200,000 Gallons A Day

[Puckstop31]

There is risk involved in drilling the deepest well in the world, in one
of the most sensitive enviromental areas in this country. They were
allowed to gamble on everything turning out ok. It didn't and now we
get to see the companies involved scramble around for a fix for this.

There is risk invovled in most innovative things Liz. Should humanity stop trying to innovate just beause there is risk involved?

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Or, 'a ship is safe in harbor, but that is not what ships are for.'

A plan B wasn't in place before they drilled and, if some politicans hadn't been in bed with big oil, we could have demanded they have a
recovery
option in place.

Its my understanding there was a "plan B" in place. Sadly, it failed as well.

And who, pray tell, are these politicians you speak of?

p.s. " Honey, S*** happens" What kind of thing is that for an adult to tell a kid? Pitiful.

In classic Lizbud fashion, you fail to use an entire quote in context. Shocker.

Tell me... Is it wrong to teach a child the way the world really is? Also, recall your original question here included 'one day'. I would not explain it, that way, to my 2 year old. When she is 10 perhaps? Yes.

(ETA - Do you actually think I would use the exact words, "S*** Happens"? If you do... Wow, what did I ever do to you to make you think that? Disagree with you? No wonder you are so easily duped. LOL)

I am not going to shelter my child(ren) from the realities of the world. I will not rob her of future opportunites because I refused to teach her the truth. And the TRUTH is, bad things happen.

[Lady's Human]

It all depends on your point of view.

I look at this mess and I'm grateful it was just one platform, in deep water.

It gives engineers time to react and deal with things, and the next time something like this happens, we won't have the same issues as the engineers will use this as a learning experience.

OR........

We could stick our collective heads in the sand, go back to a subsistence farming level of tech, and never, ever drill for any oil ever again because we might have an accident.


Three Mile Island wasn't a disaster, it was a proof of concept, but the media turned it into a moratorium on nuclear power in the US. This CANNOT happen again.

[Puckstop31]

It all depends on your point of view.

I look at this mess and I'm grateful it was just one platform, in deep water.

It gives engineers time to react and deal with things, and the next time something like this happens, we won't have the same issues as the engineers will use this as a learning experience.

Exactly. Its why I said when bad things happen and they will, learn from it, fix it if you can and move forward. In Army speak... FIDO.

OR........

We could stick our collective heads in the sand, go back to a subsistence farming level of tech, and never, ever drill for any oil ever again because we might have an accident.


Three Mile Island wasn't a disaster, it was a proof of concept, but the media turned it into a moratorium on nuclear power in the US. This CANNOT happen again.

"Don't let a good crisis go to waste." No? Classic 'progressive' BS. Back in the day, Woody Wilson's time... War was the catalyst they used to move their agenda forward. Now, it has to be a 'moral equivilant' of war.

FWIW, I live 15 miles from TMI. I have zero worry. My dad works in the nuclear power industry. There really is no safer and more efficient form of power. Too bad the media and the 'progressives' gave it such a bad rap.

[RICHARD]

I look at it like the post war fires in Iraq.

Everyone projected the wells would burn for years?

Then they sent in all the Houston based oil/fire fighters and put them out in months?

It's all a matter of tossing ideas at the problem.

We are, after all, the United States of Leading Edge Technology.

[lizbud]

(CNN) -- Oil industry experts said there is no sure-fire way to stop the massive amount of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

If there were, BP wouldn't still be grasping for a solution.

"That's because pollution cleanup technology is primitive," said Robert Bea, a University of California-Berkeley professor who directs the university's Center for Catastrophic Risk Management. He worked for decades as a risk assessor to oil companies, including BP in the 1990s.

The science of cleaning up oil spills has remained largely the same since the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, said Bea, who worked on that 11-million-gallon spill in Prince William Sound that blackened 1,500 miles of Alaska's coastline.

"It boggles my mind what in the hell they're doing, because the industry has been around for years, and this kind of thing had to be anticipated," Bea said. "But that's just the way it is. It's sad."
Since an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig April 20, BP has tried various techniques to stop the leak 5,000 feet underwater. The spill is sending 210,000 gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico each day, BP has said.

Video emerged Wednesday showing a giant leak on the floor of the Gulf shooting a huge plume of oil and gas into the water.

Shortly after the leak was discovered, BP tried using remote-controlled submarine devices to stop it. That didn't work.



Interactive: Responding to an oil spill In the past week, two other techniques were tried. The first was a huge containment dome that would have captured the oil so it could be siphoned off to a waiting tanker. But ice crystals formed when escaping gas mixed with water, thwarting that effort. Then, BP announced it was employing a similar, but smaller device called a "Top Hat." The 5-foot structure weighing nearly 2 tons reached the Gulf's floor on Wednesday, and crews are trying to position it over the leak. If that doesn't work, BP says it has yet another plan -- sending a "junk shot" -- loads of shredded rubber tires and golf balls, to clog the leak at the source.

Meanwhile, a Coast Guard effort to mitigate effects of the slick by using what a spokesman called a "historically proven technique" of burning the oil and sending the resulting smoke and soot out to sea proved less effective than was hoped. BP has been using using a chemical dispersant, Corexit, to try to break up the oil. The substance was synthesized by Exxon and has been the industry's go-to dispersant for years, Bea said.

It dilutes oil the way soap breaks up dirt on the body. However Corexit, whose makeup isn't disclosed by its manufacturer because of trade secrets, could be extremely toxic in large quantities, Bea said.

"We [in the oil industry] would always say, 'If you touch it, smell it, breathe it, eat it, you better see a doctor quick," he said. "That's a quick tip to me that my friends, the bluefin tuna, are going to be just as sensitive. The victims of this disaster will be aquatic life."

Corexit 9500 includes petroleum distillates, propylene glycol and a proprietary organic sulfonic salt and can cause eye or skin irritation with prolonged contact, according to its material data safety sheet. The document warns that "repeated or prolonged exposure may irritate the respiratory tract."

Read about dispersant chemical Corexit 9500

Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University environmental sciences professor, agrees with Bea that pollution cleanup technology is woefully behind the times.

"I don't think there is a very good system set up to evaluate those dispersants," said Overton, who heads NOAA's chemical hazard assessment team analyzing the toxicity of the oil in the Gulf.



"Testing has for years been not as sophisticated" within the oil industry as he and other environmental scientists would like, Overton said. A wave pool in Leonardo, New Jersey, is used to test the effectiveness of dispersants. The pool is 203 meters long by 20 meters wide by 3.4 meters deep, and is filled with 2.6 million gallons of saltwater.

"They can spray oil on the dispersants and measure how much gets into the water," Overton said. "But at best, that's still a fairly crude way to test the effectiveness of these chemicals because it's done under one set of wave conditions."

Steve Newman, the president and CEO of Transocean, the world's largest offshore drilling contractor and owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, answered questions about the industry's cleanup technologies Wednesday during a House hearing on the spill.

Rep. Lois Capps pointed to a document provided by Transocean stating that floating booms used to clean up oil spills only contain about 15 percent of the oil, a rate that has not improved since a Union Oil spill in 1969 off Santa Barbara, California -- in Capps' Congressional district -- released about 200,000 gallons of crude over a 10-day period.

Capps asked oil executives why the technologies haven't improved if "the technologies have been perfected to get down there and [to get oil]. ...Why was there not equivalent technology developed to clean up after a spill, whether a small spill or a huge spill, at the very same time, using some of the profits that have been generated in each of the companies that you represent?"Lamar McKay, the president and chairman of BP America, answered: "I would just comment we're working very closely with all the government agencies, EPA, Coast Guard.

"[The] Coast Guard deals with spills all over our coastal areas, all over the country. We're using the best available technology at scale. This is the largest effort that's ever been put together, so we believe we are using the best technology."

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois, said, "But you never had any until it happened."

McKay answered: "Well, we've been drilling with the Coast Guard for years, since the..."

Schakowsky interrupted: "Did you develop technologies for dealing with this?"

McKay: "Not individual technologies for this, no."

Schakowsky: "I rest my case."