Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The Oil Volcano Will Not Be Stopped Anytime Soon

On NPR yesterday, I heard Debbie Elliott's stunning report (link here with audio & transcript) about the Federal Investigation into BP's less than safe exploration of the Gulf of Mexico, and the resulting Deepwater Horizon explosion, sinking, and continual spewing of millions of gallons of crude oil into the gulf. After hearing the following statements, I now understand that this gushing volcano of oil will not be stopped anytime soon, unless maybe someone lets the Russians nuke it (as they have already done 5 times on previous Russian leaks).

"He testified he looked up, he saw this mud coming from the oil's derrick. And soon thereafter, he heard an explosion." ...so the rig was not yet fully operational, they were drilling the well head, and a massive methane bubble surged up through the mud through which they were drilling, and exploded (as methane is prone to do).

"the Coast Guard captain who is co-chairing this investigation asked the question, well, could it possibly be that because there was no coordinated fire fighting effort, that putting water on this fire overnight and into the next day could've contributed to the rig eventually sinking to the bottom of the ocean?" ...another colossal cluster f*ck, except instead of the rocky, virtually uninhabited by humans Alaskan shore line and a finite supply of oil from one Exxon oil tanker, there's 20X as many humans living on the gulf shore and the massive underground storage that has ruptured will leak, virtually forever. Makes Russian nuke fusion of mud-to-glass, sound like a pretty good idea.

Keep in mind, BP is not trying to plug an existing, previously fully functioning well. No. they are trying to cap a new well, that exploded when it was first drilled. So much fun awaits in Gulf oil exploration!

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, I listened to that piece and just couldn't believe how mucked up the whole thing was/is. And the BP spokes person using the usual flag of "we need to remove our dependence on foreign providers". Blah.

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