There is no valid analogy between the Gulf spill and Apollo 13
I am honored to present this guest post by Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Dr. H. Harrison Schmitt – Anthony
President Obama’s Administration and its supportive media repeatedly say our 1970 Apollo 13 experience is analogous to the effort to contain and cap the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Not hardly!
The rescue of Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, after an oxygen tank explosion on their spacecraft, illustrates how complex technical accidents should be handled, in contrast to the Gulf fiasco. Nothing in the government’s response to the blowout and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and its aftermath bears any resemblance to the response to the Apollo 13 situation by the National Aeronautic and Space Administration and its Mission Control team at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.
“Failure was not an option” for Gene Kranz and his Apollo 13 flight controllers and engineers. In contrast, failure clearly has been an option for President Obama and those claiming to have been on top of this situation “from day one” in his White House and in the Departments of Interior, Energy and Homeland Security. With no single, competent, courageous and knowledgeable leader in charge of a comparably competent, courageous and knowledgeable team as we had with Apollo 13, the Administration has been doomed to failure from the start. The President, without any experience in real-world management of anything, much less a crisis, has no idea how to deal with a situation as technically complex as the Gulf oil spill.
Whatever may be the culpability of British Petroleum and its federal regulators in causing and dealing with the accident, it has been left to BP engineers and managers and to Gulf State officials to respond as best they can in a regulatory environment that is politically charged, incompetent, fearful and hesitant.
Absolutely no reason exists to assume that any part of the Federal Government has engineering expertise comparable to the petroleum industry that can be applied to this or any future energy-related crisis. Certainly, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu have no more experience in these matters than does the President.
Salazar’s empty threat to “push BP out of the way” has no basis as a realistic option and best illustrates the floundering of the Obama Administration. Indeed, from “day one,” the expertise of the entire U.S. and British drilling and production industry should have been mobilized to combat this spill, with a single experienced engineering manager in charge. It still is not too late to start doing it right.
A more appropriate analogy from the Apollo era would be the recovery from the tragic fire during a pre-launch test on January 27, 1967, that took the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. The Apollo 204 fire occurred in the clearly recognized crisis atmosphere of the Cold War, in which America raced to demonstrate to the world the superiority of freedom over the Communist oppression of the Soviet Union. The Deepwater Horizon explosion took place in the equally apparent crisis of America’s dependence on sources of oil from foreign nations governed or intimidated by our enemies or economic competitors. There, however, the validity of the 204 fire analogy ceases.
The NASA’s response to the 204 fire was to rapidly implement its previously well-formulated, objective investigation of its causes, both technical and managerial. Managerial responsibilities were identified, and George Low and his engineering team made appropriate changes without a prolonged exercise in finger pointing or the delays of another Presidential, buck-passing “commission.” NASA of that day moved forward and even accelerated the Apollo effort to its successful conclusion. Apollo 8’s Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders orbited the Moon less than two years after the 204 fire. Seven months after that, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, with Mike Collins in orbit overhead, landed on the Moon.
The lessons from the 204 fire were applied and we moved on. In contrast, President Obama’s and his Administration’s otherwise rambling response to the Deepwater Horizon explosion has been to stop offshore oil exploration by the United States. How misguided and, indeed, how either ignorant or devious can our President be!?
President Obama has shown repeatedly that the best interests of the American people are a lower priority than his ideological goal of changing America from what it has been, to some mystical, socialist utopia with a renewable-energy-based standard of living equivalent to that of the late 1800s. As if the Administration could not make its ineffective, disjointed response to the Deepwater Horizon accident any worse, it did not even use previously established sea surface burn-off and dispersant procedures to minimize the effects of the spill.
In addition, it has inexcusably delayed approving and assisting in Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s request to protect the state’s shores and wildlife habitats, by building offshore sand barriers – as unnecessary as having to make that request should have been. And this is the government that Congress and the President want to run healthcare, immigration, banking, carbon emissions, auto manufacturing, and everything else in American life?
The geologists, engineers, and on-site managers responsible for the Deepwater Horizon drilling effort understood that drilling to an oil reservoir through 13,000 of rock in 5000 feet of seawater would be very difficult. They knew that their geophysically defined target, typical of Gulf petroleum reservoirs, would be a complex mix of crude oil, natural gas and brine, contained in porous and permeable rock. Because of the rock and water depth, the reservoir also would be under very high pressure. In this situation, a reliable blowout preventer, a crimping device installed on the pipe near the floor of the sea, would be essential to reduce the risk of both a spill and potential explosion on the Deepwater Horizon.
Current information indicates that BP installed a defective blowout preventer and did not have a deep-water, robotically emplaced crimping technique as a backup to the blowout preventer. Essential to the prevention of future accidents will be an objective, complete technical and managerial investigation of why a geological and engineering situation of known risks spun out of control. The primary question is, will such an investigation be possible in the politically charged, adversarial “boot on the neck” atmosphere created by President Obama and his team? Imagine if such an atmosphere had surrounded the 204 fire investigation and recovery.
Responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon accident ultimately lies with the chaotic regulatory environment for petroleum exploration created over recent decades by the Congress, courts, Department of the Interior and environmental pressure groups. Will we learn anything about regulatory overkill from this tragic loss of eleven lives, extensive environmental damage, and disruption of business and employment in the Gulf?
Elimination of access to most on-shore and near-shore oil production prospects has driven American exploration away from more easily discoverable and producible resources – and into the much more dangerous and technically challenging deep waters of the seas and oceans. Even then, drilling and production accidents are exceedingly rare, in spite of the geological, engineering and weather-related difficulties that explorers and producers face as a consequence of these misguided restrictions.
Long-term, history reminds us that naturally and accidentally released oil in the oceans disappears due to bacterial action. Remember that the fuel oil which blackened the world’s beaches as a result of World War II ship destruction disappeared after only a few years, and ocean life survived. The Gulf oil spill will not be this Nation’s most serious environmental crisis: World War II tops it by orders of magnitude in more than just this respect.
If America and freedom are to survive indefinitely, the next Congress must begin to restore sanity and intelligence to national energy policy. Until economically competitive alternatives become fully feasible, fossil fuels will remain the mainstay of our economy. Our dependence on unstable foreign sources of oil has become one of our greatest national security vulnerabilities, and only domestic production can solve it in the next 50 years.
The 2010 elections thus become a critical starting point to bring rational, constitutional, America-first thinking back into the Federal Government.
______________
Harrison H. Schmitt is a former United States Senator from New Mexico, as well as a geologist and former Apollo Astronaut. He currently is an aerospace and private enterprise consultant and a member of the new Committee of Correspondence.
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I don’t think the root problem is with the Obama administration of which I am no fan. I think the problem is deeper. We have become a nation of no accountability and zero risk tolerance, yet we expect all of the benefits of a modern, energy-intensive society all while we scream and rant about the eco-consequences, i.e. schizophrenic California. The fact is there is no such thing as zero risk and there is no short term viable replacement for oil, coal, and natural gas. We need to actually learn from this accident, have better contingencies in place, have a more streamlined crisis management group, perhaps actually *gasp* practice responses to various catastrophes, apply the lessons to new and better hardware and move on.
Thank you for posting this, Anthony and truer, TRUER words were, well…never posted. WHY the might of the drilling industry
didn’t descend uponweren’t summoned to that hole in the water to pull off another miracle like, oh, Hellfighters of Kuwait after the first Gulf War…and I have complete faith they could!! I’m sitting here in Pensacola, sick at heart at the (yet aGAIN) feeble response of our vaunted and much re-tuned behemoth Homeland Security Dept coupled with officials who haven’t the first clue what it is to earn a living without asking someone for the proper permits first, all the while knowing the first of the sludge should be here by week’s end.I was an active duty Marine for 12 1/2 years and am married to a retired Marines of 30+ years service. We’ve loaded squadrons down to the tiniest screws and toilet paper onto planes to be self sufficient for a month and a half running full operations in theater, but could ANY of us get a FEMA job? Someone who might actually KNOW what that “EMBARK” box they talk about in the manual IS, less mind the fact that you have to BUILD them, that they can’t be bought?
No. Because you need a degree. Like you were a cabinet secretary.
Or something.
Manual trackback. Thanks.
The entire Obama administration reminds me of the Martin Short character in “Mars Attacks”……
Can anyone tell me why this proven technique (in neighboring Texas), using harmless microbes to eat up the oil, is not being applied right now?
If there are no logistical problems with this technique (e.g. the time it takes to breed the little critters—which can’t be long, can it?), is there anyone reading this thread who can get the idea to the people making the decisions in the Gulf?
/Mr Lynn
I do see a lot of negativity towards the Obama administration in many of the comments above. The situation may look different from the administration’s perspective. They are working very hard not to let a good crisis go to waste, but they are up against difficult odds. Easy public access to the history of the Ixtoc I accident is undermining claims of “the worst ever”. The oil is breaking up as it rises so the slick will not have the environmental impact of a tanker spill and to top it off the troublesome engineers are working tirelessly to plug the leak! The administration is doing all it can including preventing the early use of flame booms, delaying the use of Dutch skimmer ships, restricting the use of dispersant chemicals, starting bureaucratic inquires before solutions and threatening legal action to distract those working to solve the problem. All these efforts may be in vain if this spill can’t be made to exceed the daily wildlife kill ratio of wind turbines. A good crisis could easily go to waste.
/sarc off/
Dr. Schmitt makes me proud to call myself a geologist in more than one way. Geologists are often a strange bunch. Part scientist, part driller, part miner, and part engineer. Well said, Dr. Schmitt.
One of the major problems with the Obama group is that they are all “City Folks.” Most of them have never had the advantages of country living. And have never actually had to rely on the work of their hands for a living. I know the folks in NY and Chicago are so much more sophisticated, but they would starve if they ever had to actually catch a chicken for dinner without having it delivered to their plate by the waiter. No one in the current administration has a clue about what to do, let alone coordinate a response.
I agree with most of what he says and I only disagree with one point he makes. Stopping all offshore drilling is the ONLY sane thing to come out of this. We just don’t need the energy. We have centuries of natural gas in the shale deposits that we can now get. We just don’t need to take the risk at these extreme locations. Even in the absolute worst case scenario we have 5 to 6 decades of natural gas. We just don’t need the oil and gas from the ocean floor. Problem is we don’t have an energy policy we have an oil policy.
This was no accident. A BP high level manager demanded that the high density drilling fluid be pumped out before the drill steel was removed (to save some money by using it for another drilling operation). This was after the crew and captain of the drilling rig had argued vehemently against doing so. Had the drilling fluid no been removed way too soon, the methane could not have made its way up the shaft.
A monumentally stupid decision regarding a drilling operation by someone with high authority and no knowledge about drilling technology, and some unwilling to listen to the people under his authority who did have the knowledge.
The pipe is 20 inches inside diameter. The oil is coming out, but at a velocity of no more than 1 foot per second (from BP estimate of the flow rate, and my calculations.
I noticed in a clear picture of the then stuck diamond saw that just below the pipe being cut that there is a bolted flange joint. I guess that with present deep water technology there is no device which could simply unbolt that flange joint and bolt another section with valve onto the same flange.
Time, methinks, to quickly get innovative mechanical engineers and innovative deep water robotic device designers together. If they can get a diamond saw to work down there, surely an unbolting and bolting device could be quickly devised.
We need a “skunkworks” sort of team to solve this one, not petroleum engineers.
I tried to read all the comments, but am pretty weary after starting my day at 5:30 a.m., and being 67, heavy labour does wear one down a bit.
I appreciate the good Dr’s credentials and savvy, but a few items need to be pointed out, none of which I believe was addressed by any of the commentators either, though I can be corrected on this by a sharper-eyed, less weary reader.
Firstly, for him to state that “Long-term, history reminds us that naturally and accidentally released oil in the oceans disappears due to bacterial action. Remember that the fuel oil which blackened the world’s beaches as a result of World War II ship destruction disappeared after only a few years, and ocean life survived. The Gulf oil spill will not be this Nation’s most serious environmental crisis: World War II tops it by orders of magnitude in more than just this respect” is simply wrong. Period.
He left out the fact that sixty-five years elapsed: the human population has escaped its sustainable bounds, the oceans have been immensely insulted and polluted, there has been a collapse of so many species populations that many are as good as extinct, and a lot of human food species are unable to carry the demands made on them.
Secondly, we are too many consuming too much, and we deny these realities no matter what evidence is brought to light. As I pointed out in my Internet article “Who Will Feed China?” the day is not far off when the cereal- and meat-exporting nations must decide who will be served: their native population or “sold to the highest bidder”?
Finally, China will likely have the funds to outbid all others for food, so ‘democratic’ regimes will no doubt stand back and let “Mr Market” make the best decisions. Please note how you feel about that, then write me: jefasciani@shaw.ca.
This is NOT an oil spill: it is an oil volcano which cannot cease until it reaches equilibrium with its environment. That will be some time off, and until then the world’s oceans will be increasingly contaminated. Just wait until it enters the Atlantic Loop and hits the UK, then Spain and Portugal. It could mean that paired with the financial crisis, the European Economic Union is doomed. Which may not be such a bad thing, IMO. But I stray with my political opinions….
The current NWO puppet is so weak that I refer to him as the Obamamama, as he will usher in the first fascist nanny-state, but that alone shouldn’t stop him from dealing with this as it deserves. Oops! I forgot: BP was his single largest corporate campaign contributor/bribe.
All best, Joseph, 67
an ex-pat surviving in Victoria, BC
re.Fredrick Lightfoot June 2 2009 9.07 am\
as a oilfield geologist I could not agree more,
for those posters above with the conspiracy theories, would Obama’s middle name have anything to do with his oil policies?
Where do the Muslim oil producers get there dollars from anyway?
Thank you Dr. H. Harrison Schmitt for this succint summary of much that is wrong with the situation today. Sadly, both in the US and elsewhere in the western world, the application of high levels of skill and management to the difficulties of modern technologies has been relegated behind opportunistic shouting by politically motivated groups and individuals seeking either manipulative power or exploitive personal gain. Nowhere is this dismal trend more evident than in vindictive assertions by the Obama administration towards BP. What good do they think that will that do exactly?
Alas I cannot see the situation changing because the population at large no longer realises how difficult life can be without all the cosseting produced by modern industry. We can be sure however that should we continue along this road we might all become more acquainted with more difficult times.
Here is the link to Steve McIntyre’s discovery about the National Contingency Plan the EPA was supposed to mastermind in the event of a spill like this:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/06/02/epa-and-the-national-contingency-plan/#comments
Certainly, I don’t think the government is in any better shape to quell the gushing than BP or a skunkworks team of clever folk, but I resent – like the recently exposed over-paying of Census workers by James O’Keefe – the waste of government preparing the plan they were in no position to even attempt to implement. In effect, pay me to write the damn thing and then let me go back to sleep at my desk.
I also resent the fact that the existence of the plan has not been revealed by MSM so that, at least, the EPA can be called to task for the wasteful, stupid exercise. The EPA has been totally absent, AWOL, during this mess!
Doesn’t anybody here know Andy Revkin? ……..Lady in Red
_Jim says: June 2, 2010 at 4:35 pm :
“Perhaps an easy-to-cast expression, but, do you understand how stock prices work/why an equity market exists? ”
No, sir, I do not. As a matter of fact, I was hoping someone would come along and explain all these confusing things to me.
I should leave it at, for all that I care for your tone and mannerisms, but, once more…
Valuation falls during a time when a company isn’t having much success in dealing with a problem, a problem which isn’t a spill but rather a hole in the earth. I deal in mining stocks. In my experience, when a mine floods, explodes, collapses… people run. They do so because they don’t figure the company is going to be as worth as much. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes not, but BP has already had nearly two months to make some kind of progress. They haven’t affected this one iota. Investors also see where all this oil is going, what it means, and have something of how long this can continue for.
Despite all of that, however, I wouldn’t normally see a problem with this. But with oil prices dropping (with more in the pipe, imv) in a time of credit contraction, I see a fire-sale/take-over on the horizon.
“I could see a problem IF they had a stock offering before the market being offered to pay these expenses, but, I don’t think we are at that point yet. Please, correct me if I am wrong.”
What’s there for me to correct about coulds, ifs, and thinks? I’m of the mind that time and event correct speculations, so in that regard you SOL. What I can do, however, and for it’s worth, is argue why I think you’re wrong, which I just did.
Ref – Gail Combs says:
June 1, 2010 at 9:02 pm
“It is a sad sad day that a once mighty nation is now run by incompetents only interested in bring her to her knees. I hope the next election see this turned around but I am fearful the “brainwashing” of the last fifty years runs too deep.”
_________________________
The fatter we got, the worse we became. I fear the “incompetents” among US is us and the effects of being No.1 for so long will prove fatal. Adversity and hard work bring out the best in all of us but we’ve become a nation of idiots and easy riders. If it weren’t for the nasty ol’USSR we never would have gone to the moon. Say “la’Vie”!
the only solution is the ironic one … thermite (“911”) the BP well casing
The problem is the steel well casing. It organizes the upward flow, thereby preserving upward energy and momentum. Upward momentum is the real reason NO “shut off” valve solution will ever work — try to imagine a water hammer problem like you’ve never dreamt of before. And the steel well casing protects the sidewalls of the bored hole from erosion, and eventual collapse by gravity.
The failure to implement this utterly simple solution amounts to an intentional act of war. In asymmetric warfare, failure to defend against corporate-sponsored terrorism amounts to a positive act of war against our own “We the People” populations. (This goes well beyond retailiation by BP against a handful of Pentagon brass who are balking at opening up a third front in our apparently perpetual plans for war against the worlds, to the sole benefit of … China and BP! The problem of Who China? is not an immaterial one, since the modern post-Kissinger central banking system of China was financed with debt frauds of the Federal Reserve, although admittedly it is run by local agentura who are appointed by the Federal Reserve.)
When you drill a well, you “augur out” an outer hole in bare earth. Until you encounter bedrock, the sidewalls of the hole are soft sandy soil and small rocks. They will eventually collapse inward, unless a protective continuously welded steel casing is inserted between the flowing oils and the soft sandy soils of the bore. The bored hole is probably 48″ or so (bit diameter when expanded), and the continuously welded ductile steel casing is probably 36″ in diameter with 1″ sidewalls. (Actual numbers are irrelevant). Casing pipes might be 50 ft long and they would be circular welded underwater easily by a standard pipe welding machine.
The well tip, or point, has reportedly been drilled to 30,000 ft beneath the sea floor, which is another 5,000 ft. below sea level. According to a recent recent press conference by Admiral Thad Allen, on answering a question regarding construction of two pressure relief wells, he suggested that the casing is at least 20,000 feet deep. It might be that the last 10,000 feet was drilled through solid bedrock, in which case it may not need a steel casing for sidewall protection. (Typically, one encounters “lenses” of bedrock-like soils all the way down … soil is formed in layers … layers of soft soil, or oil, in bedrock are called lenses, just as are layers of bedrock-like material are, when they occur within a larger layer of soft soils.)
Based on observed videos of outflow at the orifice, there is not that much pressure differential between the pickup point (deepest point) and the well head, which is under atmospheric pressure plus an additional 5,000 ft of water pressure.
The solution is to simply remove 20,000+ feet of welded steel casing.
Without the casing to protect the sidewalls of the bored hole from sidewall erosion and collapse, the upward flow of oil directly against soft sidewalls in the bored well will first cause the oil to lose its upward organization and its velocity, and then, eventually the sidewalls will collapse. As the sidewalls erode, the bore hole widens, which slows down (and disorganizes and wastes) the upward momentum. Absent a protective casing, eventually the eroded sidewalls of the well will collapse back into the hole, and gravity will close off the well.
Breaking up momentum of the confined column of oil (slowing down its velocity) is the key factor! Divide and conquer.
The problem is not the “huge” (lol) pressure at the well point, 35,000 ft below sea level. Soils, including potentially 10,000 of bedrock, are self-supporting structures. They don’t “weigh” like a column of fluid does. Nor is the problem the apparently deminimus pressure differential between the well point and the well head, based on the observed low velocity of discharge (on an order of magnitude of one to tens of meters per second). The condition looks to be more steady flowing (called subcritical flow), than it does shooting (called supercritical).
The problem is the directionally organized velocity. We are dealing with a 30,000 foot long column of incompressible fluid that is flowing inside of a geometrically confined space. At 1 to 10 meters per second, a column of incompressible fluid 30,000 feet long, it has the same momentum (orders of magnitude here) as a freight train, of the equivalent “length,” moving at roughly the same speed (1 to 10 miles per hour).
30,000 feet of organized momentum presents a problem of water hammer, on a scale heretofore unimagined. You are not going to stop that 30,000 feet of organized momentum by flipping a switch on a shut off valve, or by throwing a few concrete bricks in its path.
So, how do we slow down flow that confined column of oil … how do we disorganize its upward momentum?
The answer is the 9-11 solution … use Thermate to remove the geometry that confines the fluid and preserves the velocities.
Amongst its other uses, Thermite was invented for underwater demolition of bridges. It was also used to melt the 16 core structural columns in each of the towers of the World Trade Center on 9-11-01, each of core columns which had 5-inch thick sidewalls, and each of which were totally melted down to flowing blobs of molten steel. Thermite turned 16 structural steel columns, each 54” x 27” with 5” sidewalls, and each with an interior crosspiece 6” thick, that were each 66 and 2/3 stories tall, into blobs of flowing molten steel, like columns of butter in a microwave oven.
(BTW, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Thermite was also used to bring down the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig itself. What a prophetic name. The fires on the deck on the drilling rig did not cause the underwater legs of the rig to suddenly soften and give way. When the rig collapsed, it first gave way underwater. Someone pulled one of its underwater legs out from underneath it. Are we to believe a deck fire melted the underwater steel? This has 911 written all over it.)
9-11 the well casing! Be it 20,000 feet long, per Adm. Thad Allen, or 30,000 feet long (determined by the depth of the last sand lens encountered during drilling) … dump Thermite on it. The underwater use of Termite will have no effect whatsoever on the reaction. If it starts a perpetual underwater fire with methane at the well head, burning perpetually at 5000 ft below the sea … great! The reaction (highly exothermic ) between the weaponized aluminum and the elemental iron in the steel casing will melt (smelt?) the casign down to an uncontained blob of molten steel that will eventually cool and lodge somewhere in the boring. Or, it can keep right on going straight down, all the way to China, for all I care. (Without addressing the question of “Who China?” I believe “China” is a partner with BP in this act of war against the people of North America … China’s role as industrial hegemon of the new century was assigned long ago by “the International” or Comintern. And China’s banking system and industrial powers are “owned” by Federal Reserve bankers, who used US Treasury debt fraud as collateral to setup the modern, post-Kissinger, banking system of so-called “China.” Again, the Who-China question looms ominously over this BP blowout.)
I would ordinarily hope that the Pentagon, and its media subsidiary, the White House, might give BP and its pro-China wellheads the 9-11 solution that they so richly deserve — Thermite (or Thermate) them.
Unfortunately, the Pentagon has been since its inception, the military headquarters for a supranational communist bureaucracy (loosely Eisenhower’s Pentagon-Wall St complex), which reorganized itself into its “Fourth” incarnation after a revolutionary paper which Trotsky (nee Bronstein) submitted in 1921 to the prior incarnation, called the “Third.” Trotsky’s paper justifies use of state-sponsored terrorism (that is to say, really corporate sponsored terrorism) to achive the world-wide communist objective, calling for dissolution of the nation state idea. His paper caused dissolution of the Third International –which was set up on principles of Lenin, with help from a young Herbert Hoover, then in London operating a Belgian humanitarian relief operation as cover for financing Lenin, Trotsky, the Bolshevik-Zionist-globalist autrocities in Russia. At Yalta, FDR, with Truman in the wings, agreed with Stalin that Third had outgrown its 1911 office buildings in Moscow, and it needed to be totally renovated and reorganized. It was agreed that the Fourth incarnation of the permanent bureaucracy (even a shadow government needs a permanent bureaucracy) should organized in the US, to be housed in the newly built CIA and Pentagon complexes. Since their inceptions, the CIA and Pentagon (and Israel, with official recognition by Truman) have been worldwide headquarters for the Zionist (=commmunist =corporatist) agenda. During the Cold War, the modus operandi was driven by Trotsky’s arguments on the practical utility of worldwide (700+) US military bases, fomenting endless 911-style state-sponsored terrorism. With this BP incident, it is apparent that the Fourth is now being dissolved. It is not by accident that the Wall St.-Pentagon complex is losing its creditibility. We are being steered into the Fifth re-incarnation of the International, a mind-control phase based on asymmetric warfare through control of media and medicine. Soon enough, we shall learn that Hollywood has moved to Peiking.
As Zionist partner of Israel, the Pentagon’s primary role, ab initio, as military arm of the Comintern, then functioning as the Fourth International, has been to protect, and the rise of Chinese hegemony. Secondary to that, the Pentagon brass know that they must eventually to destroy all memory of the United States and its Constitution and Bill of Rights. The militia mindset of our Constitution and Bill of Rights (based on individual hue and cry, citizenship and personal responsibility) is incompatible with the Pentagon’s special-forces mindset (which is based on terrorism, anonymity and darkness, and absolute top-down obedience). What the demented mimickers of our enemy forget, is that citizenship in the republic is not an option for a human being.
One thing to say for all the delays – it’s given BP time to refine their p.r. releases. Each week those digital images get a little more detailed. I sometimes wonder if their timetables aren’t being set back just a little by the time it takes their Adobe Illustrator artists to add those nifty color gradients to the increasingly high-quality images. “Hang on! Just a few more touches. Don’t start cutting yet!”
I wonder if the slow-paced, ongoing nature of this isn’t resulting in a “see change” in the way BP and other drillers are forced to do business. Namely, they are being forced to acknowledge that the general public has both an interest in – and a right to see – what’s going on down there.
While they’re at it, how about showing the scale at the well head? At first I thought the BOP was a few feet in height. Then somewhere it was represented as being a four-story structure. I take it there are various diameters of casing and pipe which telescope downward from the sea floor. It would certainly help if those using these terms knew their definitions, and explained them properly.
Excellent article! However, there is something about the BP well most “armchair drilling consultants” seem to have missed. The fundamental failure of the well stems from a loss of casing integrity far down below the failed Blowout Preventer. The use of a single casing using threaded joints, combined with a poor cement job, enabled over-pressured natural gas to enter the well bore deep beneath the sea bed. That expanding gas then “lightened” the oil and mud column and resulted in the “kick” or overpressure that now causes the well to produce uncontrollably.
Any successful operation to pinch off the flow at the sea bed surface, even by getting the failed B.O.P. to function, would result in high pressure developing inside the rotten well bore. That would likely cause the oil to find its way through the defective casing/cement job and travel to the seabed surface OUTSIDE the well casing. Such an underground blowout would be far worse than the current situation and is ONLY controllable by a “bottom kill”. That requires a relief well that intersects the well bore far below the blowout. There, heavy mud and eventually cement can be injected so gravity can do the work of killing off the pressure as the heavy column then rises up through the blown out well bore.
I think the best that can be done at this stage is the relatively loose fitting “bonnet” now being installed that would direct the oil for surface collection, but would not pinch off flow and overpressure the defective well bore. In the meantime, the intersecting relief well drilling is underway. I think a “bottom kill” has always been the only way to put this sorry well out of its misery.
Claude Harvey
Quick followup on the WWII issue.
There is a first-person account of the post-attack diving in Pearl Harbor.
I have the book (bought it at the Arizona Memorial gift shop) but cannot
spot it right now in my library. The author describes the oil covering
Pearl as “feet thick”.
If Pearl can recover from such a massive, overwhelming oil cover, so can
anyplace else.
The thermite idea is interesting, but the rest of this long comment consists of tortured conspiracy mongering on a scale that one would not expect to see on a site frequented (mostly) by rational human beings. Starting with the insane suggestion that the World Trade Center was brought down by intentionally-placed thermite bombs, ‘Molecule’ proceeds to indict most of the world, including the Pentagon and the CIA, in a some vast conspiracy to destroy the Republic.
I hope the occasional visitor does not get the impression that such rampant kookery is typical of this excellent site.
/Mr Lynn
George Turner says:
June 2, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Jim,
I could’ve sworn the Lower Marine Riser Package was the technical military term for, um, …
This blog is rated PG, isn’t it.
Good thing I didn’t have a mouthful of coffee, I’d have ruined the laptop. Learned more about the Marines than I ever wanted to know.
The gulf is between the
great knowledge and skill of
the engineers and technicians
of the oil industry as opposed by
and the incompetent greedy morons
(generally selected for their family
connections not ability)who rule the
oil industry and who prevent the appropriate
and timely application of
that knowledge and technology —
as these BP anecdotes illustrate–
http://adropofrain.net/2010/05/rumor-schlumberger-exits-deep-horizon-hours-before-blowout/
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bps-dismal-safety-record/story?id=10763042
http://blogs.alternet.org/patthomas/2010/06/03/why-bp-just-dont-care/
http://uruknet.de/?p=m66494
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m66564
a formula 1 race car driven by an
oil industry imbecile
is just as deadly as an old clunker driven
by an industry imbecile.
It is not about great technology–
it is about what is done with the technology–
The germans converted coal to oil at 10 cents a barrel.
That technology and much more has been buried to
help line the pockets of the oil company stockholders.
Joseph E Fasciani says:
June 2, 2010 at 9:57 pm
“….“Who Will Feed China?” the day is not far off when the cereal- and meat-exporting nations must decide who will be served: their native population or “sold to the highest bidder”?
Finally, China will likely have the funds to outbid all others for food, so ‘democratic’ regimes will no doubt stand back and let “Mr Market” make the best decisions. Please note how you feel about that, then write me: jefasciani@shaw.ca.”
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Food has already been monopolized: http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Industrial_Agriculture/PCIFAP_FINAL.pdf
You might want to take a look at my rambling on this subject at: http://www.opednews.com/author/author18743.html
The ten large international corporations are trying to oust the last of the independent farmers and completely “corporatize” farming. This is a first hand look at the political “dance” behind the EU war against independent farmers. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/savePolishCountryside.php
This is a history of how it happened: farmwars.info/?p=1565
And a comment on that history from the HACCP food training program: haccptraining.educationprograms.com/HACCP-and-Food-Safety-Con-Job.html
LarryOldtimer says:
June 2, 2010 at 9:09 pm
This was no accident. A BP high level manager demanded that the high density drilling fluid be pumped out before the drill steel was removed….
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What is the source of this information? (It does sound like the typical snafu from idiotic upper management)
Louisiana officials have begged the federal government not to ban drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in waters deeper than 500′. There have been enough job losses already.
Responding, the Obama administration has now banned all offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, including in shallow waters, “until oil and gas producers resubmit plans to meet revised safety and environmental rules.” http://tinyurl.com/2edupme
Standby Louisiana, while we take away 10,000+ jobs and ask you to twiddle your thumbs while the bureaucrats try to figure out what they did wrong the first time.
LarryOldtimer said: “This was no accident. A BP high level manager demanded that the high density drilling fluid be pumped out before the drill steel was removed….”
I believe that story goes back to a “60 Minutes” interview with a mechanic who admitted he didn’t hear the whole conversation and didn’t know the subject of the disagreement. There were separate reports of a decision to replace the mud with water and that decision was agreed to by the MMS, BP, and Transocean. I’ve never seen a report that convincingly linked that bad decision with the reported argument.