from the hearing ______________________ When underground gas surged up uncontrollably through the well, desperate rig workers tried to cap it with a set of supersized emergency cutoff valves known as a blowout preventer. However, the device was leaking hydraulic fluid and missing at least one battery, and one of its valves had been swapped with a useless testing part. Details of a likely blowout scenario emerged this week for the first time from congressional and administrative hearings. They suggest there were both crew mistakes and equipment breakdowns at key points the day of the explosion... ______________________________________ IMO, there was no equipment breakdown, only layer upon layer of human errors of the extremely gross negligence kind. If they kept the most important and critical emergency device in those condition, the equipments performed exactly as is for its condition and configuration. I thought i would only see this in Mr. Burns nuclear plant but even his nuclear plant is in better shape. To put it in layman term, it like a car is going 70 mph and u feel u r losing steering control and about to hit a wall but your all brakes have leaky hydraulic hoses, partial power brake assistance from the engine, and the brake pads have been swapped with a non OEM undersized pads. Good Luck.
BP and gov't have been not truthful. at first they reported leaking 1000 barrel/day (bopd) then they up it to 5000 bopd. No sensible person who work in that field would believe that an oil company drill offshore well for such puny rates. Independent estimate is closer to 25,000 to 125,000 bopd. What oil u see on the ocean surface doesn't reflect what real volume of oil leaking. In exxon valdez, what u see is what u got. This oil blowout is spewing oil from the ocean bottom, only some floats to the surface. I am betting that much of the oil is collecting on the ocean bottom, floating and hovering like a black plague. i shoulda said this weeks ago but i did say this one is gonna be worst than exxon valdez, volume of spill and environmental impact
Everytime I see another news article on this I laugh that the US calls Alberta oil "dirty". All oil is dirty regardless of where it is or how you get it. Right now Suncor is on trial for all those ducks that died in one of the tailings ponds. I wonder how many animals will be killed due to this spill? 10x? 100x? 1000x?
the official count is 1606 ducks, likely $800k fine (penalty to be levied soon) or ~$500/duck, very expensive duck FYI, Millions of birds died each year from colliding into high rises, airplanes and yes, green energy wind turbines. Hunters just have to suffer a bit of having 1606 less ducks to shoot down each year (in canada and US) from the 100 million they shoot down each year.
independent estimation has narrowed to 75,000 to 100,000 b/d oil spewing into the ocean. 5000 b/d oil is still the official number bp's emergency plan said it has equips and ability ready to recover, skim, and/or scoop up to 17 million barrel oil. Guess how much oil they skimmed from the ocean todate(May 13)? 97,000 barrel. U gotta use bigger spoons, BP. LOL oh, btw, hurricane season starts in 2 weeks
..i heard the current oil disaster, syphon & oil drilling platform broke on Hitler's birthday...April 20th..
ya, it was recovering ~5000 b/d but drop to ~3000 b/d i think. I didn't heard about the line broke tho. I am puzzled why they burn off the recovered oil, it's like converting water pollution to air pollution. The oil could have been hauled to refinery for making gasoline. 5000 b/d X70=350k/day lost revenue.
Bush was criticized for slow respond after Katrina. It is now been over a month into the oil spill, situation is no better than day 1. Obama is getting off easy on this one
This gulf oil spill disaster, imo, is worse & will leave even more damage to the area than that Katrina hurricane...imagine if it was W who happens to be in BO's shoes, can you imagine all the criticisms from the liberals?!?!...i just feel sad for the folks in the Bayou region.. btw, how long did it take for the Alaska region to fully recover after then Exxon Valdez spill??..
it's hard to define what is fully recovered. Personally i see this gulf spill is way way way more damaging to the environment, biggest environmental disaster on US soil ever. Surface contamination can heal over time but what oil collected and moving below ocean surface is very long lasting, unmonitored, unpredictable. Chemical dispersant can make the mess look less severe but those oil will never be recovered but broken into smaller bite size for smaller organisms to eat it over wider area. BP will be attempting a top kill procedure next wednesday, a procedure what i call, experimental as it's never attempted on offshore well or this deep before. I do wish them good success and i mean it. here are some photos http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100524/sc_ynews/ynews_sc2199
are you guys feeling warmer or what? The sun is just crazy. Too much mineral drilling causing the heat perhaps? The world is ending one way or another...
My horrible suspicion was correct, the chemical dispersant is making the bad situation even worst by making the oil mixes with the ocean deep, harder for us to clean it and harder for nature to break it down. BP want to spread the oil so u can't see it rather than cleaning it up. http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/20009728
BP done some tests on the wellhead and now got the go ahead from the coast guard to do the top kill. I now up the chance of success 60 to 65%
A Good Leak? At a Coast Guard hearing in New Orleans, Doug Brown, chief rig mechanic aboard the platform, testified that the trouble began at a meeting hours before the blowout, with a "skirmish" between a BP official and rig workers who did not want to replace heavy drilling fluid in the well with saltwater. The switch presumably would have allowed the company to remove the fluid and use it for another project, but the seawater would have provided less weight to counteract the surging pressure from the ocean depths. Brown said the BP official, whom he identified only as the "company man," overruled the drillers, declaring, "This is how it's going to be." Brown said the top Transocean official on the rig grumbled, "Well, I guess that's what we have those pinchers for," which he took to be a reference to devices on the blowout preventer, the five-story piece of equipment that can slam a well shut in an emergency.