Slashdot Mirror
Gulf Oil Leak Plugged?
RobHart writes "The LA Times is reporting that the Gulf oil leak appears to have been plugged by the 'top kill.' 'Thad Allen, who is coordinating the government response, says the well still has low pressure, but cement will be used to cap the well permanently as soon as the pressure hits zero.'"
So you hold the CEO personally responsible for this mishap? If that's the case, then I don't think anyone gets to complain about how much money CEOs make.
I mean, if I were the head of BP and every decision that was made pointed directly at me, then I'd for sure want a bajillion dollars a year.
That's a lot of pressure to be under.
I mean, what if that BP truck driver falls asleep at the wheel and kills a family of 4? That's on me, right?
Sent from your iPad.
That's what Officers and Directors indemnification insurance is for.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
if you had a policy which ignored industry and federal and state and local standards on driver hours per week or hours per day, and it was reasonable to conclude that your policy played a role in the driver falling asleep, then yes.
If, on the other hand, you had a policy which reinforced (or even outdid) the safety procedures, and despite quality employee and contractor screening, despite training, despite good policy, something bad still happened (individual negligence or simply bad luck), then no.
In short, management's role is reducing the likelihood of major disasters. Did they do their job? I don't know the answer, but I suspect that the next few years will include a number of investigations to figure that out.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Not responsible for the mishap, responsible for the inadequate response. Keeping officials away and not trying to solve the leak *period*, but trying to solve the leak by extracting the oil.
Whew...I was getting worried about this one. But, it looks like we can chalk up another victory for Obama and his environmental record. This incident should put a stop to offshore drilling, which is good. The price of gasoline should go up to eight dollars a gallon, that should keep people from wasting it.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Actually - that's almost exactly it. Right there. If it is shown that this resulted from systemic faults or negligence on the part of BP management, and is something that results from decisions of the "Very High Up" - i.e. safety shortcuts, speed at the expense of safe(er) procedures, known faults with safety equipment and/or a culture of "get it done fast".
Things that management knew about, condoned, encouraged or "looked the other way", then I believe we should hold the CEO and entire personally responsible. That is (one of the many things) that is wrong with corporate culture in the world now. All the profits and percs of a "human" and none of the responsibility. I think if the CEO and board of corporations were held personally responsible then we'd see a lot less screwing of the public. I'm all for that and the "corporate death penalty".
If you were the CEO of said trucking company, and encouraged or looked the other way when your drivers were falsifying log books, driving extra hours, and ignoring the safety concerns of your maintenance contractor, and your tired driver plowed into a shopping mall with a tanker truck of propane because he was tired, then yes I DO hold you responsible. If that's not the case, and the guy was just an idiot or had too many tacos at lunch and got distracted, then no.
I generally consider myself to lean libertarian - but what we have now in the US is too many cases of privatizing profits and socializing losses/screwups - and that to me is the worst of all worlds.
I mean, what if that BP truck driver falls asleep at the wheel and kills a family of 4? That's on me, right?
Yes, it would be, but only if your negligent business decision made the event happen; like demanding an exceedingly long work day, crazy shift work, or revolving door employment.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
There is an insane amount of engineering that had to go into this. Getting it wrong would have been an even bigger disaster.
For some excellent discussions on all of this, head over to http://theoildrum.com/
Possibly for the reason that it's never been done before at this depth. Remember, whatever finally works will be paraded around by armchair generals as "what they should have done first".
Hindsight can be a cast-iron bitch sometimes.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Right, because the relief well doesn't have anything to do with, you know, being a relief well.
I think what he is pointing out is that most of the people who want the CEO's to be directly responsible for everything are the same people who think they can set a cap on what private citizens can earn.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Well if they can't drill it at 5000', maybe you shouldn't be driving your car?
I have a feeling expanding foam doesn't expand too well at over 2,000 psi.
And here, in a nutshell, the problem with American politics. It doesn't matter how bad we are, as long as you are worse.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
guess which one took the longest
I'll take "What is BP had to get permission from the feds" for $500 Alex.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
I'm sure the thousands of Coast Guardsmen, non BP engineers, private fisherman and volunteers working to actually solve and alleviate the problem are likewise eternally grateful for your willingness to contribute by adapting and innovating snarky comments about other people's efforts while sitting on your ass ;)
Well, right now, CEOs are both highly overpaid and free of responsibility. Which one would you prefer they relinquish?
With great power comes great responsibility... this is the rule I want enforced.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Rachael Maddow had a blurb on this yesterday. It showed how similar techniques (including "top kill") were used in attempt to plug the leak, then the leak was finally killed by another well drilled, with a devastating impact on the environment, about six months after the fact.
What lessons can we learn from this? First and foremost, this drives the point home that one of the first priorities is that oil should be relegated to plastic making, and not an energy source.
Nuclear technology may not be perfect, and the biggest problem with it is that it isn't goof-proof. If a group of drunk contractors pass out on the job when putting together a solar cell array, it likely won't affect much other than the head of the guy the cell array fell on. Nuclear plants need to be engineered to be as moron resistant as possible, because both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were caused by "cockpit errors". Hopefully Gen III and Gen IV reactors will go a long way to address this.
This is not to say that other energy sources are not relevant, but until fusion gets able to be used on a production basis (as in multi-gigawatt reactors), the only real solution for dense areas without access to large amount of real estate is nuclear breeder reactors.
Of course, there are other ways to help with energy. I've seen some research on generators which turn water into hydrogen and pass the stuff down a pipeline to an electricity generation station nearby a metropolitan area where it is burned. This minimizes energy loss over long distances as opposed to power lines.
In any case, this BP disaster just further reinforces the point of getting off of oil and onto other energy sources.
So you don't use plastic products either? You don't use goods that are transported on trucks that consume oil? You never walk over asphalt roads?
Because there was a chance that it could make the situation worse. They were trying things first that if they went wrong would not make the problem worse.
I guess I'm a little more cynical than this. I assumed they were trying things that would cost them the least money first.
In theory, those are the same. Factor in the potential cost of failure alongside the cost of the procedure itself. The top kill probably costs less than many of the other methods (a 93-ton, four-story-tall concrete dome can't be cheap), until you factor in the risk and cost of failure (top kill can make more oil leak, which in turn makes future attempts more expensive).
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Just saw this quote:
"You want a witch hunt? Start by looking in a mirror."
*sigh* So true... This blame game has grown so very tiresome.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Don't forget the billions they have pledged in funding for research into handling this better in the future.
I find it so strange people keep claiming BP is running from the bill when BP has done all it can to limit the problem, both now and in the future. People seem to forget that BP is one of the biggest energy companies in the world (3rd I think) and are drilling all over the planet, if they fail to handle this spill or try to run away from it they will lose contracts around the world.
That's because we don't properly acknowledge that there's enough blame to go around ten times over. We let the guilty spin the issue into one of someone else being technically more guilty in some sub area.
If we properly assigned blame, even just enough to bar them from ever participating in politics again, to every politician who took bribes or let themselves be influenced to go against the will of their constituents we'd end up with better politicians. They're out there somewhere, hidden behind the hordes of sell-outs. Instead we get suckered into trying to decide if the republicans or the democrats are more guilty and forget to punish the individuals we caught breaking the law.
Similarly for "the corporations". Punish any attempt to influence a politician or law enforcement officer (or EPA investigator, etc) as you would bribery. Seize all assets related to the transaction and punish the offender for perjury.
If we actually enforced our existing laws so many people are guilty (of real crimes - that you and I would be punished for) that almost our entire governing and financial sector would be gone.
I wish we'd stop letting them misdirect us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
recent tech from germany, many generations technologically removed form the 1960s era tech all of our china syndrome fears are based on
air cooled, passive safety system. there is no failure that can cause an accident, because anything and everything can fail and nothing bad will happen: you can just walk away from a pebble bed reactor, they are foolproof
the only issue is terrorism (not as in bombing the plant, but as in stealing fissile material and placing it in times square), so you need a really good inventory security apparatus
nuclear+electric cars is obviously the solution to our environmental, energy, and geopolitical problems
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Real" engineering is not like your geek job. When the rig blew, people died, and others needed immediate rescue to survive - and BP was there for that. There were several in-place preventive measures as part of the disaster prevention plan, but they failed - largely due to poor management culture endemic to BP, where warnings from the guys on the rig were ignored. BP certainly deserves blame for that. The same cultural problem led to the gas pipeline blowout, if you remember that.
Efforts to plug the well started immediately, and as there's no way to know what will work, several parallel efforts were all started. Lots of silly /.ers who seem to think this is like fixing a down server are asking questions like "why didn't they drill the relief well first, since that's the only permanent fix". They did start the effort to drill the relief well immediately; it will be done in August IIRC. This isn't a down server - real engineering work is required here, real heavy equipment must be designed, built, shipped to a port, loaded, and shipped out to the middle of the gulf at 15 knots.
The "top kill" effort was started as soon as the problem was understood - it just takes time to do stuff like this.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.