The oil spill

[BigBeard]

I'm no enviornmentalist by any means, but right now for some reason this oil problem in the gulf of mexico has me really bothered.  They say that they are drilling a 'relief' well or some crap like that?  I don't know that much about oil or the process it takes to get it out of the ground.  What I do know is what everybody else knows that oil and water don't mix.  So how much oil is going to end up on the ocean?  Are we going to have a huge floating oil slick when this is said and done?  I saw video on the news and I mean that stuff is really coming out of there, how are they going to stop it?  This is going to get way worse before it gets any better. 

I know this topic could be a little 'political' but it needs discussed.  It's a bad situation.  Do we really need oil that bad?  Does BP and any other oil companies drilling offshore need that much more money?  I mean do they really know how much oil is going to be released till this is said and done?  And what if the JB Weld doesn't hold and it keeps leaking?  This has the potential to kill many living creatures, including us humans.

I don't know why I'm so hot and bothered by it at the moment......  seems like some people just get to play by different rules

 

[Nightclub Dwight]

You ought to be pissed off about this.  Its a damn tragedy.  I'll stop here as I have nothing constructive to offer other than a lot of bad words.  I think I might get kicked off the forum if I were to say what I really think.

 

[AGWAN]

Its already killed millions of creatures. its wiped out an ecosystem and cost thousands their jobs.

I'm not just blindly opposed to offshore drilling. as its usually really well controlled.

what more or less happened here is BP was so greedy. so lazy... that they waited for America to foot the bill to clean it up.

it makes me sick.

 

[BigBeard]

Ok so I'm in my early 30's  so how much longer do I need the earth for?  Best case I live to be say 100.... Sounds like a good number.  Ok so that would be 2077.  At the rate we are going, I don't think that I will be able to live out all my years before someone else's stupidity kills me!!!  I guess I shouldn't quit smoking after all.  Hell someone else's mistake is gonna get me anyway, you know? 

Oh jeez..... sorry we broke the ocean.  Oh the fish and shrimp and whales and sharks?  Dead.  Yeah...... see............. whoops.........Hey look over there weapons of mass destruction!!!!!!  Why aren't you looking over there?  I said there are weapons of mass destruction.  Oh, fell for that one already, huh?

 

[m4rk0]

It's really disgusting!!

and it is not just here, check this:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/14/more-oil-spilled-in.html
Imagine BP's Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil disaster happening every single year, with little or no public outcry, no media coverage, and all but silence from government and the companies involved. Welcome to Nigeria.

 

[OzziePete]

With the GUlf of Mexico oil spill, what casued it?

Was it negligence on behalf of BP or was it a situation where all things just went jhorribly wrong when they struck a new well.... and got a gusher they couldn't contain?

I know that BP's response after the spill started was more  a case of 'uh -oh  how do we fix this'  :icon_scratch: , but I'm just curious how the darned thing got so out of control.

While the BP company might now be saying "Oh we'll pay whatever it takes..." I'd also draw attention to those in the USA,  to a corporate that got themselves in serious do-do in Australia due to asbestos health claims and when pushed, agreed to set up a fund for compensation then effectively closed down their corporation in Australia and placed itself outside of the jurisdiction. That company was James Hardie.

Be careful that BP's operations in the USA just suddenly don't go offshore and outside of the grasp of your legal system, leaving behind a shelf company that's worth $2, to administer the fund they agreed to..... Considering the billions that they've agreed to pay, it might be worth a bit of legal tap dancing to sidestep the issue of actually paying, by having a bankrupt company as it's American subsidiary. Or, maybe, just maybe, BP will 'do the right thing' and pay what they said they'll pay without so much as a whimper in protest...

Sorry if I sound cynical, but James Hardie was a mighty big corporation in our building industry before they went to The Netherlands and left behind a broke Compensation Fund. Took a LOT of public, political & industrial pushing and shoving to get James Hardie back to the table and meet their obligations to the asbestosis victims. Their Board's behaviour was obscene considering that people were on their death beds trying to sign Affidavits saying they wanted compensation.

 

[jimh]

Sorry if I sound cynical, but James Hardie was a mighty big corporation in our building industry before they went to The Netherlands and left behind a broke Compensation Fund. Took a LOT of public, political & industrial pushing and shoving to get James Hardie back to the table and meet their obligations to the asbestosis victims. Their Board's behaviour was obscene considering that people were on their death beds trying to sign Affidavits saying they wanted compensation.

Just like to point out they are no relation to me by the way.  :icon_tongue:

Cheers
James Hardie (thats my real name)

 

[Death by Uberschall]

Just blame Bush, everybody else does.  :doh:

I'm from Louisiana and I can tell you it is totally ridiculous how all of this is being handled. Bobby Jindal (governor) is a great asset to our state. He's a do'er not a say'er. But he keeps getting hit by ridiculous obstacles. Example: He's been begging for sand burns to be built to protect the marsh lands and coast line from an environmental disaster.  But the EPA was holding him back because they had not done their environmental impact analysis of the effect of those temporary sand burns. Does it take a rocket scientist to figure out which would have a worse environmental impact of the marsh lands and coast?  Hmmm, temporary sand burns or millions of gallons of crude oil devastating the natural ecosystem?? Tough call.
 :doh:

President Obama should have suspended the Jones Act and allowed those skimmer ships from other countries in to help a long time ago. BTW, he still hasn't done that.

In a nut shell, it should have been "all hands on deck" from the start. Work at stopping the leak along with a massive clean up effort while protecting the marsh lands and coast line. Once that has been accomplished, then figure out what went wrong, do all the finger pointing you want, and make those responsible accountable. All this political crap needs to stop for now.

I know this forum does not like political post, so I'll stop here.

 

[stubhead]

OF COURSE they're engineering a "bankruptcy" -

The model is Union Carbide, or even Donald Trump - he's declared bankruptcy THREE TIMES, each time defrauding investors, insurance agencies and the U.S. government (that's YOU, taxpayer stooge)...

What BP is doing right now is shuffling their assets around, quietly & internally, so that the very evilest of the rich (or richest of the evil, same diffie) can still waltz away with enough millions to live out a life of golf in the Bahamas, sailboats & private schools for the kiddies. The reason they're dawdling on payouts to actually-suffering fishermen and such is because once they go belly-up, ALL the assets go "POOF!" into a black hole of international finance obfuscation.

Do you seriously expect BP big boss man Tony Hayward to drive a Yugo & eat bologna sandwiches? Grow up, that's not the way it's done.

Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson: "live(s) in Bridgehampton, Long Island, New York and also own houses in Vero Beach, Florida and Greenwich, Connecticut."*

On Union Carbide's responsibility to pay for damages: "In August 2009, a spokesman for Union Carbide said "Union Carbide had no role in operating the plant at the time because India’s government required the factory to be owned, managed and operated by employees of Union Carbide India Limited."*

Doodlebugs, that's TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER - the fuckers STILL HAVEN'T PAID....

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Anderson_%28chairman%29

Google "corporate personhood" and "corporate welfare" if you want to get mad and punch walls for a while - you/we will never get to these people....

 

[Superlizard]

I don't blame Bush, I blame Reagan.

Why? 

I dunno know, it just sounds kewl.  And you just know he's part of the Illuminati...

Well either way it's gotta be a conspiracy of sorts... has to...

But seriously, folks...

Our current prez is following right in the footsteps of one infamously inept Jimmy Carter.

If he keeps it up, he'll beat said Carter in malaising.

Furthermore, BP has been threatened to pay up billions to the US gov't... think us average Joe's will see
any of that money?  hah!

Oh yeah and one more thing - hoping the gov't will help:  ask Bobby Jindal and Jan Brewer how that works.

 

[BigBeard]

Well I have been saying since 2000:  Phil Lesh in 2012!!!  If you don't know who Phil Lesh is, google him

It's just a bad situation where somebody is gonna make a lot of money at average Joe's expense.  And I do forsee that BP will close up shop in the US to avoid paying out any money.  And what money does get paid to the US gov't will not get trickled down to fix this horrible enviornmental problem that greed has caused. 

I don't know, I'm gonna go look in my back yard for weapons of mass destruction.  Heck they weren't in Iraq, maybe they are in Western Pennsylvania!!!!

 

[Lucky #7]

I'll preface this by saying I know nothing about oil drilling.

That said, my friend that plays fiddle at an open mic I go to is a deep water drilling expert for a major oil company.  He's the engineer they send out to make the decisions on this type of stuff.

Anyway, in a nutshell, he said the type of well they dug isn't exactly stable and even less so in the environment they chose to use it in.  He says his company doesn't even drill that kind of well because of the issues it can cause.  In his opinion, they almost had to everything go right for something bad to not happen.  Obviously everything didn't go right. They're pissed because there are probably going to be massive layoffs at his company due to the complete shutdown of ALL drilling in the Gulf.  He said as far as he knows BP is the only company that drills those types of wells and they do it a lot.

And here's something to think about.  Last I looked this one, and I think this was around the 30-40 day mark, hadn't even cracked the top 20 worst oil spills.  That's a scary thought.


And of course the Russians think we should nuke it.  :laughing7:

 

[JaySwear]

a pretty decent article about the people on the oil well.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/18/oil.rig.explosion/index.html?hpt=T1

 

[tfarny]

This is an absolute tragedy of course. On the one hand, yeah people should have been more ready for this. How does that happen? By good serious government oversight from the start. The kind that companies will complain about and lobby against. They are not your friends, they exist to make money for shareholders. On the other hand, you drill 5000 feet underwater where no human can ever venture, into massively huge pressurized beds of oil, this is gonna happen once in a blue moon regardless of how much oversight you have. People are surprised? They thought it was safe? Cmon if you didn't think it was a calculated risk to allow this stuff you are an idiot. The gulf has been polluted from industry for a long time.
It's a totally unsurprising side effect of what we like to call "driving", it's just a heartbreaking bitch to see it happen. What you can guarantee is that this will happen again and again - as the middle east runs dry (within 30 years), every last spot on earth is going to get the drill. The alternative to that is a radical change in lifestyle, if you don't believe that you are just kidding yourself. Nuff global enviro-politics. Peace.

 

[elfro89]

Do we really need oil that bad?  Does BP and any other oil companies drilling offshore need that much more money?  I mean do they really know how much oil is going to be released till this is said and done?  

the answer is yes, the demand for oil is huge. Demand far outweighs supply. It's only natural companies are gonna try like hell to get as much out the ground as possible. There is no real way to stop the current market. An alternative energy source is a must, everything that is ever made ever has used some kind of byproduct from oil. From tar on the roads to pens, plastic and even the finishes on guitars. even the process of making guitars requires grease and lubricants for the machinary to cut the body and even the machines used to cut down the trees. Oil is used in every form of manufacturing. And there is millions of companies who use byproducts for this purpose. this doesnt even include planes and ships. a flight from new york to london uses around 24000 lbs of fuel. how many of those flights are made each year. and how many planes are in the sky? how many ships are in the sea, and how many cars are on the road.

The situation is really really bad, and thats why its so important to fiind an alternative energy source and recycle as much as possible. Industry will come to an almost standstill without oil, and no industry means no jobs, and no jobs means increased poverty which leads to a whole heap of other problems.

 

[bigguspickus]

what oil spill?

 

[GoDrex]

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-16-2010/an-energy-independent-future   -  brilliant! :icon_thumright: