It’s BP, not British Petroleum, ever since Maggie Thatcher privatized the government’s stake in the energy giant back in the 1980s. But the stakes involve a large chunk of the UK’s national wealth, not to mention their national pride. From Foreign Policy: Has the BP Bashing Gone Too Far? There has been extensive coverage in Britain of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. | Read More »
Thursday: Confusion was the order of the day. On Wednesday, the first new shallow-water well drilling permit was issued, to the consternation of the environmental community: “I’m outraged,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director for the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity. “How is it that shallow water drilling suddenly became safe again?” Never mind that shallow water drilling has no demonstrated problems. Since the Deepwater | Read More »
In his two most recent appointments to his presidential commission on the BP oil spill, President Obama reveals that he’s got waaaay bigger fish to fry than finding out what went wrong of the Deepwater Horizon, and fixing it. Obama’s Oil Panel May Tackle Energy, Environment The new presidential commission investigating the Gulf oil spill will include two experts who have been active on the | Read More »
In one of the bigger ‘duh!’ headlines of the year, the Times-Picayune observes: Offshore drilling ban could be a blow to Louisiana economy The president and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s announcement late last week to halt all deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico “at the first safe stopping point” while the Interior Department figures out what regulatory changes are necessary for offshore oil prospecting | Read More »
For the last fifteen years, I’ve been the operations manager for a small Gulf of Mexico oil and gas company. I’ve had more than a few sleepless nights in that time, whether it be worrying about a problem well, a reported accident or an impending hurricane. Since Barack Obama has assumed full accountability for the outcome of the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of | Read More »
This is certainly good news. There are signs that the “top kill” operations may be effective, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen told NPR. He is in Houma, Louisiana, meeting with local officials and residents. “Since yesterday afternoon, British Petroleum and their subcontractors have been pumping a heavy mud down into the well bore below the blowout preventer, and over the course of the last 12 | Read More »
The Daily Beast’s Rick Outzen is like a dog with a bone. Rick (along with a legion of other self-imagined experts on the ‘net) is getting a lot of mileage out of the notion that an acoustic switch (see diagram below the fold) might have averted disaster on the Deepwater Horizon: We know that the Deepwater well lacked the remote-control, acoustical valve [sic] that experts | Read More »
The Exxon Valdez, it ain’t. But when I say that, itseems to upset some people. Only by being rational about assessing the environmental threat from the Deepwater Horizon spill can we be prepared to deal with the consequences. Journalists, scientists, Congressmen and bureaucrats have been jockeying to see who can make the most calamitous prediction. As an engineer, I compulsively check their claims (because I | Read More »
Christopher Brownfield suggests ‘Nuke the Oil Spill’ in today’s Daily Beast. Christopher Brownfield is a former nuclear submarine officer, an Iraq veteran, and a visiting scholar on nuclear policy at Columbia University. (I’ve gotta stop reading the Daily Beast. It’s driving me nuts.)
Uh, there have been six so far, each about the size of a golf ball. ON THE GULF OF MEXICO — A Coast Guard official says tar balls that are believed to be from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are washing up on Dauphin Island. Coast Guard chief warrant officer Adam Wine said about a half-dozen tar balls had been collected by this afternoon on | Read More »
Straight from the Gaian People’s Republic of Boulder comes this fresh idea for stopping the flow of oil from the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico: meditation! “The basic concept is to try and get as many people to visualize that the valve is actually functioning and is working and closing,” said Carl Fuermann, a staff member in the University of Colorado’s Registrar Office. | Read More »
#OilSpill: Yesterday’s news, in the LATimesblog: Gulf oil spill: 23 dead sea turtles wash ashore in Mississippi That story said that necropsies were being performed on the dead turtles. How long can a turtle necropsy take? Thanks to Google, today I was able to find a reference to the necropsy results. It’s contained in an AP wire story at the website of WTVM in Columbus, | Read More »
After the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, warmly referred to as “OPA90″. OPA90 provided for an emergency spill fund so that response for a future spill could begin right away; established the US Coast Guard as the lead agency responsible for spill response; and for the first time required minimum insurance coverage and detailed spill contingency | Read More »
God willing, the Gulf Coast may be spared Prince-William-Sound-like images of waves of tarry goo slapping ashore, while wild birds and cuddly mammals struggle for survival in asphaltine muck. Last Friday, the Lafayette Daily Advertiser reported on the rescue of the first oil-covered bird Louisiana: It was the only animal being cleaned late Friday morning, but rescuers expected many more to come in throughout the | Read More »
The catastrophic spill occurred early Wednesday after a 600-foot Liberian-flagged tanker named The Tintomara collided with a barge being pulled by a tugboat near the Harvey Locks. The barge — which was carrying 400,000 gallons of thick, tar-like No. 6 fuel oil — was split in half, sending its contents into the river. As a result, the Mississippi River is shut down to boat traffic | Read More »
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