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BP Permanently Seals Gulf Oil Well
rexjoec writes "BP has finally plugged the Macondo well. This announcement came yesterday after $9.5 billion (through September 17) in expenditures and five months of continuous effort."
From the LA Times: "Of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil that gushed from the well, 25% was burned, skimmed or piped to tanker ships. A second 25% has evaporated or dissolved, according to government estimates. Another 25%, classified by the government as 'residual oil,' consisted of light sheens on the water, thick goo on the shore and tar balls. The tar balls, though not harmful to humans, are likely to wash up on shore for some time."
Well, that didn't take very long now did it?
The "potential" for conflict can raise the cost of oil by 5-10 cents in less than a week. The "potential" for supply problsm can raise the cost of oil by as much as 50 cents over the course of a couple of months.
Millions of gallons leaking into the Gulf, however, seem to have had pretty much zero effect on gas prices. Am I wrong? Please put some numbers up showing that I am...I'd really be pissed off if I'm right about that.
Living With a Nerd
Is BP paying those fishermen for the next 40 years of lost work?
Is it paying the hotels for the next 20 years of lost business?
It sure seems like dumping a few gallons of oil can get you arrested, dumping millions though is ok so long as you pretend to do something about it.
I love how they make it sound like the oil just went away.
Hundreds of workers worked 10+ hour shifts every day on the shores cleaning up oil and dead animals for the past months. I'm not sure if that continues even now but the spill is certainly going to have lasting affects on the sea floor and gulf waters.
Every fisherman in the Gulf is going to be claiming that BP killed their record season, every cannery is going to complain that the oil spill took a crazy amount of money out of their pockets. etc. I've already heard some fishermen being interviewed saying that BP owed them several YEARS worth of fishing profits (since they were presumptively assuming that they wouldn't be able to fish for years). I'm generally not very sympathetic to big oil companies, but those poor bastards are going to be swamped with lawsuits for the next decade. But, on the upside, I bet they'll damn sure be properly maintaining those blowout preventers from now on.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If my company has a tanker full of gas, and that tanker explodes outside your store due to my company's negligence, cratering the street and making your store unreachable for months. By your logic, my company shouldn't be liable for monetary damage to your store. How would you feel about this? You can say "adapt! change!" all you want, but the bottom line is, there should be no legal justification for this kind of negligence.
Is BP paying those fishermen for the next 40 years of lost work?
No, but BP is paying for those fisherman to go out and clean the oil. Also 40 years=number pulled out of your ass. The effects of the Ixtoc 1 oil spill were not that drastic and shrimp industries returned to normal in 2 years.
Is it paying the hotels for the next 20 years of lost business?
The hotels are already doing quite well this year as they are hosting all the contractors that have been brought into the region, as are all the restaurants and such with the per diem the contractors are getting paid. And again 20 years=number pulled out of your ass.
It sure seems like dumping a few gallons of oil can get you arrested, dumping millions though is ok so long as you pretend to do something about it.
Yes, dumping millions of gallons of oil is ok (if you consider 20 billion dollars to not be a penalty). That works out to about $95 a gallon, not to mention the additional $1.87/gallon in lost oil revenue.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
It's not the margin of error. It's the 25% that's still in the deeper water. That's why they mentioned three ways the oil came out of the mass of the water and it didn't add up to 100%.
That other 25% is getting into the plankton, fish, shrimp, and marine mammals. Part of it's undoubtedly in the gulf stream on its way to the coast of the UK and Ireland. Part of it will remain in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and the western Atlantic. This last 25% will take years or decades more to break down after the press grows tired of covering it.
The reason the numbers sound so fake is that they are approximate best guesses. Nobody has actually been able to reliably measure exactly what the flow was, how much is in tar balls, and the like. The initial flow is an estimate. The tar balls are an estimate. The sheen on top of the water is an estimate. What's left in the water is an estimate. The only thing they could really measure with any precision is what they scooped up or burned off.
Cutting oil consumption is the solution. By boycotting BP you only hurt the local station owner who has no fault in this. BP will always have a market for what they're pulling from the ground.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
It's the old if you owe the bank $10,000, it's your problem. If you owe the bank $10,000,000, it's their problem.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
By your logic, I should be allowed to start a "waste disposal service". What I will do is locate myself in your neighborhood and burn tires, paint thinner, waste paint, and miscellaneous plastics in large heaping piles. You should just have to adapt to it and deserve no compensation down the road when you get cancer or poisoned by the toxic fumes in the air. Its not my fault you live there and use the neighborhood for your own personal enjoyment and living space. After all, this society is capitalist so I should be able to start a business like this cut out my niche in the market.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Prove that criminal laws were broken beyond a reasonable doubt and people will go to jail. Otherwise it's just political posturing.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
There's fundamentally two ways to make a business responsible for its unsafe actions.
One is to impose government regulations. These are generally flawed, often tuned to avoid expense to the corporation, often require unnecessary things at extra expense, may not be enforced, and are typically something of a pain.
The other is to make corporations civilly liable for what they do. This has its own set of problems, including shell corporations that loot and discard operating corporations, and the ability of large enterprises to wage delaying actions through the legal system.
The worst of both worlds is when bad government regs are used to shield a corporation from well-deserved liability.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Or is in huge underwater clouds of atomized droplets and hence out of sight and mind.
Is dumping not illegal in Florida or at the Federal level?
Where I live it sure is. The cops don't ask why you did it.
The BP+US statements about this debacle have from the very beginning been utterly fanciful and misleading. Why should anyone suddenly believe this one?
BP+US has treated the entire disaster as simply a public relations problem. Control the media message, attack and suppress any contrary evidence, and thus define reality. At least until the guilty have escaped any consequences and the gullible are left to pay the real costs.
And my observation here is to note the similarity to U.S. petro-military operations in Iraq (and the rest of the Middle East). Both were caused by hubris and greed, and the official "solution" to what is clearly a complete and total clusterfuck is just PR "rebranding" - to simply leave and declare victory.
Without independent observation and analysis, in either the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Mexico, who has any idea of what's really happening?
But from the similarities I'll bet this disaster will continue exactly like Iraqistan: lots of smiling photo ops of the CEO's of state, the occasional human interest story about the hardships suffered by the little people (carefully avoiding any link to those responsible), and the suffering and environmental devastation and the death will keep going on and on.
Gulf of Mexico, Persian Gulf.
Same hydrocarbons, different day.
"My fellow Americans, major combat operations in the Gulf have ended. In the battle of Macondo, the United States and our oillies have prevailed."
"Emission Accomplished"
What's the penalty? Fine, right? Justice served.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Deliberately dumping used motor oil is a crime. Having it spill out of your car onto the pavement because a gasket fails is not a crime, though you may still be required to pay clean-up costs.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Indeed that 25% was what I was wondering about. The long term effects of this on our health and the health of the gulf ecosystem will probably never fully be understood, but will likely be felt in many different ways. Unofrtunately, it will be one of those things that is explained away by skeptics because it is something where it is very difficult to measure and prove the impact.
While I don't want to downplay the misfortune of those who depend on the fishing and tourist industry, I think those losses would pale in comparison to the losses that will be experienced in our health and natural habitats. Consider if you were to try and measure these things in terms of the dollar value that it would take to restore and maintain them in a condition comparable to which they would have been in had there been no spill. Restoring a habitat to a pre-populated condition is sometimes very difficult, costly, or near impossible. If the damage is minor, a healthy ecosystem will heal itself, but if it is major then habitats will be destroyed beyond repair or may be in a vulnerable state, such that it may be destroyed by a natural disaster, which a healthy habitat would have normally recovered from.
Usually when you are talking about assigning a dollar value to measure suffering, death, and/or increased health care costs resulting from something like this, then you are talking big numbers. A human life statistically is often represented as a few million dollars. It's hard to say what the effects would be, but I wonder about how many carcinogens have been left behind in the gulf and might make their way through the food chain or get to us through other pathways:
http://www.sciencesuperschool.com/crude-oil-spills-mdash-biological-medical-chemical-dangers.html
Your sophistry is lame. If, as you claim, local franchisees are hurt, BP franchises become less desirable, and thus BP is hurt.
But you go ahead, continue regurgitating the talking points of people who would cheerfully put your head on a stick for a nickel's worth of profits.
Yes, and yes.
It's more complicated than that, though. Most people are probably not affected at all. But some people are affected in tragic ways. And even though I haven't gotten sick from being exposed to toxins, I AM paying for Superfund site amelioration. Does that affect my daily life? To some extent. Here's a fun map to check out superfund sites.
Well, others may have pointed it out, but it's still incorrect. There does not need to be willful harm for criminal negligence to occur. Disregarding safety can be a criminal act, even if any harm that occurs is unintentional.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Hey, here's an idea for the poor, unfortunate station owners and their employees who are so downtrodden by the rightful boycotting of BP-supplied stations: go work for or get your fuel supply from SOMEONE ELSE besides BP. I've seen more stations switch brands over the years than I can count, some without changes in management or even significant changes in employees.
BP is not the only oil company in existence, nor are the various stations they supply the only ones out there which need able-bodied employees. Add to that the fact that there appear to be plenty of jobs to be had elsewhere, despite the slump in the economy.
To put it bluntly, BP made so many poor decisions that it's as though they set this up to fail. This is the kind of fuckup that bring forth a punishment as damaging to BP as the spill itself is to the environment.
Not that you care what's really happening - as your reply makes it clear your mind is already made up. Unless the 'independent' analysis agrees with your existing bias, you'll just claim it to be a product of the "petro-military complex".
Sigh, why do people not get it. The oil from BP rigs is not sold exclusively to BP refineries and so forth. The oil is traded on a public exchange, this is then purchased by refineries which sell the refined product on another public exchange which is then purchased by a retailer. So if you go to Esso or Mobil you're still buying BP oil. If you go to BP petrol stations you're buy Chevron oil.
Its done this way because the production of oil wells do not equal the consumption of the same companies oil refineries.
If you really want to help, stop using so much oil and invest in alternate energy. Boycotts against BP are useless as you'll only hurt the unrelated retail arm whilst the drilling and exploration arm goes on with business as usual.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Nor harmful to humans? What a bout the environment we depend on? Talk about misleading the public.
you are not moderated for the mistruths that you spew. you are moderated for being a massive cunt. try to imitate your wife less in the future.
i know, i know. this is too much for the puny mind of michael david kristopiet to process. and yes, I know my mum's face is puny too. so very clever.
Cite the relevant criminal statute and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. We don't throw people into prison in this country if you can't do that.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You make it sound like BP dumped the oil deliberately in some sort of gargantuan version of replacing your engine oil and chucking the old stuff at the side of the road.
I've not (yet) even seen any mad conspiracy theory that thinks BP did this on purpose.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it