Gulf Oil Disaster.

[lokisnow]

Sorry to hear that. If it makes you feel any better, the oil appears to be heading straight for New Orleans... just imagine how they feel! First Katrina, now this... They must be like, "What's next? Volcanoes? Locusts?"

New Madrid Earthquake changes Mississippi River in a way devastating to New Orleans.

[Commodore]

This is pretty cool technology:

If U.S. officials had followed up on a 1994 response plan for a major Gulf oil spill, it is possible that the spill could have been kept under control and far from land.

The problem: The federal government did not have a single fire boom on hand.

But in order to conduct a successful test burn eight days after the Deepwater Horizon well began releasing massive amounts of oil into the Gulf, officials had to purchase one from a company in Illinois.

When federal officials called, Elastec/American Marine, shipped the only boom it had in stock, Jeff Bohleber, chief financial officer for Elastec, said today.

At federal officials' behest, the company began calling customers in other countries and asking if the U.S. government could borrow their fire booms for a few days, he said.

A single fire boom being towed by two boats can burn up to 1,800 barrels of oil an hour, Bohleber said. That translates to 75,000 gallons an hour, raising the possibility that the spill could have been contained at the accident scene 100 miles from shore.

"They said this was the tool of last resort. No, this is absolutely the asset of first use. Get in there and start burning oil before the spill gets out of hand," Bohleber said. "If they had six or seven of these systems in place when this happened and got out there and started burning, it would have significantly lessened the amount of oil that got loose."

In the days after the rig sank, U.S Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said the government had all the assets it needed. She did not discuss why officials waited more than a week to conduct a test burn. (Watch video footage of the test burn.)

At the time, former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oil spill response coordinator Ron Gouguet -- who helped craft the 1994 plan -- told the Press-Register that officials had pre-approval for burning. "The whole reason the plan was created was so we could pull the trigger right away."

Gouguet speculated that burning could have captured 95 percent of the oil as it spilled from the well.

I don't fault Obama for the spill or response to it, but this is the type of thing they beat Bush over the head with during Katrina.

[sologdin]

Volcanoes?

it'd be a boon for the city. we just need to a series of tungsten canals and pumping stations that can funnel the magma into tungsten reservoirs that will feed the supersteams into tungsten turbines and generate volcanic electricity for the city state of orlean nouvelle. when we perfect the technique, we'll sell it to iceland and form an axis of volcanic energy independence, and tell all'y'all rockoil-dependent SUV drivers to sod off.

[Lucky Pierre]

I just realized I'm going to be in Key West on May 28th... Should be interesting. Might be easy to get into the hot spots now but will have to stay away from the beaches...

[Lucky Pierre]

This is pretty cool technology:

I don't fault Obama for the spill or response to it, but this is the type of thing they beat Bush over the head with during Katrina.

Obama has been in Office a little more than 1 year... I'd think the blame for not having this on hand rests with prior administrations-the report is from 1994 FFS.

:)

This entire mess is going to be a huge game of coulda, woulda, shoulda...

[IheartTesla]

The guy I saw this morning made it very clear that the equipment that failed was not BP's equipment ( I forget which other company he made a point of naming on national TV), though they were taking responsibility for the mess spewing from their drilling operation.

Most of the oil companies (like BP and say Exxon) dont actually seem to do drilling themselves. They usually subcontract the oil well operations to other companies and act as 'landlords' over the oilfields. I did remember someone from Schlumberger mentioning that they serviced most of the Exxon oilfields and Exxon had almost nothing to do with the extraction anymore. The reason he gave me (although it wasnt terribly convincing to me) was that Schlum had a staff of 80000 and so did Exxon, and for Exxon to do the same work as Schlum they'd have to hire 80000 more people

That doesnt mean BP isnt culpable for the Halliburton's screwup. They chose the vendor after all and signed off on the cementing operation.

[Hereward]

An oil industry expert on the radio this morning was challenged as to why booms weren't used to limit the damage. He explained that most oil spills happen on or near the surface, so the oil was concentrated, coming out at low pressure and therefore was relatively easy to contain. This spill is a mile under the surface and is coming out at extreme pressure and has therefore dispersed over a wide area long before it gets anywhere near the surface, so booms are of very little use. :unsure:

[Tobin]

I just realized I'm going to be in Key West on May 28th... Should be interesting. Might be easy to get into the hot spots now but will have to stay away from the beaches...

That won't be too hard - KW only has a few beaches really:

Smathers, Higgs, Ft. Zachary Taylor, Patio - and some sand dump "beach" near the Holiday Inn.

Everything else is rock, mangroves and grey slimy muck.

Ahhh...there is no place like home, :)

[TerraPrime]

Just talking to a colleague who has a passing familiarity (more than me at least) on coastal ecology in the Mexico Gulf, and she's saying that we're pretty much screwed as far as the ecosystem is concerned. It'll take decades for it to return to it original state, if it ever can.

The magnitude of the problem is just overwhelming to take into account when we're assessing the impact on our ecosystem.

[Sis Who Swears]

This is just so upsetting to me, makes me feel absolutely helpless.

I'm dreading to see what we all know is coming.

[adamsputnik]

Guess now is a good time to get cracking on creating a vegemite-powered engine. Looks like oil, at least.

[The Iceman of the North]

Guess now is a good time to get cracking on creating a vegemite-powered engine. Looks like oil, at least.

If you think a oil spill is bad, just imagine a vegemite spill. :x

[Datepalm]

If you think a oil spill is bad, just imagine a vegemite spill. :x

We can. I believe its commonly referred to as "australia".

[Lucky Pierre]

Good thing all our shrimp in Florida come from Thailand! :thumbsup:

[awesome possum]

Am I mistaken here in recalling something about an oil-eating bacteria intended to be used for spills? I'm too lazy to Google it at the moment, but I swear I thought I heard or read something about this.

[sologdin]

an oil-eating bacteria intended to be used for spills

<summons rockmilk-eating avanc>

[BLU-RAY]

Does anyone else sense the subtle, insidious hand of the scallop lobby behind this?

No? Just me? Ok, then.

[TerraPrime]

Am I mistaken here in recalling something about an oil-eating bacteria intended to be used for spills? I'm too lazy to Google it at the moment, but I swear I thought I heard or read something about this.

There are actually several species of bacteria capable of degrading crude oil, but they all seem to belong to the genus Pseudomonas. In fact, the most well-known one is Pseudomonas auruginosa, a common bacteria found in many natural and artificial artifacts.

In order to get them to work, though, you need to supply organic nitrogen source and other nutrients. That'd be hard to do in an ocean. You can use it more effectively on shorelines, once the oil has landed.

[IheartTesla]

Its also a question of scale. You have an oil slick the size of Delaware (or Jamaica, choose your pick)....and the bacteria are only a few microns in size. Even assuming they digest their own body mass in one cycle you are talking about incredibly large amounts of bacteria which nobody in the US is producing (at least in those numbers). Although I suppose this is only area, so the actual volume of oil to be consumed might not be as large.

There, I've contradicted myself in two sentences.

[ThinkerX]

Ok....on the CBS television news tonight (May 5), they put one of their talking heads into a boat and motored him ten miles off shore to the leading edge of the slick.

My assessment: People in the gulf region got off lucky with this. I was expecting something like the thick black gunk we had to deal with in the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill cleanup (yes, I was one of the guys on the beaches back then with high pressure water hoses and giant tampons cleaning off rocks). Instead, at least the part of the spill reached by the talking head is more of a 'sheen' than a 'slick' - the sort of thing you might get from a badly tuned outboard motor. The longer that slick stays offshore - and the quicker that well head can get capped somehow - the more that sheen will disperse.

Yes, it is going to be...unpleasant. Yes, a lot of fish and birds and sea creatures are going to die. Yes, a lot of fishermen and similiar sorts are going to take a real serious hit for a year or three to their business. But - it is nowhere near as bad as it could have been.