APRIL UPDATE: Been wondering how things turned out?
Check up with the anniversary.DECEMBER UPDATE: In lieu of actually updating this frontpage with any of the references and developments that I suggested doing months ago, I'll just link to
the major reason for reviving the thread. Kudos, and good reading.
I hope everyone has already heard of this basic story, but in case you haven't:
This oil rig owned by British Petroleum near Louisiana broke and sunk. Eleven people died, God rest their oily souls. But the big problem is the siphon snapped off, and now the wellhead is openly gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Visible from space and all that. Everyone's pointing fingers at exactly who is responsible - BP owns the hole, but the actual drilling and pumping was done by contractee Transocean Limited.
The problem with Transocean is they dug too greedily and too deep. Literally. Other countries require special shutoff valves for wellheads at 18000 feet depth, because engineering works a little differently that far down. America decided not to require such measures, because $500,000 for auto-valves is too expensive. New CEO Steven Newman paid himself considerably more than that last year. But this isn't about bashing on corporate greed and malfeasance.
No, this is about offering solutions. Because as we like to say on this forum, this is a rather
dwarven problem. And the solutions in practice are pretty
dwarven to boot. Even Transocean (or was it British Petroleum?) started sending open letters
asking for suggested solutions. And no, I'm not just making this thread because
Colbert did it last night. Maybe. Anyway, here's the rundown.
Spill Cleanup Option 1 - The Birds and the Bees and the TurtlesLike any oil spill, there's lots of dead fish and black-faced wildlife and so forth washing up on the shore.
Several birds have been scrubbed. Now, reclaiming the oil off that thieving wildlife is a slow and labor intensive process, but it's probably the biggest jobs program the Sunbelt has had in decades. Luckily, it's not mutually exclusive with other options.
Spill Cleanup Option 2 - Gentler On HandsThe Dawn soap makers donated a bunch of chemicals to the cleaning effort, along with other companies, and are rushing chemistry experts to the area.
It works just like detergent, except more scientific. That bit about turning oil into microbe food is a little disturbing. They'll all feel pretty stupid when New Orleans is besieged by The Fifty Foot Plankton, like
Cloverfield covered in Afro-Sheen.
Spill Cleanup Option 3 - Give Me Long Hair, Long Oily HairApparently animal hair is really good at soaking up oil-like substances, without soaking up too much water in the process. My shower and I have doubts about this process, but I'll play along. So relief workers are
stuffing human, dog, and alpaca hair into pantyhose, or anything else that happens to float and soak up crap. At least we can get the oil back out, although throwing dog hair, nylon, and saltwater crude into a furnace has to produce the most God-awful smell ever released on mankind. Which leads to...
Spill Cleanup Option 4 - Kill It With Fire?Here's a sign when you're getting desperate, when the best option you have is when two Coast Guard captains look at each other, shrug shoulders, and go,
"I dunno, burn it?" I can't fault the logic, and I bet it looks pretty bitchin' to see the whole damn ocean catch on fire, but I'd still keep this option well down the list.
Oil Geyser Option 1 - Montgomery Burns Slant Drilling CompanyBritish Petroleum's official plan is to siphon off the leaking head by drilling another well, presumably into the original shaft, to suckle the Earth's precious blood without all that environmental fuss. Case For: The first well was a smashing success, surely the second will do even better. Case Against: It'll take at least three months, probably longer given that BP sure isn't paid by the hour to fix this shit. It's the ongoing long-term solution all the same, but it doesn't do anything about the spill for now.
Oil Geyser Option 2 - Pray For Peak Oil?One option not commonly being discussed, which goes hand-in-hand with the 3+ month drilling project, is the possibility that the well will just run out of pressure and stop leaking. There's only so much oil down there after all, and the water pressure is pretty high. Why that hasn't happened yet, I don't know, but I guess it's squeezing the oil out like a pimple right now. Anyway, twiddling our thumbs is always a good backup plan.
Oil Geyser Option 3 - Bunghole Plug DISREGARD WE SUCK OILFunny story. BP came up with this great plan to drop a four-ton bucket on top of the wellhead, to college the gushing oil into ships without it going into the water. Almost makes one wonder why they bother with the rigs if it's that easy. And the same plan has worked on wellhead leaks in shallower waters. But the whole thing
went tits up at 18000 feet, due to really cold water or something. It's still on the table, with perhaps a smaller better designed bucket (how hard is it to screw up a bucket?), so stay tuned I guess.
Oil Geyser Option 4 - Junkshot, Woodstock, Watergate, Punk RockAfter their awesome idea to light the oilslick on fire, the Coast Guard's new plan is to
stuff the pipe with old tires and shit with a previously successful tactic called "the Junkshot". I'm getting the feeling that the Coast Guard is actually run by a bunch of bored rural teenagers, but it's not like jamming shredded trash into the heart of the spill is going to fuck up the environment any more. Which may be where the last idea came from...
Oil Geyser Option 5 - There'll Be No One Left To Blame UsWhat I said before about signs of desperation? Here's a better one. Given the clientele, I'm sure everyone here has already heard of the newest suggestion from Russia's biggest newspaper, but here it is anyway -
Nuke the well, and see what happens.
Fucking metal. Hey, it worked for the Soviet Union, apparently. Use the awesome power of the atom unleashed to collapse the well. Given the circumstances, I'd be more afraid of it blowing open the reservoir and letting all the oil out at once. At any rate, let's call that Plan C.
So, to recap: There's oil gushing unchecked from the ocean floor, where no good technology exists to fix the leak. Plans include waiting, digging more, throwing hair and tires and buckets and chalk mugs and mattresses and any other crap we have laying around at it, lighting the whole thing on fire, and blowing it to Kingdom Come. In the timeless words of Dr. Moe Howard,
you got any more bright ideas?
1. Mandate digging deeper and greedier.
2. Accidentally pull the lever and drill through your primary oil-blocking system.
3. Find out your emergency blocker doesn't work.
4. Tell everybody it's no big deal.
5. ? ? ?
6. WELCOME TO FUCKING RIGMURDERED! Hope you like oil!
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Topic: There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea - One Year Later (Read 112304 times)