Deepwater Horizon - Transocean Oil Rig Fire

[New Orleans Lady]

too funny,,,Bounty the quicker picker upper,,,, Go for it "tony the poney"

[alvis]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/20...epwater-spills

Maybe this is why Tony Hayward and Doug Suttles don't know what the hell they're talking about regarding oil "leaks" a mile underwater. Because they're basing things on surface spill models instead of deep sea spill models.

Edit: WSJ article: http://professional.wsj.com/article/...-wsj#printMode

[alvis]

A bit of info on the user interfaces used on the ROVs.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37913126...r_in_the_gulf/

[BLISTERS]

Thank you BP. We won't forget for generations to come.

[company man 1]

“Rape, pillage and plunder the earth“?

LOL!

Right! Thousands of individuals lusting to “rape the dirt of mother earth” have pooled billions of dollars of their own money purely in the hope of sexually violating the soil! How gratifying!!
You’ve moved beyond being merely unhinged -- you’ve gone straight into unmitigated delusional paranoia. You really ought to seek help. You could be a danger to yourself or others.

It must be very convenient of you to take one phrase snippits of mine to reenforce whatever points you are poorly attemting to make. If you are going to find fault with my messages then wouldn't it be fair for you to take them in the context of the whole message? BTW, what is your opinion or are you just a wondering flame thrower Mr. Smith? As far as the raping of the earth is concerned, I don't know if you've seen that neat little invention called the television or ever actually been to the beautiful beaches or marshes of the Gulf of Mexico, but it does kind of piss me off to see hundreds of miles of the gulf coast being systematically destroyed due to the criminal negligence of ONE company. Having been on projects where a half million dollar a day operation had to be halted for 6 days until one turtle swam into a safe zone from demolition work that was being done, & understanding all the fishing regulations which have been enforced, & followed for the past thrity plus years by thousands of responsible people, to make the environment of this whole region be a prosperous one for future generations. Then seeing all that wiped out with a series of stupid senseless acts by ONE irresponsible company, that had they done any one of them differently than they did, this disaster would never have occured pisses me off highly. Now if that sounds unhinged or delusionally paranoid, then your perception of reality is highly diseased sir.
Now you may take whatever line out of this post you wish out of context for your personal sick humor.

So Mr. Smith, do you think it OK to destroy what everyone else has put so much time & energy into conserving for their later life & for their children to enjoy? Is everyone who sees the needless stupidity of this company's trade off of thousands of jobs & destoying the environment for their own block headed greed & gets angry about it an insane fool? Or is it just those that can place their position into cojent comentary & balance mining our God given resouces with the need to treat others with the respect we want to get in return that scares you?

[company man 1]

I have two questions in this area I hope someone can address.
1. Harrell testifys about bottoms up:

2 Q. Now, do you know how long the well had
3 been static prior to the casing cement job on
4 April 19?
5 A. How long the well had been static?
6 Q. Yes, sir.
7 A. What do you mean static?
8 Q. Well, how long had it been sitting
9 there without any activity, if that had
10 occurred?
11 A. Well, all we done, we went in and made
12 a conditioning trip, circulated bottoms up
13 prior to that. So really just static during
14 the rig up to run casing.
15 Q. Are you aware of any reports from
16 Transocean that showed that the well had been
17 static for approximately 70 hours prior to the
18 cement job?
19 A. I didn't see the reports, but I know
20 the well was static.
21 Q. Okay, sir. And do you know for about
22 how many hours?

23 A. I don't keep up with hours.

How does sitting static in the production zone for 70 hours affect the decision to bottoms up or not? What happens when sitting static for that period of time?

2. Harrell on Float equipment conversion takes 9 attempts:

1 A. Yeah. They did have a problem
2 converting the float equipment and, I mean,
3 I've seen this several times, you know. It
4 took a little more pressure.
5 Q. Are you aware that it took nine times
6 to convert the float equipment on the
7 afternoon of April 19?
8 A. I can't say it was nine times. I
9 didn't keep up with the times, but it did --
10 it did take doing it, bringing the pressure up
11 in stages to convert it.
12 Q. Did it concern you that it seemed to
13 be taking several times to convert the float
14 equipment on the afternoon of the 19th?

15 A. No. It didn't really concern me.

What does this tell about the conditions downhole? Why is the lawyer asking this question?

I went back & watched all of Mr. Harrell's testimony just so I could answer your questions. I will do my best. A drilling hole will have solids accumulate at the bottom as the mud sits in a static condition. The reason the attorney questioned Mr. Harrell about these things is because if BP tries one more time to stick it to Halliburton, they are gonna break it off & stick it right back to BP with plenty of interest on return. Halliburton made specific recommendations which BP ignored. BP's own cementing plan called for a bottoms up circulation which they didn't perform due to time. The float equipment not functioning properly was a clear indication that the LCM had the hole plugged off at the bottom & needed to be circulated out so that the mud could be conditioned to comparable mud weight throughout the hole thus keeping the cement from being pushed out position & being lost into the zone & not doing its job. The fact that the casing took extra slack off weight was a clear indicator that the hole was plugged & needed to be circulated out before pumping cement.
I noticed Mr. Harrell say he didn't think any of the centralizers had been run. That would mean that every one of Halliburton's recommendations were thrown into the trash can. This is the most clear cut case of premeditated negligence that could ever be imagined.

[MichaelWSmith]

Oh, I bet they are fattening the sacrificial lamb (s) as we speak....

Look at it like this, Mr. Smith: Let's say someone goes out and drives drunk and kills eleven souls. They didn't mean to drink and drive, it just sorta happened. So it's not premeditated murder, it's negligent homicide. Right? But if that same drunk driver has a history of earlier fatal accidents while drinking and driving, then that's a different story.

When does negligence become premeditation?

Good question. I'd say it becomes premeditation when you can identify and prove that the drunk had a motive for the murders of the individuals who were killed, though even then, I'd wonder at the choice of method if the motive was simply to end their lives.

So, are you saying that BP had a motive for killing the 11 who died on DWH and for massively damaging the property rights of tens of thousands of individuals?

[MichaelWSmith]

How can you tell BP is lying? Answer: When their lips are moving.

Forgive my asking, but can you supply some examples of this lying?

For weeks I've heard the accusation that BP lied about the magnitude of the leak -- that its estimate of 5000 bpd was such a lie. But then I heard the Coast Guard guy point out that the 5000 bpd estimate came from them, not BP.

So I'd be interested in knowing how it is that you know everything BP says is a lie.

[MichaelWSmith]

A task can be delegated....a Responsibility cannot.

Really? Why not? Because you say so?

It is ludicrous to suggest that responsibility for the actions of all 80,000 BP employees rests to no extent at all with the individuals themselves, but instead somehow accrues only to the man at the top.

[MichaelWSmith]

I told you guys that alcor and his proxies would be back, bigger and more frothing-at-the-mouth than ever. They butt-bumped each other and replicated, like a Hydra, mythical creature where you cut off one of it's heads and two grow back in its place.

I can't wait till the shooting begins. Won't be long now.

Can't speak for everyone else, but personally I find insults and smears -- when offered in place of evidence, reasons, facts, logic, etc -- very unconvincing.

[bigmoose]

Folks, I must be blind... I've Googled for an hour and can't find Harrell's testimony, either video or transcripts. Can Cynthia or another help with a link?

[OneEyedMan]

Folks, I must be blind... I've Googled for an hour and can't find Harrell's testimony, either video or transcripts. Can Cynthia or another help with a link?

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/293757-1

For the others, search that site for: joint investigation into deepwater horizon

[MichaelWSmith]

Responsibility does not move from you to another. Responsibility remains with you. Or you're nothing but another mealy-mouthed, shirking, cowardly ass..........i.e. the definition of an "irresponsible" person.

Hint: it's not another person that you hand the gun to when you're caught doing the crime.

So you think that Tony Hayward was actually the one making the decisions you claim caused this accident -- he was the one actually "holding the gun and pulling the trigger" to use your example -- and when it all went sour he just disappeared and claimed to be elsewhere?

Funny, you'd think if that were the case someone would have seen him.

But seriously, people, the notion that you cannot delegate or assign responsibility is utter nonsense conjured up here simply as an excuse to vent hate at BP. Every job carries responsibilities and every employee knows it. You think the responsibility for the safety of airline passengers rests only with the CEO of the company, and not with the pilots and maintenance personnel? Is the responsibility for your life purely in the hands of the Hospital director and not in the hands of the doctors and nurses performing your surgery?

[Texanne]

Dear Alcor, in my business we say that the best indication of future behavior is past behavior. Which means that if you want to predict how a certain person or corporate culture will behave in a situation, then it is useful to study their past behavior. BP has a long record of saying one thing and doing another (i.e. lying.) A re-reading of this blog and going to the links willl lay out many of them. I would suggest that it would be more useful and make your point better if you could enumerate the occasions when they did not lie.

[MichaelWSmith]

Hello ! wakey wakey you don't seem to realize, BP has already failed big time and it has and still is, and will be having an enormous effect on the US economy in the gulf states while Nero plays the harp in the UK.

One well has failed -- and disastrously -- but other BP wells are still producing huge amounts of an enormously valuable product, employing thousands of individuals both at BP and in their suppliers. Best scenario for all the GOM people injured by this disaster is for BP to remain in business and profitable so they can earn the money required to make people whole again (or come as close to that as is possible).

[Texanne]

Oops, I apologize to MichaelWSmith, you just sound so much like Alcor that I made a mistake.

[Texanne]

About responsibility, Harry S Truman said, "The buck stops here." The sign was on his desk in the White House. That meant that he accepted the responsibility for the decisions he made no matter how far down the line the action occured. BP's corporate culture does not apppear to come any where near that standard, by your own admission. Oky that is three in a row for me. I will go back to lurking. I must say that this blog and The Oil Barrel have been wonderfully informative to someone who grew up in the Oil Patch but had forgotten most of what I had learned. Thank you.

[BLISTERS]

One well has failed -- and disastrously -- but other BP wells are still producing huge amounts of an enormously valuable product, employing thousands of individuals both at BP and in their suppliers. Best scenario for all the GOM peoplejinjured by this disaster is for BP to remain in business and profitable so they can earn the money required to make people whole again (or come as close to that as is possible).

In light of BP's slack attitude to safety, and cost cutting, do you have confidence with these completed and producing wells in terms of safety? ...particularly ones on the Atlantis platform ? You need to realize that people will never be made whole again, never the ones who lost loved ones, nor life in the gulf, neighboring countries and shorelines, not even anywhere near close enough. There are some things all the money in the world can't buy back. The best thing BP can do for the gulf is to finance new fisheries, nurseries and hatcheries to replenish the gulf in time to come where possible. There is no way BP can remove oil settled on the seabed but they should finance research to examine the impact it will have over the next few decades.

[MichaelWSmith]

It must be very convenient of you to take one phrase snippits of mine to reenforce whatever points you are poorly attemting to make. If you are going to find fault with my messages then wouldn't it be fair for you to take them in the context of the whole message? BTW, what is your opinion or are you just a wondering flame thrower Mr. Smith? As far as the raping of the earth is concerned, I don't know if you've seen that neat little invention called the television or ever actually been to the beautiful beaches or marshes of the Gulf of Mexico, but it does kind of piss me off to see hundreds of miles of the gulf coast being systematically destroyed due to the criminal negligence of ONE company. Having been on projects where a half million dollar a day operation had to be halted for 6 days until one turtle swam into a safe zone from demolition work that was being done, & understanding all the fishing regulations which have been enforced, & followed for the past thrity plus years by thousands of responsible people, to make the environment of this whole region be a prosperous one for future generations. Then seeing all that wiped out with a series of stupid senseless acts by ONE irresponsible company, that had they done any one of them differently than they did, this disaster would never have occured pisses me off highly. Now if that sounds unhinged or delusionally paranoid, then your perception of reality is highly diseased sir.
Now you may take whatever line out of this post you wish out of context for your personal sick humor.

So Mr. Smith, do you think it OK to destroy what everyone else has put so much time & energy into conserving for their later life & for their children to enjoy? Is everyone who sees the needless stupidity of this company's trade off of thousands of jobs & destoying the environment for their own block headed greed & gets angry about it an insane fool? Or is it just those that can place their position into cojent comentary & balance mining our God given resouces with the need to treat others with the respect we want to get in return that scares you?

It would seem that in your universe, you imagine that everyone must be in one of two camps:

1) There are those -- the rightous in your view!! -- who agree that reason can be abandoned, evidence discarded and logic ignored -- so that we can impugn the motives of thousands of employees and managers of a company and accuse them of the vilest possible crimes, deliberately and serially committed -- while describing the alternatives available to us in the most catastrophic terms imaginable -- "They must be destroyed or they will destroy us!"

2) And then there is everyone else, who -- by refusing to be in camp 1 -- are automatically guilty of complete and utter indifference to the worst possible human crimes and who would seek to be apologists for even such evils as the gassing of 6 million Jews in WWII.

Well, I am not in either one of those camps. If BP is guilty of criminal negligence, I agree that the responsible parties must be punished. I don't think it necessarily follows from that that BP must be destroyed.

[Cynthia]

Folks, I must be blind... I've Googled for an hour and can't find Harrell's testimony, either video or transcripts. Can Cynthia or another help with a link?

All three days: http://www.deepwaterinvestigation.co...pe/3043/54539/

Harrell: http://www.deepwaterinvestigation.co...c/3043/621415/

Transcripts [some of the testimony didn't get videoed, if videoed is a word] http://www.deepwaterinvestigation.co...ge/3043/48847/

There is additional video at cspan, linked by OneEyedMan