A brown pelican covered in oil sits on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010.
Posted on 06/03/2010 10:33:54 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The well has been capped, more or less. BP engineers Thursday night guided a containment dome onto the hydrocarbon geyser shooting from the Gulf of Mexico oil well -- a desperate and iffy attempt to capture the leaking oil and funnel it to a ship on the surface.
It was not an elegant operation. Furious clouds of oil escaped the "top hat." Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the spill, called the development a positive step but said, "It will be sometime before we can confirm that this method will work and to what extent it will mitigate the release of oil into the environment."
It was a day crammed with engineering drama. First, BP used robotic vehicles and a pair of giant shears to cut a damaged pipe a mile below the gulf's surface. The result simplified the whole arrangement at the sea floor: Instead of spewing from multiple leaks in a tangle of bent pipes, the oil and natural gas surged in a single plume from what looked like a deep-sea smokestack.
Then came the dome, lowered by cables, guided by robots, illuminated by lamps in a world without natural light, and carrying with it the hopes of countless engineers and pretty much the entire Gulf Coast.
Nothing has gone according to plan in the subsea environment as, on the surface, the oil has hit more than 100 miles of Louisiana shoreline. After brushing a barrier island in Alabama, it is poised to tar the white sand beaches of the Florida Panhandle. The area of the gulf closed to fishing is now larger than the state of Florida.(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Let’s hope this thing is sealed.
Good on them. I hope it works.
>> Furious clouds of oil escaped the “top hat.”
In other words, “Obama clouds of oil...”
Does this mean that Anderson Cooper can finally come home?
“Does this mean that Anderson Cooper can finally come home?”
I’m sure his girlfriend is missing him
One can only hope!
Anderson Cooper is doing a great job reporting on the spill. I hope he gets to come home soon.
Is the Wash Post lying for Obama as usual? Looks like the oil is still spewing.
Man if they would have just done the job right and BP had not tried to cut corners they would be raking the dough in on all that oil spewing out like a firehose. Stupid.
From what I’m seeing on the live BP video feed, it looks like the gushing has worsened.
Looks like total fail to me.
“Man if they would have just done the job right...”
Yep. If they had just listened to the Driller and the mudman, this may not have happened. They had been battling over-pressures for quite awhile.
I think the cap over the top is one major step in the midst of a bunch of other steps. It is not to “cap” the well, but seems to be a funnel that now they will attach a hose to to bring the oil up to ships. With hopes of 80% capture. (20% still leaking into the water).
I’m sure his girlfriend boyfriend is missing him
Ms. Cooper can oil himself up for him.
A brown pelican covered in oil sits on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010.
He’s a idiot. I watched him for ten minutes and it was all I could take. The misinformation was the worst reporting I have ever witnessed.
I suppose it will be spewing until BP can tap the top cap.
It is a shame that this has happened.
Apparently this is the method BP wanted to try first, weeks ago, and the Obama Administration micromanaged their way into forcing them to exhaust other options instead. “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” right? Now the long drug-out disaster is being blamed as a reason to shut down oil exploration and drilling in favor of “safer” green technology. Do it for the children. And baby seals.
Hmmm, what was he getting wrong? I bounce between him and Greta but I thought he was doing a good job. What am I missing?
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