Just like force feeding a baby… OGMAFB

Just like force feeding a baby… OGMAFB 29 May 2010

Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, The Battle for New Orleans.
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An oil-stained cattle egret is seen on the deck of the Joe Griffin supply vessel May 9. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

[B]ut Bob Bea, a professor of engineering at University of California at Berkeley who has studied offshore drilling for 55 years, said late Friday that what he saw didn’t look promising.

He likened the effort to pushing food into a reluctant baby’s mouth — it only works if the force of the stuff going down is more than the force of what’s coming up.

“It’s obvious that the baby’s spitting the baby food back” because the pressure pushing up from the well is stronger, Bea said. …snip…

We are so screweddd. I think Bea’s characterisation is likely on target, for one thing, he has made sense since the get go.

Shields, the long time Dem operative, speech writer, consultant, whatever-job-there-is dog’s body who is on Lehrer, said the Dems will regret the day they asked for the stream of the oil “leak” to be broadcast…

Because day after day, people will watch. Day. after. day.

I hope they do.

***

I scammed this link from a comment at Sky Truth… Grassroots in and around Chandeleur Islands, 20 miles from the actual coast of Louisiana, are sending balloons up to photograph and try to map the oil.

http://grassrootsmapping.org/

******************

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1. marisacat - 29 May 2010: Plumes on the move… Link

NEW ORLEANS – A thick, 22-mile plume of oil discovered by researchers off the BP spill site was nearing an underwater canyon, where it could poison the foodchain for sealife in the waters off Florida.

The discovery by researchers on the University of South Florida College of Marine Science’s Weatherbird II vessel is the second significant undersea plume reported since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20. The plume is more than 6 miles wide and its presence was reported Thursday.

The cloud was nearing a large underwater canyon whose currents fuel the foodchain in Gulf waters off Florida and could potentially wash the tiny plants and animals that feed larger organisms in a stew of toxic chemicals, another researcher said Friday.
…snip…

the report quotes a Texas A&M scientist who says if it does not break up it may move toward the keys…

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2. brinn - 29 May 2010: What an image — not only in its physical accuracy, but the connotations of the act itself (force-feeding a baby) are so appropriate.

3 days ’til hurricane season!

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: one commenter at Business Insider the Henry Blodgett place … gave me a laugh, he called for John Holmes – as in “Where is JH when yu need him?”

Or, I would say, several John Holmeses………..

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brinn - 29 May 2010: LOL!

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3. catnip - 29 May 2010: It’s snowing. Just shoot me now and get it over with.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 29 May 2010: bang bang!

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catnip - 29 May 2010: Not exactly what I had in mind.

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brinn - 29 May 2010: Trade ya! It isn’t even noon yet and its 95, but feels like 104 or so with the humidity…..nasty! I’d take snow over this ANY time…’specially with no AC….

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catnip - 29 May 2010: I’ll gladly trade you. I don’t have AC either but I do have a fan.

And it would be nice to get my garden planted before JULY.

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catnip - 29 May 2010: Here’s one for you, brinn: Obama’s shallow plan to spend $23 billion on education

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Madman in the Marketplace - 29 May 2010: it’s like 70, light breeze off the lake and not a cloud in the sky up here!

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: we are still getting rain… and some of the ski places up in the Sierra are saying they may try to stay open to the July 4th holiday.

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4. catnip - 29 May 2010: Options studied for a possible Pakistan strike

The U.S. military is reviewing options for a unilateral strike in Pakistan in the event that a successful attack on American soil is traced to the country’s tribal areas, according to senior military officials.

Ties between the alleged Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, and elements of the Pakistani Taliban have sharpened the Obama administration’s need for retaliatory options, the officials said. They stressed that a U.S. reprisal would be contemplated only under extreme circumstances, such as a catastrophic attack that leaves President Obama convinced that the ongoing campaign of CIA drone strikes is insufficient.

That would provide a handy distraction from Oilmageddon.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 29 May 2010: our warmaking will keep spreading, like a noxious petroleum spill.

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5. ts - 29 May 2010: Zero hedge has a link with Matt Simmons on Bloomberg who says the reason size of the slick is due to a uncontrolled second plume 5-7 miles away. The top kill is irrelevant.

Simmons solution? JUST NUKE IT!

We are so screwed.

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: BP says top kill has not stopped Gulf oil leak and now considering other options

By The Times-Picayune
May 29, 2010, 1:48PM

A BP executive says the company has yet to stop the oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico and is considering other ways to plug the leak.

A source told The Times-Picayune that officials would announce the failure of the top kill option at a 4 p.m. Saturday briefing in Robert .

BP is expected to announce that it will move on to its next option, known as LMRP. The procedure involves cutting off the failed, leaking riser at the top of the Lower Marine Riser Package on the blowout preventer to get a clean-cut surface on the pipe.

Then the company will install a cap with a sealing grommet that would be connected to a new riser from the Discoverer Enterprise drillship, with the hopes of capturing most of the oil and gas flowing from the well. …snip…

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6. catnip - 29 May 2010: Dennis Hopper has died.

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7. marisacat - 29 May 2010: Latest at Sky Truth:

Saturday, May 29, 2010

BP / Gulf Oil Spill – Moving Toward Florida Straits (??)

We just finished analyzing the MODIS / Aqua satellite image shot the afternoon of May 27. It again clearly shows the main body of the oil slick (solid orange line) around the site of the leaking Macondo well, and also shows deep entrainment in the Loop Current.

Disturbingly, we see signs of thin surfactant – possibly oil from this spill – in the Loop Current where it moves past the Dry Tortugas and toward the Florida Straits (dashed orange line): ….

….

They posted earlier today, before BP gave up the ghost on Top Kill…

BP is currently trying out the “top kill” procedure to plug the leaking well. The success of this attempt is still uncertain, but at least the blowout preventer appears to be hanging together under the greatly increased strain. Live video feed shows what appears to be a strong plume of oil and drilling mud coming from one of the leaks in the busted-up riser pipe.

Keep your fingers crossed – this really needs to work.

Political blood in the water grows.

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8. marisacat - 29 May 2010: Naomi Klein in the Gulf, for Al Jazeera, vid at Real News. It’s short..

She says what we all know, Obby has deferred utterly and completely to BP, in all things. They don’t just run the resolution at the oil source, they run it all.

… it is Bank Bailout approach, 2.0. They made the mess but Obama (th gubmint) still trusts and supports the criminal.

I never have problems playing the vids at RN, even with my slow system…

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diane - 29 May 2010: Thanks for that tip on the RN videos. most times, I don’t bother with videos, because they take forever to buffer.

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: They work really well for me… I think hers stopped 3 times, but just for a couple of seconds, then caught up to itself… no waiting….

I had no idea I would have so muhc trouble with videos with this new system or the slowing dial up conenction or whatever it is, as the first vid I happened to play on this computer was at Real News, and everything went fine…

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diane - 29 May 2010: well, if you’re using a dial up connection, yeah there’s generally a forever wait for a video to buffer, no matter how powerful your computer is, unless there’s some trick I haven’t learned yet.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 29 May 2010: thanks for that.

Disasters too have been privatized, like everything else.

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: yeah she was very low key, but rammed it home when she said BP controls the data, even.

Over at Sky Truth in the latest post John Amos asked, at large, if anyone knew if anyone is systematically testing the water near the spew.

America, the place where the scientific approach DIED. I am a total flibbertigibbet, but even I know the value of rigorous scientifc inquiry and analysis. ESP of disaster and failure.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 29 May 2010: that’s what happens when you hand over an endeavor that depends on the free and open exchange of information and ideas over to corporations who turn everything into “intellectual property” and “proprietary information”.

We killed scientific process in the name of profit.

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9. marisacat - 29 May 2010: You know how it goes: They TRIIIIIED! They did! They did!

And they will TRY again!

Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:

BP Official Says ‘Top Kill’ Effort Fails to Plug Gushing Gulf Oil Well; Will Try Something Else [6:20 p.m. ET]

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10. diane - 29 May 2010: Pure Kafka

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: Yes, I also vaguely recall the days when Democrats criticized the policy of imprisoning people indefinitely without charges. – Glenn Greenwald

Well you know how THAT goes. Now it is their guy murdering people… nto some Texan they ENJOYED making fun of…

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diane - 29 May 2010: indeed

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11. marisacat - 29 May 2010: I say line up the electric chairs and PULL THE SWITCH.

Good round up piece from McClatchy, the last few graphs.

[A]s oil begins coating the Louisiana shoreline, those facing the loss of their livelihoods are questioning the veracity of both the company responsible for the accident and their government.

They’ve been unable to get good answers from anyone, said the Rev. Tyronne Edwards, who runs a community development organization in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana that’s helping fishermen file claims with BP.

“It’s obvious BP’s lying. It’s criminal what they’re doing,” he said. “But the government cannot be let off the hook, either. I voted for Obama but he’s weak on this issue here.”

For the families of the 11 men who died when the Deepwater Horizon exploded, the public relations dance has been difficult to watch.

Many are especially concerned that two top BP executives aboard the rig, known as “company men,” didn’t testify last week at a joint U.S. Coast Guard-Minerals Management Service inquiry into the cause of the accident.

Robert Kaluza invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination; the other company man aboard the rig, Don Vidrine, was on an original witness list but also declined to testify because of an undisclosed illness.

Without their testimony, there’s no public accounting of their decision-making, said Keith Jones of Baton Rouge, La., the father of 28-year-old mudroom engineer Gordon Jones. As an attorney himself, he respects the fact-finding process, Jones said, but it bothers him that the company men aren’t talking.

“The truth? I know this: BP has a lot of explaining to do, because it was their rig, it was their company man who made those decisions,” he said.

Still, BP isn’t alone in the blame, say environmentalists who’ve been working since the April 20 explosion to shed light on regulatory failures.

As soon as they began looking into the environmental reviews that were done in the Gulf of Mexico, “we realized that there weren’t any environmental reviews being done,” said Rebecca Noblin, the Center for Biological Diversity’s Alaska director.

Many of the promises from both the government and the industry about the safety of offshore drilling were proven untrue by what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico, Noblin said.

“BP, and the oil industry in general, has managed to get away with a lot,” she said. “But the reason I go back to the government is oil companies’ jobs — their focus is to make money. If they’re allowed to take shortcuts, of course they will. And it’s the government’s job to make sure that they’re not allowed to do that. Bottom line, our government shouldn’t let the oil companies do what they’re doing.”

Read more: Link to Miami Herald

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12. diane - 29 May 2010: Thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes as volcanos erupted in Guatemala and Ecuador.

There is no suggestion that the two eruptions are related.

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diane - 29 May 2010: Wow, and then this:

Tropical Storm Agatha, First Of Season, Heads Toward Guatemala; 4 Dead

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13. diane - 29 May 2010: so fucking horrible

BP disaster: worst oil spill in US history turns seas into a dead zone

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14. marisacat - 29 May 2010: All they will have left is the oil… and earlier on, there was not such [fake] confidence in the idea of drilling the second (and third) relief well… but now it seems it is ….

….get ready for it!

THE ONLY HOPE

(weren’t we sold that recently? Roll it out again!) … so dress that fucked pig up. We DO know how to do that, don’t we?

CSM

[E]stimated by BP to hold 50 million barrels, the seam of oil has emptied as much as 740,000 barrels (one barrel is 42 gallons), or about 1.5 percent of the total.

Because of the immense pressures of the earth’s innards, geologists say, the deposit will completely unload into the Gulf unless the Deepwater Horizon well is capped.

With those numbers literally pressing up from the earth’s core, BP and government scientists are running out of immediate options to kill the runaway well.

Another back-up plan in the works is to place a second blowout preventer on top of the one that failed after a “kick” of gas exploded on the Deepwater Horizon on April 20, killing 11 and causing the nation’s worst-ever oil spill disaster.

The most certain way to stop the leak is the drilling of a relief well that would take pressure off the main wellhead and allow BP to cap it with cement.

That work is underway, but could take another 60 days or more to complete. Using the higher estimates, by then up to another 1.2 million barrels of oil could have leaked out, putting the total at nearly 2 million barrels. The Exxon Valdez spilled 257,000 barrels.

At the current rate, emptying the entire Macondo deposit would take just over 7 years …snip…

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diane - 29 May 2010: Here’s the projection at Business Insider:

Two Deepwater Horizon Developments To Expect In The Coming Days
May 29, 2010, 5:17 PM

Now that BP’s Top Kill attempt has failed, and it’s dawning on people that the leak really could go on until August (provided the relief well works, which is no 100% guarantee, which is why they’re drilling two of them), here’s what’s going to happen.

First, expect BP to be “off the job” in the coming days. Having BP run the show has been a disaster for a couple of reasons. One is that Obama has to defend the company’s actions, and two is that BP is HORRIBLE at PR, waiting hours to give updates that everyone is clamoring for. Watch for the military to take over, though using BP’s resources and of course BP’s dime.

Next, the so-called “nuclear option” is about to get a lot of attention. In this case, of course, nuclear option is not a euphemism. It’s the real idea that the best way to kill this thing is to stick a small nuke in there and bury the well under rubble. Supposedly it’s been done in Russia, and by the middle of the coming week, it will be all over cable news, as pundits press The White House hard on whether it’s being considered and why not.

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: ugh I have read that Russia was not very successful with the nuclear or any form of bomb option.

— PS thanks for posting that

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diane - 29 May 2010: yeah that’s what I say, ugh, does not sound good at all, nothing fucking does.

(and you’re welcome)

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diane - 29 May 2010: oops, sorry, the link I gave was to another Deepwater piece, this is the correct link

and here’s the link they use re the Russian nuking:
link

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catnip - 29 May 2010: 7 years – unbelievable

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15. catnip - 29 May 2010: Documents Show Early Worries About Safety of Rig

WASHINGTON — Internal documents from BP show that there were serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig far earlier than those the company described to Congress last week.

The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of “well control.” And as far back as 11 months ago, it was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer.

On June 22, for example, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure.

“This would certainly be a worst-case scenario,” Mark E. Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. “However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur.”

The company went ahead with the casing, but only after getting special permission from BP colleagues because it violated the company’s safety policies and design standards. The internal reports do not explain why the company allowed for an exception. BP documents released last week to The Times revealed that company officials knew the casing was the riskier of two options.

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16. marisacat - 29 May 2010: Yup had to happen.. somebody at Business Insider (in th top post) is tossing Obby campaign schtupping words back at him:

Still leaking? Impossible! Obama promised “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Read more: Link

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catnip - 29 May 2010: Priceless.

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17. catnip - 29 May 2010: The next step…

The beleaguered London-based energy giant said its next option is a “lower marine riser package” that will not plug the well ruptured in a rig blast, but rather capture most of the oil on the sea floor and channel it to the surface for collection.

BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward called the containment cap “the best way to minimize the flow of oil into the Gulf” and said it would take around four days to put it in place.

If that’s “the best way”, why wasn’t it done before? Lying bastard.

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: It’s all ”best” til it fails…

I am going to rummage around, even tho Ixtoc I gets mentioned, the Pemex, Mexico oil rig, that blew up in their part of the gulf, in 79, I have not seen a lot of detail. Lots of dismissive, well it leaked for 9 months… and [sotto voce] thirty fucking years later, everything is fine. Like they say it is all good up where the Exxon Valdez leaked…

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: well.. there is a wkipedia page on it………….

Aftermath

In the next nine months, experts and divers including Red Adair were brought in to contain and cap the oil well.[6] An average of approximately ten thousand to thirty thousand barrels per day were discharged into the Gulf until it was finally capped on 23 March 1980, nearly 10 months later.[7]

Prevailing currents carried the oil towards the Texas coastline. The US government had two months to prepare booms to protect major inlets. Eventually, in the US, 162 miles (261 km) of beaches and 1421 birds were affected by 3,000,000 barrels (480,000 m3) of oil.[7] Pemex spent $100 million to clean up the spill and avoided paying compensation by asserting sovereign immunity.[8]

The oil slick surrounded Rancho Nuevo, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which is one of the few nesting sites for Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles. Thousands of baby sea turtles were airlifted to a clean portion of the Gulf of Mexico to help save the rare species.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill

But not all that much there…

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Madman in the Marketplace - 29 May 2010: Maddow did a piece on it the other night. The coverage from the time is remarkably similar too.

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18. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 May 2010: Getting Naked to Expose BP

Incensed by the cavalier attitude of BP CEO Tony Hayward, Codepinkers bared their flesh to raise awareness about the environmental disaster.
May 27, 2010 |

Diane Wilson, a fourth generation shrimper from the Texas Gulf and a founder of CODEPINK, has been watching the BP spill and the botched clean-up with a mixture of dread and anger. After all, it’s her livelihood and that of her community that’s at stake. “I’ve lived all my life in the Gulf Coast, in the oil, chemical, and gas hellhole we call an energy corridor,” said Diane Wilson with her Texas twang. “I’ve been fightin’ these polluters for 21 years. But this BP spill is the nail in the coffin of the people who make their living along the gulf coast. This is our 9/11 in slow motion.”

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: I’ve read about Diane Wilson… she seems fearless…

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catnip - 29 May 2010: Good for them!

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19. catnip - 29 May 2010: I don’t know if you guys knew this but BP CEO Tony Hayward sits on Citibank’s board and chairman Peter Sutherland is the managing director of Goldman Sachs International. ( via Sourcewatch)

It’s all incestuous. They all pat each other on the back as they rape and pillage the earth and its people.

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: no I did not know that…

In a sort of related item, there is some limited commentary around, that during the live stream of Top Kill that trading on BP should ave been halted, resumed when it failed (or not, Hahahah)… but I assume there will be a lot of trading in BP on Tuesday (UK market is closed Monday)… and they have certainly generated fake headlines, promising success just around the corner… the one big one at LATimes… for instance…

It all stinks.

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diane - 29 May 2010: wow, that was sure kept quiet.

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20. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 May 2010: Gulf Oil Spill: Media Access ‘Slowly Being Strangled Off’

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: Line up the electric chairs and pull the switches.

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marisacat - 29 May 2010: Ship in adult diapers.

it’s McClatchy again….

BP exec on top kill failure: ‘This scares everybody’ — Detroit Free Press

“After three full days, we have been unable to overcome the flow,” said the company’s chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, at a news conference in Robert, La. “… This scares everybody, the fact that we can’t make this well stop flowing, or the fact that we haven’t succeeded so far.”

I hd not caught that quote before….

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21. diane - 29 May 2010: More Deepwater Disasters on the Horizon?

New York – Despite a federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling, new permits and controversial environmental waivers for oil rigs continue to be granted, sparking criticism from policymakers and environmentalists.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama issued a six-month extension of the moratorium on permits and environmental waivers for the drilling of new deepwater wells. The original moratorium was ordered following the Apr. 20 explosion of the BP oil rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, which has become the worst oil spill disaster in U.S. history.

However, records show that since the original moratorium was issued, new permits and environmental waivers on existing drilling projects continue to be granted regularly. It is not clear whether the moratorium extension applies to new drilling on existing wells or merely new operations.

Since the moratorium, the New York Times reports, at least seven new permits for drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted. The majority of the approved permits are for the same type of work as that on Deepwater Horizon prior to the explosion.

Six of the waivers are for waters that are deeper than the location of Deepwater Horizon. With increased depth, drilling operations become more difficult and therefore more dangerous. The Deepwater rig was drilling at a depth of approximately 1,500 metres at the time of the explosion. Four of the new wells extend deeper than 2,700 metres.

According to the Department of the Interior, the federal moratorium was intended only to halt the issuance of permits and waivers related to the drilling of new oil wells. The order was not meant to stop new work on existing drilling projects.

snip

“The moratorium does not even cover the dangerous drilling that caused the problem in the first place,” explained Rohlf.

snip

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22. marisacat - 29 May 2010: New

LINK

……. 8)

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Marisacat