Posted on 05/02/2010 7:19:47 PM PDT by dalight
Gouget told the Registe that NOAA officials at the Unified Command Center in Louisiana know how to respond to spills, and know burning should have started as soon as possible after the initial release was detected. He also speculated that they may have been prevented from doing so by higher officials.
"It may have been a political issue. The burn would make a big big plume and lots of soot. Like Valdez, the decisions to get the resources mobilized may not have occurred until it was too late," Gouget told the Register. "This whole thing has been a daily strip tease. At first they thought it was just the diesel, then they said the well wasn't leaking. It's unfortunate they didn't get the burning going right away. They could have gotten 90 percent of the oil before it spread."
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Still Spewing
Thanks for posting this. I’ve shared this one...
He is the President of the United States, for God's sake. It is his job to be prepared to act quickly in an emergency. Can you imagine his response if we had an attack on the scale of 9/11? He'd wet his pants and hide under the desk.
He also had legal guidelines on what to do since congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. He has zer0 excuses for not acting sooner and utilizing all assets available.
Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA)
http://www.uscg.mil/npfc/About_NPFC/opa.asp
The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (OSLTF)
http://www.uscg.mil/npfc/About_NPFC/osltf.asp
Capping a wellhead at >5,000’ depth isn't an easy task.
Is that to be expected in a situation like this? I see in the diagram that it will take 2-3 months for the relief well to be constructed, but is there nothing they can do in the meantime, and if there is, how long SHOULD it take to get that done? (Capping or whatever...)
I note that Tapscott mentions eco-terrorists. I kind of wonder whether it’s not WORSE than some out of control nature nuts... Chavez may not like the competition with “his” oil companies. Venezuela just got a bunch of new military “toys” from Putin, too. (Some are suspecting NK, but I don’t see that unless carried out for them by a proxy myself...).
Maybe Chavez lent some of his toys to Cuba???
I was just asking... how long is it expected to take? Is the estimate of 2-3 months from the diagram for the capping? Or, for making it functional again?
You know it is so hard to believe that drilling a whole new well is the only plan they have. It would seem to me that 1000ft down is not the moon and the folks who capped oil fires and such when it is above ground have tools to do this in the water just the same..
so Where the heck is Red Adair's bunch? I know he has passed but I can't believe that high risk oil services has gone out of fashion.
From an email I recieved:
WE have a big problem folks and the media is not even talking the worst truth of it. I went on an international forum and people from all over the world spoke about it. People who seem to know how things work. Here is a piece of it.
Found on a forum today:
Re: First hand account of what happened that caused the oil rig to blow!
My son who would not lie to me talked today with the primary rig engineer .
I just got off the phone with him and what he told me is not good.
They hit oil at 15,000 ft! I had no idea they drilled that deep.
They capped the well and was preparing to move the drill rig and bring on the production rig.
They don’t know why but they lost pressure control and as they lost control they lost all ground works at the BOP valve.
As the gas oil mix hit the air it exploded. No bomb and No attack!
There is a massive 90 degree piece of pipe and the major hole is in that 90.
There are 2 pins in the BOP valve that when you pull them the valve is forced closed and will not re-open. Both of those pins have been pulled by the remote subs. They both failed.
There is no plan B except to drill 2nd well to remove pressure. He said 30 days is very best on stopping this flow of oil.
I just got off the phone with my son and that is what I got.
Another post:
Quote
Re: First hand account of what happened that caused the oil rig to blow!
This was on George Ure’s site this a.m. If it’s already been posted, I apologize:
2. A reader who is an engineer of considerable experience says watch this one evolve carefully because it is destined to continue to grow and he shares this long (but worthy explanation why:
“Heard your mention of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico this morning, and you (and most everyone else except maybe George Noory) are totally missing the boat on how big and bad of a disaster this is.
First fact, the original estimate was about 5,000 gallons of oil a day spilling into the ocean. Now they’re saying 200,000 gallons a day. That’s over a million gallons of crude oil a week!
I’m engineer with 25 years of experience. I’ve worked on some big projects with big machines. Maybe that’s why this mess is so clear to me.
First, the BP platform was drilling for what they call deep oil. They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. This it right on the edge of what human technology can do. Well, this time they hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Take a moment to grasp the import of that. The pressure behind this oil is so high that it destroyed the maximum effort of human science to contain it.
When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean.
Now they’ve got a hole in the ocean floor, 5,000 feet down with a wrecked oil drilling rig sitting on top of is spewing 200,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. Take a moment and consider that, will you!
First they have to get the oil rig off the hole to get at it in order to try to cap it. Do you know the level of effort it will take to move that wrecked oil rig, sitting under 5,000 feet of water? That operation alone would take years and hundreds of millions to accomplish. Then, how do you cap that hole in the muddy ocean floor? There just is no way. No way.
The only piece of human technology that might address this is a nuclear bomb. I’m not kidding. If they put a nuke down there in the right spot it might seal up the hole. Nothing short of that will work.
If we can’t cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?
We’re so used to our politicians creating false crises to forward their criminal agendas that we aren’t recognizing that we’re staring straight into possibly the greatest disaster mankind will ever see. Imagine what happens if that oil keeps flowing until it destroys all life in the oceans of this planet. Who knows how big of a reservoir of oil is down there.
Not to mention that the oceans are critical to maintaining the proper oxygen level in the atmosphere for human life.
We’re humped. Unless God steps in and fixes this. No human can. You can be sure of that.
Imagine this kind of ‘efficiency’ when they build more nuclear power plants. Pissah, can’t wait....
I’m sure the socialist media will be all over him any day — with excuses.
We are so screwed......
How do they expect the second one to work if the first one didn't?
What if that one goes as well? Then we have MORE oil spewing into the Gulf?
If we can’t cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?"
Oh. My. God.
This is truly frightening.
How do you think this fits in to the end times scenarios?
Simple reason: Even though it’s both and ecological and economic disaster, Obama simply doesn’t care. He is only interested in what political objectives he can achieve out of the situation.
Since the pipe is currently still leaking at least 30,000 barrels a day, starting a controlled burn on Wednesday rather than Thursday isn’t going to make much of a difference. You’d have to stop the flow 5000 ft down first.
BP swore in their documents last July that such a blowout on the Deepwater Horizon was nearly impossible, and that if one did occur, that they were well-equipped to handle it promptly with no major problems.
The Coast Guard was sent in the day after the u=initial explosion, which was Apr 20. But BP was claiming that there was apparently no leakage atthe time!
On the 22nd, “Worst case scenario, there is a potential environmental threat,” said the Coast Guard spokeswoman Katherine McNamara. That was based on the amount that BP had been pumping (8K barrels/day and the 70K barrels of fuel oil the rig was carrying when it sank. The Coast Guard was basing its estimation on what BP was telling everyone.
On the 24th, the Coast Guard announced that the drill site had apparently been leaking since the explosion. BP said the leak was estimated at 1000 barrels per day, and they were going to use underwater robots to fix the problem.
Even as late as the 26th, BP stated in a press release that NOAA had verified that the slick was “97% sheen” and that they were confident that they had it under control!
Finally, on the 27th, BP admits thatthe roboits couldn’t do the job, and the Coast Guard begins the containment booms/fir approach.
It wasn’t until the 28th that Coast Guard estimated that the leak was 5K barrels a day (still far less than what is actually being lost). But BP wouldn’t even acknowledge that figure til the next day!
Now, it’s one thing to hate Obama and all that he does. But let’s not let a dislike for the Administration blind us to the fact that BP has lied and dissemble about the true nature of this calamity from the get-go. How would you have responded if the Obama administration had gone in and taken over the rig, seized control of the site from BP 5 or 6 days ago, before the company itself even admitted they had a problem? That would be attacked as tyrannical seizing of private enterprise, or playing “Daddy Gubmint Knows Best.”
Apparently BP, the big experts, have no back-up plan to fix this. This literally don’t know what to do! This crude is going to keep pumping out of their broken well until it destroys the economy of the Gulf States.
A terrorist attack could never do as much damage as this debacle has. Our economy is already teetering, and now this?
As far as I am concerned, looking at the time-line evidence, matching both the government’s and BP’s response, makes it plain: BP bears the primary responsibility for this monumental catastrophe.
The only way that the government COULD have acted faster was if they’d *assumed BP was lying from the outset as to the severity of the blowout.* Now, of course, we know that they WERE lying.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.