Is BP's cure much worse than the disease?

BP made an astonishing admission today.

Think the problem is really, really bad now? Then take a good look at one possible consequence of BP's "solution" to the current situation:

BP's Relief Wells Bring Risk of an Even Bigger Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico

BP Plc faces the risk of an even bigger oil spill as it attempts to drill two so-called relief wells to plug a leak on the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico that’s gushing 5,000 barrels a day into the ocean.

The relief wells will pump cement into the leak to seal it. To do that, BP will need to first drill into the same deposit of oil and gas that caused a pressure surge known as a blowout at the original well, igniting an explosion that killed 11 workers and sank a $365 million drilling rig.

In a regulatory filing BP made to drill the relief wells it estimates another blowout could release as much as 240,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. That’s almost 50 percent more than the company’s worst-case estimate for the first well and equivalent to two-thirds of supply pumped daily from Prudhoe Bay, the largest U.S. oil field.

Really scary when you realize they are drilling these relief wells under duress with little or no opportunity for 'normal' safety protocols or considerations.

“Usually in any type of deep-water drilling you want to take additional safety measures,” said Aminzadeh, a former Unocal Corp. geophysicist and a past president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.

Notwithstanding any of the above, BP's Chief Executive assured successful results:

BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward discounted the chances of another blowout as the company works to bring the leaking well under control and foul weather pushed the expanding slick closer to shore.

“The relief wells ultimately will be successful,” Hayward told reporters in Houston. Drilling back-to-back relief wells is a “belt and braces” approach, “and will assure ultimate success,” he said.

So in other words, Hayward admitted to the government that BP might screw this up much worse than now, but turned around and told the American public that success was in the bag.

Nice.

Wanna also bet they low-balled the worst case scenario to the feds?

This ain't just diggin' another hole in the ground...

[edit on 11-5-2010 by loam]

first post whooo!!! but ya this is scary stuff i'v even heard the temperature warming in the gulf could cause massive hurricanes! Is this true?

I'm hoping they know what they are doing. I guess it makes some kind of sense. Drill relief wells to relieve the high pressure thats gushing out the current hole, then cap it......

Whether things will go to plan is another thing. I hope it works.

Hey Loam I read your other thread with the home footage of the slick. It spurred me on to write a song about it. Hopefully I can have it ready for the ATS Live within the next couple of weeks. Cheers for giving me some songwriting inspiration!! (even if the circumstances are bad)

g

Ohhh God. The dispersant is bad enough. I am not usually a pessimist & I *strongly* believe in Miracles, but I think the Gulf is a goner. This is the thing I love most in the whole world, next to my dogs. Hoping we can get to Bolivar before it hits.

EVERY person who has been affected by this spill and the states affected need to sue every upper level person in BP, Halliburton- all of them, until they are drained of blood & they die. And if they don't die, they need to go to jail for the rest of their lives, penniless.
Of course, that won't bring the damage to the ocean or the extinct species back, but it's something. BP sure as hell needs to be kicked out of the US.
They WILL burn in hell.

Every "solution" they want to try just make less my hopes of seen this solve...

Again no doubt we are dealing with a buch of morons who only knew about turning black matter into green.

But guess what?

You really screw it this time.... you REALLY f@%$!N SCREW IT THIS TIME!

Thank god this bussiness got mess up for them....less money to their pockets is the best pain they can get.

Hey i got an idea! how about we collect some of the oil in the ocean and we throw it in the pools of BP's fat rats?

In that way we all going to get just to swing into black #

I find it very strange that BP is not trying to find the quickest way to stop this leak or are unable to stop this leak as oil was $75 dollars a barrell today at close. If the lowest estimates are rite that is $375000 a day now after 22 days that is $8250000. That's a huge drop in there profit margins.

The amount of money up front in drilling a oil well only pays up if you hit a good reserve. Otherwise you lose all your upfront money. Yes this is a disaster of great magnitude but is it being hyped up to provide a way of passing other green energy bills through the house that have failed in CA.

The chemical route of dispersing this oil could be more devistating than the actual oil spill. In the long run.

Untill a way of producing a commodity such as oil is found without drilling holes in the ground we are stuck with the effects of oil. Oil gives us many products we can't live with out. If we tried going back to the way we lived before oil we would have naturists, animal rights protester, and Eco fundimentalist saying we can't do this we can't do that.

Words can't express the outrage I feel towards Britain and what they have done to our great country with the massive killer oil spill of our coastlines. What are Britain doing drilling our American oil for anyway who do they think they are. This whole thing is absolutely outrageous who knows what else they will break.

I think every American should write to their representatives and demand Britain pays the bill for their vandalism for every animal killed by this oil they should have a fine of no less than five million dollars on top of that they should pay us full price for the lost oil and lost jobs.

I'm strongly of the opinion they did this on purpose out of jealousy and we should make them pay for it and sanction the whole country unless they pay us every dime and extra compensation.

BP is Global a company with drilling rights all over the world. That would be like saying let's take stop all American companies drilling in the middle east the oil world is global not national.

The Vietnamese are drilling in the gulf also the Chinese and the Angolans yet they are drilling in areas which are not in the USA economic waters which extend 200 miles off the shore.

Yet we are not worried about this this is a disaster but it is being hyped to get through a green energy bill.

Money in the oil business is like gold your costs are so high you don't want to lose on a rig whether it be offshore or onshore. You don't waste the product your trying to collect to make a profit on it at the moment oil is $75 pb * 10000 b per day $750,000 after 22 days $16500000 in the ocean and gas prices continue to go up. Offshore drilling will resume after we figure out that green energy doesn't work because we have no way of storing it yet. Also BP and other "big bad oil companies" will just go to other gulf coast nations with less sanctions and drill in thier economic waters less tax dollars less money coming into the USA higher taxes to the public. You see those figures they put out every quarter and yearly that's before tax then they go and pay a huge lump sum to any government they are working with.

How long can this planet sustain us? In the last 50 or so years, perhaps longer, we haven't made any breakthrough changes to the way we live.

All we seem to do is make things bigger, and more (economically) efficient. No real changes are being made, or have been made, in my lifetime anyway.

The economic system has failed. While people may be richer than ever, the earth and people in general have never before been in such bad shape.

The whole system of things needs to change, or we will not last.


reply to post by winterwarlock

Britain is not responsible. British Petroleum is, which is a private, not government owned company. Britain is no more responsible than america would be if a United Airlines plane crashed into britain.


[edit on 12/5/10 by GobbledokTChipeater]

[edit on 12/5/10 by GobbledokTChipeater]

Originally posted by winterwarlock
Words can't express the outrage I feel towards Britain and what they have done to our great country with the massive killer oil spill of our coastlines. What are Britain doing drilling our American oil for anyway who do they think they are. This whole thing is absolutely outrageous who knows what else they will break.

I think every American should write to their representatives and demand Britain pays the bill for their vandalism for every animal killed by this oil they should have a fine of no less than five million dollars on top of that they should pay us full price for the lost oil and lost jobs.

I'm strongly of the opinion they did this on purpose out of jealousy and we should make them pay for it and sanction the whole country unless they pay us every dime and extra compensation.

You are quite correct. I think all native americans like yourself should unite and kick the very last white, non-american butt out of your country. The British have done nothing good since they arrived hundreds of years ago. The oil, wildlife, soil, if they belong to anyone, belong to the native american peoples. The british have ruled the US for too long now.

Somewhat related, I thought this was interesting:

Oil Producers Risk Blowouts in Search for Deep Fields

Calculating Risks

Some companies aren’t willing to risk the danger of a blowout. Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s second-largest oil company, abandoned its Blackbeard well in the Gulf of Mexico in 2006 after the company’s engineers became alarmed over the pressure levels and temperatures almost seven miles beneath the seafloor, Dingmann said.

McMoRan Exploration Co. obtained control over Blackbeard in 2007 as part of its $1.1 billion acquisition of offshore assets from Newfield Exploration Co., one of Exxon’s partners in the project. McMoRan of New Orleans extended the well almost 3,000 feet deeper than where Exxon left it.

James “Jim Bob” Moffett, co-chairman of McMoRan, told investors on a January conference call that the risks of dealing with higher-pressure deposits may be worthwhile because those fields have more oil and gas packed into each square yard of rock.

I think it says something about the true level of risk, when Exxon abandons such deep well drilling...

Just wondering, are you guys boycotting BP? I know i am. But whenever i go out, i still see a normal amount of cars at BP stations. I find this sad that people are still supporting a company that is diminishing our food supplies, aggravating our economy even more, and killing wildlife.

Originally posted by halobaby
Just wondering, are you guys boycotting BP? I know i am. But whenever i go out, i still see a normal amount of cars at BP stations. I find this sad that people are still supporting a company that is diminishing our food supplies, aggravating our economy even more, and killing wildlife.

No, i'm not boycotting. I think they need all the money they can get to clear up the mess that (mainly) Transocean have created. (BP just leased the rig, thats like you hiring a hotel room which blows up due to a gas leak and you, not the gas company or hotel, being responsible)

BP have already spent more than the 75 million the US government negotiated with them was to be their maximum clean up fee (in the event of an accident)

At this moment BP need all the support they can get as we all work together to clear up a mess that effects us all and is the 'fault' of anyone who has ever used petrochemicals.

reply to post by Wobbly Anomaly


So who was the one who decided not to spend the $500,000 on the safety valve? The rigger or BP?

Originally posted by halobaby
reply to post by Wobbly Anomaly

 

So who was the one who decided not to spend the $500,000 on the safety valve? The rigger or BP?

I dont know, do you ? Does it alter the fact that we should be helping.

I found this but, media being media, i cant vouch for truthfulness.

"An improvement notice issued by the Health and Safety Executive in 2005 says the remote blowout preventer control panel on a rig called Transocean Rather leased by BP was not "maintained in an efficient state, efficient working order and in good repair".
Transocean, the operator of the rig which sunk after an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico two weeks ago, was also reprimanded by UK regulators in 2006 for problems with tools used for blowout preventer pressure testing on another rig."

www.telegraph.co.uk... l

Originally posted by GobbledokTChipeater
Britain is not responsible. British Petroleum is, which is a private, not government owned company. Britain is no more responsible than america would be if a United Airlines plane crashed into britain.

Even if it isn't British which it obviously is with the name of British Petroleum we should definitely seize all of it's assets freeze it's accounts and auction them off to the highest bidder. On top of that we should fine them the full cost and throw every CEO in jail maybe give a few the death penalty.

They probably did this deliberately and America should not let them of the hook even if it means stepping on some foreign toes.

Wow seieze foreign assets throw people in jail!

Now that's the start of a new war right there!

Siezing foriegn assests if you can't do it to drug dealers how can you even think about doing it to a massive corporation, I think we forget as we get emotional the effects of our actions. The world might have alot of countries in it but we only have a few allies. Do do what your saying would cause massive disruption to those allies.

If we are right about polictical leaders being puppets for the ruling elite then doing what you are saying would be polictical suicide. Even a country as big as the USaA can be brought to it's knees by other nations in the world. The USA imports a lot of goods they can be cut off. The trade they do with nations could be cut off. Encomic implosion.