“The Exxon Valdez is 31st in the world ranking of all time oil spills, and since it happened it’s become the ‘Library of Congress’ to which all other spills are inevitably compared. This is quite useful because frankly there’s too many units available for talking about oil and it seems like every news source uses a different one. Wikipedia has tonnage but the American media generally prefers gallons, and the oil industry itself uses barrels. It’s difficult to compare and contrast the horror without converting to a common base. One ‘Exxon Valdez’ is reasonable shorthand for ‘enough oil to fuck shit up.’”
A Smoking Gun in BP's Deep Horizon Mess?
BP contracted Schlumberger (SLB) to run the Cement Bond Log (CBL) test that was the final test on the plug that was skipped. The people testifying have been very coy about mentioning this, and you’ll see why.
SLB is an extremely highly regarded (and incredibly expensive) service company. They place a high standard on safety and train their workers to shut down unsafe operations.
SLB gets out to the Deepwater Horizon to run the CBL, and they find the well still kicking heavily, which it should not be that late in the operation. SLB orders the “company man” (BP’s man on the scene that runs the operation) to dump kill fluid down the well and shut-in the well. The company man refuses. SLB in the very next sentence asks for a helo to take all SLB personel back to shore. The company man says there are no more helo’s scheduled for the rest of the week (translation: you’re here to do a job, now do it). SLB gets on the horn to shore, calls SLB’s corporate HQ, and gets a helo flown out there at SLB’s expense and takes all SLB personel to shore.
6 hours later, the platform explodes.
Via @felixsalmon and Thom Hartmann.
And here’s the video of the 70,000 barrel per day leak, via The Sietch
This is based on the Coast Guard’s estimate that 5,000 barrels of oil would leak for the 90 days that it will take to dig the relief well and stop the leak (90 times 5,000 = 450,000). However, NPR reported last night that “sophisticated scientific analysis of sea floor video made available Wednesday by the oil company BP shows that the true figure is closer to 70,000 barrels a day.”
The EnduraLED is capable of lasting 25 times longer than a standard incandescent and only consumes 20% of the energy. If all the bulbs in the states were switched to these LEDs it would save 32.6 terawatt-hours of electricity each year — enough energy to power 17 million homes.
Philips Unveils World’s First LED Replacement for Most Common Bulb
“Price has not yet been finalized.”
“[I]n Soviet times such [underwater oil] leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. The idea is simple, KP writes: ‘The underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well’s channel.’ It’s so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn’t work once.”
