating shrimp.

      --
      +1 Disagree
    24. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by Abcd1234 · · Score: 1

      Personally, I rather enjoyed the blanket claim that oil is a poison and utter disregard for the natural seepage that happens (and is delt with) naturally.

      Oh come now. Natural seepage doesn't produce 5,000 - 50,000 barrels/day in a concentrated burst. Nor does it result in an unfiltered expulsion of hydrocarbons (natural seepage happens through layers of rock, and so the heavy stuff is filtered out).

      Simply put, equating this event to the natural seepage that happens every year is disingenuous and misleading, to say the least.

      No, it's not going to wipe out the oceans. But it's not at all comparable to any natural event.

    25. Re:they better stop it pretty damn soon by yurtinus · · Score: 1

      ...Hence why I called it a "big problem" and "we (of course by "we" I mean "somebody more qualified than /.") need to deal with it." It is not disingenuous or misleading to point out that there is always oil seeping into the oceans naturally and the fishes are still A-OK to eat. Hell, I agree with you! Let's be friends.

      --
      +1 Disagree
  16. Think of it like a milkshake. by taxman_10m · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All we need to do is drink the milkshake.

    1. Re:Think of it like a milkshake. by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      The problem is, your milkshake is 90% water, and you need to drink a full cup of milkshake, excluding the water. That means you have to drink 10 of these milkshake/water mixes, and your stomach is nowhere big enough.

      See the problem?

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
  17. So if... by Sanctuary · · Score: 1

    The bacteria need small bits of oil and lot of oxygen to eat the oil why not in addition to breaking up the oil pump oxygen from the surface down to the depleted areas. Sure it will end up with mass amounts of CO2 in the water but then also make that area ripe for an algae/plankton bloom and then things would start to get better. That is help the other parts of the natural cycle. Maybe add in some bicarb to help keep the ph where it should be. Sure throwing chemicals into the water is bad, be we have already done that, now we need to add others to counteract the effects and neutralize things back to the state they were in before the spill.

    Give the microbes the oxygen they need to feed on the oil, and then give the other algae/plankton what they need to eat the microbes and make more oxygen. Speed up what would naturally happen over the next 30+ years without human intervention. The planet is fairly good at correcting things on it own just not in time scale we can see, or if part of the correction lower the habitability for humans we may not see it, but the earth will eventually recover to its normal ebb and flow.

    It is like helping an old lady across the street. Sure she could do it on her own but with some boy/girl scouts there they can help her across faster and safer.

    1. Re:So if... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Building giant ships to go around skimming the oil from the surface would probably be an easier engineering project than blowing enough air under the water to bring up the oxygen concentration to expedite microbe decomposition.

    2. Re:So if... by MoralHazard · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Oh, so you have an economical, reliable method for:

        * pumping millions of tons of oxygen
        * almost a mile below the ocean's surface
        * and dissolving it in trillions of gallons of water

      Goddamn armchair engineers... Seriously, you're about as divorced from reality as BP's PR team.

    3. Re:So if... by eggnoglatte · · Score: 1

      The dissolving part is easy. Oxygen will dissolve naturally in oxygen-depleted water. All you need to do is make sure that you maximize the air-water surface. This can be done by creating air bubbles in the deep. As they rise, most of the oxygen will be dissolved in the water.

      Now, it does take some effort to pump air into the deep water over a large region. But keep in mind that they are already running massive operations that involve anything from erecting barriers, isolating and burning surface oil over large regions, and yes, pumping chemicals all the way down to the pipe. By comparison to these logistical challenges, having a few ships pump down air ought to be relatively straightforward.

    4. Re:So if... by Sanctuary · · Score: 1

      They already have the ability to pump down to that depth, since they were pumping dispersant directly into to the stream at one point. Dissolving gasses in pressure is actually very simple, the act of the gas moving through a column of liquid will dissolve the gas. Yes, it is harder to dissolve a gas into a liquid when the liquid is under pressure already, but at the colder temps a mile down oxygen is actually more soluble then at the surface. I dissolve gas into a liquid, granted the gas I use is CO2 which is many orders more soluble, and my liquid is beer not sea water but the method is the same. You stick a pipe down to the bottom of the column you want to gasify and turn on the pressurized gas flow. The weight of the water in the sea is enough to force the air into solution.

      If you are commenting on the approximate 2200 psi needed to pump down to that depth, my little pressure washer at home can do that.

      I never claimed to be a environmental engineer, I'm a computer engineer, and was asking a question.

  18. Re:i LOL by kestasjk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Previously known as Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which is a bit less catchy these days.

    Actually BP no longer stands for British Petroleum officially, but meh.. No large company is anchored too heavily to its country of origin.

    --
    // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
  19. so? by 3seas · · Score: 1

    All this really means is that some of the fishing industry in the gulf will change to oil gathering.
    And isn't it a good thing that the refineries are so close by?
    They might call it Gulf Oil. Oh wait that name is already taken.

    What is most amazing about this is that an oil rig caused it with a drilled hole.
    Hasn't nature ever done such a thing as leak oil in the ocean?

    I always wondered what was oil holding up that when we take it out of the ground...

    In comparison to other man made disasters, like deforestation, where does it really rank?

    1. Re:so? by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 1

      There is a lot of wringing of hands going on in the press right now, but in reality there isn't much that can be pointed at as actual ecological damage from this. I've heard numbers like 10,000 tar balls collected, and 20 birds rescued.

      Wait a year or so and see what the biosurveys show then there will be something to base a good discussion on. Personally I don't think they will show much because of this fact - the Gulf of Mexico naturally leaks 2000 bbp per day every day year in and year out. The best estimates we have are that the BP spill is on the order of 5,000 bbl per day, and it looks now like BP has choked off the main leak some 23 days after the mess started. Ultimately that is not a huge increase in the oil level already naturally present in the Gulf.

    2. Re:so? by Gerafix · · Score: 1

      Think Exxon Valdez x3, and that's just right now, they haven't stopped it.

    3. Re:so? by Gerafix · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's like saying the sun naturally releases lots of radiation so it's okay to go jump into a nuclear reactor. The organisms around natural leaks are vastly different and have adapted to such locations over hundreds of thousands of years. And it's not like that 2000bbp, which I'll just take your word for, is all out of one location either. You can't just go pour oil over everything and then go, "Well oil naturally occurs so it'll be fine!" Really rather absurd.

    4. Re:so? by miracle69 · · Score: 1

      And it isn't even Ixtoc I * 0.01 at this point.

      --
      Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
    5. Re:so? by itsenrique · · Score: 1

      Where does it rank as far as harming the earth? We can't know until it ends, I'd guess not as bad as mass deforestation. Where does it rank as far as causing economic loss a large part of the U.S.? I'd say its pretty bad.

    6. Re:so? by royallthefourth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Protons are protons you fucking idiot yes the sun radiates nuclear radiation

    7. Re:so? by Gorobei · · Score: 1

      Slow down. Take a deep breath. Reread the OP.

    8. Re:so? by Gorobei · · Score: 1

      Oh, you were replying to the moron troll. Sorry, never mind.

    9. Re:so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      did you read what the guys you had marked troll just said :

      solar radiation is completely different from Nuclear Radiation, at least in the form that reaches the earth's surface

    10. Re:so? by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 1

      How is this parent insightful? It should be -1 Stupid.

      The organisms around natural leaks are not vastly different from life in the Gulf as a whole. Once oil is released from a leak, natural or not it will distribute throughout the Gulf. And as you say the various natural leaks are widely distributed through a large area, thus the adapted life is also widely distributed.

      If the adapted life was local to small areas we would not be seeing the oxygen reduction which is clear evidence of metabolism of oil, and life adapted to the presence of oil in the plume.

    11. Re:so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is true that the sun radiates protons. They get deflected by the magnetosphere. The sun also radiates neutrinoes, which pass harmlessly through the earth, and photons over a wide spectrum, some of which is harmful, though the harmful wavelengths are supposed to be filtered out by the ozone layer of the stratosphere.

    12. Re:so? by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      Protons are protons you fucking idiot

      I think you mean photons, there aren't any protons released by the sun's fusion reaction, it is extremely efficient in that regard, whereas the fission we use tosses protons all over the place. The radiation the sun produces is in the form of electromagnetic waves, which can still be extremely nasty, but the vast majority of the harmful stuff is deflected by Earth's magnetic field, along with any particulate matter from the solar wind.

      The vast majority of radiation from the sun that reaches the earth is non-ionizing radiation. Very little ionizing radiation makes it to the surface. Also, the fusion process of the sun produces a lot less residual ionizing radiation than the fission process we use on earth.

      The majority of radiation emitted close to a nuclear reactor (i.e. practically touching spent fuel rods and the like) is ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation is very high energy and strips electrons from atoms (hence the "ionizing" part). This does very bad things to living organisms.

      There are actually pretty huge differences between radiation from the Sun (as far as what hits the earth) and radiation from a nuclear reactor if you ever managed to get close enough to be exposed to such radiation.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    13. Re:so? by Mr+Bubble · · Score: 1

      He didn't say that. He said you wouldn't want to jump into a nuclear reactor just because the sun is also a source of radiation. See, it was about quantity and concentration.... Oh, never mind.

      --
      "The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
  20. Its a sequel.... by 3seas · · Score: 1, Funny

    Dead Sea II

  21. Nuke the F-ING thing. by pablo_max · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Seriously. You can mod this a troll if you feel better. But I would much rather there be a small area of radiation from a tactical nuclear explosion, than the entire gulf coast destroyed the biggest oil spill in the history of mankind and one that will just keep on going and keep getting worse.
    I know folks have bad feeling about nukes, but for fucks sake..it worked 4 out of 5 times for the Russians. It's time to do it before it's too late!
    http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/62992,news-comment,news-politics,deepwater-horizon-gulf-mexico-oil-spill-should-bp-nuke-the-leak-like-the-russians

    1. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 4, Informative

      You can't just drop a nuke on the seafloor and expect it to close the well. All it'll gonna do is blow away the sediment, leaving the well open. In order to close it, you'll have to drill into solid rock, lower the nuke down there and blow it to collapse the original well. At this point, you can as well do a relief drilling and shut it down with mud. Nuking a blowout makes sense only when you don't have the capability to geo-steer a relief drill precisely enough to hit the original hole. We can do that now, and it won't take much more time than drilling for a nuke. We could nuke the BP headquarters, though - that might help...

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    2. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by UziBeatle · · Score: 1

        THEY ignored Ripley too and we saw where that ended up.

        THEY will ignore a visionary like you as well.

        THEY always do.

        Pity the fools.

       

      --
      Something between the lines jumps out and bites your arm off. Soltan Gris / London
    3. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by yyxx · · Score: 1

      We can do that now, and it won't take much more time than drilling for a nuke.

      You only need to drill a few hundred feet for a bomb (it probably doesn't even have to be nuclear). The relief wells apparently have to go all the way down. Furthermore, what makes you think they won't screw up on the relief wells as well? Hurricane season is coming up. Then, oil comes bubbling out of two or three holes.

      We could nuke the BP headquarters, though - that might help...

      I'm not sure I'd like to see London nuked just because of BP; I actually like London. On the other hand, maybe Europeans would then start realizing that European companies are responsible for this.

    4. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by miracle69 · · Score: 4, Informative

      It isn't as bad as the Ixtoc I spill that went on for 9 months and didn't kill the gulf. That was 30,000 barrels per day for 9 months.

      --
      Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
    5. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A few hundred feet probably won't do it - the sediment layer is huge in the gulf, and you definitely want to collapse the solid rock beneath. On the topic of the headquarters, yeah, it would probably be an overreaction to nuke London, I like the place, too. I am European, btw - and in my opinion, the place of origin of the corporation in question is irrelevant - there are no European or American corporations, those entities hold no loyalty or allegiance to their place of origin anyway, they exist in a whole different universe...

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    6. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by maxume · · Score: 1

      The companies are multinationals. Their home charters are a matter of convenience.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    7. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Get a grip on reality. It won't be the biggest oil spill in the history of mankind or even the Gulf of Mexico for many months. Even if these speculative, higher estimate of the barrels/day flowing out were accurate it would still take months to equal IXTOC-1. And did the Gulf of Mexico turn completely into a dead zone when IXTOC-1 happened back in 1979? No. And if the original estimate was of ~5000 barrels/day is about right, this blowout isn't as serious.

    8. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why I read Slashdot. We actually have a real, live nuclear weapons expert, who no doubt has researched and participated in underwater nuclear explosions, taking time out of his busy day to post here! Amazing!

      And you morons who modded this "informative" - what's your excuse?

    9. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by Noughmad · · Score: 1

      Way to ruin my happiness that for once we were doing something bad to America?

      --
      PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
    10. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      UK != EU so much fail slashdot really

    11. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by careysub · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It isn't as bad as the Ixtoc I spill that went on for 9 months and didn't kill the gulf. That was 30,000 barrels per day for 9 months.

      Maybe you aren't keeping up with the news - current estimates based on actual observations of the oil flowing out of the hole is 50,000 barrels a day, making it worse than Ixtoc 1's peak flow rate (the number you gave). But Ixtoc 1 "only" released a total of 3 million barrels over those 9 months, an average flow rate more like 10,000 barrels a day.

      Deep Horizon looks like it will only take 60 days to break the world record for an accidental oil spill, and we are now in day 30, with no estimate of when it is likely to be shut down (though that relief well, touted to be the real fix will take at least 3 months).

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    12. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is Bruce Willis and his specially picked Hollywood crew available for the drilling? He did a great job in Armageddon!

    13. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      No one mentioned the EU. except you.

      Or are you claiming that London isn't in Europe?

    14. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      Maybe you aren't keeping up with the news - current estimates based on actual observations of the oil flowing out of the hole by people with no idea of critical factors like the gas to oil ratio, porosity of the reservoir rock, potential obstructions in the shaft is 50,000 barrels a day, making it worse than Ixtoc 1's peak flow rate (the number you gave).

      There, fixed that for you.

      An uninformed estimate is an uninformed estimate, no matter how much you try to make it sound otherwise. This is exactly the same problem BP has with their estimate, which is why they say it's impossible to accurately measure the flow of the well and chose the lowest figure they could get away with. They are right, and these "expert" figures are no more accurate than BP's figures, for all the same reasons.

      Frankly, a well naturally pushing 50,000 barrels per day is an extreme gusher, and is very rare. The average production of active wells in the gulf is 1600 barrels per day. I find it highly unlikely that this well is pushing out 50,000 barrels per day, but 5,000 seems like a real lowball estimate. A deep sea well wouldn't be profitable at that rate, and though there are plenty of ways to increase the flow of a well, you usually reserve them for after the natural pressure has dropped to the point that it won't push up to the surface adequately on its own. I'd be a lot more willing to believe 15,000-20,000 barrels a day until more accurate measurements can be made. 50,000 barrels is pretty out there.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    15. Re:Nuke the F-ING thing. by Mr+Bubble · · Score: 1

      It's also different in that it is being released from a mile down - as opposed to 150 feet down - ands being hit with dispersants that weight it down and fractionate it at depth. Add to that the fact that it is drifting into the loop current which will carry it down to Cuba and the Keys. It seems like it is definitely going to affect fisheries for decades to come - particularly oysters and shrimp.

      --
      "The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
  22. Re:i LOL by Eggbloke · · Score: 1

    Ironically their tag line is "Beyond Petroleum".

    --
    I care not for your karma and your mod points.
  23. The truth hurts the teabaggers by Beelzebud · · Score: 2, Interesting

    These idiots used DRILL BABY DRILL as a campaign slogan. Now they want to forget that ever happened.

    1. Re:The truth hurts the teabaggers by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

      Drill babies? They're mad!

    2. Re:The truth hurts the teabaggers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you a teabagger? Most, if not all, members of the Tea Party are not.

      What's that running down your chin, dude?

    3. Re:The truth hurts the teabaggers by Beelzebud · · Score: 1

      Teabaggers self-applied that name, before someone tipped them off to what it meant. It's not my problem you guys are totally clueless.

  24. Re:i LOL by roman_mir · · Score: 1

    That's right, Beyond Petroleum - Killing the Living and the Harvesting the Dying before they even become oil! Ingenious!

  25. Re:i LOL by Trip+Ericson · · Score: 5, Informative

    Bear in mind that several years ago, BP merged with another company and kept the BP name. That company? Amoco. AMerican Oil COmpany.

  26. Man! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I find curious how apathetic people are these days.

    It's like a toon character:

      "Hey! Look! The Earth is being destroyed!"
    "Yo, man! That sucks!"

    Earth may be doomed, but is there hope for us?

    1. Re:Man! by malkir · · Score: 1

      I find curious how apathetic people are these days.

      It's like a toon character:

      "Hey! Look! The Earth is being destroyed!" "Yo, man! That sucks!"

      Earth may be doomed, but is there hope for us?

      As opposed to "OH NO THE WORLD IS ENDING!?!?! Kill your children before they have to suffer the same fate we will!". The whole situation fucked up, nothing you say or do can change that. Welcome to the real world, deal with it and QQ.

    2. Re:Man! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine, goes by the name of "learned helplessness".

      With the exception of the occasional mulishly idealistic college student, most people don't take long to stop caring much about things over which they have absolutely no power.

    3. Re:Man! by Shark · · Score: 1

      There's always something you can do 'about it', first of which is making sure everybody knows 'about it'. That's how mobilization starts.

      --
      Mind the frickin' laser...
    4. Re:Man! by justin12345 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Knows about what? The oil spill? I'm pretty sure everyone knows that there is a really bad oil spill in the gulf by now.

      Mobilization has begun. There are already crews attempting to stop the leak, and crews attempting clean up.

      Perhaps you should go donate blood to the red cross. It'll make you feel better.

      --
      Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
    5. Re:Man! by Ephemeriis · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I find curious how apathetic people are these days.

      It's like a toon character:

        "Hey! Look! The Earth is being destroyed!"
      "Yo, man! That sucks!"

      Earth may be doomed, but is there hope for us?

      We are basically bombarded with completely irrelevant bad news 24/7.

      Turn on the TV or radio, fire up a web browser, pick up a newspaper... You'll read about some random person who got kidnapped on the other side of the planet. Or a nasty plane crash somewhere. Or a tsunami.

      Yeah, it's sad that somebody is suffering somewhere... But it's really got absolutely no bearing on my life.

      And then we're bombarded with big stuff that is relevant, but we can't do anything about it.

      Things like the volcano in Iceland, or the oil spill in the gulf. Yeah, it affects me... But there's really nothing I can personally do about it. Maybe throw some money at it in the form of a donation or two... Which might help... But there's absolutely no immediate feedback that I'm doing something to alleviate the problem.

      And then we're bombarded with random scary stuff that doesn't even necessarily have a basis in reality.

      Somebody, somewhere said that they wanted to kill the President - so now we're at threat level plaid, be afraid! There's some random bowl game coming up and terrorists would love to blow it up, be afraid! Mashed potatoes cause Alzheimers, be afraid! Obamacare is going to destroy Social Security, be afraid!

      Is it any wonder that we've learned to tune all that out and just keep chugging along in our day-to-day lives?

      It's either that, or stop functioning entirely.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    6. Re:Man! by endymion.nz · · Score: 1

      You can't stop this oil spill. You could stop contributing to a society which encourages profit over anything - executives get in trouble for failing to meet fiduciary responsibility if they don't do everything in their power to increase value for shareholders. Then maybe next time a well is drilled it won't be hurriedly backfilled around the pipe with cement by Halliburton. Or you could just keep ignoring it and keep giving your tacit approval.

      --
      mediocrity rules, man
    7. Re:Man! by somersault · · Score: 1

      donate blood to the red cross. It'll make you feel better.

      That's a lie! It made me almost pass out! Damn those vampires!

      --
      which is totally what she said
    8. Re:Man! by Runaway1956 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Lemme guess. You're still in school - or at least you're very recently graduated. I'm not apathetic, myself, but at age 54, I'm getting there. No matter how bad the news, how dire the warnings, or how hopeless the situation, EVERYONE AROUND ME is an apathetic jackass. Phht. There is no "mobilization". We'll just continue to swirl around and around, until we finally get sucked down the toilet, and find ourselves in the septic tank.

      Even then - MOST PEOPLE JUST WON'T FUCKING CARE!

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    9. Re:Man! by Ephemeriis · · Score: 1

      You can't stop this oil spill.

      Which puts into the big stuff that is relevant, but we can't do anything about it category.

      You could stop contributing to a society which encourages profit over anything - executives get in trouble for failing to meet fiduciary responsibility if they don't do everything in their power to increase value for shareholders. Then maybe next time a well is drilled it won't be hurriedly backfilled around the pipe with cement by Halliburton.

      Sounds nice on paper... But I'm skeptical that it would actually be effective in reality.

      We aren't talking about problems with a single company, or a single state, or even a single nation here... Pretty much the entire freaking planet operates this way. Even if BP is absolutely crucified for this, it won't do much to all the other folks around the world who operate this way. It'll take a hell of a lot more than a few people boycotting BP to fix this problem.

      Or you could just keep ignoring it and keep giving your tacit approval.

      I'm not personally ignoring anything.

      I'm fairly active in my community. I vote, and try to make informed decisions. I write letters. I purchase as responsibly as possible.

      That whole is it any wonder that we've learned to tune all that out and just keep chugging along in our day-to-day lives was aimed at the AC who found modern apathy curious. And it was merely an explanation as to why so many people in the world are, indeed, apathetic.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    10. Re:Man! by endymion.nz · · Score: 1

      That's good, and you seem like you're on the right track. It's not enough though, there are many opportunities for you to close the gap between what you know and the ignorance of the general population... if you can handle being called a crazy person for a while.

      --
      mediocrity rules, man
    11. Re:Man! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Is it any wonder that we've learned to tune all that out and just keep chugging along in our day-to-day lives?
      > It's either that, or stop functioning entirely.

      Isn't this defeat already?

      I keep believing in Linux, though it's at 1,5~4% on the desktop. But IE is falling and, if office loses to Oo.o, maybe -- just maybe -- Windows starts to lose share...

      I guess we should work the same way, even if little by little, to make a better world, which we might not see, but even so... I don't see any Plan B from where I stand.

    12. Re:Man! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...Is it any wonder that we've learned to tune all that out and just keep chugging along in our day-to-day lives? It's either that, or stop functioning entirely...

      I vote to stop functioning entirely. Everything will be all right as long as I have enough beer...

    13. Re:Man! by michaelhood · · Score: 3, Informative

      Perhaps you should go donate blood to the red cross. It'll make you feel better.

      The Red Cross is doing just fine..

      Net Assets $2,559,637,123

      We have determined that this charity has a privacy policy which requires you to tell the charity to remove your name and contact information from mailing lists it sells, trades or shares.

      They sell my blood for $200 a pint and then sell my name and address as a blood donor.

    14. Re:Man! by michaelhood · · Score: 2, Interesting

      executives get in trouble for failing to meet fiduciary responsibility if they don't do everything in their power to increase value for shareholders.

      I hear this a lot in rants about capitalism, but do you have any examples of this actually happening? I'm familiar with fiduciary duty. I just want to see some example(s) of this occurring in a public company. thanks.

    15. Re:Man! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Okay, what are you doing about it? Maybe talking with some friends about how much it sucks? That means exactly nothing.

    16. Re:Man! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While I totally agree with you that at the moment the news is pretty one-sided and overall mostly negative (good news != news), there still is something you can do. Not for this particular disaster ofcourse, but you could start to think how you could contribute to a way of life where oil is not essential. I'm thinking small stuff: dont ask for a plastic bag when you can easily carry stuff, or put in another bag you already haev with you. Or better take a shopping bag with you when you go shopping.
      Drive with someone else to work, or when going on holidays take as many people in the car (and still be able to sit comfy ;)).
      But also larger stuff:buy an ecofriendly car...
      Stuff like this doesnt keep you from functioning normally, but if EVERYONE would do this...it would definately contribute and we would be less dependant on oil and hopefully the multibillion dollar oil companies would start to think of other ways to make money, perhaps hydrogen. And I'm not even just an idealistic student ;)

    17. Re:Man! by yurtinus · · Score: 1

      Well, I rode my bike in to work today...

      Granted, the motivation is more my quest for ROCK HARD BUNS OF STEEL than it is for saving the world from The Swamp Thing, but either excuse works out great on the hipsters at the coffee shop downtown!

      --
      +1 Disagree
    18. Re:Man! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They sell my blood for $200 a pint and then sell my name and address as a blood donor.

      The article says they sell it to cover the costs. Red cross is a non-profit. I'm not sure what you think you're trying to imply, but I seen nothing evil about charging hospitals for the cost of collecting blood. I see nothing in the article about selling names and I know my regional blood bank never sold my name.

    19. Re:Man! by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      Even then - MOST PEOPLE JUST WON'T FUCKING CARE!

      AND THAT IS THE EXACT FUCKING PROBLEM!

      ___
      Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
      Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
      Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    20. Re:Man! by Finite9 · · Score: 1

      Too true. You hit the nail on the head. It's simply human nature, and globalisation may have given us the opportunity to hear about disasters on the other side of the planet, but we're just not programmed as human beings to care about things outside of our immediate circle of effect.

      --
      "Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
  27. Big Plug by diakka · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So maybe this is a stupid question, but why can't they just design a big plug and stick it in the pipe? Would that cause the pipe to rupture or something? Or try to reroute the oil by attaching a big to the pipe that's spewing oil?

    --
    -- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
    1. Re:Big Plug by slimjim8094 · · Score: 1

      So maybe this is a stupid question, but why can't they just design a big plug and stick it in the pipe?

      It's a 5ft diameter hole, and the oil is coming out at something like 150,000 PSI. Doing some quick math, we have:

      area pi*r^2=pi*60^2=11309in^2

      11309in^2 * 150000lb/in^2 = 1,696,458lbs, or more than 1.5 million pounds, pushing on whatever plug you insert. If you dropped a skyscraper on it, it might cut it off - but that's a bit tricky to do.

      --
      I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
    2. Re:Big Plug by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      It's a 5ft diameter hole, and the oil is coming out at something like 150,000 PSI.

      That figure is misleading. I think that is the absolute pressure - not the relative pressure. There is around 150,000 psi of water pushing down on the oil trying to keep it from leaking out.

      If you just dropped a manhole cover on the hole it would have 150,000 psi of oil pressure on the bottom of it, and around 150,000 psi of water pressure on the top of it. Now, I have no doubt that the oil pressure is slightly higher, but probably not by multiple orders of magnitude as you suggest.

      If you dropped a skyscraper on it, it might cut it off - but that's a bit tricky to do.

      Well, except for the fact that the column of water above the leak already weighs far more than a skyscraper.

      I think the real issue is making some kind of a seal, since you're talking about sand/silt/methane/rock/etc at the bottom. If you just drop a big block of concrete the oil will seep around the edges, probably with fairly little drop in flow rate.

    3. Re:Big Plug by Stickybombs · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually, a 5' DIAMETER hole, would have a 30 inch radius, and therefore an area of 2827 in^2 2827*150000 = 424 million pounds of pressure. However, it is actually an 18 inch drill hole with a pressure differential of around 13,000 psi (see various calculations in comments for this post http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1651510), which puts you at just over a million pounds of pressure. The blowout preventer that didn't work properly was a 450-ton device. It isn't much of a stretch beyond that to get a 500 or 600-ton block of something down there to just plug it up.

    4. Re:Big Plug by diakka · · Score: 1

      If it's really such a great force, how come the pipe itself is not just eroding? Wouldn't that kind of force just rupture the steel?

      And for these critical pipes, wouldn't it be better to design them with an external conector so that a larger pipe could be easily places around it and attached in cases like this?

      --
      -- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
    5. Re:Big Plug by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      its a 21 inch hole at 8000psi you idiot.

    6. Re:Big Plug by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Isn't that what the "junk shot" where they propose to try and use shredded tires, cord and golf balls to try and plug it is?
      --riverat

    7. Re:Big Plug by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      It's a 5ft diameter hole, and the oil is coming out at something like 150,000 PSI.

      Holy shit, where do you ignorant people get your information?

      The casing is 21 inches in diameter, the borehole is 9 inches in diameter. The borehole is the limiting factor, but neither one of them are 5 feet in diameter. There is no drill rig on earth that drills a hole that big.

      As for PSI, it's easily calculated. Standard figures (based on specific gravity) are 45psi per 100ft of water, and 100psi per 100 feet of sedimentary rock.

      That means the pressure at seafloor (about 5,000 feet) is roughly 2250psi. At the top of the reservoir (an additional 11,000 feet) it's roughly 13,250psi.

      There is no 150,000psi, you would literally have a geyser of oil shooting out of the sea at those pressures.

      Now, that said, an 11,000psi pressure differential is nothing to sneeze at, but the question of flow is further confused by factors such as the porosity of the reservoir rock, the amount of gas mixed in solution with the oil (which comes out immediately at the pressure drop - it's like shaking a soda bottle and opening the lid), which influences the rate of flow (more gas means more flow) as well as the actual amount of oil that comes out (more gas means less oil by volume).

      Basically, plugging the hole is exactly what they've done, but the pressures are too great to simply push something against it. For one thing, the pipe is bent sideways, and under water you have a complete lack of leverage for generating any kind of horizontal pressure. So what they have done is attach the siphoning rig to a plug, and they are going to try to use suction to generate the necessary pressures to stop the leak.

      The siphon is already in place, they won't know how effective it will be until they ramp it up to full speed. They can't just flip the switch, or hydrates would form (oil and water binding to form solids) which would plug the pipe. They expect to have the leak under control some time next week.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    8. Re:Big Plug by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because every figure he gave was wrong.

      The casing pipe (the pipe you can see) is 21 inches in diameter, not 5 feet. The borehole (the hole that was actually drilled down to the reservoir, which you can't see) is 9 inches in diameter.

      The pressure is easily calculated - 45 psi per 100 feet of water, and 100psi per 100 feet of sedimentary rock. 5,000 feet of water gives you 2250 psi, and 11,000 feet of rock give you 11,000psi. Total pressure on the reservoir is therefore 13,250psi, with the pressure differential between the two ends of the borehole at 11,000psi.

      However, you can't just calculate that out with the density of crude oil to get the actual flow rate, and therefor the pressure, coming out of the pipe, because you don't know the gas to oil ratio of the oil or the porosity of the reservoir rock, which affect how fast the oil flows and how dense it is, which determines the force it exerts as it exits the pipe.

      This is why I call bullshit on so called experts who claim to have calculated the flow accurately. Visual calculation methods cannot be made accurately because of the lack of information about the gas to oil ratio - one 50k-100k visual based estimate I read assumes a GOR of zero (no gas), which is absurd, the oil at 150 degrees (the temp of the oil in the reservoir) and 13,000+ psi can hold a crapload of gas in suspension, which could easily make the visual estimate off by 50% or more. This is because as the pressure drops on the way up the borehole, the gas comes out of suspension and expands, causing the flow to increase dramatically but the ratio of oil by volume to gas decreases dramatically as well. The result is what appears to be a massive gusher of an oil leak that is actually mostly gas.

      Non-visual based calculations lack even more critical information about the composition of the oil that are necessary to make accurate calculations, like the porosity of the rock, the GOR again, and whether or not there are any obstructions that inhibit the flow.

      Frankly I'm very skeptical of anything over 30,000 barrels a day, that's one hell of a high flowing oil well as it is. 50,000 barrels a day I'm extremely skeptical of, and I dismiss anything more than that out of hand as virtually impossible. Oil wells simply don't flow that fast.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
  28. Look at he bright side by 3seas · · Score: 1

    If we let the Gulf fill with oil, The petro industry can't tell us there is a shortage again.

    Since we can't seem to really do anything about it, lets all make up nasty oil industry jokes and shame the whole industry into ... the Gulf of Mexico.

    As much money that goes through the oil industry, you'd think they would have installed a shut off valve. Of wait, they don't want to shut it off so why would they have installed a valve? (don't no body say they did, for it they really did, it'd been shut off by now) Instead they try to funnel it...

    Maybe if they actually focused on shutting it, they might just figure it out.

    And since they don't really want to shut of off, it must not be so serious.

    Who owns the oil in the water? Does BP hold all claims to it?

    1. Re:Look at he bright side by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      I think the problem is that what exactly are you supposed to attach a shut-off value to? It is like trying to hook a valve onto a cave opening. It isn't like the ocean floor has threads tapped into it and a non-porous barrier surrounding the "pipe".

      My understanding of blowouts is that they are caused by gas that makes its way into the pipe. As the gas rises to the surface, it expands, and what was probably a gallon of fluid at the bottom of the well is now a slug of gas the size of the oil platform at the top. It is difficult to manage that expansion.

    2. Re:Look at he bright side by PeterBrett · · Score: 1

      As much money that goes through the oil industry, you'd think they would have installed a shut off valve. Of wait, they don't want to shut it off so why would they have installed a valve? (don't no body say they did, for it they really did, it'd been shut off by now) Instead they try to funnel it...

      They did install a valve, but for some reason it didn't work (they went to quite a lot of effort to try and make it work, and to try and work out why it wasn't working). So either they didn't install it properly, or didn't maintain it properly.

  29. Re:i LOL by yyxx · · Score: 5, Informative

    you americans are fucked, hahah. thats what you get with your evil oil companies.

    Actually, it's what Americans get when they let a British oil company deploy a Swiss drilling platform with German companies responsible for safety. Massive US lobbying efforts by BP also contributed to the lack of regulation, all in the name of international fairness and free trade.

    And historically, Europe's record on oil spills is far worse than that of the US. Of course, being obedient little nationalists, Europeans love to find fault with the US while their own governments are screwing them.

    Hopefully, as a result of this disaster, the US will severely limit the ability of foreign companies to lobby in the US, and hopefully it will kick out European oil companies with their poor safety records once and for all.

  30. As noted in the article... by Joce640k · · Score: 1

    There isn't enough oxygen in the water to metabolize all that oil in time to prevent a disaster.

    --
    No sig today...
    1. Re:As noted in the article... by AK+Marc · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So the fix is to pump O2 into the wellhead?

  31. Who Pays? by Wingsy · · Score: 1

    This situation is only going to get worse. And worse. And worse. I can see it coming. Eventually, when thousands upon thousands of people who depend on the Gulf for their livelihood are put out of business, who is going to pay? Exxon didn't pay (in full), so I expect BP won't be paying up either. Oh they'll pay some, and put up a good effort to clean up the mess, but the damage will become so widespread that most of their efforts will be in vain. And all those people who depend on the Gulf will be out of work and will essentially lose everything.

    Who Pays?

    BP should pay. Even if it means the company goes out of business entirely. Sell off all their assets if necessary to pay the people who no longer can support themselves. Stockholders, you lose. You are in fact the owners of the company, and your company is responsible for the damages (federal 75 million liability cap be damned). Why should a Gulf worker lose everything and you keep on truckin with your BP stock?

    --
    If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
    1. Re:Who Pays? by guruevi · · Score: 1

      BP didn't pay for the Exxon Valdez either even though it was BP's responsibility.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    2. Re:Who Pays? by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      BP didn't pay for the Exxon Valdez either even though it was BP's responsibility.

      How was that in any way BP's responsibility? They are in no way responsible for another company spilling that other company's oil. Exxon (aka the largest oil company in the world) was moving oil of Valdez to the lower 48 markets via a tanker driven by a drunk-off-his-ass skipper. At exactly which point was BP involved?

      Are you suggesting that if some dumbass at a gas station spills a little gasoline on the pavement, it's BP's responsibility to clean it up? Where the hell do you get off?

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    3. Re:Who Pays? by guruevi · · Score: 1

      The oil spill response plans for the Exxon Valdez were drafted and filed by Alyeska (BP is the primary owner of the consortium). They were at that time responsible for the cleanup crews but they had been firing the response teams and they didn't have any containment machinery in that area - it took them 24 hours to even start going.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  32. BP reporting oil flow rate is conflict of interest by Vellmont · · Score: 1

    There's been quite a lot of speculation that the numbers estimated by BP are low. BPs response has essentially been "that won't help us stop the leak, so stuff it". Well, that's not really true, since to know how effective something is you need to be able to measure before and after. There's also the obvious problem of the aftermath, and understanding how large it will be.

    Frankly, I think BP releasing how much oil is leaking represents a HUGE conflict of interest for them. I believe they know the flow rate is substantially higher than the original estimates. But why would they want to release that information? Attempting to keep the numbers low limits their potential damage payout. It also would be a huge PR nightmare if the numbers are even bigger. In the long term there's going to be a TON of lawsuits. Many of them are going to be dependent on the scientific data to support them. The amount of oil leaked is obviously going to be a BIG factor. The larger the amount of oil leaked, the larger the damage right? So BP is essentially trying to play dumb, and hope that the original estimates will stick, thus limiting their liability.

    To get a handle on this it's very clear we need real numbers on how much oil is leaking. The position that stopping the leak is the only thing that matters is ridiculous. The problem doesn't go away after they stop the leak. Solving the large term damage left by this is obviously partially dependent on knowing how much oil has leaked into the Gulf. Being potentially off by an order of magnitude is in no way acceptable.

    --
    AccountKiller
  33. Speaking of plumage.... by dcraid · · Score: 2, Funny

    My vote is for Beautiful Plumage.
    Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
    Mr. Praline: The plumage don't enter into it. It's stone dead.

  34. Oil Spill larger than we thought? by GPSguy · · Score: 1

    Old news. This story was making the science rounds early last week. It is a devastating spill, and it is depleting subsurface oxygen, but the scare tactics are not helping anyone clean it up.

    --
    Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by tenure.
  35. Re:i LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    yes, bp is just as "american" as any other oil company, i recommend:

    A Century of War:
    Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order
    F. William Engdahl

    http://www.amazon.com/Century-War-Anglo-American-Politics-World/dp/074532309X

  36. Re:BP reporting oil flow rate is conflict of inter by maxume · · Score: 1

    It should become quite a lot clearer fairly soon, now that they are trapping some of the leaks.

    The maximum amount they are trapping can be easily calculated by watching the boats they use to transport it away, and the change in the Gulf over the next couple of weeks can be used to estimate if they are staunching a lot of it or not.

    --
    Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  37. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  38. Re:i LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    No they merged with Amoco: AMerican Oil COmpany.

    And the funny thing ? they made something like 3billions in benefit since 2009.

  39. And the sea is far more overfished now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    And the sea is far more overfished now. A cold when you're healthy is shrugged off. A cold when you're already starving and hypothermic will kill you.

    In 1979 Newfoundland was still a massive fish nursery. The ocean flow past there comes from the Gulf.

    And the fish there are already in far far greater trouble: http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/cbio/cancod.html

  40. Just to play devils advocate... by toadlife · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You can't assume that the column of oil is made of 100% oil. The oil might be dispersing into the water immediately upon exiting the pipe, making the column a mixture of oil and water.

    Think of faucet in your kitchen or bath. Many have aerators on the nozzle that serve to mix the water with air. These aerators increase the size of the column of water, making it appear that a larger volume of water is coming out of the faucet.

    --
    I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
  41. Re:i LOL by DMiax · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    sure, but we on slashdot know it must be Microsoft's fault after all, and Microsoft is an American company.

  42. Re:i LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, so if it keeps the BP name it can't possibly be British Petroleum anymore because Amoco, which got ate, was American. Thus it must be a wholly American company because one of its acquisitions was American. Kind of like how I'm a Chinese citizen now because my cell phone was made in China.

  43. Re:i LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, so if it keeps the BP name it can't possibly be British Petroleum anymore because Amoco, which got ate, was American. Thus it must be a wholly American company because one of its acquisitions was American.

    I don't know the specifics about BP/Amoco, but one thing to point out is that a merger is different from an acquisition.

  44. Re:i LOL by moonbender · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a publicly traded multinational corporation. The world's fourth largest, in fact. I think it's pretty much transcended nationality. The CEO is Swedish, FWIW.

    --
    Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
  45. I agree. by harley78 · · Score: 1

    can wind power make pantyhose?

  46. Re:i LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are you claiming that oil is unnatural? You confuse me.

  47. Bull SHIT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oil FLOATS on water, dumbasses.

  48. Re:i LOL by Hognoxious · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yeah, thankfully it's a foreign multinational instead of an American one, or you - and Obama - wouldn't have anything to carp about.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  49. Little plastic treasure chests with skeleton arms by Mike216 · · Score: 1

    I'm certainly not an expert at any of the respective areas of science this involves, but does anyone know if we could re-oxygenate the water even on a temporary basis? Jokes about bubbling skeleton pirate treasure chests aside, would it be possible to run tubing down to the floor of the affected areas and pump air in? I realize we're talking about a large area and this wouldn't be a small task but would that at least temporarily solve this particular part of the problem?

  50. Perhaps a plastic chimney? by Julz · · Score: 1

    Why not make up a huge long extra strong heat resistant open ended plastic bag to bring this oil up to the surface. Something like a huge long chimney. The oil eating bateria could be added at the bottom to ride the oil up and start working on it early. Then once you get all that oil up to the top suck it up into oil tankers and take it away to reprocess. I'm sure that they 'BP' can get some good oil out of it to help offset the cost of this cleanup.

    Just a thought...Perhaps a very uneducated one...But I'm just thinking out loud here...We already use chimneys to move the out gasing further up above us. So why not use the same principle to move the oil closer to us for collection instead of leaving it sitting underwater with the potential disaster it could cause.

    --
    When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
  51. That's metric $#!+ton of oil by mathimus1863 · · Score: 1

    I might be a little late to the party, but I haven't seen anyone yet do the calculation I was expecting to see... just how much volume is that 10mi x 3mi x 300 ft plume?

    Well once you convert everything to meters, and observe 264 gallons per cubic meter, you get a staggering 1.8 trillion gallons of ocean water in that plume. If even 1% of that is oil, then we are totally fucked. Hopefully it's less than 0.01%.

    However, if you calculate from the surface slick itself, you have 3650 sq miles of slick (as of Friday). And based on a chart of oil-thickness-to-color, you could say that the oil slick is 50 micrometers thick. This equates to 125 million gallons of pure oil just on the surface. Over the course of 25 days, that's about 5 million gallons per day just making it to the surface! Is anyone else getting concerned?

    1. Re:That's metric $#!+ton of oil by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      Is anyone else getting concerned?

      Yes, everyone is concerned.

      If even 1% of that is oil, then we are totally fucked. Hopefully it's less than 0.01%.

      It's a very low percentage of oil, and it's in an emulsion, which is why it's 300 feet deep instead of an inch deep. It must be almost all water or it would not be heavy enough to occupy the top 300 feet of ocean water. You should be able to calculate the density of the emulsion Based on how deep it is able to remain in the water. Seawater has a density of 1021kg/m3, and gassy crude oil like the stuff in this spill generally has a density of 700-800 kg/m3. Pure crude is closer to 900 kg/m3. In order for the emulsion to stay so low in the water it is probably over 1010kg/m3, at least. If that's a good estimate for a density that would allow the oil to sink that low, then there are 11kg of oil per cubic meter in that water, which is in the 1% range. If the density needs to be higher to float that low, then there will be proportionately less oil in the water.

      However, if you calculate from the surface slick itself, you have 3650 sq miles of slick (as of Friday). And based on a chart of oil-thickness-to-color, you could say that the oil slick is 50 micrometers thick. This equates to 125 million gallons of pure oil just on the surface.

      I can't get the same numbers you got. I'm assuming you multiplied 3650 square miles by 1609 to get square meters, which is 5.87 million square meters. You then multiply by 50 microns to get cubic meters of oil, no? I get 293.5 cubic meters, which at 264 gallons per cubic meter is 77,500 gallons, or 1,844 barrels on the surface. This is in line with the idea that the vast majority of the oil is under water.

      Do you see the problem with trying to estimate the amount of oil that is spilling? It's freakin hard, and depending on what assumptions you use (and you have to use some assumptions) you get wildly varying figures.

      To illustrate my point, 5,000,000 gallons per day on the surface requires 120,000 barrels per day be pouring out just to equal the surface volume, yet there is many times more oil below the surface. Oil wells simply do not flow that fast, it would be the world's most profitable well by a wide margine. The average flow rate of wells in the gulf is 1600 barrels per day. Assuming this well is a real gusher, the flow rate might be up in the 40,000-50,000 barrels per day range. That's still an incredibly high flow for an oil well.

      Simple logic and a little knowledge of how oil wells work, and normal flows and the like would make you extremely skeptical of the very high figures being thrown around.

      In other words, when your estimations give you figures that are outside the expected norm by several orders of magnitude, you should probably re-examine your assumptions.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    2. Re:That's metric $#!+ton of oil by mathimus1863 · · Score: 1

      Multiply 3650 by 1609^2 to convert from square miles to square meters. Then you'll see 125 million gallons on the surface.

  52. Re:i LOL by Trepidity · · Score: 1

    Yeah, and it was enough of a merger that for the first few years it was actually named BP Amoco. Then the Amoco got dropped a bit later.

  53. Re:i LOL by somersault · · Score: 4, Funny

    Damnit, I knew we should have bombed Swederland when we had the chance!

    --
    which is totally what she said
  54. politics and law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the government isn't going to touch this, if they did BP could say the government messed things up, as it stands now the accident and the handling thereof are 100% BP's problem and court cases against BP will be easier than if the government had gotten involved.
    btw, BP isn't interested in sealing the well, if they do that law makers might not let them drill again, so their goal isn't to stop the flow but to try to rig up some sort of working well again.

  55. Re:i LOL by Foobar+of+Borg · · Score: 1

    Killing the Living and the Harvesting the Dying before they even become oil!

    Soylent Oil is PEOPLE!!!

  56. Re:i LOL by Runaway1956 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Previously known as Anglo-Iranian Oil Company," of Operation Ajax fame. The wikipedia has a decent article on Operation Ajax - maybe some people would like to look at it. The United States literally overthrew a legitimate government, for the sake of BP's profits. Not something that the UK or the US government readily admits to.

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  57. Re:i LOL by Runaway1956 · · Score: 1

    Swederland? Alright, +1 funny.

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  58. you can do something by bzipitidoo · · Score: 1

    Like the parent said. True, the most that most of us can do about the leak now is stay out of the way of the professionals trying to stop it.

    But we can make BP wish they'd never been so reckless, and give pause to any company still cutting corners on the safety. Stop driving gas guzzlers. Don't fill up at BP gas stations. Use other means of transport or propulsion. Fire off angry letters to Congress. It may not sound like much, but enough people doing these things will hit them where they live.

    --
    Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
    1. Re:you can do something by Ephemeriis · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But we can make BP wish they'd never been so reckless, and give pause to any company still cutting corners on the safety.

      Can we really do that?

      Stop driving gas guzzlers. Don't fill up at BP gas stations.

      Haven't you heard? BP is now Beyond Petroleum. They, as well as pretty much all the big oil companies, are diversifying. They're now energy companies. If we don't buy their gasoline we'll be buying their electricity, or hydrogen, or whatever else.

      Use other means of transport or propulsion.

      Where I live, there's no public transportation.

      Assuming there was public transportation... It'd still be running off some sort of energy, which would likely wind up lining some irresponsible corporation's pockets.

      Fire off angry letters to Congress.

      Except that this isn't just a national problem. These are international companies acting irresponsibly all over the world.

      It may not sound like much, but enough people doing these things will hit them where they live.

      Except that it probably won't.

      These guys are hired to make the company money - nothing more. Nobody cares what kind of collateral damage there is. As long as the stockholders make money, they're happy.

      And even if somebody actually gets fired over this... They've probably got plenty of money to tide themselves over until they get another job with another giant corporation that'll do exactly the same thing.

      Hell... Absolute worst-case scenario they just re-brand themselves and pretend like the old corporation is dead while continuing to do business-as-usual under a new name.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    2. Re:you can do something by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hell... Absolute worst-case scenario they just re-brand themselves and pretend like the old corporation is dead while continuing to do business-as-usual under a new name.

      Exxon...Esso...SO...Standard Oil.

      Yep.

  59. We nee LOX, stat! by jdigriz · · Score: 1

    "oil-eating bacteria are consuming the oxygen at a feverish clip as they work to break down the plumes." Well, let's get the little buggers some oxygen! They're on our side, they should be getting all the help they need. Let's get an aircraft carrier in there, and use the power from the reactors to pump as much oxygen down to them as is necessary.

  60. Re:i LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A question.

    Who owned the Anaco Cadiz, Torrey Canyon and the Braer?

    A clue, look closer to home.

  61. Re:Little plastic treasure chests with skeleton ar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good and valid question however I'm not confident it's possible. There are 2 approaches that I can think of, based on work I've done on inland waters and estuaries.

    The first is to destabilise vertical stratification and allow for more rapid downwards mixing of oxygen from the surface. Stratification forms a barrier to the vertical exchange of oxygen from the surface to the depths. This works in lakes and reservoirs, but I would guess would be impractical on a scale this large. Consider the system would effectively need to break down the potential energy of stratification over many thousands of square meters. My guess would be the power needed would be a few watts per square m (the sun provides around 200W/m2 of heating, a small amount of which contributes to water column stability). So even for a 10x10km area, a constant power input of 1x10^8 W would be required.

    The second option is to inject oxygen directly. There are huge technical difficulties with this approach, especially in warm salt water. The saturation concentration of oxygen is low, and injection of oxygen above saturation leads to bubble formation and degassing. So an o2 injection system could not deposit large concentrations of 02 and allow it to disperse. Again, I don't think this would work. The use of hydrogen peroxide would probably have similar restrictions.

  62. Re:i LOL by QRDeNameland · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No large company is anchored too heavily to its country of origin.

    Tell me about it. A few weeks ago, I was posting on another forum about banking, and was recounting how a bank account that I've had for years started out as a regional S&L, and through about 4 or 5 mergers finally ended up being with Bank of America. While researching Bank of America's history in order to get my facts straight, I saw this gem on the Bank of America wiki page.

    Bank of America's history dates to 1904, when Amadeo Giannini founded the Bank of Italy in San Francisco....

    Somehow I don't see them playing that bit of their history up what with their Stars and Stripes logo and all.

    --
    Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
  63. Re:i LOL by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 2, Informative

    BP's corporate headquarters are still firmly rooted in the UK, and all major corporate decisions come out of corporate home base. Trust me, I work for them.

    --
    Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
  64. Re:i LOL by moonbender · · Score: 2, Funny

    While that is ordinarily not a reason to trust you, I guess I'll trust you on this. ;)

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  65. Big consequences should have small risks. by lotho+brandybuck · · Score: 1

    I'm not prepared to accept the consequences of a completely out of control well.. like a lost wellhead. We shouldn't be drilling down there until we can do it in an intrinisically safe manner.. that means, technology has to work to keep the well open, not technology has to work to close the well (like the current BOP systems) As bad as this is, it could have been even worse.

  66. Re:i LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thanks for pointing that out to the rest of us that already got it.

    You're stupid, aren't you?

  67. Dumping a second poison to hide the first by jeko · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The dispersant Corexit is itself toxic, which means BP is adding more poison to hide the first.

    The one great advantage of Corexit, however, is that it makes the oil sink below view, so BP is literally hoping, like a naughty toddler, that out of sight means out of mind. A few weeks from now, when dead fish begin piling up on the shore and people ask "What's up with all the stinking fish?" you can depend on Pat Robertson to blame the homosexuals, Sarah Palin to blame the liberals and Fox news to report on the new terrorist attack on the Gulf.

    And we'll believe it.

    But, Dear God, I hope not. As much as I hate to say it, I think the previous vicious AC poster is right -- killing the Gulf of Mexico might be the only thing that gets our attention and forces us to make better choices.

    --
    He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
    1. Re:Dumping a second poison to hide the first by Elbow+Macaroni · · Score: 1

      You know what. I don't think even this will wake people up. The Tea Bagger types are seriously dumb as bricks.

      --
      -------------------------------------
      Technically, we are beyond survival.
  68. Would this work? by Brad1138 · · Score: 1

    How about a mile (or so) long 30'-50' diameter rugged/oil proof fabric tube that goes down to the bottom over the leak and goes all the way to the surface. It could flare out at the top to as big as need be and have 10' high walls. All the oil would stay in the tube, with the surface the only place to go, from there it could easily be siphoned into ships. It really shouldn't be that hard to make such a "sock". I would think it would definitely be easier than all the difficult solutions they have tried so far.

    --
    If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
  69. They still calling it a SPILL? by jobst · · Score: 1

    What gets me the most with all of this is that people STILL calling it an "oil spill", WTF?

    --
    to code or not to code, that is the question.
  70. Hmmm... by danwesnor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Anyone else notice that BP's attempts to fix their mess all involve recovering the oil, and they've not tried anything that involves sealing off the well? Are they trying to prevent environmental disaster or are they trying to maximize profits?

  71. Re:i LOL by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    One, you're a dumbass, and two, BP is getting their ass reamed in the media over here. Granted, we care less about the deep ocean than we do about the coastline, but harm to the environment is far and away the chief concern, and in that regard we've been pretty fortunate that very little oil has touched ground, but your anti-American bullshit isn't grounded in any sort of reality.

    BP is a European based company, by the way, fucking up our environment, you asshole.

    --
    Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
  72. Re:i LOL by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    And who owns BP and TransOcean?

    A clue, look closer to home.

    If this spill is America's fault, those spills are Europe's, dumbass.

    --
    Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
  73. Re:i LOL by joebagodonuts · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah - as someone who has been through 4 mergers, it's the "tow-mah-tow" to acquisition's "tow-may-tow". Probably there are differences in accounting and filings to regulatory agencies, but within each company, what ever name was kept was the winner.

    --
    "Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
  74. BP messed up. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When we passed by a BP the other day, I passed it and went for the Flying J, since BP hasn't fixed the problem yet and is letting it get worse. I refuse to give any financial support to a company that can't handle a crisis of this magnitude. They should have learned from Exxon's mistakes, they should have known better. I just don't care, they should have known better. If they can let the rest of us suffer, then they need to burn for it.

  75. Nobody is that stupid. by jeko · · Score: 1

    Nobody is that stupid. Sure they'll be happy to fuck up your shit, but they'll make sure theirs is nice and pretty,

    We begin today's lesson with a discussion of the horrific history of the Rapa Nui and Easter Island. We'll draw a line from that ancient environmental disaster to the current situation in Los Angeles where the ditance between "your fucked-up shit" and "my pretty shit" is currently the width of one street in most places.

    We all breathe the same air, we drink the same water. Ultimately, it all "our shit." Today's homework is Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" for a discussion about how well separating the Rich from the Poor works.

    --
    He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
  76. Re:i LOL by mosb1000 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Speak for yourself. I live in Orange County, CA. It's about as pedestrian / public transit unfriendly as you can get. Still, I do not own a car and I get around just fine (I walk about 50 miles a week, but that's doable). Before that I lived in Moscow, Idaho. I did not own a car there either, and there is absolutely no public transit. However, since it's a small town I was able to walk everywhere I needed to go. The problem's not that you can't do it, it's that you don't want to make the lifestyle choices you'd need to in order to do it.

  77. Not so fast by Darkman,+Walkin+Dude · · Score: 1

    Do this: destroy the fucking BP if necessary and also, screw the corporate protection, arrest the management, arrest whoever wasn't doing the job right and also put every single prick from MMS (that's the Government agency literally is fucking with the corporate whores, literally) to jail for 10 consecutive life sentences. Or shoot them Chinese style.

    And then no oil company will work without having full insurance cover, and insurance companies will charge a gargantuan fortune to run that kind of risk, and the cost of fuel rises to compensate, and the price of your dinner goes up 4x or 5x every year. Congratulations, you've just destroyed society.

    1. Re:Not so fast by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      Yeah, OMG, I am sorry, did I just destroy society?

      Society would be better off if nobody was DESTROYING public resources, like the fucking Ocean!

      Sure, there would be Insurance for the Oil companies, but that is the cost of business for any business, why is this one, a very dangerous one to everybody's lives any better, why are their dangers socialized and their profits kept private?

      Also remember that BP is supposed to pay ROYALTIES. Yeah. If they do what you say, well, that's wonderful. There would be a reason to increase the royalty payments as well by a factors, of say 100.

      On the other hand if BP cannot successfully get insurance for covering their asses maybe that means that insurance companies are not stupid enough to be in that business and then the 2% of oil that is drilled for off-shore wouldn't be touched at least until there was a bullet-proof tech to do so without actually damaging the environment.

      If the Insurance company decided that the premiums must be outrageous, maybe that should be taken as an indicator that off-shore drilling is actually very very dangerous to the environment and must be stopped altogether.

      Also, what the fuck are you talking about x4, x5? 2% of drilling does not cause any price fluctuation like that, maybe 2% price fluctuation at worst.

      Even then, society SHOULD be paying the correct amount for the privilege to use oil in their everyday lives if that means the public resources get fucked like that.

    2. Re:Not so fast by omglolbah · · Score: 1

      Have a peek at the way Statoil operates rigs in Norway.
      I'm sure you can find some articles with a tiny bit of googling...

      Here they have very strict safety requirements and are also required to submit regular reports on compliance. From what I can gather from working in the field for a few years it seems that the companies here have found that having a leak is too expensive to have happen... ever...

      Doesnt hurt that the Norwegian state is a majority shareholder either ;)

    3. Re:Not so fast by LanMan04 · · Score: 1

      And then no oil company will work without having full insurance cover, and insurance companies will charge a gargantuan fortune to run that kind of risk, and the cost of fuel rises to compensate, and the price of your dinner goes up 4x or 5x every year. Congratulations, you've just destroyed society.

      Society cannot run on oil forever. *Anything* that makes oil more expensive is a good thing, as it's pretty clear there are no more "easy" ways to get at oil (diminishing returns and all that) and we need to invest in alternative energy NOW while we still have the oil powering society to do so.

      The sooner we're weaned off the near-dry teat of oil, the better.

      --
      With the first link, the chain is forged.
    4. Re:Not so fast by Darkman,+Walkin+Dude · · Score: 1

      Settle down Doris, put the handbag away. I'm just pointing out why governments are so slow to inflict massive punitive damages on oil companies, because unlike you they need to deal with the world the way it is today, not the way the world. The brutal reality from the perspective of a politician is that its better to have the occasional killoff of aquatic life than to have the stuff our transport infrastructure depends on multiply in price, and everything else along with it.

      Everyone knows its not sustainable in the long term, but people still need to drive today. I'm a massive proponent of wind and electric vehicles myself, in the face of very stiff oppositon from people who rarely have clue one what they are talking about.

  78. Re:i LOL by Elektroschock · · Score: 1

    You are calling names.

    What I did was to compare US and European mainstream news reporting about the oil spill around end of april.

    I was shocked by the reporting in US mainstream media and the extreme spin. It looks like one month later the US public happens to find out about what is really going on.

    "BP is a European based company, by the way, fucking up our environment, you asshole."

    The oil rig was run by Transoceans, the cementing done by Haliburton. And BP? Maybe they own the oil field or buy the oil, no idea. I don't care where a multinational company has its seat.

  79. Re:i LOL by Elektroschock · · Score: 1

    The first cover-up was that the explosion occured 20 april but we got news reporting only 21 april. In the case of a terror incident 20 april is a very significant date to muslim haters.

    http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2010/04/19/daily25.html

  80. Re:i LOL by Elektroschock · · Score: 1

    I was speaking about the US media spin.

    Yeah, oil is "organic", ha ha ha

  81. Re:i LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Merged, LOL, lok at the size of each of them before the takeover.

  82. Government estimates by phorm · · Score: 1

    No, it's about the same as when a government says: "funding Project X will cost Y."

    Because there's no accountability for bullshitting in parliament, most people I know now just assume that the government is full of shit, and that Y costs somewhere between 10x and 100x the actual estimate. For a good example, look at the initial estimates for the Olympics in various areas. The initial estimates are always lowballed, and then costs start pumping up and up and up once things get going.

  83. Re:i LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bork Bork Bork! The Swedish chef is behind this!
    Actually the Swede (Carl-Henric Svanberg, previous CEO of Ericsson) is not CEO, he's chairman of the board at BP

  84. Re:i LOL by moosesocks · · Score: 1

    You missed the "In San Francisco" part, along with the rest of the summary. Bank of Italy purchased a smaller bank named Bank of America Los Angeles," in 1929 and took (part of) its name. This is not at all uncommon in corporate mergers (I'll be damned if I know who actually owns AT&T or Westinghouse these days)

    The original Bank of Italy name stemmed from the fact that its founder was an Italian immigrant, and many banks at the time refused to offer accounts to immigrants.

    --
    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  85. Re:i LOL by sac13 · · Score: 1

    Hopefully, as a result of this disaster, the US will severely limit the ability of foreign companies to lobby in the US...

    Placing limitations on lobbying kinda defeats the politicians' motivation for "regulation"...

  86. complain about O2 now, while you still can. by mr_java66 · · Score: 0

    Complain about O2 now, while you still can. Once a big storm rolls around the gulf, the O2 levels will be back to normal. The reason why the gulf of mexico is a good place to drill for oil IS the storms. Anything that can be fixed by agitation, will get fixed. Most of the problems of oil, can be fixed with vigorous agitation.

  87. Re:i LOL by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

    Hey man, we've got an energy crisis looming! They're just doing their part to replenish the oil supply.

    It's proof that oil is a renewable resource, and therefore should get all kinds of green tax credits! ;)

    --
    Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
  88. duh! by bjk002 · · Score: 1

    everyone knows its got to be at least 800 feet.

    --
    Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
  89. Re:i LOL by Iron+Condor · · Score: 1

    [...]

    And historically, Europe's record on oil spills is far worse than that of the US. [...]

    I fail to see how the table you linked there is supporting this claim.

    You may want to do the following two things:

    • 1) Sort the table by tonnage. There's all kinds of inconsequential spills all the times and you cannot expect this table to be complete on the level of single barrels. I can easily flood that table with ten times more entries, all of which have the little US flag in them and none of them mattering a whole lot.
    • 2) Ignore the little flags that tell you where the spills happened and have a look at who was spilling. The largest oil spill in European waters, for example, would have to be the Amoco Cardiz - hardly a European operation.
    --
    We're all born with nothing.
    If you die in debt, you're ahead.
  90. Yes, and it's already happening by sean.peters · · Score: 1

    I read elsewhere on the internets that they've done oxygen testing near the plumes (sorry, can't find the link again), and dissolved O2 levels are down by like 30% in the vicinity of the plumes. The theory is exactly what you say - microbes are busy devouring the oil, and using up oxygen in the process. There's a real fear that in addition to all the other bad effects of the oil, it will also increase the already growing "dead zones" - areas in which low oxygen concentration is destroying all animal life - in the Gulf.

  91. It's a question of concentration, though... by sean.peters · · Score: 1

    There was an article in Salon that addressed this, and several commenters there brought up the point that to achieve the concentrations found harmful to corals would require an enormous amount of dispersant. In fact, they'd have to be pumping as much dispersant into the water at roughly the same rate the well is discharging oil into the water. Which seems pretty unlikely.

  92. Re:i LOL by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

    Interesting. I didn’t knew that.

    But I have something even more interesting: They did the exact same thing in the Ukraine. It’s what you may know as the “orange revolution”.
    All the people you saw on TV, with the orange stuff... those were CIA extras and agents.
    It came all out, when the agent that became the president (Viktor Yushchenko) was thrown out again, since the election was found to be completely rigged. It’s interesting how the premise was, that Russia would rig the elections, when really, the US did. (Or actually, I think they both did.)

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  93. Re:i LOL by Runaway1956 · · Score: 1

    Mmmmmm. I had actually read about that Orange revolution, it was brought up about the time that Iran's Green thing was going. I read a couple claims that it was staged by the CIA, and I read a couple articles that refuted that. I'm not sure what to believe, but it's something the CIA is capable of!

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  94. Re:i LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How can a multi national be from any country by defininition dumbass.

  95. Re:i LOL by Bloke+down+the+pub · · Score: 1

    It hasn't even been called "British Petroleum" for a decade, and even when it was it was largely owned by ayrabs.

    --
    It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
  96. Re:i LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In this case neither name was kept.

  97. Re:i LOL by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    But don't hit the fence at the Eastern border - you'll let all the kangaroos escape!

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  98. Re:i LOL by MightyDrunken · · Score: 1

    No no, BP stands for Beyond Petroleum.
    They are simply getting rid of the excess oil they no longer need ;)