BP CEO: we're leaking a "tiny" amount of oil

[nkdlunch]

:lmao
doesn't this guy look like Mr. Bean. They should do a reality show of this guy handling the crisis



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/14/bp-ceo-gulf-oil-spill-rel_n_576215.html

Tony Hayward, BP CEO: Gulf Oil Spill 'Relatively Tiny'

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/cartoons/2010/1/28/1264694379950/BP-chief-Tony-Hayward-at--001.jpg

Don't worry about that pesky oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP CEO Tony Hayward says: It's "relatively tiny" compared to the "very big ocean."

Hayward launched this novel defense of the worst spill in U.S. history during an interview with the Guardian that deserves a full read, especially with BP fighting the Obama administration's push to make the company pay the full tab for cleanup costs. The BP chief executive acknowledged for the first time that he expects his future with the company to be "judged by the nature of the response" to the current crisis; this may help explain his stream of delaying tactics and excuses.

"We will fix it. I guarantee it. The only question is we do not know when," Hayward told the Guardian. "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume."

Before calling the oil spill analogous to the Apollo 13 flight and comparing it favorably with a deadly 2005 BP rig explosion in Texas, Hayward said BP is "increasingly confident" that they'll find a way to stop the oil flow, and that the company has already prevented significant amounts of oil from reaching the shore.

BP's CEO isn't alone in downplaying the effects of the spill. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) told the Associated Press his state is ready for tourism dollars -- just don't get too close to the water while waterskiing.

"We don't wash our face in it, but it doesn't stop us from jumping off the boat to ski," Barbour said.

[rjv]

he can't be that stupid but he sure is one awful liar.

[boutons_deux]

flow velocity academic "experts" estimated from the delayed-release BP video that the flow is not 5000 but 50,000 to 80,000, with one estimate over 100,000.

[Winehole23]

he can't be that stupid but he sure is one awful liar. It's our stupidity he's counting on, and with respect to that, "the lies" are opportune: today it is reported that volume of oil spilled could be 10-15 times bigger (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-14/bp-spill-may-exceed-estimates-u-s-congressman-says-update1-.html) than previously estimated.

[baseline bum]

Nice toupee, Tony.

[EVAY]

DAMN!

I mean, this is pretty close to the definition of CHutzpah, isn't it?

[RandomGuy]

It's our stupidity he's counting on, and with respect to that, "the lies" are opportune: today it is reported that volume of oil spilled could be 10-15 times bigger (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-14/bp-spill-may-exceed-estimates-u-s-congressman-says-update1-.html) than previously estimated.

NPR got the scoop by actually contacting a guy who studies flow dyanamics for a living and literally wrote the book on it.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126809525&ps=cprs


Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry.


Contract workers load oil booms onto a boat to protect marshlands from the massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico on May 13, 2010 in Hopedale, Louisiana. The BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig continues to leak what may be an unprecedented amount of oil and gas into U.S. waters.
A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day — much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.

The method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent.


Given that uncertainty, the amount of material spewing from the pipe could range from 56,000 barrels to 84,000 barrels a day. It is important to note that it's not all oil. The short video BP released starts out with a shot of methane, but at the end it seems to be mostly oil.

That would make this worse than the Valdez spill so far.

[Drachen]

WOW! Does he need a wheelbarrow to lug those things around???

[TDMVPDPOY]

if its tiny, then how come his company cant even fix it? lame

[Winehole23]

if its tiny, then how come his company cant even fix it? lameHis point was, it's tiny compared to the Gulf of Mexico. Which is true, but trivial.

[Winehole23]

That would make this worse than the Valdez spill so far.One Exxon Valdez about every four days.

[admiralsnackbar]

His point was, it's tiny compared to the Gulf of Mexico. Which is true, but trivial.

It's really beyond trivial and well into negligent... the gulf is the keystone of coastal economies in TX, AL, LA; FL and MS.

[boutons_deux]

# The New York Times

May 15, 2010

Scientists Find Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf

By JUSTIN GILLIS

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.

“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months,” she said Saturday. “That is alarming.”

The plumes were discovered by scientists from several universities working aboard the research vessel Pelican, which sailed from Cocodrie, La., on May 3 and has gathered extensive samples and information about the disaster in the gulf.

Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.

BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.

“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

The undersea plumes may go a long way toward explaining the discrepancy between the flow estimates, suggesting that much of the oil emerging from the well could be lingering far below the sea surface.

The scientists on the Pelican mission, which is backed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that monitors the health of the oceans, are not certain why that would be. They say they suspect the heavy use of chemical dispersants, which BP has injected into the stream of oil emerging from the well, may have broken the oil up into droplets too small to rise rapidly.

BP said Saturday at a briefing in Robert, La., that it had resumed undersea application of dispersants, after winning Environmental Protection Agency approval the day before.

“It appears that the application of the subsea dispersant is actually working,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said Saturday. “The oil in the immediate vicinity of the well and the ships and rigs working in the area is diminished from previous observations.”

Many scientists had hoped the dispersants would cause oil droplets to spread so widely that they would be less of a problem in any one place. If it turns out that is not happening, the strategy could come under greater scrutiny. Dispersants have never been used in an oil leak of this size a mile under the ocean, and their effects at such depth are largely unknown.

Much about the situation below the water is unclear, and the scientists stressed that their results were preliminary. After the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, they altered a previously scheduled research mission to focus on the effects of the leak.

Interviewed on Saturday by satellite phone, one researcher aboard the Pelican, Vernon Asper of the University of Southern Mississippi, said the shallowest oil plume the group had detected was at about 2,300 feet, while the deepest was near the seafloor at about 4,200 feet.

“We’re trying to map them, but it’s a tedious process,” Dr. Asper said. “Right now it looks like the oil is moving southwest, not all that rapidly.”

He said they had taken water samples from areas that oil had not yet reached, and would compare those with later samples to judge the impact on the chemistry and biology of the ocean.

While they have detected the plumes and their effects with several types of instruments, the researchers are still not sure about their density, nor do they have a very good fix on the dimensions.

Given their size, the plumes cannot possibly be made of pure oil, but more likely consist of fine droplets of oil suspended in a far greater quantity of water, Dr. Joye said. She added that in places, at least, the plumes might be the consistency of a thin salad dressing.

Dr. Joye is serving as a coordinator of the mission from her laboratory in Athens, Ga. Researchers from the University of Mississippi and the University of Southern Mississippi are aboard the boat taking samples and running instruments.

Dr. Joye said the findings about declining oxygen levels were especially worrisome, since oxygen is so slow to move from the surface of the ocean to the bottom. She suspects that oil-eating bacteria are consuming the oxygen at a feverish clip as they work to break down the plumes.

While the oxygen depletion so far is not enough to kill off sea life, the possibility looms that oxygen levels could fall so low as to create large dead zones, especially at the seafloor. “That’s the big worry,” said Ray Highsmith, head of the Mississippi center that sponsored the mission, known as the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology.

The Pelican mission is due to end Sunday, but the scientists are seeking federal support to resume it soon.

“This is a new type of event, and it’s critically important that we really understand it, because of the incredible number of oil platforms not only in the Gulf of Mexico but all over the world now,” Dr. Highsmith said. “We need to know what these events are like, and what their outcomes can be, and what can be done to deal with the next one.”

Shaila Dewan contributed reporting from Robert, La.

[Nbadan]

Arrogant assholes...


BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.

“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

Fuck BP....

[Nbadan]

Meanwhile the Oil could kill Florida's coastal environment on both sides - can you say Ironic Jeb?


New satellite images show oil starting to enter the Gulf Loop current, which would pull it through the Florida Keys, into the Gulf Stream and up to Palm Beach County, according to a scientist tracking the oil spewing into the gulf.

The new images, taken Saturday by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "clearly that the oil is being pulled into the Loop current," according to a release from Mitch Roffer, an oceanographer who runs Roffer's Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service and has been providing daily updates on the spill's movement.

"We still don't know how long it's going to take to get around to the Keys and then the east coast of Florida - it just remains to be seen," Roffer said Saturday. That process, which is difficult to predict, would take at least a week, and possibly several, scientists say.

Richard Dodge, the dean of the Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center, said he'd seen Roffer's report and "it looks to me like he's right. "It hasn't quite happened," Dodge said, noting that currents might still shift to force the oil away. "But from the satellite photos that I saw, it sure looks like it's going to happen."

[Nbadan]

Meanwhile the Oil could kill Florida's coastal environment on both sides - can you say Ironic Jeb?


New satellite images show oil starting to enter the Gulf Loop current, which would pull it through the Florida Keys, into the Gulf Stream and up to Palm Beach County, according to a scientist tracking the oil spewing into the gulf.

The new images, taken Saturday by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "clearly that the oil is being pulled into the Loop current," according to a release from Mitch Roffer, an oceanographer who runs Roffer's Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service and has been providing daily updates on the spill's movement.

"We still don't know how long it's going to take to get around to the Keys and then the east coast of Florida - it just remains to be seen," Roffer said Saturday. That process, which is difficult to predict, would take at least a week, and possibly several, scientists say.

Richard Dodge, the dean of the Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center, said he'd seen Roffer's report and "it looks to me like he's right. "It hasn't quite happened," Dodge said, noting that currents might still shift to force the oil away. "But from the satellite photos that I saw, it sure looks like it's going to happen."

Palm Beach Post (http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/oil-from-spill-may-be-entering-gulf-loop-690795.html?cxntcid=breaking_news)

[boutons_deux]

BP's Own Investigation Found Problems With Another Gulf Oil Rig

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/15/bps-own-investigation-fou_n_577668.html?view=print

[boutons_deux]

Eliminating tax subsidies for oil companies


http://climateprogress.org/2010/05/16/eliminating-tax-subsidies-for-oil-companies/

[boutons_deux]

Eliminating tax subsidies for oil companies


http://climateprogress.org/2010/05/16/eliminating-tax-subsidies-for-oil-companies/