Government Awakens from Coma: Forces BP to Contain the Well

[G_j]

http://dailyhurricane.com/2010/07/government-awakens-from-coma-forces-bp-to-contain-the-well.html

Government Awakens from Coma: Forces BP to Contain the Well

Robert L. Cavnar


Founder, www.dailyhurricane.com
Posted: July 10, 2010 10:42 AM

For the last 81 days, I've been watching the government, perpetually 2 steps behind BP, fail time after time to keep BP honest, or even understand the issues enough to not just take what they were saying at face value. It started from the first moment. Initially, when the Horizon sank after being incinerated for 2 days with flames roaring 250 feet over the rig floor and melting the derrick, BP said the well wasn't flowing. Then a day later, the Coast Guard announced, with BP's silent assent, that it was flowing 1,000 barrels per day; then a few days later the estimate was reluctantly raised to 5,000 barrels per day. For the subsequent 5 weeks, staring at the video feeds and knowing that the oil boiling out of the destroyed riser was far more than the volume that Adm. Thad Allen kept repeating, the BP rep almost always stood behind him, mum, or repeating the mantra that the volume was not important since the "response would be the same no matter how big." It's been a long, ugly road.

First, we watched the early, very heavily edited (and blurred) video feeds of the ROVs trying in vain to shut in the BOP (I still think some of that was file footage from Oceaneering). Then we watched the giant containment dome being built for days on the docks, the continuous coverage of it being shipped to the site, the days of waiting for the result. When they were building it, I kept thinking that first, it wasn't big enough to fit over the BOP, which is over 50 feet tall, and second "what were those wings they were building on it?" When I found out that they were putting it over the bent riser on the seafloor instead of at the wellhead, I realized that that whole effort was just for show. No serious person would have thought it would work, plus, the biggest leak was going to be out of the cracks in the top of the bent over riser, not 600 feet away, especially after days of sandblasting inside the valves and piping that were making things worse by the hour.

<snip>

And on and on. Obfuscation about the flow rate; multiple teams of scientists pouring over blurry video footage and putting out a volume ranges of plus or minus 100%. Then we find out that BP had HD video of the well the whole time. The lame clean up effort; keeping media away from the worst areas; skimming and recovery assets not even close to what was needed. Orchestrated press conferences that were long on words, short on data.

Which brings us up to today. The Helix Producer has been on station now for over a week. It's an FPSO (floating production storage and offloading) vessel that can process 25,000 barrels a day. BP has been steadfastly putting off installing the latching containment cap, and hooking up the Helix, citing high seas, bad weather, hang nails and sinus congestion. Thursday, finally, the US government awoke from its leadership coma, demanding to know what's taking so damn long and what can you do to hurry up containing the well? We all know that BP is strongly motivated to not contain the whole flow, since we would then know exactly what it's producing and back-calculate how much they have polluted the Gulf since the well blew out on April 20. Surely, they were hoping to get it killed with the relief well before they got around to getting the flow contained so they could argue for lower volumes to reduce the massive EPA fines that will come. Heavy subsea dispersant use was also used to cover the evidence. Suddenly, BP is ready to go with the new containment system. They start installing it today, and is a subject of a post later today.

<snip>

While I don't presume that anyone in the White House actually reads this blog or watches my television appearances, but certainly I'm glad someone finally woke up, if just for a minute, to do what I, and other industry bloggers have been yelling about for weeks (months?).

[flyarm]

1. our government has been complicit in this from the get go..to believe otherwise you would be a fool!

and those of us on the Gulf have not been fooled...not one iota! eom

[villager]

4. The U.S. Government! Complicit with... *big oil!?*

Why, next you'll say there are tax laws favoring multinational oil companies, and that our foreign policy is skewed -- and screwed! -- to help them!

Damn, you might go nuts and even claim all our environmental backpeddling and "climate denial" is because of them...

What's next!?

[UTUSN]

2. Oh, for Zeus's sake!1 The only thing OBAMA did wrong was NOT to say FROM THE BEGINNING

"Look, the BEST/ONLY way to fix this will take two or three months to do. We will be on their backs every step of the way, and in the meantime we are mobilizing all the available clean-up mechanisms. And we are launching a review and re-structuring and re-staffing of all the regulatory agencies."


In essence, the content is what he DID do, but should have SAID it clearly and repeatedly.

[Octafish]

3. It's not like Uncle Sam subsidizes Big Oil to the tune of, what, $40 Billion annually?

...not counting all the numerous and varied tax breaks for the chiselers who own Big Oil.

[G_j]

5. got to have it

for endless war

[G_j]

6. k