BP oil spill in the Gulf – Cap change update 1

As I seek reassurance that BP can actually pull off this monumentally challenging underwater maneuver I am not reassured. As I watched the robotic submarine try to take three bolts out of a cap using a socket tool it is clear that the oil industry goes on learning nothing. I have watched these exercises before and always there is a depth perception problem when judging distance using a single camera. What would take minutes on the surface takes hours on the sea floor. There should be two camera’s focused on these tasks, one for depth and one for alignment, how can they not learn these simple realities.

Lack of planning is everywhere, no place to store your tools securely, no place to put the parts as you take them off and a clear lack of understanding basic mechanical assembly is obvious. I watched as the robotic operator took the bolts loose but not off then tried to bash the cap around they were trying to remove. The goal was obviously to get it to fall apart. As anyone that is familiar with these tools and these components would know, the assembly gets loose simulating it is ready to remove but it won’t come out unless the bolts are actually removed.

It is the action of a true rookie to get all the bolts loose then smack it around only to find it is still attached and then go back and take them out. How is it possible they don’t have qualified mechanics riding shotgun on these mechanical steps. it is totally absurd and environmentally costly.

So as we foolishly trust BP to replace the assembly in the next 4 and a half days we will release 4 and a half days of oil into the gulf possibly as much as 225,000 barrels an amount almost as large as the entire Exxon Valdez spill and this time, we are doing it on purpose.

225,000 barrels is 9 million 450 thousand gallons so if you think I am being picky here, think about this. in the 6 minutes of fooling around that was unnecessary 8750 gallons of oil were released into the gulf. That is exactly what is at stake. Had they implemented my containment device, most of that oil could have been collected. This is the story all along. The US government is forced because of lack of preparedness and lack of will to count on a team that cannot be counted on.

We as the citizens of this country have to accept dispersants and crude oil pollution because we cannot get these people off their ass to try to mitigate a single barrel of oil. So far during this entire process they have not mitigated any spilled oil. They have collected oil but if it didn’t fit inside their plan of hiding it by sinking it to the sea floor, away it goes to piss on everyone. So once again, we chase the holy grail while spilling more oil than the Exxon Valdez. How can anyone think this is acceptable.

Once again they hold a gun to our head and we thank them for not shooting us with it. They say we have to leak to get this done when all along they could have done exactly the opposite and controlled and mitigated the leak that was not thier choice and now everyone in the Gulf will live with it. What a company, I am so totally digusted with them that I hope they go out of business and I hope I never have to see that BP logo again.

BP oil spill in the Gulf – Beyond profanity – Exxon Valdez 2

In the early morning hours of March 24th 1989 the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef. The resulting oil spill covered Prince William Sound in crude oil. The official estimate is highly disputed but it stands at 257,000 barrels of oil, that’s 11 million gallons.

Since that time, the only lessons learned by oil companies have been how to legally get out of paying the bills by appealing every decision made by a court and certainly paying off judges although there is no proof of the latter. It is amazing to see technology stand still in oil spill recovery even while every scientific category of study around the globe has advanced more in the past 21 years than they did in the previous 21 centuries.

Today, we are standing at the threshold of a decision to duplicate the Exxon spill in living color. The plan outline released today in a letter by Bob Dudley, BP’s latest leader in the Gulf disaster shows that BP fully intends to replace the cap on the Macondo well while implementing 0% containment for 4 to six days. It is stunning to read through the BP outline that reads more like a Christmas wish list then a plan and see that there is no containment, Nothing.

It is the height of their arrogance, today they will implement a plan to cap the well that is not easy by any stretch of the imagination, if successful, it could possibly render the well leak proof and end this disaster in four days. What are the odds on that really? BP is currently 0 for 6. It is a teaser to get us to bite and the people in charge probably will.

It is truly amazing to think that the oil released during this time, even if everything goes just as planned could be as much as 180,000 barrels and if it doesn’t go as planned, more than 7 days, full volume leakage almost doubling the Exxon Valdez spill.

So again that is; best case scenario 4 and a half days of 80% flow leakage with 0% containment and that equals at the minimum best case total, 126,000 barrels of oil leaked if everything goes swimmingly. Here is the math; 35,000 bls minus 8,000 bls for the Q4000 production equals 28,000 barrels then 28,000 bls times 4.5 equals 126,000 barrels of crude oil leaked, half of the Exxon Valdez total. in 4 and a half days.

Worst case for 4.5 days is 60,000 bls minus 8000 bls equals 52,000 bls times 4.5 equals 230,000 barrels of oil leaked even if everything goes right if you use the high-end number from the flow rate technical group.

Now, what if something goes wrong, luckily for us, BP has planned for that and they well should have given their record of not really thinking things through. The “Oops something went wrong” plan takes place over a staggering 7 and a half days which at the high-end flow estimate gives you something hard to believe. It gives you 390,000 barrels of oil released and that is a stomach churning nightmare amount of 16 million 380 thousand gallons of crude oil and untold millions of gallons of methane.

While I am a proponent of installing the flange to flange capping stack and BOP and closing the well, I never imagined that BP would plan that operation with zero total mitigation. I was completely floored by the intentional plan to spill this much oil. It is summarily criminal and cannot be allowed to go ahead.

As any of you following my blog know, I have submitted plan after plan to try to reduce the amount of oil being released and those thoughts have all fallen on deaf ears. My most resent submission is a tool that could clearly reduce this oil release by over half of its volume, It is simple to construct and rapidly deployable.

By now though it is crystal clear that BP,  regardless of what they publish about themselves constantly, is incapable of envisioning any type of environmentally responsible plan. They see oil mitigation as a waste of time, after all what is another million gallons now? The company that tried so hard to distance itself from oil will have to wait at least a century to have a prayer of selling that bullshit again.

Logical people at this point in the time line should not even possibly take this plan seriously. Unless and until BP presents a plan with continuous mitigation during installation the answer should be permission denied.

I can tell you from watching this however that the plan will be approved. If they are allowed to do this, which they will be,  even if it is successful it will devastate the gulf far beyond tar balls and nuisance oil. It will be nearly the same result as leaving during a hurricane and far worse than anyone imagines.

The plan will be approved without any mitigation and oil will flow into the gulf for days. What if BP reaches a failing point that they have not perceived rendering the well un-cappable and the current cap even more ineffective than it already is? What then?

If all of this occurs, it will be because BP wants only one thing from all of this, no way to measure the total flow. No way to document historically the amount of oil that has left the well. Their plan all along has been to obscure the facts, Brag about what the have measured and what they have collected while preventing a comprehensive flow analysis all the while acting like they are doing what we want them to do.

How hard would it have been with all this time to implement a passive collection effort? Just a simple tube to the surface that directed the flow of the oil and gas up to the ships above where it could be collected and not allowed to poison our shores? We will never know because no one ever tried.

About a month ago there was much commotion about American rage being anti-British. That was off the mark. American rage is Anti Corporation and BP’s part in fueling that rage is far more effective than its part in preventing this spill. I seriously doubt I will ever buy anything in a BP store again. This whole time as I have tried to offer real and effective solutions like Sea Floor Containment 2 and the Changeover tool, BP has ignored these and countless thousands of other ideas because they already had a plan, It is a plan to deceive Americans.

I am fully supportive of installing this cap but not like this. BP needs to contain the oil they are spilling not try to hide it with dispersing agents. They need to create a plan that is minimizes oil releases while performing the functions required to get the job done. The total absence of any oil mitigation strategies conclusively shows BP is never even thinking about it. They need to do what is right, like they say they will in their commercials that show us all how wonderful they are. I doubt anyone can find a way to do what is right while spilling 16 million gallons of oil but if any company would think they could, it would be BP.

With an 8 day weather window, the correct response is to take 3 days and construct a better plan, one with mitigation and containment. A plan that is nearly bullet proof with a contingency for every possible failure during the process. A plan that lets you back up to your current state of condition each time so you can stop and resolve a problem without feeling hurried and WITHOUT LEAKING MORE OIL!  A plan that is methodical and streamlined and is actually attainable and finally, a plan that makes things better, not worse. I am not sure BP can make such a plan.

BP oil spill in the Gulf – Riser changeover tool submitted July 8th

I submitted an idea today for a tool to allow fast changeover to the capping stack riser. I submitted it to the Coast Guard because I do have immense faith in them even though I was poking them in the eye in my last post. Conversely, I have no faith left whatsoever in BP.

I decided to submit this Idea after reading this forceful and commanding, very significant letter dated today, July 8th 2010. Any faith I had lost in the Coast Guard was 100% restored after reading it. It implies that BP has not been playing nice and it is certainly a pleasure to see them get their hand slapped for it:
Letter from National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen to BP Chief Managing Director Bob Dudley

A note: People searching for pressures and drawings should consult the links I have placed on my blog specifically the DOE link that pertains to the Deepwater Horizon data.

Email Received from Coast Guard after submission:

The following RDC BAA White Paper has been successfully submitted to the USCG:

Tracking Number: 2007729

White Paper Title: TIME CRITICAL – RISER CHANGE-OVER TOOL TO MITIGATE

Company:

Technology Area: Oil Wellhead Control and Submerged Oil Response

Date Submitted: 07/08/2010 17:34

Thank you for your White Paper submission. Your White Paper will be screened by a Governmental Inter-Agency Alternative Technology Assessment Team for possible implementation.

Your input is valuable and will be assessed thoroughly by the Government’s team. Due to the large number of White Papers that need to be screened, the screening may take some time. As soon as the screening has been completed, you will be notified of the status of your White Paper.

Any questions specifically regarding this BAA must be submitted in writing to:
RDC-BAA-DHR@uscg.mil.

Thank You,
M. J. Sisson, Captain, USCG
Commanding Officer, Coast Guard Research and Development Center

http://homeport.uscg.mil

White Paper Text:

Time Critical – Please Review by July 9th 2010

Tile: Riser change-over tool to mitigate oil losses.

Purpose: well head control during LMRP cap changeover.

Author: Steve Barrett

Design:

Designed for rapid development using proven technology the blue section at right (see drawing below) is a tool designed to allow oil capture while freeing the flange area to be worked on in preparation for the flange to flange attachment of the capping stack riser.

This tool is built from off the shelf components (dark blue) with very little welding or fabrication (light Blue). The four anchor point spreaders move the tie down cable out of the work zone for the Rovs.

Four  2.5 inch steel cables support the tool and centering wedges hold it centered inside the LMRP flange. A minimal set of collar brackets keeps the tool from settling into the pipe. A set of thick flexible seals bend out under pressure to reduce oil flow around the tool.

This tool would allow the entire flange fastening hardware removal process to be completed and would add an effective layer of mitigation during that process greatly reducing oil losses during change over. The tool is sealed below the flange to flange gasket area greatly reducing leakage during bolt removal.

The tool can be installed in a very short time span with minimal oil losses.

The tool is lowered and positioned using its hoist points, the cap is lifted off the LMRP then the tool is placed using rovs. The LMRP Cap is then placed on top of the tool and collection resumes while allowing access to the flange area in preparation for installing the capping stack.

See Image below.

Bp oil spill in the Gulf – BP, gambling with your future

Incredibly BP and the Coast Guard still have no plan to avoid creating a catastrophic oil spill when the first hurricane of the season shows up in the Gulf. What is amazing is the day to day nonsense about wildlife rescue and tar balls on this beach and that beach when we are literally staring down the barrel of a gun with the prospect of having our head blown off.

Unbelievably, here we are again with a huge corporation mindlessly ignoring the facts while gambling with our future. It is wall street all over again. When a hurricane shows up in the gulf, the plan is to separate the ships from their collection devices and have them run for safe harbor. when they do, they will start disconnecting an incredible 6 days before the storm arrives. This means 6 days of unchecked oil will flow into the gulf before the Hurricane arrives so it will have something to play with when it gets there.

Remember the crap everywhere after Katrina? what do you think 1 million gallons of crude oil is going to do in a Hurricane? It will take at a minimum of a couple of days for the hurricane to pass, probably more like four. Then it will take about six more days for everybody to get back on scene and hook up and start collecting again. So sixteen days minimum of unchecked oil flow into the gulf. All this time has passed and this is their plan.

I can think of several if not many ways to minimise the disconnection process as I have said before. What is it with BP and the Coast Guard thinking this is acceptable. They act as if it is inevitable and unavoidable. I would hate to think that this is the same Coast Guard that will defend our country in the event of an attack. What will they do then, go home 6 days before the bad guys get here? What is the problem here, why isn’t the administration willing to kick BP out of the leadership role. How can they not see that this is the most ineffective response to anything in history, except probably Katrina, It will be a long time before I forget what I saw there, it was shameful.

Hello, this is America, you know, we build airplanes and rockets, we went to the moon, we have the space shuttle and the Hubble space telescope, we have the mars rovers….., you know, the red white and blue, remember? Where is that spirit in this endeavor? Where are the people we used to have in this country that would stop this, the ones that could fix this and not let it happen anymore? It is all so stunningly stupid.

The plan is to leak oil for 16 days during a hurricane. Does that really sound like a plan? Sink a ship and attach the hose to it while you are gone, that is a plan. Build a seafloor containment system and put the oil in there when you can’t put it on a ship, that is a plan. I mean what the hell anyway, run a pipe 200 feet out of the water and light it on fire, then you could tell where you were going on the way back, that is a plan.

It is not “a plan” to do nothing. Doing nothing is not “a plan”. You have spent three months constructing a plan and building all these systems so when a hurricane shows up you can disconnect the hoses and pour the oil into the gulf until you get back. Great job guys, remind me not to ask you for help fixing my toaster.

So what happens when the Hurricane hits, surprise, the relief wells have to be abandoned. I wonder if anyone figured that into the time line for completion. If you look at the record it is obvious that a hurricane could strike in mid July then one could strike in early august and then another in late august and one in September leading to, under this incredible plan that is not a plan, 8 straight weeks of no collection and no progress on the relief wells. It could easily end up that way.

It is mind numbing that BP and the Coast Guard just accept this as the way it is. Normal people would see this risk and figure out another way forward that eliminates the risk. Normal logical people would not think that being disconnected for 16 days straight was acceptable. I am not talking miracles here. There are ways ahead, smart ways to plug the well, ways to capture the oil on the sea floor but this is not the plan, nope, the plan, is leak until you can get back. It is just unbelievable.

BP oil spill in the gulf – Reality check, what is going on and why

When you have corporations running the TV news, it is no wonder you don’t get the truth. If you want the truth, you have to learn the facts and take an educated guess on your own since it is clear by now that the story is all being manipulated everywhere.

The number one headline for the last two weeks about BP should have been “BP Doesn’t Have Enough Capacity” and the understanding that everyone reading the news should have is BP could stop the leaking cap tomorrow but then they would have to dump the oil into the water at the surface because they can’t handle the volume of oil that would come from a non leaking cap.

Add those two things together and it is clear that it is not necessary to leak oil to make the cap work, they are leaking oil because they don’t have enough capacity. In other words, BP lied from the very beginning. They said the cap had to leak because of the hydrates formed in the sea water reaction with Methane but the reality is the cap has to leak because they need to reduce the amount of oil coming to the surface. BP wonders why their stock price is falling.

BP as a company is acting in the most despicable manner one could comprehend, pretending that the cap has to leak to keep the water out when all along they knew full well from the images coming from the bottom that the leak volume far out paced their production capacity at the surface and if they didn’t know that what the hell are they doing in the oil business. The real question you are left with then is why didn’t they grab more production

It is clear that BP is successfully distorting the story so that major news companies (IE: news corporations probably invested in BP) feel all to comfortable reporting what they are told rather than finding the truth. So this is what you get from big corporations they stick together, crap in your back yard and tell you it doesn’t smell bad.

The other truth you should be aware of is the possibility that there is a down hole blowout below the blow out preventer that is leaking into the bedrock and possibly out around the well pipe casing. Good details about the plan going forward can be found in the press conference of June 18th.

This blowout if it exists was probably generated by BP as just one of many stupid mistakes that were careless and unnecessary. The blowout would have occurred when BP engineers were trying to kill the well at full flow last month. The blow takes the form of a pipe that has split open under pressure and it is likely leaking a substantial amount of oil into places we can’t see.This is why BP keeps saying that the relief well is their only real hope. and this is also why they are drilling down to 18,000 feet to intercept the well.

If you drill a relief well to high up you drill through the pipe and weaken it you could cause the well pipe to fail and separate from the hole. In this case the pipe would be driven up out of the sea floor and ejected from the hole leaving the hole opening covered in mud with no way to find your way in again. That would leave you with a leak from a mud hole and no way to cap it. This is the reason everyone is ignoring stopping the leak by pressurizing the well head.

These are the best “read between the lines” conclusions backed up by the collection of facts obtained over the last month. The one other thing that is clear is BP has never taken the idea submission process seriously. They misinformed everyone and followed their own plan, not really considering any of the submitted ideas as anything more than PR. This however is not at all true with the Coast Guard effort. If you plan on submitting an Idea, avoid the BP process and submit it directly to the Coast Guard using their more complicated procedure and they will keep you up to date, by email, on your idea status as it is processed.

BP oil spill in the Gulf – Want the leak stopped, It is up to you

There comes a time when nothing gets done without public pressure. Right now, BP has a device developed by Oil States Industries standing at the ready that can stop the leaks from this well. BP posted an image of the device on their web site and then removed it. The oil states device combined with a special BOP developed by Cameron Industries called the capping stack BOP is ready now and should be deployed now.

There is no need for more testing, no reason to wait and there are plenty of reasons to force BP to get in gear and replace the cap. The first reason is, it is possible right now and may become impossible in the days to come because of the weather window. BP is not interested in stopping the leaks because they are financially motivated to prevent it from happening. It will take your voices en mass to make the difference, please make them count.

There comes a time when people need to stand up and say enough is enough. If you want this leak stopped and you think it is impossible, think again. There is a device sitting in a warehouse right now that could stop the leak cold but BP and our team of geniuses refuse to put it in place before the Helix Producer is hooked up and processing oil. All these smart people are doing a very dumb thing. It is the wrong decision and all that is left is massive public pressure.

If you are sick of this whole mess, write your Congressman and or Senator. Tell them to replace the well cap now and not wait. If they do wait, the odds are very good that we will experience an uncontrolled spill the magnitude of which has never been seen in our hemisphere and the lasting damage to the gulf will be unrivaled for centuries. Forget about fixing it in your lifetime or your children’s lifetime, we are talking 75 years plus of devastation if the well head is allowed to run unchecked for the 16 days it would be unattended during a hurricane passage.

BP, the Coast Guard and NOAA try to gloss over the effect of a hurricane hitting an oil slick but it will not just be “An oil slick”, it will be the biggest oil slick in history. Oil will be spread all over everything for miles in every direction. Two and a half times the Exxon valdez spill will be released in 16 days which is about the same amount of oil that has been spilled since April 20th. Yes I mean the spill size will be doubled. During this time BP will release millions of gallons of potentially toxic chemicals into the water with scientifically unknown consequences for reasons that have nothing to do with anything but BP’s oil spill liability.

The time has come for people to act, The time has come to send a strong message to Washington. There is a narrow window left to avoid this devastation and if you don’t act and you the people of America don’t speak up this chance will be squandered and the consequences will be devastating.

Right now as I write this, there are four tropical depressions threatening the Gulf spill zone any one of which could become a hurricane. One of those depressions has a 50% chance of becoming a hurricane in the next 48 hours. If the new cap is installed in the next few days it could limit the amount of oil released during the site abandonment by restricting the flow out of the well. If this cap is not installed now, chances are it will never be able to be installed and the difference in leakage will be historically criminal.

Make a difference, get involved, notify your public officials, the cap should be installed now, tell them not to wait. Time is of the essence and you have the only power that can make a difference, the power of numbers.

If you don’t know what to write, copy and paste this article.

Bp oil spill in the Gulf – BP stalling to prevent legal measurement of leakage

By now it should be pretty clear that no company the size of BP is this stupid. BP is clearly trying to prevent government officials from measuring the actual flow coming out of the well by stalling the process of accurately measuring it. At this point we know that it is above 25 thousand barrels a day but we don’t really know by what factor.  Is it 10% higher or 20%? The governments flow rate technical group says it is between 35,000 barrels a day and 60,000 barrels but that is an estimate, far different from a legal reality.

BP is not the devil here, right, this is exactly what a corporation does. Nothing is more important than the bottom line and certainly no number is more significant in the bottom line than total number of barrels leaked.  Each barrel leaked could cost the company between $1100 and with a determination of gross negligence, as much as $4300 dollars a barrel based on EPA regulations set in place after the Exxon Valdez spill. In the leakage equation, every barrel really counts. At the low figure of $1,100 dollars a barrel, the difference in the fine between 25,000 barrels a day and 30,000 a day over a 90 day period is a whopping 495 million dollars with the total fine being 2.97 billion dollars. It is totally in BP’s interest to never let the real number be known and as you see, they are doing their best at preventing it.

One thing is clear from the process that has unfolded over the last two and a half months, BP is dragging their feet on purpose. Only recently did I realize why. How else can you explain all the obvious oversights and seemingly endless periods with no forward progress.  No company could really be this bad at reacting to a spill. It is clear that the collection effort has three specific legal goals. Establish a baseline amount of oil that did not leak into the Gulf by collecting and documenting barrels captured. Make the initial rate of loss impossible to legally determine by changing the equation through the action of cutting off the riser pipe. Make the final rate of loss legally impossible to define by finishing the relief wells before it can be measured.

It is inside these legal goals that finally you can align all that has come before and have it fit an intelligent plan. It is a plan of immense deception. Politicians use these tactics all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Republican senate was advising BP on the way forward based on their actions and clearly they would have every reason to participate in the charade since they are all heavily invested in oil. Here is the play book; First, pretend you are interested it what people want you to do, work on it constantly all the while manipulating the course of progress until in the end you have prevented success all the while steering the goals of the masses off a cliff while benefitting yourself. It should be clear to anyone by now that the purpose of BP jumping into the fray was not to help at all but to diminish the effectiveness of completing the task. This is exactly what BP is up to.

Lets start off with reality; Right now, today, BP cannot process all the oil leaking from the well head. BP as a whole has systemically underestimated the volume of oil leaking from the well all along.  If the existing cap on the well head didn’t leak, the well would begin to pressurize and the cap would be blown off the well anyway. In this scenario it would be rapidly apparent that BP did not have enough production capacity on the scene but this is not what has happened is it. BP created the Top Hat to make the argument that the cap must leak to prevent water from entering the pipe. this allowed them to leak all the oil they could not process effectively preventing it from being measured.

I have spent hours trying to design a cap that would not leak and have successfully done so but no one was interested in it. It took BP several weeks to take the lines already hooked up to the well head and process oil through them backwards to the Q4000, the rig they were already hooked up to. Instead of just reversing the flow through the pressure tested lines they re-rigged the whole system and they now feed it to a burner and if I had to bet, I would guess there is no certification of the oil amounts being burned. BP will effectively get credit for processing oil they never burned or collected because we are not verifying the measurements. Remember, each barrel counted as not leaking could reduce BP’s legal liability by $1100 dollars, this is a huge incentive to manipulate the flow numbers and I am sure that if someone looked, they would find them doing just that. Remember with the burner there is no way to verify the amounts collected later. It is not like the tankers that transport oil from the Discoverer Enterprize to shore. Those ships can and are being metered as the oil is removed, I wonder who is keeping track of that?

The July 2nd briefing by National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen makes it perfectly clear that the device to stop the flow of oil into the gulf is ready and the well could be capped immediately meaning stop the leaking and collect all the oil;

Adm. Thad Allen: The sequence will go as follows: We hope by the end of next week to have a 53,000 barrel per day capacity with the existing cap.  At that point we will be in a position to make a decision on whether or not to remove the existing containment cap and put another cap on that will allow us to recover all of the oil.

For reasons that are probably unclear to everyone except BP the decision to install that cap is being delayed until the Helix Producer is online producing oil through the floating riser and the kill line connections. Why would any sane person delay that process?

Remember that any delays bring on the possibility that a hurricane will prevent further progress on oil recovery. If you were BP why would you ever want anyone to know the real flow numbers. If you did assist in those being determined wouldn’t your shareholders have the right to sue you for wanton disregard for their interest in the company?

BP is stalling, the appropriate action is not to wait at all. If there is a cap that can be installed and not leak it should be installed. If that cap can restrict the flow of oil without a danger of further calamity it should be restricted. If the current schedule is allowed to drag on, what will happen is a hurricane will show up and lead to the largest single oil spill in history, again, not including the one they have already made. It is a fools game to wait to cap the well. If the legal measurements are never taken, it should be clear to any one that BP will pull an Exxon legal move appealing the case for 20 years until they get the right judge to limit their liability because, as they will argue time and time again “No one really knows what the actual leakage rate was.

Bp oil spill in the Gulf – BP lies so well the government believes it

I read the summary report on the unified command web site daily. One heading that always kills me is this:

BP Continues to Optimize Oil Recovery Rates from its Leaking Well

Under the direction of the federal government, BP continues to capture some oil and burn gas at the surface using its containment dome technique—collecting oil aboard the Discoverer Enterprise etc…….

What is absolutely ludicrous about this statement is no forward progress has been achieved or can be achieved using the current systems.  Both systems reached production capacity shortly after they were implemented. The capacity of all systems involved is about 25000 barrels a day, something like 60% of all the oil leaking. During the past few weeks they have had high and low points but they reached 100% capacity many days ago and have never achieved it since. The statement “Continues to Optimize” probably doesn’t mean “Achieving Nothing” to most people.

This constitutes either ignorance on the part of the unified command or a buy in to BP’s misguided public relations nightmare, either way, it is certainly not what I want out of my America. To a very real extent, the people involved in this effort are contractors to BP. The moment passed long ago when BP’s dismal leadership should have been replaced by the governments team of best and brightest. It is amazing enough to watch as BP makes zero measurable progress for weeks while blowing oil into the gulf through intentional leaks. When it is followed by the news media and the people who write about it seem not to notice, there is a certain conflict of interest.  I have compiled a chart from Data that clearly shows BP’s unimpressive results.

In more than 70 days, we still are collecting just over 50% of the oil on average. The ugly brown color in the graph is the total amount of oil that has flowed into the gulf. It is estimated backwards from a flow 3000 barrels per day higher than the flow rate technical groups lowest current value of 35,000 barrels per day which occurs on the graph right after the riser is cut off around the first of June.

The green and yellow portions of the graph show BP’s total collection accomplishments over the whole period from April to current day. As you can see, even when BP is collecting 25,000 barrels a day they are still releasing 15,000 barrels into the gulf. There is no refinement occurring, it is all BS.

In the event of a hurricane, what you would see is all brown because they would disconnect from the collection efforts for a period as long as 16 days. While it seems like that was the way it was before they started collecting, reality is, the flow would be 20% higher or more than it was before the riser was cut off. During this time, They would release 35,000 barrels a day or more and exceed the Exxon Valdez spill total by 2 and a half times even at the minimum value. the maximum value of the flow rate technical group is 60,000 barrels a day, about 5 times the Exxon Valdez spill in 16 days at that rate.

For a company whose fines are directly related to the amount of oil they leak, they don’t seem to motivated to stop the flow. I am not sure how BP is manipulating the press so successfully, probably because they advertise with the companies that do the news. It would be interesting to see the relationship between the headlines and their advertising money. We know the connection between the legal decisions and the stock ownership.

In the end, people need to decide for the future of America, are we going to continue to let corporations piss on us daily or are we going to move progressively ahead so we never have to bail out the very companies that abuse our environment, our pension funds and our pocket books while ruining the future of our children.

Make no mistake, if this was a smaller company, the response would have been more effective, more robust and more team oriented. It is exactly because BP is so big that their first thought is always to manipulate the facts, intimidate the players, lobby the politicians (many of which they own) and alter the historical record. Little companies just can’t afford to do these things.

The list of corporate villains is now is long and distinguished, BP, Enron, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Countrywide Financial( now Bank of America)….. the list is goes on and on and is stomach turning. BP now proudly takes its place near the top. The real question we should ask right now is; do we want to keep proceeding in this manner. With all the calls for smaller government there should be calls for breaking up monopolies and pushing measures that promote government to contracts with smaller companies. This mess, the giant company one, it is all of our making.

The risk to the future lies in these enormous companies with their huge numbers of shareholder interests and the never-ending list of ways they falsify reality. As Americans, we have seen this now many times, they buy TV time and advertise themselves to us, they change the public record and rewrite history as well as influencing elections and legal decisions, the only real question is can we learn anything from it? These super companies do us no good at all. It is time to recognize that it is the super company factor that is the problem. It is time to stop it and never let it happen again.

BP sells fuel to our military, buys commercials on all major networks, pays into all major political campaigns, lobbies our government and employs hundreds of thousands of Americans. All these things could be done using 100 smaller companies. Their influence is so great and the pressure they can apply is so enormous that they can even change the official government statements on a government website to imply that no preparations, minimal progress, lack of forethought and manipulation of the facts equals optimization. It is well past time for a change.

BP oil spill in the Gulf – BP plans Gulf Devastation

Two and a half times the Exxon Valdez spill is about to be released into the Gulf on purpose. It is coming, the Devastation of the entire Gulf Coast will happen and in fact, it has been planned.

Even if BP somehow manages to connect the Helix Producer to the new riser manifold before a Hurricane strikes it will make no difference. The Coast Guard has made it clear these ships will not be allowed to stay if winds associated with the hurricane are forecast to be 40 knots or greater. So, what is BP’s plan when they have to leave, it is impossible to comprehend.

All ships will be disconnected from the recovery lines and they will head to port. When they disconnect they will allow all the oil they are collecting to be spilled into the gulf unrestricted. There is no plan to try to stop it in any way. Yes, I really just said that. It is a plan that fits all the rules and exercises caution and will save lives, but really, that is not true is it. What it really is, is a plan that gives a giant oil company the rights to puke on everyone to save their own ass.

It is at times like this in history that we read about the hero. The person that comes to fight the Leviathan and struggles to subdue the monster before it is too late. My message to you; You are the hero. What we need now is the giant voice of god to yell down from the heavens to the people running this battle, “FIGHT TO THE LAST, SAVE THE COAST AT ANY COST” If we can’t get god, we will have to do with the giant voice of Americans.

We have fought so hard in war so many times for some numbered hill in some distant land. We have fought to defend our country from tyranny, fought for equal rights for all and let us not forget the fight for independence. Why, I ask you, Why would we not fight to defend our country from a giant oil spill. It is hard to believe we can’t find the qualified people willing to accept some additional risk and the qualified scientists willing to help.

Is this really what we have become as a country, a bunch of wimps that turn and run in the face of danger. Aren’t there people that would risk their lives to try to stop this. Hell yes, I would. Put me on the deck of that ship and I will pilot it through the Hurricane. I will keep processing that oil to keep it out of the gulf until the ship sinks, the connection can’t be maintained or the storm passes what ever comes first and this is what we all expect of BP, isn’t it.

I am willing to bet, if you put out the word, you would have more volunteers than you needed. Then again, why not hire people for a lot of money to do it. You know, “Contractors” like they used in Iraq or Afghanistan. You can’t tell me that in World War II that they didn’t refuel a ship at sea in really bad weather. Thousands of lives have been lost in this country for much less than this goal, protecting the Entire Gulf Coast from a huge, relentless oil spill that we can not only predict, but we are planning. Can’t anyone on the team of geniuses really summon up the courage to fight this.

The United States coast guard is responsible for saving the lives of people at sea. In this role as National Incident Command the rules of the Coast guard surely outline safety procedures that make it against the rules to risk your life, even for a good cause. Well a good cause is presenting itself here. I am sure in war, the coast guard doesn’t go back to port at forty knots.

If you have the power to stop this, then it is your responsibility to your fellow countrymen to not let this enormous spill destroy their lives. I can’t help but think if we were talking about Washington DC, or Virginia beach, the action plan might be a little different. What if we were about to spill 25 million gallons of crude oil on the capital building, do you think the plan would “Run away when it gets windy?

The problem with the plan as it stands right now is it is way to over cautious. We should not be running from a hurricane that might not hit just because the Coast Guard has set the 40 knot gust standard. Also, every ship in the BP flotilla should stay on station and just drop their connections only at the 11th hour when a hurricane is imminent.

Imagine what happens if everyone evacuates and then the storm turns away and it causes a huge spill but no hurricane ever gets near the well, I imagine people will feel quite stupid about that.  I am sure they would be equally devastated if they did not act quick enough, this is why they need people to volunteer. this takes the decision out of the hands of regulators and puts it in the hands of fighters. It puts the decision in the hands of people comfortable with controlling their own destiny.

There are risks everyday that are not worth the fight. This is one time where taking a chance has huge implications for many peoples futures as well as the threat to the beautiful planet we live on. To me, the risk is worth the gain, the risk is worth the chance of stopping the destruction of the Gulf Coast, I am sure more people feel the same way.

BP oil spill in the Gulf – Faking success

I just watched the BP rov maneuver for 20 minutes to place itself in front of the only place on the LMRP cap where oil is not leaking from the seal. This is because the seal is damaged and is allowing sea water to seep inside. Wait did I say sea water is seeping inside? I thought that would kill the cap instantly, Guess that is just another lie.

How do I know sea water is seeping in? well, the pressure outside the cap is about 2000 Psi, the pressure inside the cap is unknown but a fair guess can be made about what it is not. It is not 10,000 psi. I say this because high pressure differentials in a case like this show up as violent streams of fluid that cause turbulent intermixing.  It is clear if you watch what is going on with the Cap that there are minimal high velocity events but for the most part, the pressure at the sea floor inside that cap must be nearly the same as the surrounding pressure. This is verified by the fact that there is no oil coming out of that seal and in fact it means the pressure inside is slightly less.

The seal on the cap fits relatively loosely around the flange in a manner that allows for a  very large leakage rate at the seal itself. If it was a barn door, it would be open. So you can be sure that if no oil is coming out, water is going in. Two things should be clear from this video, the first is, BP will do anything to manipulate the message and second, there is no problem with water flowing into the well stream. I have long suspected that the flow would draw some water through the seal at times.

All of this points to so many pieces of disinformation that have been spewed by talking heads that it is hard to digest it all in one sitting. I have always thought the whole hydrates argument was misleading and had another purpose and now they are proving it. It is clear now why the BP Cap has leaked from day one, it is because they use the leaks to limit production. This is also why they installed the four valves in the top of the cap. In the briefing just after Deployment you can hear Kent Wells discuss the benefit of those valves by saying “It worked out different than we though and keeping those valves open gives us better control” or something of that nature. This is because the valves of course, cut the flow up the pipe when they are open and increase it when they are closed.

So all along what has really been going on is a classic dog and pony show. Everyday BP reports the numbers and everyday the news media like a bunch of idiots repeats those numbers as if they mean anything. No one ever asks the obvious question, why is that cap leaking like the Titanic? The answer to that question is simple, it leaks so the Discoverer Enterprise doesn’t exceed its processing capacity and so the Cap doesn’t blow off the well. In fact, it leaks exactly the amount necessary to prevent exceeding capacity.

It is the biggest lie BP has told and they continue to tell daily, “We Capped the Well”. It is clear from the fact that four valves remain open that at least half of all the oil coming into that cap goes out a hole somewhere so it is pretty clear from that observation that the max flow number is double the recovery rate of the Discoverer Enterprise or higher.  This is just a simple observation, the cap is flowing half of the oil out through leaks so we are collecting the other half. At this point then you have to wonder why those valves were placed on top of the cap in a difficult place for the rovs to reach. I mean wouldn’t anyone that thought about it for a second have known that the valves would be obscured by the oil leaking around the Cap? Yes they would, they placed them far from the seal and not on the sides of the cap so BP could minimize the video evidence of the leak.

For weeks I have watched them maneuver in for an ultra close up view of the cap seal assuming they were trying to see the leakage rate or examine the seal integrity but as every photographer knows you can use the camera to frame what you want people to look at. It is clear as they focus on the seal section with no leakage that all they are doing in that close up view is keeping everything else out of the shot, like the hundreds of gallons a minute of oil leaking out the open valves on the cap.

If you take all this and add it up it is clear that the overall loss rate from the well is near 100% of production on Discoverer Enterprises best day and that is 15,000 barrels of crude so when the cap comes off, it is a total of 30,000 barrels leaving the well a day, that is a huge number, it is 1 million 260 thousand gallons a day or a flow rate of 14.5 gallons a second.

In a hurricane though, you would also disconnect the Q4000 which is producing nearly 10,000 more barrels a day. Add that to the other losses and multiply it times the 16 or so non production days associated with the storm, 6 to shut down, 6 to restart and 4 for the storm itself and all totaled in the end you have 26 million 880 thousand gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf. A leak two and a half times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill in just 16 days.

I am done thinking someone is going to prevent this disaster. It is coming unless by an act of god no hurricane comes to the well site this season. If one does show up, you can write off the gulf coast for years to come and all this wasted time will be recorded as the largest corporate blunder in history. it will probably redefine how people feel about oil for generations and will be the driving force behind alternate energy conversion. This spill is exactly why we need to rethink our energy policies. Is it worth 10% of our coastline and 20% of our fisheries to drill for oil in the Gulf?

Like I have said before, I will never buy gas from BP stations or any of its affiliates again. I feel as if our only vote that counts is in our wallet. I see there is a concerted effort to lobby the public on the ineffectiveness of boycotting BP, I wonder who could be the driving force behind that little tidbit of misinformation. It is part of capitalism to allow market forces to make determinations about which companies continue and which fail, I hope people are not suggesting that being a good capitalist is being communist again, that is all comical.

BP clearly knows they are lying and obscuring the facts. They know they have no intention of capping or sealing the well. They know they are using poison to disperse the oil so it can’t be seen and everything they are doing amounts to fraud in the court of public opinion.

Bp could easily change this but they don’t because to them, the one most dollar significant fact that must be obscured is the total number of gallons spilled as fines in the future will be based on this number. The face on all these lies is BP, that is who I am going to stop doing business with and if that hurts people associated with BP, maybe, those people should decide if they can live with that, just the same way we all have to.