Gulf Oil Slick

[Corkey]

Dear Friend:



Thank you for writing to me about the BP oil spill. I will stand with the people of the Gulf Coast until they are made whole, and I appreciate your perspective as we continue to do everything we can to address this crisis.



The Gulf is one of the richest and most beautiful ecosystems on the planet. For centuries, its residents have enjoyed and made a living off the fish that swim in its waters and the wildlife that inhabit its shores. The Gulf is also the heartbeat of the region's economic life, and this oil spill has upended whole communities.



My Administration will continue to leverage every resource at our disposal to protect coastlines, to clean up the oil, to hold BP and other companies accountable for damages, to begin to restore the bounty and beauty of this region, and to aid the hardworking people of the Gulf as they rebuild their businesses and communities. For information about response efforts, available assistance, or how to help, please visit: www.WhiteHouse.gov/deepwater-bp-oil-spill. Individuals affected by the BP oil spill can also find resources by calling the United States Coast Guard at 1-800-280-7118, and small businesses can find support by calling 1-800-659-2955.



Thank you again for contacting me. I encourage you to visit WhiteHouse.gov to learn more about my Administration or to contact me in the future.



Sincerely,

Barack Obama

[Miss Scarlett]

Am wondering, afraid to hope, that this skimmer "A Whale" will be successful. Certainly cannot hurt to try. It's a bit annoying when someone offers a suggestion or assistance only to have the powers that be (whoever they appear to be at the moment - BP, Coast Guard...) decline, delay or whatever then turn around and tell the public they are doing everything they can....blah blah blah...

It's almost like BP is afraid someone other than BP might profit from this. I heard a joke somewhere way back when this disaster was new...the punchline of which (my paraphrase) was that BP issued an announcement that any oil washing up on beaches was the express property of BP and they would prosecute any who collected such oil...

[MsDemeanor]

Miss Scarlett, a lot of the crap BP has been pulling is to avoid fines and royalties. EPA fines are levied per barrel, so the more barrels documented, the higher the fine. Oil companies also pay the government for each barrel, so BP owes the US $ for all that oil in the water. This is why they've been using the dispersants, to break up the oil so that it can't be counted. Also why they've been underestimating the flow, refused to put cameras on the leak for the first few days, burning oil, etc. Using ships that collect the oil means that there's a count of # of barrels.

Another issue, strangely, is that there are clean water standards for water that is returned to the ocean. Now normally, this makes sense; you tell an industry that "the water must be this clean after you use it and dump it back in the ocean". In the case of oil, though, any clean is better than it was. Still, there are hoops that must be jumped and agreements that must be made before something like A Whale can be used. Mostly, though, it's just BP being supreme asshats who's priority is the $ and not the mess.

[Glenn]

Sneaky motherf*uckers! If I was king, BP would be liquidated, it's assets used to restore all the damages, and the people responsible would be publicly executed without a trial, warrent, or judge's signature. If a serial killer can get the chair, so should the folks who murder and destroy on such A MASSIVE SCALE.

[MsDemeanor]

Liquidating BP would destroy the British economy and wipe out a fair portion of the country's retirement funds, which would devastate even more lives. As for execution (which always wrong, IMO), I'm thrilled to live in a country where we have things like evidence and trials and juries and stuff. They don't always work, but thet beat the hell out of the alternatives.

[Glenn]

Legal proceedings? You might see a few of the big ol boys go under internal investigations, get a slap on the wrist, or maybe even a couple of months in jail. BP has to be laughing at all this. Any justice we get will be served by us the taxpayers, through higher pump prices, etc. .

[Jesse]

Yikes! I am thinking this type of leadership would be even more devastating and harmful than all of the oil spills put together!

Jesse

Originally Posted by popcorninthesofa

Sneaky motherf*uckers! If I was king, BP would be liquidated, it's assets used to restore all the damages, and the people responsible would be publicly executed without a trial, warrent, or judge's signature. If a serial killer can get the chair, so should the folks who murder and destroy on such A MASSIVE SCALE.

[AtLast]

Monday is when BP will be announcing its 2nd quarter earnings..... ought to be interesting!

Last week BP's Tony Baloney the CEO was attempting to round up new investers in the Middle East. This kind of gives me hope that BP might try to keep itself solvent which seems better in terms of it actually being in this for the long haul and making restitution.

I know, I know, I am probably being far too optimistic... Sometimes, however, I do think of what is at stake for big oil in this in terms of what BP does. This could prove to be one major blemish the industry world wide that it cannot afford.

Guess I am more of a glass half-full kind of person. Or I am really in deep denial! Just having a huge problem thinking about the people in the Gulf that really need BP to pay up.

So, do you all think we will finally get the message that alternative fuels must be developed and put the resources in this that are vitally needed?

[Glenn]

BP just signed another record contract called the Caspian Project. A panel of only 3 judges rejected Obama's 6 month moratorium of offshore drilling..

[MsDemeanor]

The map seems to be a bit off....I wonder how old it is. Even the information in the 'found via' link says that the numbers on the map don't match to the widely reported numbers. The most glaring issue, and why I wonder when the map was created, is that the Deepwater spill has exceeded the size of Ixtoc, yet is substantially smaller on the map. Also, the Gulf War spill estimate seems high - although any 'official' estimate of a spill during a US war would, in my mind, be questionable and quite likely understated.

[Selenay]

Originally Posted by MsDemeanor

The map seems to be a bit off....I wonder how old it is. Even the information in the 'found via' link says that the numbers on the map don't match to the widely reported numbers. The most glaring issue, and why I wonder when the map was created, is that the Deepwater spill has exceeded the size of Ixtoc, yet is substantially smaller on the map. Also, the Gulf War spill estimate seems high - although any 'official' estimate of a spill during a US war would, in my mind, be questionable and quite likely understated.

The information for the iconograph comes from the ITOPF.

>ITOPF<


Yes and no, to the map being off (I'm doing further research to ensure that the statistical data on ITOPF is as accurate as people are implying it is.) because the source collects data from both published and UNpublished sources.

I know I hate wikipedia (and maybe you do, too), but this is a fairly well documented link to the largest oil spills in recent / reported history.

As for their actual numbers, the ones I have checked so far are not exorbitant, but they are the highest range of the projected spill amounts.

Comparing between measurements (metric tonne vs kg vs lb) all of their reported measurements (except the recent spill which, yeah, kind of hard to keep consistent...) is accurate to within twelve percentage points. Another possible explanation is that they have also added in a percentage for oil lost to the environment that cannot be accurately assessed. That, and there are discrepancies for almost ALL of the spills saying that the media underrepresented the oil spilled in... Well, given that we all know how much the gulf numbers have changed, I'm sure you know what I mean.

Even so; I meant the iconograph not as a factual basis for argument but more as a demonstrative comparison in scale to the disasters that have historically happened and continue to happen on a daily basis, and the issue in the gulf. I was really trying to make the point that this has happened before on smaller (though that isn't depicted on the graph) and much larger scales. . . And we don't hear about it. At all.


I'm going to continue researching the iconograph creator and the data and will keep you posted, if you'd like.

Edited to add: Oh yeah I forgot! The map's creator has an updated version of the map on his site, to reflect the increasing size of the spill, I just couldn't do a link to it at the time of my post for... some reason, I forget what, but you can check his website out.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by popcorninthesofa

Sneaky motherf*uckers! If I was king, BP would be liquidated, it's assets used to restore all the damages, and the people responsible would be publicly executed without a trial, warrent, or judge's signature. If a serial killer can get the chair, so should the folks who murder and destroy on such A MASSIVE SCALE.

So you do not have a problem, at least in principle, with the Bush administration suspending habeus corpus, the 'enemy combatant' designation putting a person beyond either US civil law OR the Geneva conventions, black sites, extraordinary rendition or Guantanamo Bay? Because what you say above--and I understand the anger--sounds like you think precisely this kind of thing should happen to organizations like BP.

Blessedly, we (humanity) have largely given up on the Divine Right of Kings.

Cheers
Aj

[Glenn]

Yes, Aj; If I was a king..heads would be arollin over this! We are talking about millions of lives at stake. We are talking about the future of our planet, the collective destiny of life on Earth! But no.. no one seems to care, not as much as they should. If Bush was still in office America would be CRUCIFYING him. But it's OK for Obama to send troops down there to kick the media out? The Federa government is who insures these oil companies againest disasters of this magnitude and should have had better safeguards and accountability. BP and the industrial military own us, our laws. But what I am more concerned about are the methane hydrates that this drilling released,,which were slowly destroying us anyway, but they may be making it happen sooner.

[Toughy]

this video is about a month old and shows a crack in the sea bed floor close to the well head:

http://firedoglake.com/2010/06/18/br...floor-of-gulf/