A surprisingly good speech from Obama, covering some areas which really needed to be discussed. The corruption of the MMS was covered, along with pointing out that the insane policy of deregulation where industry regulates itself, more or less, leads to disaster (one has to ask, however, why this same point and speech was not made about the grotesque abuses of the financial services sector.

Obama also points out that we consume 20% of the global oil production but have only about 2% of the oil reserves means we need to start dropping oil consumption. Discussion of clean energy and the mythical ‘energy independence’ we like to fantasize about.

You can get the speech transcript here. There’s also a useful page of links to more speeches available.

We’ll see how this goes. Obama brings up history, World War II, landing men on the moon, and so on. I guess it helps to try, even though unfortunately, dealing with resource constraints isn’t in the same category as burning/using massive amounts of resources to achieve some goal, like building tanks in WWII, making rockets to fly to the moon, and so on.

And this of course is where the speech making falls flat, trying to sell the model of consumption/resource plenitude as a method of dealing with resource constraints/scarcity. That’s just not going to work, and I’m not sure how long that type of rhetoric is really going to fly. Maybe we’ll just keep doing it, I don’t know.

As we wind down, each step of the way we’ll just grow into believing this is the new normal, which is the same as the old normal (a nice column by Dmitri Orlov which has an amusing story about our tendency to think in this way no matter what reality actually shows us)….

Now you can track various parts of the Deepwater Horizon spill using the new ERMA Interactive Spill Map. (ERMA stands for Environmental Response Management Application). Or just visit the www.geoplatform.gov/gulfresponse/ home page, where you can also access the map.

Read more about the ERMA application here, deepwaterhorizonresponse.com – Federal Agencies Introduce Online Mapping Tool to Track Gulf Response.

Today, NOAA launches a new federal website meant to answer those questions with clarity and transparency– a one-stop shop for detailed near-real-time information about the response to the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill. The website incorporates data from the various agencies that are working together to tackle the spill.

Originally designed for responders who make operational decisions to the oil spill disaster, www.GeoPlatform.gov/gulfresponse integrates the latest data on the oil spill’s trajectory, fishery closed areas, wildlife and place-based Gulf Coast resources — such as pinpointed locations of oiled shoreline and daily position of research ships — into one customizable interactive map.

The launch of the public site is designed to facilitate communication and coordination among a variety of users — from federal, state and local responders to local community leaders and the public — the site is designed to be fast, user-friendly and constantly updated.

Beyond NOAA data, the site includes data from Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, the Fish and Wildlife Service, EPA, NASA, U.S. Geological Survey and the Gulf states . Agencies contribute data through the response data sharing mechanism within the command posts. This includes posting geospatial data on a common server, allowing access and use for multiple spatial platforms.

Watch this June 10 technical briefing video with Kent Wells, the BP spokesperson for the efforts now under way.

Sorry I can’t embed it, but this covers what relief efforts are now under way, including the short term Q-4000 flaring ship, and the 2 new drill/processing ships that are being set up to handle up to about 40k barrels per day oil, with 2 full tankers as well.

No matter what, I can’t say BP isn’t trying here, that’s for sure. Too bad it’s necessary, but they are doing some amazing things, with amazing quantities of oil being produced daily, unfortunately about 1/2 is currently flowing directly into the gulf.

But give the video a look, it’s about 15 minutes long, and will help you understand what’s going on with graphics and shots of the various drill ships, processing ships, tankers, and sub-sea devices being constructed to handle these flows.

I’m just posting this brief item to not lose this link in the maze, and also because I think in general what ROCKMAN thinks is worth noting is maybe actually worth noting.

Since the entire threads are very long, and since this one is unusually interesting, with many good posters, you can read only the comment sub-thread on this topic.

ROCKMAN on June 13, 2010 – 2:55pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

A LITTLE HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS

Shortly after the blow out shots of the digital drilling console were posted showing mud pit volumes, stand pipe pressure, etc. Can’t find those post. Someone save the link?

What reminded me of those posts was the Energy Dept’s “transparent” web site with all the important data has none of this info. Might be nice to repost not just for the newbies but we have more oil field trash hanging out at TOD these days. I’m sure some of these guys can offer better analysis of this data.
[Note: links to documents and discussion follow, then this point:]
====
ROCKMAN on June 13, 2010 – 4:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top

I know ali. That’s why I wanted to get some new eyes on it. The CNN reporter asked how many folks at BP and elsewhere could have been watching this data stream in real time on the rig and at BP’s offices. My guess was that given the time of day and the phase they were in, it was quit possible that no one on the bank was watching. The data should have been on several monitors on the rig….coman’s office, mud room, driller’s dog house. But who was watching? The more important question IMHO: when did they first notice and how much time did they have at that point.

NEWBIES: save this link. I suspect it will become THE data at the heart of the eventual investigation/trial.
=====
ROCKMAN on June 13, 2010 – 5:29pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top

EL – I can imagine no one on the bank watching…game seemed to be over once the csg was run. The hands on the rig is a different matter. There’s an outside chance they turned all the monitors off on the rig but that’s very unlikely IMHO. It’s hard to believe someone didn’t notice it early on in the event. From my experience it’s almost instinctive to look at the monitor when you pass it. From what little we know they might have started fighting the kick an hour before the explosion. But if they knew it was kicking that early then both coman, pushers and OIM should have been on the floor by then IMHO.
=====
aliilaali on June 13, 2010 – 5:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top

RM — “IMHO: when did they first notice and how much time did they have at that point.”

that’s true…in fact too true and might just be what needs to be figured out….what confounds me is ….far as I am concerned at least three sets of eyes should’ve been on this…like you point out @ dog house, mud room and the coman…
(more…)

Here’s another posting that got lost in theOilDrum.com comment thread Deepwater Oil Spill – A Longer Term Problem, Personnel – and Open Thread 2

I’ve corrected a few factual errors, and those corrections will appear in […] in the quote body, and I’ve also cleaned up the links/quotes to make them more readable. Other than that all content is as it appeared Saturday night. Please note that the original source for this was as far as I can tell on godlikeproductions.com/forum1/ – The BP Deep water horizon, Macondo Well Blowout. and what we are facing in the Gulf Part II

A similar discussion/posting of a casing failure can be found at nakedcapitalism.com – Guest Post: BP Official Admits to Damage BENEATH THE SEA FLOOR, June 12 2010, with relevant quotes and support arguments.

Also, you have to wonder if this is what Matt Simmons (Oil Guru: The Real Nightmare Will Be When A Hurricane Picks Up The Oil And Paints The Gulf Coast Black, The Gulf Coast oil spill’s Dr. Doom, and theOilDrum.com – Matt Simmons on Dylan Ratigan Today, Closing the Relief Ports, and Open Thread 2) and Florida senator Bill Nelson (Sen. Bill Nelson: Reports of oil seeping up from seabed, well casing may be pierced. (video) ), were talking about recently, albeit in a distorted form?

Also please make sure to read the discussion I’ve posted under this main article/posting that looks at some of the key points from a technical perspective.

dougr on June 13, 2010 – 3:17am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

OK let’s get real about the GOM oil flow. There doesn’t really seem to be much info on TOD that furthers more complete understanding of what’s really happening in the GOM.

As you have probably seen and maybe feel yourselves, there are several things that do not appear to make sense regarding the actions of attack against the well. Don’t feel bad, there is much that doesn’t make sense even to professionals unless you take into account some important variables that we are not being told about. There seems to me to be a reluctance to face what cannot be termed anything less than grim circumstances in my opinion. There certainly is a reluctance to inform us regular people and all we have really gotten is a few dots here and there…

First of all…set aside all your thoughts of plugging the well and stopping it from blowing out oil using any method from the top down. Plugs, big valves to just shut it off, pinching the pipe closed, installing a new bop or lmrp, shooting any epoxy in it, top kills with mud etc etc etc….forget that, it won’t be happening..it’s done and over. In fact actually opening up the well at the subsea source and allowing it to gush more is not only exactly what has happened, it was probably necessary, or so they think anyway.

So you have to ask WHY? Why make it worse?…there really can only be one answer and that answer does not bode well for all of us. It’s really an inescapable conclusion at this point, unless you want to believe that every Oil and Gas professional involved suddenly just forgot everything they know or woke up one morning and drank a few big cups of stupid and got assigned to directing the response to this catastrophe. Nothing makes sense unless you take this into account, but after you do…you will see the “sense” behind what has happened and what is happening. That conclusion is this:

The well bore structure is compromised “Down hole”.

That is something which is a “Worst nightmare” conclusion to reach. While many have been saying this for some time as with any complex disaster of this proportion many have “said” a lot of things with no real sound reasons or evidence for jumping to such conclusions, well this time it appears that they may have jumped into the right place…

TOP KILL – FAILS:
This was probably our best and only chance to kill this well from the top down. This “kill mud” is a tried and true method of killing wells and usually has a very good chance of success. The depth of this well presented some logistical challenges, but it really should not of presented any functional obstructions. The pumping capacity was there and it would have worked, should have worked, but it didn’t.

It didn’t work, but it did create evidence of what is really happening. First of all the method used in this particular top kill made no sense, did not follow the standard operating procedure used to kill many other wells and in fact for the most part was completely contrary to the procedure which would have given it any real chance of working.
(more…)