Drill, baby, drill,,oops!

I have many friends in the LA coastal area. This is just heart wrenching, seeing how the area is just beginning to get back on its feet after Katrina. Winning the Super Bowl really lifted everyone's spirit. And now this.

But sometimes it does require a tragedy of this magnitude to get Americans to be more aware of the consequences of our dependency on fossil fuels. On the other hand, I doubt if many Americans will trade in their Suburbans and Escalades because of this.

 

I personally hate oil platforms because of their poor efficiency. 100 platforms running full-tilt barely make 1% of total world production.

The risks outweigh the benefits. Imagine had this happened off the California coast - where most are rich - rather than in the (on average much poorer people) gulf coast.

Imagine all that oil being 20 miles out from LA or San Diego.

It could happen - there were platforms operating off of California at one point.

I say BAN.

 

Remembering California's Own Oil Rig Disaster | NBC Bay Area

 

Certain political figures are already floating the idea that this was some kind of sabotage.

So yeah, no action is going to be taken.

 

Enter ... Halliburton

A 2007 study by three U.S. Minerals Management Service officials found that cementing was a factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period. That was the single largest factor, ahead of equipment failure and pipe failure.

The Halliburton cementers would have sought approval for their plans—the type of cement and how much would be used—from a BP official on board the rig before carrying out their job. Scott Dean, a BP spokesman, said it was premature to speculate on the role cement might have played in the disaster.

Halliburton also was the cementer on a well that suffered a big blowout last August in the Timor Sea, off Australia. The rig there caught fire and a well leaked tens of thousands of barrels of oil over 10 weeks before it was shut down. The investigation is continuing; Halliburton declined to comment on it.

Drilling Process Attracts Scrutiny in Rig Explosion - WSJ.com

 

This smacks of incompetence on the part of whoever was doing the cementing ops

 

Astounding!

FOXNews.com - Should the U.S. Scale Back Offshore Drilling?

 

Pretty sad. But then these are FauxNews customers...

 

"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" - David Farragut

 

I don't know who is writing the propaganda for Fox News, but they have one heck of an efficient machine.

 

i hope u mean 2 FEET and not 2 inches.

we need to understand that the oil is not being pumped out, its being forced out by internal pressures exerted by the Earth.

so that 5,000 barrels is "oozing" out on its own while overcoming tens of thousands of PSI of water pressure that is essentially trying to push that oil back into the hole (remember this thing is sitting in 6000 feet of water) each atmosphere is like what?? 30 feet of water so we are looking at 200+ atmospheres of pressure here.

simply slapping a cap on it aint gonna work. besides the difficulties of working at those depths, the only way they have of "capping" it is to reroute the tremendous amount of pressure the well has. which means drilling a parallel well much like a dam bypass... then tapping into the leaking well. that reduces the pressure long enough to cap it.

 

Yeah, it makes perfect sense that sabotage is a possibility. The timing is excellent. The feds have such a great knack of disaster happening at the precise opportunity needed to thwart the political winds of change.

Now that Obama has rolled on drilling, and the vast majority of Americans have spoken that $4/gallon gasoline is NOT something the consent to as being the sovereigns of a government of and by the people, this just happens to fall into the globalists/leftist hands.

It almost makes Nancy Pelosi look sane.

There are no coincidences any more when it comes to events that benefit greater federal government/global government involvement in the individual's life at the expense of liberty and freedom.

 

I really ought to be buying more tin-foil futures

Octane, disasters happen and people react to them. Some people try to take advantage of them.
But disasters happen MORE OFTEN to people that don't take precautions. And the disasters have a greater impact on people that are ill prepared.
Katrina wouldn't have been nearly as bad if the levees in NO were properly maintained. This spill may have been a non-issue if BP had the 'acoustic' switch used in Brazil and Norway.
If you go skiing down a triple diamond with your eyes closed, don't scream CONSPIRACY when you wipe out.

 

That's the only complaint that you have about nuclear? That the government polluted Hanford while developing atomic bombs?

Why don't you look at France which has been a net exporter of electricity to Europe and even backs up the wind farms when the wind stops blowing. Europe would have been screwed without France's nuclear installations. And what disasters have occurred there, pray tell?

Oh and by the way, take a look at Chernobyl. How many people died as a result of the worst of all possible calamities on a design that should never have been used and of course isn't used by anybody in the west or South Africa, Japan and India for that matter? Google WHO's figures and google Russia's figures. They will surprise you.

Finally, how much radioactive Thorium and Uranium do you imagine have been pumped into the air by envirowhackos prohibiting use of nuclear which has necessitated the building of coal pollution factories? Check out if radioactive flyash tailings from coal power generation produce a strategic threat because of their ability to be refined into fissionable bomb material.

 

Go ahead and buy all the futures you want. I'm not going to make a dent in worldwide consumption.

Have you ever heard of the Reichstag fire? Gulf of Tonkin? All conspiracy theories? Government does do evil things all the time to promote greater power.

I didn't say the accident WAS staged or WAS terrorism. I would think that you'd want to wait more than 10 days before ruling it out.

 

And likewise I didn't say Governments never do anything bad or evil.
You seemed to imply that this was a conspiracy when you said

And likewise, I don't rule out that it was intentional. However, with the evidence we have at this time, there seems to be nothing supporting the idea it was intentional, and lots supporting the idea it was lack of foresight, negligence and/or simply caring more for the all-mighty buck than people, livelihoods and the environment.

 

Dave, not to turn this into a physics discussion, but the same water pressure also works to hold any cap in place. Capping a well at depth is no different than capping a well on the surface, with the exception that you have to work under water.

Tom