Spill baby spill, slippery politics

This hasn't been a good few weeks for Tony Hayward, the chief executive officer of BP. In the weeks since the huge oil spill in the Gulf began, he has struck an occasionally Churchillian tone: "We are going to defend the beaches," he proclaimed. "We will fix this." But the British leader he most calls to mind is Ethelred the Unready.

For CEOs in crisis, the playbook includes a proper appreciation of the gravity of the situation, a sense of calm urgency, and confidence-building rhetoric backed by confidence-building action. So far, Hayward is zero for three. From the outset, there's been a sense that Hayward wasn't quite prepared for this and didn't quite grasp what is at stake. The Wall Street Journal reported that Hayward "admitted that the oil giant had not the technology available to stop the leak. He also said in hindsight, it was 'probably true' that BP should have done more to prepare for such an emergency."

As the spill worsened, Hayward fretted that he and BP were its victims. "What they hell have we done to deserve this?" he reportedly told fellow executives. Of course, Hayward isn't the victim here. The sea life, the sea itself, the employees who died, the fishermen who are losing their livelihoods, the tourism industry, responsible drillers"they're the victims. Hayward should have been asking himself: What they hell did they do to deserve this? And what am I going to do fix it?

i can't imagine too many moral realities in which mass delusion is the prefered option

Quote:

i can't imagine too many moral realities in which mass delusion is the prefered option

I remember in Moby Dick Ishmael expressing a wish that the ladies back home would be more economical with their oil lamps.

no matter what happens with off-shore drilling, we still need to reduce our need for middle-east oil, increase all domestic alternatives and significantly increase nuclear energy.

They are not skilful considerers of human things who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin. Though ye take from a covetous man his treasure , he has not one jewel left, ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness.

Steve Wereley went from being a respected but little known engineering professor at Purdue University to being the center of attention last week after he produced a startling new estimate of the size of the spill. Using a well established scientific technique to measure flow from the biggest of three leaks near the sea floor, he determined the flow coming out the end of the pipe could be 10 times the size of the official figure.

Wereley has now analyzed video of a second leak. At a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, he said that leak alone appears to be bigger than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.

"What I get is 25,000 barrels a day coming out of that tiny hole " that's a 1.2 inch hole,” he said, adding that it seemed “incomprehensible.”


Wereley says the oil in this part of the pipe is under tremendous pressure. Add his current figure to last week's estimate of about 70,000 barrels a day, and his total is now approaching 100,000 barrels a day. And, there's another leak he has yet to analyze.

Wereley's flow rate includes both gas and oil, so he says his figures may come down once he sees enough video to be able to quantify the amount of gas.

"But from what I see in the videos, I don't see the numbers coming down that significantly," he says.

Measuring Oil Flow


Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) called Wereley to talk to his House Energy subcommittee after noting the huge discrepancy between Wereley's numbers and BP's oft-quoted estimate, which is based on a survey of oil on the ocean surface.

When asked Wednesday what the likelihood was that BP's figures were accurate, Wereley said he didn't see "any possibility, any scenario under which their number is accurate."

Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the gulf oil spill are escalating, with prominent oceanographers accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope.

The scientists assert that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies have been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill and the damage it is causing in the deep ocean. They are especially concerned about getting a better handle on problems that may be occurring from large plumes of oil droplets that appear to be spreading beneath the ocean surface.

The scientists point out that in the month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, the government has failed to make public a single test result on water from the deep ocean. And the scientists say the administration has been too reluctant to demand an accurate analysis of how many gallons of oil are flowing into the sea from the gushing oil well.

“It seems baffling that we don’t know how much oil is being spilled,” Sylvia Earle, a famed oceanographer, said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “It seems baffling that we don’t know where the oil is in the water column.”

Looking more and more like Obama's Katrina all the time.......

What caused the drill rig/platform to explode in the first place? Does anyone know yet?

Obama’s new oil taxes will lead to more imports
Published on: August 07, 2009 at 11:10
WASHINGTON (Commodity Online): The US Government plan to substantially increase taxation of domestic oil and gas taxes for both upstream and downstreamThe government has justified the move on three counts- (1) to eliminate the current level of “excessive” investment in domestic oil and gas operations and return the industry to a more neutral tax regime; (2) to reduce carbon emissions and encourage the use of renewable fuels; and (3) to redirect tax “subsidies” from the oil and gas sector to “more productive uses.”

A US energy policy think-tank Energy Policy Research Foundation Inc (EPRINC) has pointed out that the move will not achieve the intended benefits and on the other hand will lead to increased imports of crude oil and petroleum products apart from increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Bias Against Oil And Gas By Robert J. Samuelson
Monday, May 4, 2009
Considering the brutal recession, you'd expect the Obama administration to be obsessed with creating jobs. And so it is, say the president and his supporters. The trouble is that there's one glaring exception to their claims: the oil and natural gas industries. The administration is biased against them -- a bias that makes no sense on either economic or energy grounds. Almost everyone loves to hate the world's Exxons, but promoting domestic drilling is simply common sense.

Contrary to popular wisdom, the United States still has huge oil and natural gas resources. The outer continental shelf (OCS), including parts that have been off-limits to drilling since the early 1980s, may contain much natural gas and 86 billion barrels of oil, about four times today's "proven" U.S. reserves. The U.S. Geological Survey recently estimated that the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana may hold 3.65 billion barrels, more than 20 times a 1995 estimate. And there's upward of 2 trillion barrels of oil shale, concentrated in Colorado. If only 800 billion barrels were recoverable, that would be triple Saudi Arabia's proven reserves.

None of these sources, of course, will quickly provide oil or natural gas. Projects can take 10 to 15 years. The OCS reserve estimates are just that. Oil and gas must still be located -- a costly and chancy process. Extracting oil from shale (in effect, a rock) requires heating the shale and poses major environmental problems. Its economic viability remains uncertain. But any added oil could ultimately diminish dependence on imports, now almost 60 percent of U.S. consumption[/b[b]], while exploration and development would immediately boost high-wage jobs (geologists, petroleum engineers, roustabouts)...............

rosborne979 wrote:

What caused the drill rig/platform to explode in the first place? Does anyone know yet?

Sabotage?