QUESTION: Do Americans understand just how bad the Obamaspill Disaster really is?
We made the crude illustration above in an attempt to wrap our heads around the Obamaspill Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, while trying to understand the big picture of what seems to be going on.
One of the sources of information we used was www.TheOilDrum.com, but that site gets very technical for us. It’s been close to two decades since any of us had a geology class, so it takes literally hours for us to pour over all the information over at TheOilDrum. Realizing most Americans don’t have the time to invest in a study like this, we see a real and pressing need to get information about this Obamaspill Disaster out to them in a manageable form.
We have yet to see an illustration explain exactly what is going on, and why this Obamaspill Disaster is much bigger than the Media is letting on. Hence our awkward and amateur attempt above.
Can anyone do better? Please email it to us at HillBuzz@gmail.com if you can and we’ll run it, and try to get it in front of as many eyes as possible.
Also, please correct our understanding of what’s happening if we’re wrong in this, but here’s how things stand as we see them currently:
(1) The problem is not necessarily the hole that the Obama administration approved in the Gulf floor (for which the Obama Administration waived safety permits and other protocols because of BP’s sizable donations to the Obama campaign), but the oil that is now flowing into various layers of rock above where the oil has been trapped for millennia.
(2) Pursuant to the above, BP’s straw is sucking oil up from its contained space, and the oil’s pressure has cracked through the straw at points above the oil’s previous entombment, with the oil now able to penetrate the surface in places far removed from the hole Obama allowed BP to drill.
(3) Now that the oil has access to a new field of movement, hydrodynamics is coming into play with the immense pressure of the ocean and the oil reserves, and the oil is finding multiple points of entry into the saltwater (which could be infinite, considering the loose rock layers the oil is now exposed to).
(4) If the above are all true, then the oil is not going to stop flowing until it’s either gone, or holes can be drilled that suck the oil out of the current “straw” at a point below where the current breeches are occurring. Theoretically, this would then stop the oil from flowing into the layers of loose rock above the layers of rock that contain the oil, since the oil would then no longer be exposed to those breeches, as the relief holes would suck it up before it got there and had the chance to leak out.
We just don’t see how it’s even possible to stop that oil from leaking out, but now is as good a time as any for all of that Hopeychangey unicorn magic to be used to solve one of the problems that we were repeatedly told in 2008 that only an untested community organizer and professional opportunist could solve.
While we wait for this “president” to finish playing golf and hosting Paul McCartney and Beyonce at the White House for cocktail parties, we’ll all have to keep researching what’s going on in the Gulf and finding new ways to make this information accessible to the public at large.
Remember: regular people do not read political websites. Normal people will not spend hours of their lives trying to wade through the jargon and technical materials at sites like OilDrum…which, oddly enough, are meant to be more accessible and understandable than the academic and industry sites studying oil.
It’s a regular person trying to read Daily Variety and understand what’s going on in Hollywood, which would be hopeless…so OilDrum is like Entertainment Weekly, only THAT’S still too hard to grasp…so we need an Obamaspill People magazine take on things.
Quick. Simple. With lots of illustrations.
Chime in with anything you can contribute to this effort…and any ideas you have on how to get this information into the hands and heads of regular Joes and Janes out there, many of whom need to take responsibility for the hopeychangey voting they did in 2008, and where that’s all landed the country now.
© 2010, HillBuzz. All rights reserved.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZWET39Mazc&feature=watch_response
I don’t know about you guys, but I want an Obama/unicorn sticker!
Me 2!!
Since there are numerous such wells all over the world, most of them apparently operating just fine, there must be some explanation for why this one well screwed up. Human error, no doubt. But while we savage BP, let’s also remember that the guv-ment approved their construction and operation. So when are we going to see guv-ment bureaucrats testifying before congress? Not before November, I’m sure.
You know, with all of this outrage aimed at BP by members of this government, I can’t help but to feel that they need this to distract us from the fact that they were asleep at the job. This is generally the tactic taken by those who know they’re guilty or culpable of something.
We have had offshore drilling in Australia for more than 20 years. Think about that….!!!
Regarding 1 through 3, I guess we should be thankful “top kill” didn’t work, since that would have applied even more pressure to the flow? Personally, I think it was nothing more than “busy work”; BP likely knew it wouldn’t be successful and may have known success could make matters worse. It was a diversionary tactic meant to make the public think they were doing everything possible while they worked on the real solution, drilling a relief well – a process that takes months. Intuitively, as a solution to the leak, a relief well makes the most sense to me.
As a side comment, if I interpret Lame Cherry correctly, he/she believes these new points of entry on the ocean floor were caused by the earthquake in Haiti.
And what if this relief well does not function properly? What if the same thing happens again with the relief well? I hope that the relief well solves the problem, but I’ll only believe it when I see it.
I’m hopeful the same thing won’t happen at the relief well, that would be too coincidental. Sure, there’s no guarantee it will work, esp. if there are indeed new fissures on the ocean floor leaking oil, but given all the scientific focus on the problem this seems to be the best hope.
As an aside, this is an interesting article, esp. the comments section where they touch on oil not being a fossil fuel: http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/putting-the-gulf-oil-spill-into-perspective—natural-oil-seepage-from-the-oceans-floor-is-common/blog-334195/
This must be why he’s on television talking about effing Health Care again!
Inexcusable!!!
“It appears, Mr. President, that you were informed by BP about problems on Deepwater Horizon on February 13 and the company wanted your help. What did you say?”
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/06/21/kevin-mccullough-obama-bp-spill-february-salazar-resign-change/
Ooh, the gloves are off on that one. Good post. I didn’t know about BP asking for help earlier this year. Is that common knowledge? It should be shouted from the mountain tops.
Not only was the government informed that there were problems with this well in February, on March 17 BP’s Tony Hayward sold 1/3 of his BP stock.
Ya know, I heard about him selling his stock, I just couldn’t figure out his angle. The intimations that he had knowledge of the impending explosion were just too conspiratorial for me. It makes more sense that he’d dump his stock after realizing there were big problems and no help on the way.
I am not sure that Hayward’s motivations are that bad. As a BP executive he might be getting ready to retire.. and he has the right to sell his stock to do an upgrade to his home… which is what he did….
1/3 isn’t like selling off the whole enchilada. If I thought my holdings were going to be in trouble, I’d have done the same. Retirement could have been the motivation, but he’s only 53.
If you draw a line from the Hati earthquake to the Chilie earthquake they are on the same line. I too think there was major disruption on that fault. They are also watching the angle of the BOP (blow out protector) b/c it could just break off and drop to the ocean floor all 45 tons of it. On one of the attempts to top kill they noticed mud or sand coming out below the BOP. I think they are afraid of tightening down on the capt for fear of blowing out behind the BOP. JMHO
According to The Oil Drum, the BOP weighs 450 tons, not 45. Balanced on top of a 9″ pipe. Swaying in the currents of the gulf. And tilting.
Sorry, was a typo! These units are hard to comprehend!
cap not capt!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNW0lkjTxAQ&feature=player_embedded
My degree is in the medical area, so I’m no dummy, but I had trouble understanding the Oildrum report. You guys have nailed it so I can understand it. Needs a little finessing, which I will leave to others, but NOW I understand what is going on down there.
Need to work in around it where the Obumbles adminstration screwed up.
Good news, the Judge ruled against Utopia shutting down the oil rigs!
I just emailed the boyz about it. I’m sure Zippy will appeal, but this Judge has a reputation for being very thorough and by the book.
From what I read, the judge indicated that the government had misled the public on the need to shut down the oil rigs. He cites a government report that showing experts agreeing to the moratoriam, when in fact they had not; their signatures had been attached to a report that was a revision of what they had signed.
The judge is on to these Chicago White House thugs. Daley can shut down an airport his wife wants to turn into a park by having bulldozers carve X’s into them at midnight. But that sort of nonsense isn’t going to fly too long on a national level.
Boyz, I’ve been thinking about writing a short article on the spill, I just don’t want it to disappear into the WordPress twilight zone like many longer posts.
Why not write it and email them a copy?
BTDT. That’s why if it’s something really long/insightful/whatever, I now blog it and provie a link.
“provide”
It doesn’t have a graphic but it does reference the same source (The Oil Drum) and give some laymen’s explanations. It also mentions a solution – one that apparently no one wants to talk about, for obvious and not so obvious reasons:
http://thepalination.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/the-malaise-speech/
I think your diagram is excellent because it’s simple and contains all the major (known) components of the disaster.
Cartoon idea: since the fraud enjoys his Bushwackers and is actually really good with a straw when there’s alcohol coming through it, I think someone should draw him sucking oil from the ocean through a straw. Even though he says he can’t do it….well, shoot, I won’t believe that until he’s tried. And besides that, he could at least suck up a LITTLE of it. If there has ever been anyone in our White House who ABSOLUTELY SUCKS, he’s that person. He may actually be able to take care of a good portion of it. I truly despise him.
I don’t understand why the relief wells weren’t drilled at the same time as the main well. It is my understanding that is the normal deepwater protocol – I think I remember having read about that as it related to North Sea drilling. I think that is an easy thing to say to illustrate the government’s complicit role in this disaster. Just ask why the regulators didn’t have sense enough to require the simultaneous drilling of relief wells. That is what we have been waiting for all these weeks, with more weeks to go, and all the while the current structure is more and more endangered.
Pie, drilling, especially in deep water is expensive, BP had $98 million invested in that well before the blowout. Nobody drills without need. None of the extreme wells use relief wells because they aren’t needed. BP is known in the industry for being very cheap in their operations. They were withdrawing the drilling mud to save $7-8 million cost of the mud. The well was unstable and was being cap because of that instability. If they had left the mud in place and had done a full cementing to seal the well none of this would of happen. They cheaped out and tried to withdraw the mud and replace it with seawater. The water was not heavy enough to hold the oil/gas mix and they had the mother of all blowouts.
Very accurate Capt. The only thing I would add about BP’s handling of this well is that I read somewhere there was either a deviation in the well casings or else when the casings were showing signs of strain, they were not adequately reinforced. I believe it was the first scenario though and would go along with BP’s pattern of doing it on the cheap. I thought I had also read somewhere that Norway requires the simultaneous drilling of a relief well but I would have to go research that again.
The real issue was the obvious instability of the well and the known questions surrounding the reliability of the BOP.
Two problems with the casing. First most modern deep water casing is dual wall pipe, this is in case of something bad like a blowout its a lot less likely that either or both walls would fracture like what has happened to BP. BP used single wall steel casing. The wall thickness is 1 1/2 inches. That sounds very heavy but at the stress levels involved it can crack or even shatter.
The second problem BP had was the cement job. Well casings are actually setup as an upper and a lower section. Both section are very long, usually around 2000-3000 foot each. The upper section is inserted into the bore hole then the second section which is a smaller diameter is inserted further downhole with an overlap between upper and lower sections. The lower section is then VERY carefully centered in the upper section. Cement is then injected between the upper and lower sections and between the casing and the bore. BP did NOT properly center and align the cases, this is what Halliburtons complaint was about.
So we had lighter, cheaper single wall casing that was improperly aligned and so was improperly centered.
One last thing the blowout preventer was an older, cheaper, obsolete single ram design instead of the newer double ram design that EVERYBODY else uses. Now excuse me while I spend 10 minutes cursing every cheap bastard at BP.
Ahoy CaptCaveman,
Great commentary, paralleling something overheard at an industry luncheon: BP’s original drilling plan was faulty from the git-go. Also heard BP was too much in a rush to move the big rig off location (read that, save the extra $mil a day to do the completion job correctly.) Good grief, they found the big kahoona, but their legendary propensity to do stuff on the cheap is gonna cost them the crown jewels. And screw up everything for everyone else.
http://jimwalterpix.typepad.com
Was the BP well ever on line, or was this a new drill.
Its what is called an exploratory well. It does what it sounds like, it’s first well into the pocket. This is the toughest because you don’t what your going to hit. It was unsuccessful because there was too much gas in the oil. You drill for oil or gas,not both. They were capping it and would likely have drilled lower in the pocket for oil or higher in the pocket for gas.
For laymen, you Hillbuzzers did a masterful job of reducing a complex problem to an easy-to-digest morsel. Kudos. I doubt even the experts could do as well.
http://jimwalterpix.typepad.com
A comment about the spill blow-back. If a cosmetic surgeon ruptures Heidi Montag’s hooters during an implant boost-up procedure and causes a silicone spill on “The Hills,” there should be a moratorium on breast augmentation surgery, right? Uh-huh, I can see the celebri-twits lining up behind that.
http://jimwalterpix.typepad.com