Much time was wasted because BP could not believe the blowout preventer failed to seal the well and kept trying to get it to function. How they could expect it to function when blowout preventers are notoriously fickle to operate in practice is unclear, however. Plus, this one was mangled in installation and maintenance.
No containment domes were on hand when the catastrophic failure first occurred, showing a lack of foresight for disaster.
Nevertheless, when used, the containment domes failed because they filled up with methane clathrate hydrate: a foreseeable event, given the pressures at the sea bottom. As the methane/oil mixture explosively decompresses upon entering the open ocean, methane clathrate hydrate nucleates and grows, like snow, in the methane/oil plume. Nevertheless, BP seems to have been bewildered by this occurrence. They did not anticipate this happening! Despite their expertise, they are neophytes drilling at these depths, and they just didn't know this would happen! And we are supposed to trust them drilling at the continental shelf edges, and in the Arctic, where methane clathrate hydrate is abundant? Please! Like trusting children with loaded weapons!
Since the Deepwater Horizon was located just south of the big oyster beds and shrimping area - among the most productive fisheries in the world - and since those areas have been overlain by large amounts of toxic oil for more than a month now, it would be surprising if oysters and shrimp are not massively damaged. Similar to how the Exxon Valdez totally wiped out the herring fishery in Prince William Sound. Fishing in Louisiana may be eradicated as a way of life. Hunting too. Wildlife will be decimated, even under a best-case scenario. Hundreds of thousands of people will lose their jobs, and no one is prepared for that.
And yet BP's Tony Hayward is still babbling on about how he hopes the damage is moderate and how BP will fix what ails the coast.
"I feel devastated by that, absolutely gutted. What I can tell you is that we are here for the long haul. We are going to clean every drop of oil off the shore."He is either cracking under pressure and suffering delusions, or he is willing to tell people anything they want to hear, just to escape the pressure. Maybe both. And when lies don't work, he uses local officials to shut down media access to his person, and to public beaches, and to anything else that might reflect poorly on BP. The utter contempt being displayed towards the people who live near the Gulf coastline is just awesome to witness. The Masters of the Universe just have no idea how callous they sound, and how callous they are!
Crimes may have been committed too. One of BP's folks intends to take the 5th Amendment in testimony to Congress. Nice decisionmaking there!
What form will the anger of ordinarily Gulf Coast folks take, and to whom will it be directed? And when? White-hot anger takes awhile to develop, but once developed, takes forever to burn out!
And most of the oil has yet to wash up on shore. It's offshore - lurking. Shorelines in Florida, Cuba, the Bahamas, and Mexico have yet to be affected. As they most assuredly will be, given the large size of the spill and the fairly-small size of the Gulf of Mexico!
That's right, hurricane season starts early next week too! Wind, rain, waves and oil - an awesome combination!
Obama has suspended drilling permits for the next year. He doesn't even know how bad it it will get, poor child! So naive! And he's not alone! The politicians are SO slow!
Even if the 'top kill' procedure works, the real political damage has just started. This crisis has just started!
And yet, for all that, BP's response to the disaster has, by oil company standards, been fairly rapid. If Exxon Mobil was in charge, or, God forbid, Pemex, the response would have been *m-u-c-h* s-l-o-w-e-r! Put that crude in your pipe and smoke it!
Drill, baby, drill!
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