Wednesday, June 23, 2010

BP's Gusher

The latest twist is that a collision with an underwater submersible has damaged the cap that BP installed on their underwater gusher.  That means that oil is now flowing into open water at a rate of 5,000 barrels per day.....oh wait no its 10,000 barrels a day.....oh wait no, its between 60,000 and 100,000 barrels a day.  However they don't really know.

Every one of BP's bandaids that have been applied to this spill have now failed and oil is flowing into he gulf unchecked.  We are told that this could continue until BP drills 4 'relief well' in August.

I am not an engineer with specialized knowledge of deep sea drilling.  I have no expertise on anything to do with anything here.  However it doesn't take any specialized knowledge to know that every one of BP's approaches has resulted in abject failures.  Has it occurred to anyone that if drilling four new holes in the ocean floor is as successful as all other attempts to stop this spill, then we could be looking at even more oil in the gulf?

Like i say i don't know the technical details of what a relief well means.  I'm sure that it will be done very safely and the odds of them opening up another gusher a mile below the surface are absurdly low.  Does anyone really blame me for being so cynical?

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