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I love the condescending remarks of this thread, they really show that people with no oil well drilling experience really do have some experience, even if only they'd never left from their living room televisions.
BTW folks, this gulf oil gusher is no accident, and if you can't figure that out by now.....
So what, you going to blame Obama for blowing up the rig and causing the spill? Bet you were screaming Bush blew up the Twin Towers as well.
This was an accident, the fact that some safety equipment failed either due to cost cutting or malfunction is yet to be determined and it will be gone over for years in the Court Systems.
What did happened for certain is 11 men died, unknown injured with burns and other injuries and there is a mess from the oil. Nobody did this on purpose, to think so is just perverse...
NO.
First off, this was NO ACCIDENT. This was a mistake by a large oil company trying to do it CHEAP AND FAST. What has been done is CRIMINAL.
5,000 feet below the surface of the water, did the engineers ever, ever ask themselves, WHAT IF ?
Yeah, they're learning from their mistakes allright, meanwhile, they have ravaged the earth.
Alaska shores have still not recoved from the Exxon-Valdez.
Why are some calling this a spill? This is hardly a spill. I pour a glass of milk and set it on my table, I then bump it with my elbow and the milk goes everywhere, that is a spill.
I'm fixing a pipe under my sink, the wrench slips, and the pipe breaks, it floods my house while I'm looking for the shut off valve, that is a gusher.
I see many people using these forums are armchair quarterback oil drillers.
Our coastal plains will never recover from this criminal act.
BP should go into receivership, by their sheer negligence.
Other than off the dipstick on your car, have you seen an oil spill in person? I would bet not.
You are the prime reason I started this thread, I am so tired of people screaming "The end is near" and are clueless to what really transpires thoughout the life of an oil spill.
They are a mess, animals do die, yet you will still go to your car and go for a drive, turn up the heat or air conditioner.
starlite9: Started working oil spills almost forty years ago, not much has changed. Can't even tell you how many of them I have worked on starting when I was in the Coast Guard to it appears the Gulf Spill in a few weeks............
Thank you for your magnificent post with explanations and photos. We have this spill and sadly there's nothing that can turn back time so that it would never have happened.
Your information, based on personal experience, provides some hope that the long term effects will lessen with time. The "taco shell" and solidified oil does look much easier to clean up than the liquid stuff. Still, the shorter term effects on people and animals is just horrible. A lot of death and destruction, starting with the eleven and moving through the eco system.
What do you think about the fact that the AMOUNT of oil being spilled (gushed, really) is more than we have ever had to deal with before?
I can't agree with everything you said but I do appreciate the time you took to share your point of view with us.
Thank you for your magnificent post with explanations and photos. We have this spill and sadly there's nothing that can turn back time so that it would never have happened.
Your information, based on personal experience, provides some hope that the long term effects will lessen with time. The "taco shell" and solidified oil does look much easier to clean up than the liquid stuff. Still, the shorter term effects on people and animals is just horrible. A lot of death and destruction, starting with the eleven and moving through the eco system.
What do you think about the fact that the AMOUNT of oil being spilled (gushed, really) is more than we have ever had to deal with before?
I can't agree with everything you said but I do appreciate the time you took to share your point of view with us.
Thanks, for your question.
This spill is large, but nowhere near the top ten in the world.
Saddam I think set the record when he blew up the Kuwaiti oil fields and dumped hundreds of millions of barrels into the oceans in about 1992. The 1980's war with Iran/Iraq war sank about 32 super Tankers and I don't recall the outcry of them sinking with crude...
In the Gulf of Mexico (same place as now), there was a well blow out that took nine months to get it stopped, put out... well so far is was about eight times more than this gulf spill has to date, and may even be capped as we blog right now, won't know until tomorrow morning but the news said the cap is in place to where they can pump off the oil. That would be a good start.
Just as a point of reference, I don't think anyone really has any idea of how much oil is coming out of the well, any is too much.
I don't expect anyone to take everything I say as Gospel, what I want them to realize that the world won't end, it just takes a left and right before going straight again... There will be some effects of the oil there that we don't have in the colder waters of Alaska, the warmer water there will cause the spill to dissipate much faster.
I do not want to quote your original post as it is rather long.
I learned something from it & thank you for posting it.
IMO this was an accident, due to what I don't know but hope the powers that be determine the cause.
It has not reversed my pro drilling stance either....for the most part I think the oil companies are responsible & accountable....and hopefully a valuble lesson from this will be learned.....The loss of wildlife does sadden me though
Wasn't the Valdez human error on the Captains part?? Not something that Exxon was overlooking as far as safety etc...
Whatever, I didn't write this thread for experts like yourself.
Keep your remote close!
I would like to join in with others in thanking you for that first post. I think that most of us could have learned a bit from it. I am not so excited about the outcome of this one as I was, although I keep believing that to stop drilling is to take a few steps backward.
I have been reading up on the Bakken oil shale deposit in Montana and North Dakota and the amount of crude oil that is available. Of course, I wonder about the desire of the Obama administration to create over 13 million acres of new national lands in that area where they say they want to build monuments. Colorado has nearly stopped experimentation with oil shale and that comes from environmentalists. I am sickened to think that we are now dependent on foreign oil only because those same environmentalists manage to control government.
I know of too many areas that have been reclaimed after srtip mining etc. and just can't stand tree huggers holding us back and they have been doing it for years. What is going on now is nearly as bad and ridiculous as the dams that couldn't be built by TVA because some tiny fish would become extinct. Man will someday go that same route because of tree huggers.
Other than off the dipstick on your car, have you seen an oil spill in person? I would bet not.
You are the prime reason I started this thread, I am so tired of people screaming "The end is near" and are clueless to what really transpires thoughout the life of an oil spill.
They are a mess, animals do die, yet you will still go to your car and go for a drive, turn up the heat or air conditioner.
Someone tell me, what caused the rig to catch fire in the first place.
We know there was no blowout valves functioning. But that didn't cause this thing to sink.
At the time it was a firefrighting attempt to rescue the eleven missing men, it appears the efforts to put out the fire is what sank the rig. In time and after years of courtroom drama, most of the facts that can be reconstructed will be known, much of it went down with the rig.
More than likely though, the rig left unattended to burn would have still sank after bulkheads would have buckled under the intense heat.
I do not want to quote your original post as it is rather long.
I learned something from it & thank you for posting it.
IMO this was an accident, due to what I don't know but hope the powers that be determine the cause.
It has not reversed my pro drilling stance either....for the most part I think the oil companies are responsible & accountable....and hopefully a valuble lesson from this will be learned.....The loss of wildlife does sadden me though
Wasn't the Valdez human error on the Captains part?? Not something that Exxon was overlooking as far as safety etc...
Yes the EXXON Valdez was human caused, but not all the blame is the Captains. The ship was in the Coast Guard's Vessel control system and Capt. Hazzelwood requested permission to change course from the outbound lane to the inbound lane to avoid ice Bergs (bergies) that were coming out from the Columbia Glacier. He was granted permission, given a course heading that the Coast Guard vessel traffic center didn't moniter off their Potatoe Point radar site, (just didn't look), the Captain signed off the bridge and the Third Mate took the helm (he was licensed for inland passages also) without checking the ships course, and about an hour and a half later, a perfectly good ship was on Bilgh Reef and the rest is History.
Had the Coast Guard been blamed for the accident, they simply didn't have the resources to clean the spill. So EXXON took the blame and the rest is history.
But it goes back before that as well, when the pipeline terminal opened up in 1977, there was a full oil response contengent to respond to spills, in 1983, the State of Alaska and the Federal Government allowed the terminaL to lay off the full time (about 40+ workers) oil spill responders and assigned their jobs to people up in the terminal that had no idea of what to do, but on paper they showed a full oil response team in place. By the time the ship hit the rocks in 1989, there was no respone personnel or equipment that worked or it was missing, so the spill became history making.
That is the short version!
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