Thursday, May 27, 2010

Thoughts on the spill

Ideas/talking points.
1. If there have been 18 countries that have offered help to fix the leak in the Gulf, and the US Gov't/BP have only accepted two of these offers - why is it not being released what countries we've accepted help from (Canada & Mexico now we know who) but we don't know WHAT. What have these countries offered and what help are they giving. We know htat there are three countries that have submersible devices (robots?) that can do work at the depth & pressure that is involved in the Gulf oil leak. There was news that these three countries have offered their technology to the US/BP and to let their submersibles be used in this situation. Why have we not accepted their offers, and since we haven't accepted these offers, release some article that explains what the submersible tech could do and why would or wouldn't help in the situation in question.

2. I may not like Obama - but he made a LOT of good points during the presser.
-We cannot transition to clean technology overnight - we have been working on greening the environment and our tech for years - it isn't going to happen any faster just because this situation occurred, and in as much we're still going to need oil - and it makes more sense to use our own domestic production than import from other countries at a higher price.
-He was asked about 'can we belive anything BP says based on the fact their initial estimates of how much oil were leaking per day being as far off as they are?' His response was a round about of who is in charge and BP is responsible for fixing the leak, then paying for response/cleanup; and then he went back and said the US is in charge of management of the land that the oil lease is on etc. It was a round & round of blame but at the same time. BP made ESTIMATES. An estimate is often times a best guess. A guess. It was an estimate not an 'accurate count' of how much oil was being released in the first place. Yes BP is responsible but this is the FIRST time anyone has dealt with any time before now. No one's positive anything will work and quite frankly this country was founded on 'well what happens if I try this...' and holy crap it works in a lot of cases, in some cases like now it doesn't. Trial and error. Yes things will happen in nature - the pressure at the depth of 1 mile below sea level is far greater than most anything that we really have dealt with in fixing leaking anything at any pressure.
-Why wasn't the top kill done sooner - because if they hadn't worked up gradually to the pressure they're working at now there was the major potential for something else to rupture and cause BIGGER leaks and MORE problems. Its simple - in this case they were being smart and taking things slowly.

-I certainly think that future oil wells and current oil wells already in operation need to rethink their prevention protections. We know now that when a rig explodes like Deepwater Horizon did, that the blow-out protectors and other safety precautions do not work at the depths and pressures at which many if not all of these deep water oil rigs are based and working. Many options need to be researched and tested (if possible) in conditions matching or close to matching those of the situation at hand so that in the future if something like a rig such as Deepwater Horizon explodes or has a catastrophic failure of another type - that we're not trying to figure out what to do again. We know now what works and what doesn't. And researching better, stronger, more effective safety and leak prevention will put more people in the US back to work - even if its having more people making the oil spill booms that the news has said we're lacking enough of around the world.

I'm sure I have more thoughts but I have something else to do and can't sit here thinking of them all day. :) Another post later perhaps.

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