The Gulf Oil Spill in a Nutshell

Thats only because we have already removed a lot of the oil where it used to bubble ti the surface. For thousands of years these places were a source of bitumen for mummies in Egypt and tar for roofs in the Britain.

I just discovered the most appropriate anthem for this entire debacle:

The more I read, the more appropriate that title sounds.

Wake up America!!
I remember paddling around in tar (oil) from tankers washing out their tanks in the English Channel back in the 60's & 70's and the ruined beaches and wildlife, not to mention skin and clothing. We coped and cleaned up - to listen to you lot you'd think it was the end of the world.
I watched that fiasco of an "enquiry" yesterday - what a joke!! Just a bunch of soon to be unelected (hopefully) politicians venting their wrath on someone who was NEVER going to answer their questions prior to the conclusion of proper and technical enquiries conducted by sane people. You lot created the society of litigation - LIVE WITH IT!!!

We're plenty awake and unlike you we can also count barrels of oil spilled into formerly pristine waters.

So YOU can remember the '60s and '70s? Glad to know that because so can I, then a schoolboy when the Torrey Canyon (a tanker chartered by that same old British Petroleum) ran aground on the Scilly reefs and 100,000 barrels of crude oil spilled into the English channel destroying all wildlife for decades. My school was dispatched to wash oil-covered birds on the beaches near Brighton. We did that for days but few could be saved.

Now hear this:
The BP blowout in the Gulf is spewing the entire cargo of the Torrey Canyon every day.
It's been sixty days.
Bottom kill isn't going to work until next fall at the earliest.
Did the same QC representing BP advise you to add insult to the American legal system on top of the massive injury already sustained by Americans with untold consequences and no end in sight for months or years to come? Is hanging your head in shame an unknown concept in British law? How about the grace to shut up? When in such a deep hole stop digging!

I just looked it up, the Gulf blowout amounts to the Torrey Canyon cargo every week, not every day; that doesn't make it much better in the circumstances. https://professionalmariner.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=AB1BEA4C5E974EA79C889DE5ACFF20C9

Good to see the top BP execs are not overworking the problem. Holidays are so relaxing.
http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/breaking-news-world/bp-chief-yacht-outing-draws-fire-as-oil-effort-slogs-on-20100619-yo0z.html

He might as well stay over there, he's not welcome here. The Coast Guard estimates daily flow is 60,000 barrels and says pressure on that well bore keeps rising.
I don't really understand this. What is the pressure? How fast is it rising? Salazar is a politico, he just appointed a lawyer to head MMS. He probably plans to stuff the well with carbon credits. Chu is a genius with a Nobel Prize but where are the measurements he took? The Coast Guard doesn't have them, they said. They do have evacuation plans for all the ships and drilling platforms. Any geologists here? Could that well really REALLY blow up?

I don't know if this is anywhere near accurate http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article20440.html

or this one about "abiotic" petroleum, same page


But if either or both are true then BP can claim act of God not negligence and be let off the hook for punitive damages. What's really scary here is that nobody in charge right now from BP to Obama to Salazar to the Coast Guard seems to have a clue either.

Was 1,000 per day the original estimate ? Upped to 5,000 under considerable duress to admit it was worse ? And now 60,000.....says volumes about their attitude doesnt it.
Piper Alpha brought about considerable change, but not enough apparently.

I did a search for geologists on this site and located a couple so I'll go post a link to this thread. I hope one of them can answer the questions in my previous couple of posts.

World oil consumption is 80 million barrels a day. So the highest estimate from Deepwater Horizon represents about 1/1200 th of what is gushing out everyday around the world. The essential difference here is that we can see it. The other 1199/1200 th part is still coming our way in one form or another as is all the other stuff required to get and process it and to use it for the glorification of our egos. And that's out of control too.

It's a bit like when the skivvy wipes up a mess somebody makes on the formica lunch counter. She just spreads it out so it can't be seen by the naked eye. I daresay if some microscope pictures were taken of the surface of the lunch counter, blown up and made the subject of a TV documentary with a doom-mongers commentary, a modern Job, none of us would ever eat at a lunch counter again.

I knew a lady who washed her husbands underpants separately and rinsed out the machine 4 times (Oswald's dilution law) so that ---well, you can figure that out.

One might suppose that those who believe in an Intelligent Designer think that the oil was buried on purpose in some grand plan which I can't explain in a short post such as this is intended to be. And so also is our finding it and putting it to use so that we were the first culture that didn't have to rely on human or animal muscle power. And the same applies to this event which must be designed to provide a warning not to go mad in the first flush of our success. That the punishment of Prometheus for stealing fire from the Gods had not been a sufficient deterrent. Myths having become bullshit with the passage of time and the festival of self-indulgence being in full swing.

It was verily an act of God. What else could a believer in an intelligent designer possibly think. The gold was thinned out to prevent us ever getting a glimpse of the radiance surrounding the intelligent designer's celestial throne. The fault in the design was that it wasn't realised how good we would get. Just as some people raise questions about how good intelligent computers could get.

Oil was a gift which we have abused in what one might call, on a Darwinian time-scale, a grande premature ejaculation which some cynics would argue was the inevitable result of the French Revolution and the voting reforms and particularly relating to those voting reforms concerning the female sex which knows how, with a sort of collective consciousness, not necessarily observable by each individual female, like when a locust swarm moves in, to win every election for the foreseeable future.

How's that for in a nutshell?

"Act of God" is a standard clause in contracts, nothing to do with religion. It may apply to the BP Gulf well blowout unless BP was guilty of“gross negligence or willful misconduct”.

BP has 2 partners in that well, they may have to split the costs 3-ways. http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2010/06/21/anadarko-would-take-huge-hit-if-forced-to-pay-into-bps-20-billion-oil-spill-fund/ I'm hoping a geologist will show up soon to answer the questions in the previous links.

There is no way in hell that BP is going to get off calling this an 'act of God.' The accident was 100% preventable.

Cycloptichorn

Do you think you can refrain from posting the unabridged version? I'm hoping someone qualified as geologist will show up to address the 2 points made here http://able2know.org/topic/144532-9#post-4180897

Have you no sense of humour old chap?

Standard clauses in contracts my arse.

"“gross negligence or willful misconduct" indeed. They were doing what we were rewarding them for doing for all those years when things were going smoothly. BP was involved in dogfights all over the place on the gas price. With bulk buyers just as much as motorists. Fights for survival. Too much care and concern and too much being good boys would have seen them off years ago and you damn well know it. Or you should do because it's obvious.

The bargain hunter rules big business at the production end, where it's blue collar, so it's the bargain hunter's baby. Where it's white collar it's the other way round. White collar rules the bargain hunter. So it's white collar's doing. And blaming it all on blue collar which is the base of the inverted pyramid on which white collar squats.

Same old story. Like the banking crisis.

Unabridged?? I defy you to make it shorter and make the points properly.

I've looked at the 2 points you mention and I can't see a question to answer.

Nonsense and vapid hyper-gheneralizations, Spendi. Why don't you do some research into BP's safety record over the past five years, compared to those of the other major petroleum producers & distributors.? You'll find a big difference. They brought this one on themselves, and they are to blame for it.

I don't support out lightweight President's attempts to demonize BP - a charade he does for his own political purposes. However, neither do I buy your irrational attempts to blame consumers, and, in effect, absolve BP for the responsibility for its own actions.

I'm not absolving BP from its responsibilities at all. I'm prepared to wait for the cross-examined evidence to be heard and decided upon in a court.

As I have reason to believe that you are a considerable consumer of oil products I understand why you think consumers are not to blame.