So with Top Kill(tm) the latest Wile E. Coyote plan to go bad for BP, what's next?
The most ambitious bid yet for a temporary fix ended in failure Saturday when BP said it was unable to overwhelm the broken well with heavy fluids and junk. The company determined the "top kill" had failed after it spent three days pumping heavy drilling mud into the crippled well 5,000 feet underwater.The odds of each successive plan working are less and less, folks. I agree with Bob Cesca.
Now, BP hopes to saw through a pipe leading out from the well and cap it with a funnel-like device using the same remotely guided undersea robots that have failed in other tries to stop the gusher.
It's becoming increasingly clear that this oil will continue to gush until the relief well is finished.Indeed. You'd better start imagining that suggestion, lady. On the other hand, I fully expect the Democrats to screw up offshore drilling reform as badly as they have health care and financial regulation reform, by passing reforms that aren't reforms at all.
Speaking of which, Canada requires mandatory relief wells to be drilled with every main well as an obvious safety mechanism. And BP is lobbying the Canadian government to drop that rule. Yes. Really.
Yesterday on MSNBC, which has a penchant for hosting lobbyists on their various shows for some reason, the senior economic adviser for the American Petroleum Institute, Rayola Dougher, scoffed at such an idea -- basically suggesting preemptive relief wells were out of the question.
The cost of drilling a relief well: $100 million. The cost of mitigating the BP oil spill so far: $930 million.
She said, "That would be -- that would really make it unviable [sic]. I couldn't even imagine such a suggestion."
Corporate criminals.
Meanwhile, when this latest plan fails, there's always nuking the damn thing. We may not have a choice.
As the latest effort to plug the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico meets with failure, the idea of nuking the immediate area to seal the oil underground is gaining steam among some energy experts and researchers.The worst case scenario I keep talking about, the one that will cripple the Eastern seaboard for a decade and cost half a trillion dollars in economic damage or more, is looking not only likely, but too tame. The real damage could in fact be a full blown national economic depression.
One prominent energy expert known for predicting the oil price spike of 2008 says sending a small nuclear bomb down the leaking well is "probably the only thing we can do" to stop the leak.
Matt Simmons, founder of energy investment bank Simmons & Company, also says that there is evidence of a second oil leak about five to seven miles from the initial leak that BP has focused on fixing. That second leak, he says, is so large that the initial one is "minor" in comparison.
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9 comments:
OK.
Maybe I was somewhat...over the top last night. I apologize.
But that doesn't change the FACTS. Here is the cold hard reality: the fishing industry is badly damaged in Louisiana. People there need jobs now! If anything we should be rapidly expanding offshore drilling to get these people into new jobs as fast as we can.
A moratorium on new drilling combined with the moratorium on fishing will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and affect millions of people.
Which industry is less risky, oil drilling or fishing in contaminated waters? Those are your choices. Which is it?
I go for option 3, reducing oil consumption, not needing to drill offshore as much, and increasing green energy jobs.
It amazes me that as much as you rail against government spending, you're basically asking for a government jobs program.
You've got to be kidding. You still don't understand why Obama is FAILING MISERABLY at this. Let me explain this to you and your liberal buddies here so that you can finally be made to understand.
The Army Corps of Eningeers to put up the miles of oil booms to protect the marshes, but instead are sitting around doing nothing leaving the booms sitting in warehouses.
The Coast Guard to assist in manpower cleanup, but instead are floating around doing nothing.
The thousands of deckhands and skippers who can't fish thanks to the EPA and who want to help clean up but are forced by the Coast Guard to wait around and do nothing.
The thousands of unemployed Gulf Coast tourism and fishing industry support workers who want to clean up the beaches and should be organized and hired by BP and contractors to do so, but the Interior Department is making them do nothing.
The thousands of rig workers, and their support industry workers, mechanics, sailors, roughnecks, construction workers and engineers who should be put to work building MORE offshore oil rigs to employ those put out of work in the fishing industry, but Obama put a moratorium on new rigs.
THAT is Obama's failure. THAT, along with the unemployment rate, Obamacare, the corruption, the failure to secure our borders, the $13 trillion in debt and the total incompetence of the entire immigration is why the Republicans will pick up 100 seats in the House and a dozen in the Senate this fall.
Do you get it now? Do you finally see why government can never be a solution to any problem?
Game over. YOU LOSE AGAIN.
I'm afraid it's not. You're asking for either the government or BP to hire thousands of workers to clean the place up.
It's a jobs program. You want a massive jobs program. You want a jobs program and you complain that the government spends too much money, and that corporations should not be compelled to deal with government regulation, while saying that BP should be forced to pay to hire all these workers to clean up...or that the government should hire them.
You're exactly like Jindal. You're screaming that the government isn't fixing the problem, but you refuse to say who and how should pay for the fixing. I have noted a number of fixes, from companies having to drill relief wells ahead of time like Canada requires, to nationalizing the entire offshore industry, that are solutions. They cost money. They would be paid for by raising fees on oil companies who drill offshore which is what the Democrats did in the House just this month.
Meanwhile, you're existing in a fantasy world where all these booms and workers and fuel for boats and food to feed all these people are free.
You don't make any sense.
Obama is the one who does not make any sense!
He gets on the TV and says he takes full responsibility for this mess and yet he does nothing!
With this, the Joe Sestak scandal, and Obamacare, he is done. Finished. Gone. His approval ratings will be under 40 by July 4 and under 30 by Labor Day...
Maybe he should resign!
Now you're just reaching.
Fact of the matter is this is BP's fault, BP's problem, and BP's liability...and you know what? If BP gets sued out of existence for this, I won't shed a tear.
Obama didn't cause this. BP did.
Obama gets the blame for this as well. It wasn't BP that forced drilling this far out and this far deep into the ocean. It was environmental regulations that forced it.
Even you have to agree with me that we absolutely must open up safer drilling areas like ANWR and closer to the coast in shallower water. We have hundreds of millions of vehicles to power. They need oil. Unless you're willing to pay $10 a gallon for gas and trillions in additional taxes for public transportation, that is the cost.
Choose. More drilling or more taxes?
Frankly, we need more taxes on oil to reduce demand...so we don't have to drill.
Even better, we need to take that tax money and then invest it in alternative energy.
There's the liberal answer, "moar taxes
Actually we need alternative sources of energy but until they are willing to put up a nuclear power plant it's obvious they aren't all that interested in change, it's just nice to talk about because it helps in the polls.
Until then we have to deal with reality, something you skirt past at almost every opportunity. We consume oil, and unless you plan on calling Obama and asking him nicely to actually do what he said, we need to continue to pump oil to prevent people from going broke paying 10$ a gallon for gas.
Also it's not a "reach" to say Obama is liable, you take him at his word on everything, we're taking him at his word on this.
"I'm responsible" - Obama
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