Scientists Find Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf

[larsonstdoc]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/us/16oil.html?src=twt&twt=nytimes


300 FT. THICK!!!

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.


Times Topic: Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (2010)
“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.”

[Freeski]

Here's a crazy thought: what if Katrina was some kind of test/prep for this catyclsmic oil leak, all with the grand plan to turn the entire Gulf of Mexico into one mammoth oil field. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Cancun and Havana - all gone. Enclose the gulf with giant dams between Miami and Havana, and Havana and Cancun. Best part of all is the shipping of that oil through the Panama Canal and high speed transportation routes throughout North America.

[PhoenixJunta]

I wonder if they had paid scientists to pop out at the right time to say this. Watch the environmental (Global Warming folks) to go nuts. 300 feet? Damn.

[larsonstdoc]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp=37168286&#37168286

VIDEO---BP HITS ANOTHER SNAG IN EFFORT TO SLOW OIL LEAK

  They say in the video that they have a good handle on where the oil under the surface--HAHAHA--lie!

[chrisfromchi]

How exactly can oil....be under the deep water? temperature and pressure?

[Freeski]

I wonder if they had paid scientists to pop out at the right time to say this. Watch the environmental (Global Warming folks) to go nuts. 300 feet? Damn.

I hate that they use our hard-earned money to f**k up the planet.

[larsonstdoc]

Here's a crazy thought: what if Katrina was some kind of test/prep for this catyclsmic oil leak, all with the grand plan to turn the entire Gulf of Mexico into one mammoth oil field. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Cancun and Havana - all gone. Enclose the gulf with giant dams between Miami and Havana, and Havana and Cancun. Best part of all is the shipping of that oil through the Panama Canal and high speed transportation routes throughout North America.

Only one problem with your idea--HURRICANE SEASON STARTS IN 2 WEEKS.

[Freeski]

Only one problem with your idea--HURRICANE SEASON STARTS IN 2 WEEKS.

Never waste a good problem.

[larsonstdoc]

Never waste a good problem.

LOL Freeski

[Anti_Illuminati]

This is going to kill all of the algae in the entire ocean over a few years.

70% of the Oxygen in the Earths atmosphere comes from all of the oceans algae.

Kill the algae and you have total extermination globally.

They could blame this on increased CO2 instead of decreased Oxygen.  Watch for that talking point.

[Satyagraha]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/us/16oil.html?src=twt&twt=nytimes




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.

Excuse me?
Why the hell does BP have any say in whether scientists can measure the flow? This is just incredible; they have a major f*ckup and we're begging them for permission? Does ANYONE in Washington have any balls anymore?

[Freeski]

This guy has a lot of details and a timeline for anyone interested. Well sourced, too.
----------

Sunday, May 9, 2010
BP / Gulf Oil Spill - How Big Is It?
 
Quite a lot bigger than the estimate being uncritically quoted throughout the media of 210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) per day. That was the last "official" estimate made by NOAA and accepted by the Coast Guard back on April 29 (see timeline below). Before that, the Coast Guard estimates ranged from 336,000 gallons (8,000 barrels) per day, to zero, to 42,000 gallons (1,000 barrels) per day. None of these estimates has been publicly explained or substantiated. And on May 1, the Coast Guard and NOAA stopped trying to estimate the spill rate, with Admiral Thad Allen saying, "Any exact estimate is probably impossible at this time." http://blog.skytruth.org/2010/05/bp-gulf-oil-spill-how-big-is-it.html

[H0llyw00d]

Excuse me?
Why the hell does BP have any say in whether scientists can measure the flow? This is just incredible; they have a major f*ckup and we're begging them for permission? Does ANYONE in Washington have any balls anymore?

NOPE, all balls bought and cupped for....there may be 1 or 2 dangling freely out there

[Jon W]

If this happened in China, the Head of BP would've been executed already.

What is our gov doing? Kissing their asses, still.

Who owns who?

[larsonstdoc]

  Soetoro, It's time to call the Russians and go with the nuclear option on this oil spill!!!

[s3d1t0r]

  Soetoro, It's time to call the Russians and go with the nuclear option on this oil spill!!!

...or skip calling the Russians and just pull a General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove.

That's wing attack plan 'R' - plan R for Robert.

[agentbluescreen]

  Soetoro, It's time to call the Russians and go with the nuclear option on this oil spill!!!

Creating an even weaker "containing-crater" over the top of the Three Billion Barrels of oil leak is no solution at all.  They drilled into what they thought would be the lower side of a huge gas-filled DOME over the oil. Blowing a huge F-ing crater into the ocean floor over this already now-existing manmade leak is not only another environmental nightmare all it's own, it's a notion that's never going to (and rather totally unlikely to) work.  It might most-likely make this even much worse, in even worse ways.

The only sane way to fix this is to drop a vice down there and clamp it off or to start digging transporting and dumping a human constructed mountain of rock over it, to cover and seal it. (but no - they wanna save 'their oil' to pay for it)

This means the entire US Army should be drafted or transferred to the Corps of Engineers at home, here and already been doing that a month ago.

Soetero isn't a commander in chief he's merely an impeachable copy-reader.

[agentbluescreen]

All they've been working on for a month is ways for them to save their damn oil and/or damn oil well.

This Thad Allen should be fired.  This should have been an eventuality the US ARMY Corps of Engineers had ready contingency plans for.  Once again (Katrina) your multi-Trillion Dollar stinking, destructive, mass-murdering, incompetent, traitorous, self-serving Pentagon/CIA Mafia have left America TOTALLY DEFENSELESS!!

"Defending America" from al-Fu@%ing CIAduh was an even BIGGER MISTAKE now...  eh??

[Guns Equal Freedom]

 

[agentbluescreen]

This makes 9/11 and the al CIAduh bug hunt look like a barn fire and a cheap shoplifting bust.

The entire JCS should be fired for not having a defense strategy ready and already in execution for this all too foreseeable "national defense" contingency by now...

What a shame, total stupidity, ignorance, corruption, treason and incompetence.

[Guns Equal Freedom]

This makes 9/11 and the al CIAduh bug hunt look like a barn fire and a cheap shoplifting bust.

The entire JCS should be fired for not having a defense strategy ready and already in execution for this all too foreseeable "national defense" contingency by now...

What a shame, total stupidity, ignorance, corruption, treason and incompetence.

The problem probably started all the way back before Obama.

[agentbluescreen]

  Soetoro, It's time to recall what the Russians did

This is ALREADY a Chernobyl-class disaster and it requires a Chernobyl-type solution, this catastrophic drilling disaster requires the immediate massive construction of an emergency-permanent containment sarcophagus - NOW!

Thanks for the mind-jog Larsonstdoc

The simple fact that both oil and gas are coming out means that the well is (already) too high in the deposit and useless anyways.

[larsonstdoc]

This is ALREADY a Chernobyl-class disaster and it requires a Chernobyl-type solution, this catastrophic drilling disaster requires the immediate massive construction of an emergency-permanent containment sarcophagus - NOW!

Thanks for the mind-jog Larsonst

You're welcome.  I picked that up off another thread here and I don't remember where.  They were talking about how the Russians used nukes underground and MY QUESTION AT THE TIME WAS HAD THEY USED IT UNDERWATER.  Nobody answered the question.  I was worried about all the sea life.  Nukes and life don't mix (radiation).  I have also heard (don't know if it's true) that this gulf find is (at this time) the largest find in the world.  I agree.  This is a Chernobyl-type disaster.  My opinion is that they should call the Russians because of their experience with using nukes on these type of situations. 

[agentbluescreen]

Ya - but there's nothing constructive about any wasteful, useless, valueless, poisonous, always totally self-destructive and purposeless suicidal-nuclear weapon, unless you want to split-wide-open a meteor in outer space (from underground on it)..

Those abominable crap have no terrestrial uses whatsoever.

The only possible constructive solution here is immediate and total burial.  We need to patch a bad hole in our planet, not make it, nor make a bigger one.

[larsonstdoc]

Ya - but there's nothing constructive about any wasteful, useless, valueless, poisonous, destructive and purposeless nuclear weapon, unless you want to split-wide-open a meteor in outer space (from underground on it)..

The only possible constructive solution here is immediate and total burial.  We need to patch a bad hole in our planet, not make it, nor make a bigger one.

  Understood.  On the other thread I asked if they could dump a 1000 helicopter loads of used cement over the hole and I didn't get a response.  I don't know if it would work.  At one point GP said they were going to shoot rubber up in there.  Why didn't they do it?  Now they are so desperate that they are asking for suggestions from the general public.

[agentbluescreen]

 Understood.  On the other thread I asked if they could dump a 1000 helicopter loads of used cement over the hole and I didn't get a response.  I don't know if it would work.  At one point GP said they were going to shoot rubber up in there.  Why didn't they do it?  Now they are so desperate that they are asking for suggestions from the general public.

Well we ain't no generals but we sure need to be public  

Fire all these idiots, to hell with BP, get ALL the troops home and start digging and dumping as fast and as much as we all can  - YESTERDAY!!


That well is an unmitigated disaster - there is no time to bother saving, fixing, rehabilitating nor controlling it.  

BP and Halliburton are promising to write (themselves) cheques this planet can't afford to cash.

[Jackson Holly]

This is going to kill all of the algae in the entire ocean over a few years.

70% of the Oxygen in the Earths atmosphere comes from all of the oceans algae.

Kill the algae and you have total extermination globally.

They could blame this on increased CO2 instead of decreased Oxygen.  Watch for that talking point.

Anti-Illuminati is exactly right here ... and it may not take a few years. I read somewhere that the most reliable rate of escape now is equal to an EXXON VALDEZ every four days!

In one year every ocean in the world will be affected to some degree ... ever increasing die-off all the way up the food chain ... totally spoiled beaches, toxic chemicals in the winds, etc, etc, etc.

If they don't stop this katie-bar-the-door.

[larsonstdoc]

  You probably know agentbluescreen that there is a pipe at least 15,000 ft long from this hole to the oil below.  It just makes sense that if I had a hole in my well in my back yard that they couldn't repair that the best thing to do is to TRY TO BURY IT.

  A friend of mine has worked in the oil business all of his life.  He said that in deep oil finds like this, Brazil and Norway require extra shut off valves, etc.,JUST IN CASE SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPENED.  You know BP and it's engineers knew this.  Why didn't they do it?  

  He also told me that most of the oil in the gulf (the existing platforms--about 4000), is between 700 and 1500 feet deep. On this disaster, BP DUG OVER 20,000 FT BELOW (because that's where this find is).

[larsonstdoc]

Anti-Illuminati is exactly right here ... and it may not take a few years. I read somewhere that the most reliable rate of escape now is equal to an EXXON VALDEZ every four days!

In one year every ocean in the world will be affected to some degree ... ever increasing die-off all the way up the food chain ... totally spoiled beaches, toxic chemicals in the winds, etc, etc, etc.

If they don't stop this katie-bar-the-door.

  Hurricane season starts on June 1st---two weeks from now.

[agentbluescreen]

We should have been already dumping a huge, large high-circle of rock around the ruptures to serve as a circular containment rim within which to drop and cast a concrete sarcophagus over the entire disaster site.

This project must begin now, post-haste, before the rupture worsens.

This planet IMMEDIATELY AND URGENTLY needs all of our troops, defense manpower, civil homeland security, FEMA, national guard and naval defense resources HOME and redeployed on dealing with this MOST URGENT AND CRITICAL-EVER NATIONAL DEFENSE CRISIS - NOW!

Iraq and Afghanistan have been there for millions of years they do not need any more mass-murderous criminal babysitting.

We need to protect and defend our country (and planet) from BP and Halliburton.

[larsonstdoc]

Agentbluescreen, I decided to see what the UK papers are saying about this.  BP is still in the twilight zone--talking about dumping chemicals deep into the sea.  They talked about the "junk shot" a week ago.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/16/louisiana-oil-spill-toxic-chemical-bp

Louisiana oil spill: toxic chemical fear over BP's clean-up efforts
Officials, scientists and fishermen warn of threat to sealife in the Gulf of Mexico
  
Tweet this (99)
Peter Beaumont
The Observer,    Sunday 16 May 2010
Article history

Chemical dispersant spreads after being released into the Gulf of Mexico this month. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Scientists have raised urgent new concerns over the latest efforts to mitigate the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the oil rig explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon. Latest efforts to limit the environmental damage involve an untried deep-water technique, using a toxic dispersant that they believe may damage ocean life. But the new method has so far only succeeded in ratcheting up the growing controversy surrounding the spill.

On Friday, Barack Obama appeared to be losing his patience with oil company executives and officials who have been trading blame since the rig exploded. "I will not tolerate more finger-pointing or irresponsibility," he said in the White House rose garden, flanked by members of his cabinet. "The system failed, and it failed badly. And for that, there is enough responsibility to go around. And all parties should be willing to accept it."

Approval by the US Environment Protection Agency (EPA) for the pumping of tens of thousands of litres of the chemical Corexit 9500 deep on to the seabed early yesterday comes despite warnings from Louisiana state health officials, scientists and fishermen that the technique is untested and potentially hazardous to marine life and the wider ecosystem. Louisiana officials claim BP and the EPA ignored their concerns about how the chemicals may harm the sea floor.

This round of attempts to both stop the spill and deal with the oil being spewed out follow the failure to capture the leak by the lowering of a 100-tonne metal box over the damaged seabed wellhead.

In the coming days BP will attempt a "junk shot". This involves pumping the damaged blow-out preventer lying on the ocean floor – which failed during the explosion that killed 11 workers – with golf balls and other material to clog it up before closing it with heavy mud.

But it is the use of the chemical dispersant in such depths that has become the increasing focus of concern. Until now, Corexit 9500 has been approved for surface use only.

Chemical dispersants break oil into small globules, allowing it to disperse more quickly into the water or air before currents can wash it ashore.

Corexit 9500 has been identified as a "moderate" human health hazard that can cause eye, skin or respiratory irritation with prolonged exposure. Its makers also warn that it has the tendency to "bioconcentrate" in the environment.

Louisiana health and hospitals secretary Alan Levine said federal regulators have been too quick to dismiss worries about the chemicals: "Our concerns about the use of these dispersants underwater is based on the fact that there is virtually no science that supports the use of those chemicals. We're trading off what we know is going to be environmental damage on the surface for environmental damage of a level we don't know that is going to be under the surface."

Carys Mitchelmore, an environmental chemist at the University of Maryland Centre for Environmental Science and a co-author of a 2005 US National Academies report on dispersants, told Nature: "No one will tell you using dispersants won't have an effect. You're trading one species for another. The long-term effects are really unknown. The dispersant has inherent toxicity. And these oil droplets tend to be the same size as food particles for filter-feeding organisms."

"Dispersants… are toxic to marine life, so there are trade-offs to consider," David Pettit of the Natural Resources Defence Council told the Washington Post last week. "And just because humans can't see oil on the surface doesn't mean it's not still in the water column, affecting marine life from plankton to whales."

Another toxiciology expert, Dr William Sawyer, who has made a presentation to the US lawyers representing environmental and other interests after the spill has added to the concern: "The dispersants used in the BP clean-up efforts, known as Corexit 9500 and Corexit EC9527A, are also known as deodorized kerosene," he told the group. "With respect to marine toxicity and potential human health risks, studies of kerosene exposures strongly indicate potential health risks to volunteers, workers, sea turtles, dolphins, breathing reptiles and all species which need to surface for air exchanges, as well as birds and all other mammals. Additionally, I have considered marine species which surface for atmospheric inhalation such as sea turtles, dolphins and other species which are especially vulnerable to aspiration toxicity of Corexit 9500 into the lung while surfacing."

Meanwhile, concern was mounting that substantial slicks of oil might be on the point of reaching Louisiana's fragile marshlands. TV footage late on Friday from a helicopter flight over Louisiana's barrier islands showed miles of slick being washed by waves through wide passes between islands directly toward the wetlands of Terrebonne Parish.


  

[larsonstdoc]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7127612.ece

  I think these jackasses at BP are more concerned about protecting their 15,000 long pipe than to stop this leak.

Desperate BP hopes rubbish will stop leak

An oil soaked bird struggles against the side of the HOS an Iron Horse supply vessel
Tony Allen-Mills
2 COMMENTS
RECOMMEND? (2)
ENGINEERS at BP were last night making a second attempt to cap the leaking underwater oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, less than 24 hours after a new method of stemming the flow by deliberately clogging up a faulty seabed valve hit a snag.

The British company was making a second attempt to insert a mile-long catheter into the leaking pipe by remote control in forbidding conditions 5,000ft below the surface.

Technicians using joysticks are operating robotic submersibles that will attempt to place a 6in-wide relief pipe into the remains of a 21in pipe that used to connect the wellhead to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on the surface.

The aim is to use the relief pipe to pump a mix of densely packed items such as golf balls, knotted rope and lumps of plastic into the oil well’s blowout preventer — the giant safety device that failed to work when the Deepwater rig exploded last month.

The catheter gambit has emerged as one of the British company’s few remaining short-term options. It is struggling with mounting political pressure and public anger at its failure to halt the spread of 210,000 gallons of oil a day that continue to menace hundreds of miles of America’s Gulf coastline.

The Obama administration stepped up the pressure on BP last night with a demand for “immediate public clarification” from Tony Hayward, the chief executive, over the company’s intentions about paying the costs associated with the spill. “The public has a right to a clear understanding of BP’s commitment to redress all the damage that has occured or that will occur in the future as a result of the spill,” said Ken Salazar, the interior secretary.

Freezing underwater temperatures and high pressure foiled an earlier attempt to place a containment dome over the leak. The conditions caused a build-up of ice and other problems that blocked the pipes intended to pump the oil to surface tankers.

The company is drilling a relief well that will eventually seal the leak, but that may take up to three months to complete.

Attempts to contain the surface oil slick with floating booms and controlled burn-offs have proved more successful, with only comparatively minor damage reported.

Political tension had increased sharply last week after President Barack Obama condemned oil company executives and officials in his own administration for their handling of the crisis.

The government has authorised, for the first time, the use of chemical dispersants to prevent oil reaching the surface.

Officials acknowledged, however, that there had been little research on the effects of the chemicals underwater and the experiment may be stopped if there is evidence of environmental damage.

[agentbluescreen]

Agentbluescreen, I decided to see what the UK papers are saying about this.  BP is still in the twilight zone--talking about dumping chemicals deep into the sea.  They talked about the "junk shot" a week ago.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/16/louisiana-oil-spill-toxic-chemical-bp

Louisiana oil spill: toxic chemical fear over BP's clean-up efforts
Officials, scientists and fishermen warn of threat to sealife in the Gulf of Mexico
  

Peter Beaumont
The Observer,    Sunday 16 May 2010

Chemical dispersant spreads after being released into the Gulf of Mexico this month. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

[color=red]In the coming days BP will attempt a "junk shot". This involves pumping the damaged blow-out preventer lying on the ocean floor – which failed during the explosion that killed 11 workers – with golf balls and other material to clog it up before closing it with heavy mud.
[/color]

It was the concrete foundation UNDER this useless, unreliable, stinking, already damaged wellhead shaft "blowout preventer" that is likely full of gas bubbles, unsound and was ALREADY failing the pressure testing when the first of the rising naptha-gas bubbles blew the damn rig up!

Plugging the broken garbage with FU@%ING golf balls may just blow it off of the ocean floor leaving an even larger improperly cast cement drill shaft open wider!

For all we know, that damn wellhead could blow the hell off that screwed-up shaft casting tomorrow.

TO HELL WITH SAVING THEIR DAMN WELL!

What if it blows off a week or a month later?  The leaking junk down there is already bad enough, we need to keep it down there and bury it all now.

Sooner, not later!

[larsonstdoc]

It was the concrete foundation UNDER this useless, unreliable, stinking, already damaged wellhead shaft "blowout preventer" that is likely full of gas bubbles, unsound and was ALREADY failing the pressure testing when the first of the rising naptha-gas bubbles blew the damn rig up!

Plugging the broken garbage with FU@%ING golf balls may just blow it off of the ocean floor leaving an even larger improperly cast cement drill shaft open wider!

TO HELL WITH SAVING THEIR DAMN WELL!

What if it blows off a week or a month later?  The leaking junk down there is already bad enough, we need to keep it down there and bury it.

We understand this and they don't.  Or is it just their GREED?

[Jackson Holly]

VIDEO from Anonymous-Coward @ Godlike Productions:

WORSE THAN WE THINK

http://video.godlikeproductions.com/video/WORSE_THAN_WE_THINK

[agentbluescreen]

We understand this and they don't.  Or is it just their GREED?

Dude they're already passed strike three, this is a walk they don't deserve and a risk we can't take.

[larsonstdoc]

VIDEO from Anonymous-Coward @ Godlike Productions:

WORSE THAN WE THINK

http://video.godlikeproductions.com/video/WORSE_THAN_WE_THINK

WOW!  YOU MUST WATCH THIS VIDEO!!!! 170,000 LBS PER QUARE INCH.  I was just joking the other day that I might have shoreline property in Iowa if this thing blows.  THE METHANE GAS IS WHAT SCARES ME---much more flammable than oil.

[larsonstdoc]

Dude they're already passed strike three, this is a walk they don't deserve and a risk we can't take.

  Just reading the papers around the gulf area, they are pretty hush about this. This is a MAY DAY MAY DAY event.

[jeremystalked1]

Only one problem with your idea--HURRICANE SEASON STARTS IN 2 WEEKS.

I wonder how this is going to affect hurricane formation?  More or less powerful?  Also, will any hurricanes that form end up ruining ecosystems in the area due to the oily residue they scatter everywhere?

[Jackson Holly]

It looks to me like they are trying to keep a lid on this thing (pun intended) to prevent all-out panic. Really ... how in hell are they going to cap this thing? I mean their billion-dollar, triple-failsafe valve system has already failed, their platform exploded and laying on the bottom of the sea. I think we are about to see the world's first crude oil and gas volcano and it will continue to erupt until the field is emptied.