Gulf of Mexico oil disaster

[ND66]

...I am an Australian living in Japan, shortly about to return to Australia....

don't you like it there?





.

[Evildead666]

I'm an Englishman living in France who's going to make a jump to Canada

France has been good these past 23 years, but its time for a change.

I hope they'll have me lol.

On Topic : I thought that it was the people from (previously known as) AmOCo who were doing the drilling in that area, so basically Americans drilling on American soil (so to speak) ?

As I understood it, BP bought Amoco, and it is they who are doing the drilling ?

[Tjalfe]

I'm an Englishman living in France who's going to make a jump to Canada

Where about in Canada?

[Sasq]

don't you like it there?

it's not bad, but no place to raise kids...

on topic, got this reply back from BP

Dear Mr. Webb

I understand your perspective regarding BP's C.E.O. and senior
management.
Thank you for sharing your concerns with us. Every member of Unified
Command deeply regrets the impact this spill has had on wildlife and
the residents of the Gulf Coast. We are doing everything possible to
stop the flow from the well, contain spilled oil and minimize the
environmental impact and economic damage.

In the meantime, we appreciate your interest and concern, and encourage
you to follow our progress.

While ultimate responsibility for this terrible accident will be
determined in due time, right now all of us - Unified Command, BP, the
Administration, Federal, State and Local agencies and contracted
responders - are working together towards out ultimate goal of
environmental and economic restoration for the Gulf and its residents.


BP has assumed full responsibility for the spill, and where people have
legitimate claims for damages BP will honor them.

Regards,
BP Response Team

to be honest, I was a little surprised to get something that was even remotely customized and not just 'can-o-response' so at least kudos where kudos due.

[Evildead666]

Where about in Canada?

Not exactly bothered about where.
As long as i can get to 'nature' in a short drive, i'll be happy.
I've lived in what we call the "countryside" here and in the UK, but I think it has nothing to do with what is called "countryside" there.

I'm more interested in getting a job, and settling down, wherever.
I've lived in some rough and dodgy places before, so i'm not worried about where.
You can adapt to your surrounding...

Was contemplating going to Vancouver to start, and try and go east from there....either by train/plane/automobile (lol, no John Candy isn't on the trip )

Will be getting a flight in early October, have some stuff to finish off here first...

Can anyone recommend an area where a Computer Tech would needed ?
You can PM me if you want more info...

[Evildead666]

it's not bad, but no place to raise kids...

on topic, got this reply back from BP


to be honest, I was a little surprised to get something that was even remotely customized and not just 'can-o-response' so at least kudos where kudos due.

I'm surprised they replied so quickly....
They aren't the Devil in disguise, i'm sure other Oil companies have been checking their equipment since this spill started....

Some good will come out of it.

[VJ]

I'm also very surprised they replied... But I think their PR machine is also running full speed (they paid for commercials, google search terms, specific websites, ...).

The main problem I think it not what they are doing now, but what they failed to do beforehand. Personally I have the impression the problem is too difficult (I'm hoping they are not considering that things are too expensive) for them too solve, but that nobody else has better know how...
I still fail to understand why any country/organisation would allow deep drilling if there are no proper plans in case of events (well, I understand it: money, but it was very shortsided).

I suspect that the good that will come out of it is hopefully that companies will 1. take even more security meaures and 2. look for ways to stop such a blow out. Perhaps companies could work together to form some emergency response team?

[Sasq]

I have no doubt other companies have just been 'lucky' up until now
but until us as consumers force the management responsible for these actions to fall on their swords when things go to hell, all upper management will care about is their own bonus's and shareholder value.

if the way we achieve that, is by punishing the company and in turn punishing the share holders stock values, so be it.

Too many companies value the shareholder more then their customers, the only way we can take that back, is to make it clear to the companies, without us consumers, they have nothing.

[ND66]

No wonder they're sweeter then honey...

Rig survivors: BP ordered shortcut on day of blast

(CNN) -- The morning the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, a BP executive and a Transocean official argued over how to proceed with the drilling, rig survivors told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an exclusive interview.

The survivors' account paints perhaps the most detailed picture yet of what happened on the deepwater rig -- and the possible causes of the April 20 explosion.

The BP official wanted workers to replace heavy mud, used to keep the well's pressure down, with lighter seawater to help speed a process that was costing an estimated $750,000 a day and was already running five weeks late, rig survivors told CNN.

BP won the argument, said Doug Brown, the rig's chief mechanic. "He basically said, 'Well, this is how it's gonna be.' "

"That's what the big argument was about," added Daniel Barron III.

Shortly after the exchange, chief driller Dewey Revette expressed concern and opposition too, the workers said, and on the drilling floor, they chatted among themselves.

"I don't ever remember doing this," they said, according to Barron.

"I think that's why Dewey was so reluctant to try to do it," Barron said, "because he didn't feel it was the right way to have things done."

Revette was among the 11 workers killed when the rig exploded that night.

In the CNN interviews, the workers described a corporate culture of cutting staff and ignoring warning signs ahead of the blast. They said BP routinely cut corners and pushed ahead despite concerns about safety.

The rig survivors also said it was always understood that you could get fired if you raised safety concerns that might delay drilling. Some co-workers had been fired for speaking out, they said.

It can cost up to $1 million a day to operate a deepwater rig, according to industry experts.

Safety was "almost used as a crutch by the company," Barron said. He said he was once scolded for standing on a bucket on the rig, yet the next day, Transocean ordered a crane to continue operating amid high winds, against its own policies. "It's like they used it against us -- the safety policies -- you know, to their advantage.

"I don't think there was ever a plan set in place, because no one ever thought this was gonna ever happen," he added.

BP spokesman Robert Wine would not comment on specific allegations, saying the company has to "wait for the investigations to be completed. We can't prejudge them."

"BP's priority is always safety," he said.

Transocean, the world's largest offshore drilling contractor, said its top priority is safety.

"There is no scenario or circumstance under which it will be compromised," the company said in a written statement. "So critical is safety at Transocean that every crew member has stop-work authority, a real-time method by which all work is halted should any employee suspect an unsafe situation or operation."

In Washington on Tuesday, Rep. Nick Rahall, the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, sought more answers. In a letter to Steven Newman, CEO of Transocean, Rahall said records from the rig indicate 18 people at work on the second shift with "zero engineers, electricians, mechanics or subsea supervisors" on duty the night of the explosion.

Rahall added that payroll records show 20 crewmen, including seven of the 11 men who died, had worked a 24-hour shift six days before the explosion. Rig workers typically work 12-hour days.

"Although these reports do not provide a complete picture of who exactly was working during the time of the explosion and in the days leading up to it, when combined with the ongoing BP internal investigation that suggests that inattentiveness may have been a contributing factor in the disaster, I have serious questions about whether enough people were working on the night of April 20 to adequately handle the complex operations that were being performed, or if crew fatigue caused by extended shifts may have played a role," wrote Rahall, D-West Virginia, the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee.

Rahall called on the company to give his committee more detailed logs and a further explanation of its staffing -- a request Transocean said it would meet.

But Transocean said no worker put in a 24-hour day, and the documents Rahall cited didn't tell the whole picture. Daily drilling reports track operations and "certain personnel," it said, "but does not use them to catalog complete crew shifts or the actual hours worked by each crewmember."

"At the time of the accident, the Deepwater Horizon and its crew had compiled seven consecutive years of operations without a single lost-time safety incident," the company said in a written statement. "The vessel was properly and professionally manned; there was no shortage of technical expertise, nor did any crewmember work a 24-hour shift."

CNN was given access to individual time sheets that appear to back up Transocean's claim that no employees worked 24-hour shifts on April 14, six days before the explosion that eventually sank the rig.

Other documents reviewed by CNN seem to indicate that additional salaried workers may have been on the job that don't show up on time sheets, possibly refuting the committee's claim the rig was shortstaffed on April 20.

The rig workers have filed a negligence suit against BP, Transocean, oil field services contractor Halliburton and other companies involved with the deepwater rig.

"I've seen gross negligence, and this conduct is criminal," said Steve Gordon, the lawyer representing the men. "There's a crime scene sitting 5,000 feet below the water."

Brown, the rig's mechanic, had traveled with the rig from South Korea, where it was made nearly a decade ago. He had seen the mechanical crew get downsized over the years. Yet as the rig aged, the engines began having more problems.

"It became overwhelming," he said. "We couldn't keep up with the flow of it. ... We constantly over the years kept telling them, 'Hey, we need more help back here.'

"They pretty much just said, 'Well, we'll look into it.' "

About nine months ago, Brown said, he got an additional first engineer, yet the crew was still overloaded with work.

Even more alarming, the rig survivors said, was the amount of resistance the well was giving them. "We had problems with it from the day we got on," Matthew Jacobs said.

Nearly every day, Jacobs said, "we had problems with that well."

Barron said it was like an eerie cloud hung over the well being dug 5,000 feet into the sea.

"There was always like an ominous feeling," he said. "This well did not want to be drilled. ... It just seemed like we were messing with Mother Nature."

At times, the drill got stuck. Many times, it "kicked," meaning gas was shooting back through the mud at an alarming rate.

"I've seen a lot of gas coming up from muds on different wells, and the highest I've ever seen in my 11 years was 1,500 units. And this well gave us 3,000," Brown said. "I've never been on a well with that high of gas coming out of the mud. That was kind of letting me know this well was something to be reckoned with."

It all came to a head at 9:56 p.m., when the first of three explosions rocked Deepwater Horizon, 52 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana, with 126 people aboard. Tiles fell from the ceiling, walls collapsed, and people ran for their lives. It reminded Matt Jacobs of the movie "Titanic."

"It looked like you was looking at the face of death," he said. "You could hear it, see it, smell it."

He scrambled to the lifeboat deck. Jacobs had been trained to fight fires aboard the rig. But when he looked at the flames shooting 150 feet into the air, he knew there was nothing they could do. "There is no way we can put that fire out," he thought.

Jacobs hopped in a lifeboat. He screamed for co-workers to jump aboard. A second explosion rocked the rig. The lifeboat, still suspended in the air, went into a free fall of about 3 feet.

"Here I am on a lifeboat that's supposed to help me get off this rig," Jacobs thought. "And I'm gonna wind up dying."

He bowed his head and prayed.

Now, 50 days later, the survivors are telling their stories. It's become part of their everyday lives. They can't shake what happened that day, even when they close their eyes at night.

"It's like being in a neverending nightmare," Brown said. "You dream about it. You see it in your sleep. Then, we wake up in the morning, and we realize it's not a dream. It's real. ... It doesn't end for us."

CNN's Aaron Cooper contributed to this report. This piece is part of a CNN Special Investigations Unit project.


Links referenced within this article



Find this article at:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/06/08/oil.rig.warning.signs/index.html?hpt=C1

[cjolley]

They are in it deep.
It's pretty apparent they lied to the government at many levels about the size of the leak from the beginning up to and including now.
Probably in hopes of holding down the size of their fine, which is based on barrels of oil spilled.

And their contingency planning document has come out and is rapidly becoming a laughing stock.

[VJ]

Infographic showing just how deep they drilled..

http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/infographic-tallest-mountain-to-deepest-ocean-trench-0249/

[RedRed]

Scale of BP oil leak revised up to 40,000 barrels a day
Title says it all ...http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...ll-gulf-mexico

[cjolley]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100614/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_washington

BP engineer called doomed rig a 'nightmare well'

By MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press Writer Matthew Daly, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 14, 6:17 pm ET

WASHINGTON – BP took measures to cut costs in the weeks before the catastrophic blowout in the Gulf of Mexico as it dealt with one problem after another, prompting a BP engineer to describe the doomed rig as a "nightmare well," according to internal documents released Monday.
The comment by BP engineer Brian Morel came in an e-mail April 14, six days before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that killed 11 people and has sent tens of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf in the nation's worst environmental disaster.
The e-mail was among dozens of internal documents released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating the explosion and its aftermath.
In a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward, Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Bart Stupak, D-Mich., noted at least five questionable decisions BP made in the days leading up to the explosion.
"The common feature of these five decisions is that they posed a trade-off between cost and well safety," said Waxman and Stupak. Waxman chairs the energy panel while Stupak heads a subcommittee on oversight and investigations.
"Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense," the lawmakers wrote in the 14-page letter to Hayward. "If this is what happened, BP's carelessness and complacency have inflicted a heavy toll on the Gulf, its inhabitants, and the workers on the rig."
The letter, supplemented by 61 footnotes and dozens of documents, outlines a series of questions Hayward can expect when he comes before Stupak's subcommittee on Thursday.
The hearing will be Hayward's first appearance before a congressional committee since the explosion and sinking of the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig. BP America President Lamar McKay and other officials represented the company at earlier hearings.
The letter by Waxman and Stupak focuses on details such as how to secure the final section of the deepwater well. The company apparently chose a riskier option among two possibilities — running a single string of steel casing from the seafloor to the bottom of the well, instead of hanging a steel liner with a "tieback" on top.
Despite warnings from its own engineers, "BP chose the more risky casing option, apparently because the liner option would have cost $7 to $10 million more and taken longer," Waxman and Stupak said.
In a brief e-mail exchange, Morel and a colleague, Richard Miller, talked about the last-minute changes.
"We could be running it in 2-3 days, so need a relative quick response. Sorry for the late notice, this has been nightmare well which has everyone all over the place," Morel wrote on April 14.
Waxman and Stupak also said BP apparently rejected advice of a subcontractor, Halliburton Inc., in preparing for a cementing job to close up the well. BP rejected Halliburton's recommendation to use 21 "centralizers" to make sure the casing ran down the center of the well bore, they said. Instead, BP used six centralizers.
In an e-mail on April 16, a BP official involved in the decision explained: "It will take 10 hours to install them. I do not like this." Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: "who cares, it's done, end of story, will probably be fine."
In spite of the well's difficulties, "BP appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure," Waxman and Stupak said.
The lawmakers also said BP also decided against a nine- to 12-hour procedure known as a "cement bond log" that would have tested the integrity of the cement. A team from Schlumberger, an oil services firm, was on board the rig, but BP sent the team home on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight the morning of April 20. Less than 12 hours later, the rig exploded.
BP also failed to fully circulate drilling mud, a 12-hour procedure that could have helped detect gas pockets that later shot up the well and exploded on the drilling rig.
A spokesman for BP could not immediately reached for comment.

[RedRed]

Leak revised upwards agin - 40-60,000 bpd.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/us_...a/10325271.stm

[SitFlyer]

It's still lots more than it should ever be. Penny wise and pound foolish is definitely going to bite BP on this one.
Happens at lots of companies all the time..............I've only one word for that and it's IDIOTS