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There really needs to be some clarity on what has and is happening here. So, speaking as somebody formerly in the oil & gas business:

1) This was not an “oil well.”

2) The Deepwater Horizon that blew out, caught on fire, and sank was a semi-submersible drilling rig.

3) It’s primary purpose is to drill for oil, not PRODUCE oil. Semi’s can be used to produce oil. One question is: was this rig actually producing oil or just drilling for it?

4) As to the “one main switch for cutting off the flow of oil by closing a valve located on the ocean floor,” do we know if there even was a flow of oil happening when this rig blew up? Drilling rigs drill for months without encountering any oil. What you seem to be describing here is bottom-located production equipment, the kind that would be installed when oil is being produced by a permanent production platform, not a semi-submersible drilling rig.

Does anybody here actually know what the facts of this case are? Lord knows the main stream press corp (the useful idiots) are so busy comparing it to Valdez, they don’t bother to actually do their jobs and answer the what, why, when, how and provide some meaningful context and comparisons. Is this Valdez or Ixtoc 1 which while 10+ times a bigger spill than Valdez did little environmental damage.

5) What does generally stop a disaster of this type in a drilling situation are the blow-out preventers or “BOPs.” A BOP operates by slamming down on both sides of the drilling tubing (called drill string) and thereby cutting off any flow of hydrocarbons. Certainly on a state of the art piece of equipment like the Horizon, they were installed and working. They automatically operate in the event of certain pressure changes. My guess is that this rig was drilling and punched through into a massive hyrdrocarbon (gas and oil) rich zone. The “kick” as we call it was so massive, it shattered the drill string below the BOP. That kick was so violent it also did substantial damage at the surface of the rig and that is what caused the fire. The BOP never even had a chance to work.

What bothers me is that while this is a good working theory, it is nothing but a theory until we know some facts. And we can’t know any facts until the idiotic press starts asking some real questions. Anybody that has read in the press any answers to these questions, please chime in.

Here are some other things to think about. Is the “oil” slick oil from the borehole that was being drilled or is it diesel stored on the rig, or both. How much diesel was stored on the rig for usage in drilling operations?

Valdez spilled some 262,000 barrels of oil. The initial rate on this incident was reported as 1,000 barrels a day, so it would take almost a year to spew what Valdez did. Now, we hear its 5,000 bpd. What the truth really is, who knows. Ixtoc 1 spewed some 3.5 million barrels at 10k to 30k bpd. It fouled beaches in Mexico and Texas, but the effects were nothing compared to Valdez. It remains to be seen if this event is closer to Ixtoc 1 or Valdez, but some intelligent comparisons and analyses would be nice versus the sensationalism and hysteria dominating the headlines these days.

I have seen news stories talking about the potential for this spill to foul “rocks” and “beaches.” What rocks? Not many of those along the GOM coast. What beaches? Mostly where this oil seems to be going there are marshes. There are beaches in Mississippi, but as anyone whose been to them can attest, they suck. Brown Mississippi River effluent, brown sand, worthless for swimming. I don’t mean to minimize the potential ecological disaster, but let’s analyze it rationally and talk about what may really happen and not engage in projection from what happened in Alaska.