Hit ‘em up
Attorney General Troy King has asked BP to cease circulating settlement agreements among south Alabamians.Alabama Attorney General Troy King said tonight that he has told representatives of BP Plc. that they should stop circulating settlement agreements among coastal Alabamians.
The agreements, King said, essentially require that people give up the right to sue in exchange for payment of up to $5,000.
Big government liberal regulations get in the way of Galtian superhero business.
When something goes wrong, no one could have predicted it.
Once it starts going wrong, nothing can be done unless you can do underwater surgery with robotic submarines, you naive fucking hippie.
Tort reform!
Countdown to the Mickey Kaus/Gregg Easterbrook about the good news about the oil spill.
And how come we never hear about all the oil rigs that aren’t spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico?
Is that the Flo Rida remix?
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Check this out
You motherfuckers know what time it is
I don’t know why I’m even on this track
You all librulz ain’t even on my level
I’m going to let my little lawyers
Ride on you
Bitch made ass Gulf Coast bitches
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:07 pm
I clicked on that link, you bustard.
Glad the AG is stopping the bribes—way to be scumbags, BP. Hopefully, they’ll get in touch with anyone who already signed one of those “contracts” and advise the strike>sucker citizen how to void it.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Last night I was wondering something. Obviously the fishermen on the coast will sue BP, and they’ll win. They probably won’t get as much as they deserve, but they’ll get something.
I love shrimp. Prices are going to go up several bucks a pound easy. Maybe more. I think shrimp loving Americans (100 million? 200 million?) should be declared a class for purpose of recovering our loses from BP. A pound a week for the next, oh, two years. $2 extra * 104 weeks * 150 million.
Then we’ll start talking about oysters.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:12 pm
[...] in Business, Daily life at 10:13 am by LeisureGuy DougJ at Balloon Juice: No one could have predicted: Attorney General Troy King has asked BP to cease circulating [...]
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:13 pm
strike fail
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:14 pm
It seems like BP had more legal backup plans than shutoff valve backup plans. It is too bad they weren’t as well prepared for the original catastrophe as they are trying to be for the financial one.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Might be the best offer they’ll get.
NYT
And oil is the most cost-effective energy source in this, our free market.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:17 pm
mmm, you’d almost think somebody was worried or something . . .
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:19 pm
@wrb: In the Exxon case the Supremes said punitive damages couldn’t go over 10x economic damages. So figure a max of $750m punitive.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:19 pm
This post is a great memegasm.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Getting Alabamans to sign a document giving up their right to sue BP—it’s hard. It’s like doing brain surgery. In the dark. On rollerskates. While being attacked by bumper cars driven by clowns. On unicycles.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:22 pm
The garbled insanity of the mock “discourse” following the quote just deflated my mood to ground zero.
Why? The mocking insanity of DougJ snark is a spot on imitation of how our media and government function.
Fuck it… The fall of the Roman Empire wasn’t shit. Just wait til historians examine the aftermath of the fall of the American “empire”.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Oh sure – you f’in hippies are mad because BP had made plans for what to do when this happened. Honestly you guys would complain if you got hung with a new rope!
Also part of their plan I am sure:
BP is taking some pains now to remind everyone that the platform was not THEIR platform! That belonged to some other schmucks. I see lots of ‘joint-and-several’ actions keeping squadrons of lawyers busy for their entire career. Then, ultimately, it will be the tax payer left with the monetary damages and the locals whatever residual the lawyers drop while making their escape.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:25 pm
You forgot “Drill, baby, drill.”
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:26 pm
@MikeJ: That plan has a twinge of genius about it!
This is an un-natural disaster. Somebody did it. Class action, baby!
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:27 pm
I’m surprised that the Alabama AG would even have the time to try to police BP’s quitclaim scam down along their coast; I would have thought his office would have been completely swamped with trying to sue the Federal Government over their
FascistCommieNaziTyrannyOppressionHealth Care Reform plan to have much time for anything else….@patrick II:
Heh – cheaper and more cost-effective! This is NO surprise….
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:29 pm
god, this is starting to sound like that West Wing episode when Sam tells the oil company to independently incorporate the boat and mortgage it to the hilt so there would be no profit at the end of suing it.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Where’s my waiver and 5k offer? I live in Colorado … but still.
And you bring up a good point about all the other well behaved wells. They’re like all those priests who didn’t molest anyone. It would be unfair to malign the whole institution of offshore drilling because of one bad actor.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:31 pm
that second link was a low blow…
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Take the $5,000 now…or you can go for what’s in the box!
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:33 pm
American Exceptionalism.
Even if it’s a British company.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:33 pm
@frankdawg: Simply sue everyone remotely connected with building and operating the platform and claim they are jointly and severally liable. Let them all point fingers at one another.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:34 pm
This is a black swan event.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:39 pm
@wrb:
May I humbly suggest, then, an oil spill tax. Pass it right fucking now. $1000 for every gallon of oil spilled. The tax is collected, then distributed among those affected.
Problem solved. Well, except for cleaning up the spill for generations to come.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:43 pm
More jollity:
.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:43 pm
I can’t wait for those slackers and tree-huggers from Florida to Texas go begging to Big Daddy Government for disaster relief bailouts.
But not me. I’m not putting up with another round of Gulf Coast Liberals leaching from the government teet. I’m going to take my beach front property and move it to Wyoming.
If God meant for the beech to be clear of oil slick, he would have compelled the free market to protect it. This is his punishment for allowing gays to get married and illegal immigrants to enter his country.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Black swan, black sea gull, black turtle, black freaking everything.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Where are the video mash-ups of the GOP’s leading lights saying “Drill, baby. Drill” interspersed with scenes of the oil slick spreading and animals covered in gook?
Show Michael Steele
Show oil slick
Show Rudy Giuliani
Show dead birds
Show Sarah Palin
“Spite” is not an energy policy
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:45 pm
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Unless you mean that literally, as in the swans will be covered in crude oil, it is not a black swan event. It is not an unexpected enough event to qualify.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:45 pm
A contrarian who likes attention should throw up a quick blog post about how maybe the poor people of the Gulf need that $5,000 and who are you elitist snobs to tell them they shouldn’t be allowed to take it?!
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:46 pm
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Zing
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:46 pm
This whole thing makes me sick to my stomach. Every single morning I get to read about it worsening, and worsening, and worsening. I can only imagine what it’s going to be like for those living with it.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:47 pm
I’m waiting for someone to argue “Well, we already shit the nest, why not fill the Gulf with MORE drilling rigs?”
At the very least, I’d expect the East and West coast states to try that, in arguing against rigs off their own coastlines.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:49 pm
@Zifnab: so which is it? Your oil-slicked beach will probably require a baggage fee but your oil-slicked beech might just be able to make it into the cabin on some airlines.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:51 pm
@daveNYC:
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, the irony is deliberate.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:51 pm
but but but poor Sarah Palin. Will no one think of her slogan making talents? /snark
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:52 pm
I wonder if Pat Robertson will have the good sense to keep his mouth shut this time around.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I think what we really need is for Republicans to dig up the corpse of Terry Schiavo and then get a holistic healer to tell us what her decomposed brain is telling us to do.
I’m thinkin’ tax cuts.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:53 pm
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Is there a limit to the amount of links you can include in a post to avoid moderation?
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:55 pm
@r€nato: “I wonder if Pat Robertson will have the good sense to keep his mouth shut this time around.”
Obvs that drilling rig must have been “the gay one”.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:55 pm
This article has a link to a PDF of the agreement they were requiring the fisherman to sign. You gotta read it.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:00 pm
I’m just glad not to be managing the email servers, etc. on which the internal documents of BP and Transocean discussing the planning history of this rig are stored. ‘Cause I’m guessing that the mean time before failure of those systems should be occurring right about…
...now.
It would be a real shame if somebody were to slap a subpoena on them before the irrecoverable data losses happened.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:02 pm
GREEN BALLOONS! GREEN BALLOONS! GREEN BALLOONS!
Hi, I’m Troy King. You may remember me from such nuisance lawsuits as Real America vs. Kenyan Usurper Death Panels…...
My favorite was Gene Taylor (D-dumfuckistan). It’s not THAT bad. From 1000ft it looked like chocolate milk.
Honest to fuck.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:06 pm
What seems evident to me is that the FSM clearly enjoys pantsing the Republicans. *
Jindal mocks volcano monitoring – we get volcanoes blowing shit up.
Palin mocks environmental concerns with her ghastly slogan of “Drill, baby, drill” – we get this epic disaster.
Please, for the love of whatever’s left, let’s hope they don’t mock maintenance schedules for our nuclear bomber fleet.
*She can be a wrathful and merciless bitch of a deity.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Anyone noticed how many of these recent natural disasters (tornados, floods, oil slicks) are occurring in the deeply Republican South?
Wasn’t there a story last spring about a right-wing prayer circle to strike down Democrats that boomeranged onto some right-wing hero? I remember some C-Span caller being very upset about that.
http://jacksonville.com/news/g.....r_senators
Hmmm, the Hand of God at work? Too bad so many innocents will suffer over this.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Surely we can all agree that BP is Taxed Enough Already, right?
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:11 pm
@Corner Stone:
Nah, their next gambit will be mocking the K/T extinction event as a myth and asteroid detection astronomy as a liberal-scientific-complex boondoogle…
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:11 pm
@South of I-10: yoikes! even a weapons-grade wimp might consider using legal teams as rubble to plug that hole and maybe, even, to sop up the mess that washes ashore. they might be too greasy, practically speaking though. if so, maybe we could keep them in reserve and use them to start back-fires as necessary.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:13 pm
@scav: I’d have to read it again, but I am pretty sure you become responsible for the entire clean-up if you sign it.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:15 pm
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
last time i investigated, the max was 2.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:17 pm
$75 million? God I hate our Congress. You throw a couple million at those whores and you can literally save tens of billions.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:18 pm
IF THEY’D JUST STOP ALL DA SPENDIN’ AND CUT THE TAXES THE OIL’D CLEAN ITSELF UP
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:19 pm
And for the emotional suffering of BP executives and their lawyers- and of their families.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Now, I wonder if a class could get an injunctive order requiring super fast clean up by BP and when BP cannot meet the schedule, they get sanctions that go to the plaintiffs wholly apart from subsequent damages.
eric
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:22 pm
@El Cid: See, if you cut government spending, then you can’t monitor the spill. You can’t monitor the spill, the spill doesn’t exist. The spill is therefore clearly the fault of the government monitoring. So all we need to do is get rid of the government monitoring and the spill goes away. Plus we get a tax cut. And unicorns. QED.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:22 pm
I’m waiting for someone to argue “Well, we already shit the nest, why not fill the Gulf with MORE drilling rigs?”
From my blog:
Alexander: the GOP are the real environmentalists – which means we have to keep drilling in the Gulf
Gregory: are you serious?
Alexander: sure it’s already covered in oil so now is the perfect time
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:22 pm
@jwb: It’s sort of Schrodinger’s oil rig.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:23 pm
@Corner Stone: What seems evident to me is that the FSM clearly enjoys pantsing the Republicans. *
FSM, karma, odds. With as much counterintuitive, demonstrably false, up is down bullshit as they spew, they can’t help but look like jackasses at least twice a day, directly inverting the broken clock analogy.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:24 pm
They were offering $5000, without any fixed liability yet? Holy crap, BP must be shitting its pants with fear. Which means the real worst case scenario is much worse than even the pessimists’ worst case. ‘Cause we all know that BP isn’t as ignorant about the reality here as they let on. “Hoocoodanode” doesn’t fly in the board room, and Big Oil isn’t in the habit of handing out walking-around money unless they think they really, really have to.
Yikes. Buy shrimp futures.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:25 pm
@stickler: shouldn’t you short shrimps?
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:26 pm
@wrb: I don’t think it has sunk in with most people just how huge and destructive this is going to end up being. This non-natural disaster passed Exxon Valdez levels a long time ago. This is a Chernobyl-scale event. In both cases, we’ve got a fuckup that wreaks havoc at a continental (or oceanic in this case, or even fucking up two oceans) scale.
You can call this the oil industry’s Chernobyl. You can call this capitalism’s Chernobyl. That is the only other environmental disaster that is even remotely comparable in scope*.
*Although AGW will, unfortunately, eventually dwarf both.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Finally, noted Marine Biologist and Land Shark expert Rush Limbaugh weighs in.
Puts the oink! into Capitalist Pig.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:27 pm
O/T: Mexico’s right wing President urges Mexican citizens to stay away from Arizona.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Well hurricane season is upon us. With any luck a cat 4 or 5 will come along, suck all that crude up into a low pressure system, dump it from the Gulf Coast up through and Ohio valley and .... WOHOO! FREE OIL FOR ALL
Provided of course that the courts don’t decide that BP retains the rights.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:34 pm
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: It’s times like this that I have to remind myself that Rushbo isn’t a Monte Python skit.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:34 pm
@r€nato:
Well, these guys are trying to make something like that happen as we speak:
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:40 pm
@Culture of Truth: I’d just like to tell you that I am a great admirer of your work.
You should link to your blog in your handle (use the “website”) field. It is genius.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:41 pm
I’ve got 2 points.
1. Is there any wonder why Alabama is so poor now that we know they’ve got such anti-Big Business government officials?
2. Wouldn’t now be a good time for Obama to show the teatards that he’s serious about cutting spending by refusing to provide any money for this catastrophy until it gets a CBO score showing that it reduces the defecit or they money if offset by cuts or tax increases?
How much you wanna bet Bunning and Cornyn won’t be so willing to shut down the Senate with a one man filibuster to stop these payments to real ‘Muricans?
Also, since there was no problem with this when Bush was Preznit, why should Obama worry his sweet little mind about these people who didn’t vote for him?
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:43 pm
My apologies if this is all old news, but this link to a newsvine discussion seems to me like one of the better in-depth (no pun intended) presentations for a general audience on the structure of the rig, at least that I’ve come across. Found by way of solanic, h/t Yves Smith. Be sure to follow the link entitled “Schematic of a new leak as of April 28th” at the bottom of the 2nd (solanic) article.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:45 pm
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Hey, Rush is just an entertainer. Because it’s entertaining to listen to a fat rich fuck make light of the (potentially) worst environmental disaster is history.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:45 pm
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: I want Rush to get his lard ass down to the New Orleans area and prove this to us by drinking from the sea. He can just open his mouth and keep swallowing until he proves us all wrong.
ASS-hole that he is.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:47 pm
This was so helpful to me.
Now if any of you guys can explain the acoustic switch and how it would have worked I am all ears.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:48 pm
I gritted my teeth and checked out what Rush is saying, and the closest I could come to a summary before my eyes started hurting is that Obama should have had it torched right away but now it’s too late. Does anyone know whether that was ever a real option?
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:51 pm
@South of I-10: I’m beginning to worry about the hidden responsibilities they may have suckered me into accepting from merely having read the stupid thing.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:52 pm
I finally know what to think, now that Moose Lady has chimed in.
http://www.facebook.com/note.p.....4560338434
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:53 pm
@Brandon: What they should do is use this as an excuse to add a substantial tax on all oil, something that will raise gas well above $4 a gallon as a starting point. I fear, however, that we’d learn that people would much prefer a dead Gulf to having to pay the actual social cost of oil.
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:57 pm
@flukebucket:
The acoustic switch isn’t a complicated idea. Submarines communicate via acoustic pulses. Whales don’t like ‘em. The switch is a way to communicate with the blow out preventer when the normal, probably fiber, links aren’t working.
Since the switch only activates the same BOP that the subs couldn’t activate manually some argue that it wouldn’t have made any difference in this case.
However, it took hours for the subs to get there and an acoustic switch could have been used immediately.
If the damage the caused the BOP to become inoperable occurred in the interim, an acoustic switch might have saved the day.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I wonder if it wouldn’t be achievable if made a direct trade-off. Income taxes go down by the exact amount collected through oil taxes.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:05 pm
This story has gone significantly further. Napolitano caught wind of it, and told BP to stop. BP claims to have stopped, and actually claims to have never done it in the first place.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....ed-x2.5%29
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:05 pm
@flukebucket:
The ‘acoustic switch’ is controlled by an message that is sent
acoustically rather than by wire.
How the switch itself is powered – by battery or spring – I do not know.
In one of the earlier threads, a poster showed concern that acoustic systems make large mammals unhappy.
This is completely unrelated to that. Pings required to signal the switch are short, relatively low energy
signals.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:06 pm
@eric: Why would you short them? They’re about to become much more valuable, since there will be much fewer of them on the market. Probably some hedge fund managers are way ahead of us on this one though, as there’s nothing more American than turning a buck where there’s a buck to be turned, disasters be damned.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:11 pm
So an acoustic switch is just a wireless way to close the valve. Seems to me that wireless would be the first choice and a standard feature. Beats the hell out of monkeying around with submarines.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Check out this post from dude’s that were tuna fishing off the rig when it blew.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:14 pm
It’s time to start treating corporations like persons and sentence some of them to death.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Flukebucket: It wouldn’t have hurt to have another method for attempting to close the BOP, but acoustic signals don’t propagate in water in an entirely predictable way, so it’s not a guarantee.
It only duplicates the function of various other switching sytems that failed, it doesn’t add functionality to the BOP.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:32 pm
That’s not oil in the Gulf.
It’s Jesus Tea.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Can anybody name a major corporation that has been sued out of existence for this sort of a disaster? I can’t think of one. BP should be in the process of liquidating itself and handing the money over for cleanup.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Can someone explain to me why we can’t fire a nuclear-tipped torpedo down the oil hole and seal up the breach like they would do in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea?
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:35 pm
@stevie314159: Jesus. Mr. Teller, your ideas regarding how to stop an asteroid collision don’t work any better underwater.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:40 pm
@gnomedad: “I gritted my teeth and checked out what Rush is saying, and the closest I could come to a summary before my eyes started hurting is that Obama should have had it torched right away but now it’s too late. Does anyone know whether that was ever a real option?”
I think it depends on how much the oil has mixed with the seawater and emulsified. My impression is that relatively fresh oil will burn, but after it’s had time to mix, it won’t.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:40 pm
@Americanadian: The big problem is that real gulf shrimp are already pretty rare. Most shrimp are imported from abroad.
I had a clapper once. Can’t say it was all that reliable.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Jon : Plus, you can’t just flick a bic and roll out. An uncontrolled oil fire wouldn’t be much of an improvment, especially for the other rigs out there.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Wonder if they could just run a cable from shore out to these rigs wellheads. It’s only 50 or so miles from shore and we run cables across the Atlantic and Pacific.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:53 pm
I’m hoping that’s snark, but after spending a day cruising the net, I fear it isn’t.
Basically, we have no torpedoes, nuclear or otherwise, designed to work in water a mile deep.
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:06 pm
@Jay C:
Actually, no. It would only have taken 100 people to accept terms to match the cost of the non-installed acoustic switch. Sort of helps put into perspective just how (relatively) cheap the fucking thing was, now doesn’t it?
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:07 pm
@stevie314159:
The problem here is you need a Bruckheimer solution: Bruce Willis as the hard bitten deep driller, Tom Cruise his cocksure partner and their wacky crew of characters. But first Willis has to reconcile with his best diver and ex son-in-law, Cuba Gooding Jr. Who in turn would get back together with his wife and son before saving the planet while dying on cue. USA! USA!
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:11 pm
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
did you know they also run PIPES to shore? So yes they can do it.
Of course the cables that are run between continents expect to have many paying customers and lots of business.
I think the business case for laying fiber to every wellhead might be a little less robust.
Or were you going to suggest only laying fiber to the ones that are going to have blowouts? Since those are the only ones you really need.
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:11 pm
@PanAmerican: I am intrigued with your idea of dropping Bruce Willis to the bottom of the ocean. How can we make this happen?
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:14 pm
@Stooleo:
After the Bhopal disaster, Union Carbide was bought out by Dow, but it still exists as a subsidiary. That’s the closest I can think of.
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:15 pm
@malraux: Did you take antibiotics?
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:15 pm
From another mensa member:
On Saturday, Taylor flew over the oil spill in a Coast Guard plane and at first glance declared that the site was “not as bad” as he expected it to be.
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:17 pm
@catclub:
Just these of course. duh. When the final bill comes due for this disaster, whatever BP is worth will likely be a drop in the bucket. And the taxpayer will no doubt get stuck paying for most it. Like they always do when big bidness screws the pooch. My guess is when folks along the coast see their beaches turn black and Florida goes bankrupt from a dead tourist industry, the will to find a few extra bucks to make mostly sure this doesn’t happen again, will be evident. Whether all of part of it comes from the public or private sector. Since they are not going to cease drilling deep oil wells, lest Americans won’t be able to drive around all day in their SUV’s, like it’s their god given right.
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:21 pm
@Jon H:
As usual, Rush is a fool as well as an ass. They burned some of the oil, but it didn’t work very well and burning more wouldn’t have been very effective under the circumstances, according to this article.
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:24 pm
@PanAmerican: Yes, I’m sure Hollywood is already hard at work solving our problem, and we’ll soon see Bruce Willis saving the Gulf on the silver screen even as the real Gulf dies a slow death.
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:25 pm
@Digital Amish:
Oilicane! The flammable, sticky hurricane!
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:33 pm
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
The coast tourism industry is oil-dependent though. How many of those tourists are in the water in a boat with an engine? They need a SUV or a truck to pull the boat to the water.
I was thinking that commercial fishing and drilling for oil in the same water might not be a great mix for a regional economy, but then you start to realize tourism probably grinds to a halt without cheap gasoline, so there goes Number Three on the revenue list.
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:38 pm
@kay: Oil companies have been making out like bandits for years now, something like 40 billion collectively per year, at least when Bush was president, so I reckon they can pony up a few bucks for the BTA, whatever that turns out to be, to not destroy the ocean and it’s beaches and estuaries like what is happening. It seems likely that the GC fishing industry is dead as Franco for at least a decade, and if they don’t get the thing shut off fairly soon the Gulf Stream will carry the black blob all up and the east coast as well. Because sooner or later the crimped pipe will fall away and it’s wide open the spicket,
Cheap gasoline will not be a factor for tourists who go to FL mainly for it’s white sandy bleaches that will now turn gooey black for the foreseeable future. They just won’t bother. It is almost impossible to overstate this looming disaster. The only real hope is to drill adjacent wells and pump concrete into the same oil deposit hopefully to seal the thing. But that will take 90 days and their is no guarantee it will work for a well this deep.
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Are the teabaggers out protesting the government forcing itself down everyone’s throat by trying to contain the damage from the oil spill?
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:04 pm
@Michael:
No that’s not snark.
Snark would be “Why can’t we train dolphins to do emergency spot welding of oil pipes?”
See the difference?
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:10 pm
@KDP:
Yes, I notice that hurricanes and tornadoes often occur in the South. Just like I notice how the flat Midwest often has flooding. And how the dry Western states have problems with wildfires. And don’t get me started on how those people who live on fault lines typically deal with earthquakes.
Don’t be an jackass.
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:11 pm
My understanding is that the reason the Exxon Valdez was so bad was because it dumped a very large amount of oil in
a relatively confined area – Prince William Sound – and the
oil spill immediately came ashore. That does not appear to be the case here. The Gulf of Mexico is pretty big. If the spill sits on the surface for long enough, much of the volatile fraction evaporates and the non-volatile fraction sinks – distillation!. When it happens this way, the damage to wildlife and wetlands is substantially reduced.
Dispersion – via the Gulf Stream – which I find hard to believe, could actually mitigate the damage – the ocean is really big.
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:16 pm
@stevie314159:
Then
Because it might just blow the thing wide open
Because the underwater nuclear testing in the south seas produced ecological disasters perhaps even worse than this.
“Radioactive cauldrons” was a description used more than once.
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:19 pm
I want to recreate the end of Quantum of Solace with Rush and his “all natural” oil.
“I bet you make it 20 miles before you think about drinking that”
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:24 pm
quite you whining libtards. think how much worse it would be to look at a bunch of ugly wind turbines offshore.
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:25 pm
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: #108
“It is almost impossible to overstate this looming disaster.”
But it is worth a shot?
By some measures over a million people died as a result of the Iraq invasion. GWB grabbed onto ‘over 30 thousand civilian casualties’.
The 2004 tsunami killed over 200,000 people and devastated
various island countries.
Where do you place this one? 500 times worse than those?
A billion?
How about some perspective here?
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:27 pm
@catclub: What are you, self appointed smart ass of the day?. This is an environmental disaster primarily and an economic one. The items you list there is no comparison to and I didn’t make one. They are all separate disasters in their own way. Now piss off wanker.
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:35 pm
And in 30 days, Hurricane season begins and I don’t know of any examples of a Hurricane, Typhoon or whatever passing over a large oil slick in the water, especially close to land. With the extreme evaporation and condensation around a tropical storm eyewall, would it pick up petroleum molecules and deposit them inland with rain fall?
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:39 pm
I’m thinking the obvious solution to all of this is a tax cut for BP.
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:35 pm
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Self appointed smartass seems preferable to self appointed dumbass/chicken little.
If you want the job of claiming that the helicopters aren’t laughing over this, take it.
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:35 pm
@catclub:
My understanding is that the reason the Exxon Valdez was so bad was because it dumped a very large amount of oil in
a relatively confined area – Prince William Sound – and the
oil spill immediately came ashore. That does not appear to be the case here. The Gulf of Mexico is pretty big. If the spill sits on the surface for long enough, much of the volatile fraction evaporates and the non-volatile fraction sinks – distillation!. When it happens this way, the damage to wildlife and wetlands is substantially reduced.
Dispersion – via the Gulf Stream – which I find hard to believe, could actually mitigate the damage – the ocean is really big
Dumbass? you mean like this comment, probably one of the dumbest ever made on BJ. “the ocean is really big” lol, sounds like you’re channeling Rushbo here. The Gulf Stream is a river of water that flows adjacent to the American coastline all the way around Fl and up the east coast. The only “dispersion” will occur along it’s path northward, and when on shore winds blow it will blow the oil onshore.
Prince William sound released a pittance of oil compared to what we are likely to end up with here, and PWS shoreline was rock and cleanable, whereas the Gulf is largely marshy estuaries that are highly sensitive and the oil will settle into the sands and toxify it for decades.
You talk like this event is over. It is not. And with really no good ideas to stop the flow, that will increase largely when the crimped pipe falls away. It is not even remotely comparable to the Exxon Valdez disaster that was enclosed and limited by that enclosure. Right now it is only a few miles offshore of MS and AL, and only because southerly winds have died down.
You are an idiot that does not have a clue what he/she is talking about
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Thanks you for posting that John Ashcroft performance.
It really helps put this oil thing into the proper perspective.
Cripes, what a disaster.
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:49 pm
@Surly Duff:
The difference is that when earthquakes strike California, most of us explain it in terms of fault lines and plate tectonics, not “Jeebus hates Hollywood”.
The South is where the Wolverines-for-Jesus crowd pompously proclaims that disasters are a sign that God hates the same people they do, so demanding they come up with a ‘reason’ (horrific word for them) why they get hit time and time again may just chisel off the top couple inches of concrete from their skulls.
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:57 pm
I get worked up about this prolly cause my education and experience has been in Ecology. We Reformed Druids take it personal when Earth Mother has been violated like she has with this clusterfuck stupid mankind shit.
May 3rd, 2010 at 7:02 pm
@Stooleo: Well, the closest analogue might be the end of the East India Company, which was wound down by Parliament after their incompetence sparked the massive Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, whereby the British were damn near run out of India entirely. They had to kill a bunch of Indians to reconquer the subcontinent.
But of course, even then, the Honourable Company’s investors were compensated.
May 3rd, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Send all the pro-drilling cheerleaders to the Gulf (led by Palin), and tell them: “Mop, baby, mop!”
They’ve gotten all the pay, now they can start doing the hard manual labor to earn it.
May 3rd, 2010 at 7:41 pm
@Mark S.:
Someone once asked me how much it would take to bribe me as an official at a motorsports event. I told him he didn’t have enough. I was telling him in a roundabout way that I could not be bought. He was offended that I disparaged his net worth, not that I would or would not take a bribe.
So obviously I am not fit to be a republican, let alone in congress.
May 3rd, 2010 at 7:42 pm
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
VNR (very nice rant)
May 3rd, 2010 at 7:51 pm
@chrome agnomen: think how much worse it would be to look at a bunch of ugly wind turbines offshore.
Windmills have been a power source for centuries, and often featured as the subjects or backgrounds of paintings — which suggests that artists and viewers have not found them “ugly”. So that appears to be just your opinion.
May 3rd, 2010 at 8:01 pm
@wrb:
Well except that they evidently tried to activate the emergency disconnect sequence from the bridge before they even left the rig, to no avail. From what I understand, there was no power to be found, which it seems should have activated the deadman switch.
May 3rd, 2010 at 8:13 pm
I guess I’m a little confused by the article cited in the post. It talks about settlements with citizens who would agree not to sue, then talks about the waivers with the fishermen BP was hiring for cleanup.
According to the contract linked @42, the fishermen would have agreed not to sue BP for damages associated with their work on the spill, but it wouldn’t prevent them from suing for business losses they suffered because of the spill.
So does anyone have a link with a pdf/more info about the general no-sue settlement? Just curious.
May 3rd, 2010 at 8:26 pm
@Zuzu’s Petals:
That assumes knowledge of exactly how the communication with the BOP was impaired. It requires a binary solution- either it was cut entirely or was entirely intact.
It is not hard to imagine scenarios under which the disconnect connection was compromised (if actually employed- a guy who just ran might not admit it, there is some liability involved) but the deadman wasn’t activated until the platform broke free of the pipe.
Or sometime sooner, some hours or tens of minutes into the rig burning, but long after the acoustic switch could have been employed.
May 3rd, 2010 at 8:27 pm
@stuckinred:
Wonder if he saw that North Korean sub anywhere.
May 3rd, 2010 at 8:30 pm
@Zuzu’s Petals:
There has been some conflation between two different documents.
In the one cited BP asks those it hires (put out of work and desperate due to BP’s screw up) to hold it harmless form the consequences of cleaning up BP’s toxic mess and to agree not to speak of the experience.
In the other case BP offered to pay people up $5,000 for a pretty much complete release from liability.
Preying on desperate people, looks like.
May 3rd, 2010 at 8:37 pm
@wrb:
Actually the deadman wasn’t activated at all. Rather than requiring communication with the BOP, it activates automatically when the power connection to the rig is lost, shears off the drill string, and seals the well.
There were several people on the bridge. I’m pretty sure the fact that the power was out was attested to by other people elsewhere on the rig, but I suppose we’ll find out sooner or later.
There are several steps at which the BOP can be activated from the drill floor and the control shed (at least), before and after a blowout. Yet it wasn’t.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been nice to have a remote device and it sure wouldn’t hurt to require them in the future. (Let me be clear, I have a loved one whose life literally depends on the rigorous implementation of safety standards. The more the better as far as I’m concerned.) I just think the people who shout that IT COULD HAVE SAVED THE RIG! don’t always understand the issue.
May 3rd, 2010 at 8:42 pm
@Zuzu’s Petals:
I think they are right, based on what we know. Not “would” but “could”.
The explosion could have compromised the communication between the rig and the BOP. However the deadman might not have been triggered until later.
The acoustic switch could have been activated immediately, before the rig started to sink and move around, torquing the pipe.
The fact that it wasn’t operable by the time the subs got there doesn’t seem conclusive. Things could have happened during the lost time.
May 3rd, 2010 at 8:51 pm
@Raven:
I think maybe your snarkometer needs an adjustment.
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:38 pm
@stevie314159:
Can someone explain to me why we can’t fire a nuclear tipped cruise missile into BP headquarters and wipe the bastards out like Luke Skywalker did to the Death Star in Star Wars?
May 3rd, 2010 at 11:42 pm
@wrb:
I think it’s a “could” with little or no evidence to support it. Just my opinion.
First, as I said, the deadman should have engaged immediately upon the loss of power. It didn’t.
Second, the rig did not sink until a day and a half after the event. The ROVs were on the scene within hours.
The BOP is protected by a small house located on the seabed, and inspection showed the exterior of the unit – particularly the accumulator bottles which are activated by either the rig switch or a remote switch – was intact. So was the pipe connection, from what I understand.
But sure, there are any number of redundant systems which in theory, unsupported by evidence, COULD have helped. But I tend to go with the opinion of people with a lot more expertise than you or me (like the professional mariners at this forum) who think it’s pretty much a false issue.
My guess is that when all the data has been analyzed, it will be found that the BOP blew with the blowout. ‘Till then it’s speculation on both sides…though I don’t think all are equally supported.
May 4th, 2010 at 12:05 am
@wrb:
Interesting, thanks.
The first part sounds like a typical hold-harmless and indemnification provision found in paid volunteer contracts.
The second part, requiring confidentiality…whew, not sure what that’s all about.
May 4th, 2010 at 12:11 am
There should be no limit to BPs liability here; there is no such thing as Too Big to Be Accountable. They had no right to destroy that whole ecosystem. If the switch would not necessarily have saved the day even if it had been installed, then there needed to be more risk assessment and engineering and backup systems. But the fact that not even that was required is telling.
May 4th, 2010 at 1:53 am
Because we need to stuff the GOP and their fluffers in there to make it more efficient first!
Badump-crash! Thank You, I’ll be here all night.
May 4th, 2010 at 2:11 am