Posted on 04/23/2010 12:50:45 AM PDT by KDD
A drilling rig that burned for more than a day before sinking Thursday has fouled Gulf of Mexico waters with a potentially major spill of crude oil, officials said. The collapse of the oil rig could disgorge up to 336,000 gallons of crude a day into waters about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said the sunken rig, the Deepwater Horizon, increased the threat for environmental damage, which previously appeared minimal. With new challenges from the collapsed rig, a growing assemblage of cleanup crews began to work in the area, hoping to stop the oil before the spill were to reach the shore.
Meteorologists predicted a change in the Gulf's current today that would push the oil toward the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines. But Landry said the spill isn't expected to reach the coast. “We have the ability to keep it offshore,” she said. BP, the oil company that leased the offshore rig, said it had mobilized four aircraft that can spread chemicals to break up the oil and 32 vessels that can recover more than 171,000 barrels of oil a day from the surface. BP officials also expected to have a million feet of boom in place to help contain the spill by today. “We have contingency plans in place to respond to any anticipated situation, and the full resources of BP are being mobilized to implement those plans,” said David Rainey, vice president of Gulf exploration for BP. Even then, federal and BP officials said it wasn't clear whether oil was flowing from the well after the platform sank because they didn't know what was happening underwater.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Perhaps this is the new "smart" American economy at work. Manufacturing, oil production, etc. exist not to provide goods and services so much, but work for armies of lawyers, government agencies, ngo's, and various other paper pushers.
bears repeating, since i missed it in a quick reading too...
April 23, 2010
Oil has stopped flowing from Transocean well
The flow of oil appears to have stopped from the undersea well connected to the sunken Transocean Horizon drilling rig, according to a Coast Guard spokesman.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Mike O'Berry said remote controlled submarines have been unable to shut the valves on equipment at the wellhead on the sea floor, but it appears the flow of oil from subsurface reservoirs has stopped on its own.
"This could just be temporary, so we're not letting our guard down," O'Berry said.
There are six oil skimmer vessels on the scene and more ready to be called in should they be needed. Several aircraft were flying over the sheen of oil that had spread from the area yesterday spraying a chemical that breaks up the oil and causes it to sink.
End snip
any concerns the Deepwater Horizon explosion was a terrorist act?
AHHHHH! I should hit the abuse button on that! LOL!!!
“We have the ability to keep it offshore,”
So it`ll “only” kill everything offshore. Wonderful. sarc/
Yeah, this reeks of opportunism. The easiest guess is the BP did it to itself to keep oil prices high. Or the cfr globalists arranged for this to happen for similar reasons. High oil/gasoline prices are also a form of control on the unwashed masses. This might give the enviro-whackos enough to kill offshore drilling but there is still enough oil deep underground on shore right here in the USA (ANWR) to drop the cost of a gallon of gas to about .50 a gallon. IF we can get our ability to refine up to handle a dramatic increase in supplies. That'll be tough. There hasn't been a new refinery built in this country since 1975.
I hope that is true!
There should be at least one more set of BOP controls near the accumulator unit. At least it is that way on land rigs, and I can't see having less redundency offshore.
I know it is rough, but everyone has to do their part to keep those idiots out of government...
[. . .though these days I hear you catch nothing but pups there.]
Any idea if it’s because of over-harvesting or have the fish moved to follow patterns of the bait fish or is it because they lost so much mangrove-type shoreline?
>> There is a valve to shut the oil off beneath the rig I believe but it seems no one was able to get to it.
Too bad those valves are automated to be normally closed.
Me too.
Exactly what I thought. Perfect for the anti-drilling forces!
America is under attack just as surely as if the enemy was dropping in under parachutes and coming ashore in landing craft.
>> Too bad those valves are automated to be normally closed.
“are not automated”
In other words, a safety valve should automatically close when not signaled to stay open.
I think there is a good chance something other than a blowout occurred. Do we know what jobs the missing 11 were doing at the time? Were the Tool Pusher, driller and floor crew killed?
So BP burns down millions of dollars of Transocean property with Transocean watching?? Sorry that's nuts!
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.