Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Curlew on June 02, 2010, 11:18:25 PM
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http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2011:live-feed-of-the-gulf-oil-spill&catid=122:media-advisories&Itemid=55
Its shut down for the night, Its a webcam of the work being done at the bottom of the ocean, worth watching what they are doing, watched some ROVs cut a pipe with a little band saw earlier
PLEASE NO POLITICAL TALK
would be cool to hear if you see anything interesting
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the riser pipe has now been chopped off, and it looks like the LMRP cap is currently descending into position. with luck that should stop most of the leak :aok
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http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2011:live-feed-of-the-gulf-oil-spill&catid=122:media-advisories&Itemid=55
Its shut down for the night, Its a webcam of the work being done at the bottom of the ocean, worth watching what they are doing, watched some ROVs cut a pipe with a little band saw earlier
PLEASE NO POLITICAL TALK
would be cool to hear if you see anything interesting
No politics needed, BP's been given a free pass as the "blame game" has been played.
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how exactly does:
1. paying for stopping the leak ($1bn so far),
2. paying for the cleanup, and
3. facing a criminal investigation
... count as a "free pass"? :headscratch:
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See Rule #6
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putting my insurer cap on, it will be interesting to see how the liability is split between BP and its subcontractors Halliburton and Transocean. my guess most of it will be between Halliburton and Transocean, Transocean taking the bulk of it (for reasons which will definitely get me hit with a range of forum Rules :)).
edit: thx for the webcam link Curlew, theres certainly plenty going on down there. fascinating to watch :aok
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robot1
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_inte...ntionROV2.html
robot2
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_inte...ise_ROV_1.html
robot3
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_inte...ise_ROV_2.html
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edit: thx for the webcam link Curlew, theres certainly plenty going on down there. fascinating to watch :aok
just doin my ahbb civic duty :salute
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how exactly does:
1. paying for stopping the leak ($1bn so far),
2. paying for the cleanup, and
3. facing a criminal investigation
... count as a "free pass"? :headscratch:
"Investigation"? They should be hit heavier. This has a MAJOR effect on the Ecosystem for crying out loud. No investigation is needed, they fluffied up and should be criminally CHARGED. "Investigations" are money wasters.
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"Investigation"? They should be hit heavier. This has a MAJOR effect on the Ecosystem for crying out loud. No investigation is needed, they fluffied up and should be criminally CHARGED. "Investigations" are money wasters.
Murder charges :aok. The 11 are forgotton so easily.
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Murder charges :aok. The 11 are forgotton so easily.
Agreed, the whole thing pisses me off.
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I wonder if the US govt will share the liability due to the apparent proof that regulators were playing dumb or in some cases flat-out accepting bribes. The companies might be able to shed a whole ton of liability if they can show in court, via inspection reports, that they thought they were doing ok because the inspectors gave them a pass. Yea it's bogus but liability isn't all or nothing and I figure the taxpayers are going to eat a LOT of the bill because the government oversight... didn't.
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not a chance, for the same reasons halliburton will end up paying little or nothing ...
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Watching the spill-cam now... They put the capture cap on and it doesn't seem to be working. They're jiggling it around hoping it will seat better but it doesn't seem to be helping a bit. It looks like it is sitting right on top of the pipe, so it isn't obvious why it isn't working. You'd think they would be able to start sucking up the oil since the cap is right on top of the thing, but I guess it doesn't work that way.
Maybe it is clogged already from the gas crystalizing, like the last attempt to put a box on top of the leak. Part of me wonders why they don't get a big rubber stopper and jam it in there with a few hundred tons of pig-iron. Or unbolt the dang flange connector just below the cut, and bolt on a new pipe interface. NASA has experience working with zero torque wrenches out in space (no leverage in space or floating under water) and maybe one of their wrenches can be scaled up to work on that thing.
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BP tech briefing from the aptly named Kent Wells:
http://bp.concerts.com/gom/kentwellstechupdatelong053110.htm (http://bp.concerts.com/gom/kentwellstechupdatelong053110.htm)
more video inc streams from all the ROVs on the seabed:
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9033572&contentId=7061710 (http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9033572&contentId=7061710)
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BP tech briefing from the aptly named Kent Wells:
http://bp.concerts.com/gom/kentwellstechupdatelong053110.htm (http://bp.concerts.com/gom/kentwellstechupdatelong053110.htm)
more video inc streams from all the ROVs on the seabed:
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9033572&contentId=7061710 (http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9033572&contentId=7061710)
That video gave me a big picture of what is going on and what's going on to fix it. :aok
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On the second ROV feed link Skandi ROV 1 and 2 and Enterprise ROV 2 look like they are at the well head.
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Nuke it from orbit...its the only way to know for sure.
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Murder charges :aok. The 11 are forgotton so easily.
QFTMFT!
This is BPs fault forever in my book for one reason and only one unfortunate reason. Ignorant manslaughter.
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Could some of you more educated in oil-rig ownership explain something to me? BP was leasing the oil-rig from Transocean... Does that mean BP is responsible for maintenance and inspection of the rig? If not, Transocean is the company which should be facing manslaughter charges, not BP.
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depends who, if anyone, has been negligent. which depends on the contractual arrangements and the real cause of the blow out.
but lets not let common sense get in the way of a good lynching eh? :rolleyes:
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update:
LMRP cap now fixed in place and oil/gas being pumped to the surface. they will spend the next 2 days optimising but its already capturing 20% of the leak :aok
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Murder charges :aok. The 11 are forgotton so easily.
Just as the British Government prosecuted Occidental for killing 167 men on Piper Alpha?
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err no they didnt, Occidental were found to be negligent by the public enquiry but no charges were ever brought.
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Exactly :)
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gotcha :)
update: still optimising capture and now pumping 10k barrels/day - 50-80% of the flow, and flaring 22m cft of gas a day.
edit: video of the LMRP cap being moved into place:
http://bp.concerts.com/gom/successful_install_lmrp_cap_060510.htm (http://bp.concerts.com/gom/successful_install_lmrp_cap_060510.htm)
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BP was leasing the oil-rig from Transocean... Does that mean BP is responsible for maintenance and inspection of the rig? If not, Transocean is the company which should be facing manslaughter charges, not BP.
The contract between BP and Transocean said the senior Transocean representative was in charge.
Transocean not only supplied and operated the rig, they supplied and operated the blowout preventer that failed. Transocean had to stop work on a well they were drilling off India last year after the blowout preventer failed in a similar manner. The only thing that stopped that being a similar disaster was that they hadn't struck oil when the failure occurred.
Transocean have gone to court to limit their liability to $27 million. The press have given them a very easy ride.
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This is a C.R.D. situation..........(Chit Rolls Downhill)....Trans Oceans rig........contracted by BP, with many other companies involved. Some with a minimum roll, others with greater liability. Bp is going to blame it on Trans Ocean, Trans Ocean will blame Halliburton, and the circle of luv will continue. And ultimately its going to come down to who was in charge of changing out the Duracells.......... :bolt:
And your right Lyric........how soon do we forget that 11 people died........
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Transocean have gone to court to limit their liability to $27 million.
now that is just laughable. even our own liability policy for tradesmen (for eg. a roofer, not a multinational public company) has a lower limits of £10m ($15m) each for EL and PL.
what I'd like to know is how any court can determine liability without knowing all of the facts. without the results of an inquiry its just guesswork. I can understand why the public hold BP responsible - Halliburton is a US company so it cant be their fault, and no one has heard of Transocean, which just leaves BP holding the can. I'd expect more from the courts tho.
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Transocean are a US company too, although they moved their headquarters to Switzerland for tax purposes a year or 2 ago.
There is an old US law covering shipping liability dating from 1851 that limits payouts to $27 million, and that's what Transocean are trying to hide behind.
What's worse is Transocean have already received a $400 million payout from their own insurance for the loss of their rig.
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yeah it had to be something like that, although £27m index-linked from 1851 to 2010 would be in the ballpark.
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The contract between BP and Transocean said the senior Transocean representative was in charge.
Transocean not only supplied and operated the rig, they supplied and operated the blowout preventer that failed. Transocean had to stop work on a well they were drilling off India last year after the blowout preventer failed in a similar manner. The only thing that stopped that being a similar disaster was that they hadn't struck oil when the failure occurred...
Don't mean to sound picky... Where did you find this information?
I certainly feel Transocean is at fault and BP is receiving undue treatment for what's happening. Would love to verify that Transocean was operating the blowout preventer.
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yeah thats my feeling. seems that brand-awareness isnt always a good thing ...
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The drilling company has to operate the BOP because it's part of the drilling operation. Last October Transocean admitted to problems with BOPs on its deep water drilling fleet, but said they had corrected them:
Though BOPs are a necessary piece of safety equipment, one of the largest rig fleet managers, Transocean, recently pointed its finger at BOPs onboard its rigs as the source of lower drilling revenues for Q2 2009. Transocean reported an EPS of $2.79, which was below the consensus of $3.03, due to a variety of revenue and cost factors, some of which were related to BOP issues.
Steven Newman of Transocean addressed the issue during an earnings conference call a few months ago. "The deepwater segment of the fleet, which is the 4,500 - 7,500 ft segment, 16 rigs in that fleet was the largest underperformer in Q2. We had a couple of human error incidents on drill floors on a couple of those rigs, and we had a handful of BOP problems; nothing that I would characterize as systemic or quarter specific. We did a deep dive on each one of those incidents. We've identified the root causes. We are going back to address them in our management system so they don't happen again. They were anomalies."
At the time of the report, Newman remarked that none of the BOP issues should impact Q3. He said, "All of the BOP incidents that occurred in Q2 have been resolved, and we'll continue to keep our eye closely on the performance of our subsea equipment."
Newman said the age of the rig fleet had nothing to do with the BOP problems. "The BOP problems we had were a combination of modern generation and older systems. A couple of human error issues we had were really completely unrelated to the age of the rigs those guys were working on."
http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=82682
Then in quarter 3 2009:
It was one of those moments that make oil exploration in the deep seas such an unpredictable business. Early in September, a team of engineers from Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and its contractor TransOcean, the world's largest offshore drilling company, watched in horror as a live camera feed showed mud gushing out vertically from a well they had been drilling for the past 35 days. The feed, captured by a remotely operated vehicle two kilometres below the water surface, showed that something was drastically wrong. The blowout preventor, an essential piece of equipment on every oil well that regulates pressure to ensure safety, had failed.
Drilling had to stop immediately.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/forbes-india-rigging-the-wild-west/101507-7-single.html
Then earlier this year:
Transocean is looking into problems experienced with another blowout preventer (BOP) involving its drillship Discoverer Seven Seas off India earlier this year as part of an urgent investigation into the reliability of its equipment and the performance of its global deep-water rig fleet in the wake of the Macondo well blowout.
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article214256.ece
and
Indian giant Reliance Industries has temporarily suspended the KGV-D3-W1 exploration well after the blowout preventer (BOP) on board the Transocean drillship Deepwater Expedition developed mechanical problems, Reliance's partner Hardy Oil & Gas said.
"In the interest of safety, the D3 joint venture has decided to suspend the W1 well and bring in a replacement rig,” Hardy boss Yogeshwar Sharma told UpstreamOnline.
“The problems were associated with one of the two control systems for the BOP. The main control system was working, but there were issues with the back-up.
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article216010.ece
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update: now pumping 15,000 barrels/day and flaring 30m ft^3 of gas. shame they cant capture the gas, would help pay for the cleanup.
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update: still pumping 15,000 barrels/day, estimate of leak now doubled to 40,000 barrels/day
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update: now extracting just over 15,000 barrels/day.
recovered by LMRP cap: 127,000 barrels
recovered by Riser tool: 22,000 barrels
recovered by skimming: 475,000 barrels
total recovered: 624,000 barrels
total leaked: 1,560,000 barrels (@30,000 barrels/day)
new system will be up in the next coupla days, extracting directly from one of the BOP choke lines.
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We watched an interesting show on Science Channel last night about this disaster. It was very informative for those of us that don't get a chance to follow up daily on the progress (or lack thereof) of the repair and clean-up efforts.
I couldn't find the video, but it is airing again. Schedule:
http://science.discovery.com/tv-schedules/special.html?paid=48.15381.26265.0.0 (http://science.discovery.com/tv-schedules/special.html?paid=48.15381.26265.0.0)
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latest tech briefing (10th June):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP5qBILLoMc (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP5qBILLoMc)
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say good bye to the gulf coast ..
say good bye to any economical growth in this country for years to come.
We are toast.
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:lol considering the USA is a nation that prides itself on its toughness and resourcefulness, I cant believe the level of blind panic and emotion being displayed by some of you at the moment.
anyways latest update:
flow estimates revised up from 20-40,000 bpd to 35-60,000 bpd
current recovery capacity (Discoverer Enterprise): 15-18,000 bpd
additional capacity from Q4000 early next week: 5-10,000 bpd
total capacity early next week: 20-28,000 bpd
additional capacity from floating riser 1, early July: 20-25,000 bpd
additional capacity from floating riser 2, mid July: 20-25,000 bpd
total capacity mid July: 55-68,000 bpd
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say good bye to the gulf coast ..
say good bye to any economical growth in this country for years to come.
We are toast.
Wow. Over-reacting a tad aren't you?
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update: Q4000 in operation earlier than expected.
currently recovering/flaring 25,000 bpd
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Wow. Over-reacting a tad aren't you?
IMO nope - I truly hope i am wrong but don't see it.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/01/us/20100501-oil-spill-tracker.html (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/01/us/20100501-oil-spill-tracker.html)
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:lol considering the USA is a nation that prides itself on its toughness and resourcefulness, I cant believe the level of blind panic and emotion being displayed by some of you at the moment.
Nothing "blind" about the concern at all.
If/when a hurricane pushes up into the gulf, we'll see who was blind.
Even without a cane, millions of lives are screwed for decades if not generations.
Curious RT with all your sucker upper updates, when do you see the gulf back in the same shape it was say March 2010?
As political as this disaster has become, we can't even discuss it here in the detail it requires.
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personally, in terms of the ecosystem in the gulf I dont see it recovering to March 2010 state for 50-100 years, if ever. however the BP spill is only a small part of that.
even after the spill is stopped and the cleanup operation completed, the massive demand for oil internationally (but primarily from the US) combined with dwindling inshore and shallow water reserves mean that expansion of deep water drilling is inevitable. given the vast reserves under deep water in the gulf that expansion will continue in the gulf. given the difficulties of working at these depths further well spills are inevitable. spills from shipping will also increase as overall oil production activity expands. even if the US were to extend the moratorium on deep water drilling indefinitely, there are other states with drilling rights in the gulf who will (and are currently) expanding their own deep water drilling operations.
oil production isnt the only (some would say not even the biggest) threat to the gulf ecosystem. the effects of hypoxia and eutrophication from runoff into the gulf are already pretty bad. given the expanding world population and therefore demand for food, food production will have to increase. increased production means increased runoff and hypoxia. not only is this expansion due to increased acreage farmed, but more intensive methods. there will be more runoff due to the area farmed, but the amount of runoff per acre will also increase, leading to potentially devastating hypoxia effects.
sorry its not a very cheery outlook, but I think its a realistic one.
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I agree with most of that except the part where you state the largest oil spill in US history is only a small part of the gulfs problems.
The gulf issue is only a part of our economic mess but it is quickly becoming a huge factor in its future.
Don't believe we have exhausted all land based oil but the greenies are pushing us deeper and now want zero drilling while other countries (can you say Brazil/Soros) drill even deeper. As bad as the spill is, stopping drilling is worse and is 100% political imo.
LA, MI, AL and FL are hosed. They had extreme unemployment before the spill - this will push the numbers into unsustainable and possibly a unrecoverable scenario via a domino effect. It is just the latest event that spells the end of a way and level of life I always thought would be possible in the US of A for the average joe.
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not trolling here but the largest US oil spill so far was the Lakeview gusher - 9m barrels.
as for the economics of the US gulf coast there were long term problems before the spill came along, some of the causes of which would certainly stray into Rule #14 area. its worth bearing in mind that the gulf coast has profited immensely over the years from oil extraction, to use a coupla cliches "nothing lasts forever" and "all good things must come to an end."
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The spill directly impacts only two industries: fisheries and tourism in four states.
The total gross state product in 2005 for Louisiana was US$168 billion, placing it 24th in the nation. Tourism and culture are major players in Louisiana's economy, earning an estimated $5.2 billion per year. Greatest income is derived from the petroleum and gas industries.
Tourism accounts for 3% of GSP. You can expect a similar or smaller figure for the fishing industry. Petroleum and gas will remain the primary source of income for this state. Don't expect the deep sea drilling moratorium to last very long.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Mississippi's total state product in 2006 was $84 billion. On August 30, 2007, a report by the United States Census Bureau indicated that Mississippi was the poorest state in the country.
The primary industry has always been agriculture.
Alabama is part of the largest industrial growth corridor in the nation. The state has heavily invested in aerospace, education, health care, and banking, and various heavy industries, including automobile manufacturing, mineral extraction, steel production and fabrication. According to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis, the 2008 total gross state product was $170 billion
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Florida in 2007 was $734.5 billion. Its GDP is the fourth largest economy in the United States. The major contributors to the state's gross output in 2007 were general services, financial services, trade, transportation and public utilities, manufacturing and construction respectively. 23.2 million tourists visited Florida beaches in 2000, spending $21.9 billion. In 2009, fishing was a $6 billion industry, employing 60,000 jobs for sports and commercial purposes.
For this important state, tourism also accounts for about 3% of income, fisheries less than 1%. Furthermore, the East coast of Florida should experience no or minimal impact from the spill.
That's four states out of 50, one of which if pretty important to the economy of the nation as a whole, two of which are middle of the field. However, all four of these states generate the bulk of their income from industries other than tourism and fishing.
So, yes, it's an environmental disaster, but it's not the economic disaster that you paint. In fact, the whole thing is pretty insignificant when compared to Hurricane Katrina.
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did a little googling and came across this, which almost exactly sums up my position, well worth a read (Fig. 3 is particularly interesting):
The Dangers of Overreacting to the Deepwater Horizon Disaster (http://www.aei.org/outlook/100965)
edit: nice analysis there AKH.