I yield to their expertise but they are not above 'make it fit math' and 'I have experience so thats not true' to reach their desired conclusion and they are oil professionals whose livelihood is dependent on 'oil'.
There have been loud roars over any talk of stopping offshore drilling so the site may be about peak oil and alternatives but that doesn't follow to the posters I am seeing.
They debunked the estimates of anymore than 20,000 bbpd coming out of the well with 'wells aren't that big in the GoM' but the nearby BP Atlantis rig has a design capacity of 200,000 bpd processing capacity for some odd reason. I realize its surely over engineered but by 1,000% just in case or is it that wells of that size exist in the GoM? If that rig was designed for much bigger wells then it would be elsewhere.
How I found out about the fines being directly scalable to the real spill rate was on Oil Drum.
I think what you are reading is a lot of professionals in the field, so I wouldn't claim they are on the side of BP, they started by exposing peak oil and their agenda was to move to alternative energies.
I think they are simply analyzing the engineering as best they can because they are technical people for the most part.
But on the spill rate itself, if BP can put over 20 gauges they are obviously reading even through Cameras they could put a sensor of some sort and get a real flow measurement. After they sawed the pipe off, that's when they had a good shot to get an accurate rate, but honestly I just don't know. On one hand it would seem in BP's interest to low ball it as much as possible. On the other hand, they just underestimated the rate so much they did not have production capacity in place...which any delays isn't in their interests.
but all things arise from the spill rate, so it drives me nuts.
Myself, I switched into geek mode on this simply because I know all things follow shutting down the spill and I have the technical background enough to track and dissect.
I have noticed (maybe especially on the Oil Drum) there are clear efforts to minimize the size of the leak in the first place.
Its certainly in BP's interest to have the public believe the minimized estimates since the fines they pay will in part be from that data.
The long time posters with info on the Oil Drum are either in the business or retired so their sympathies are also with BP. Thats clear from the tone of the posts from those users imo.
Certainly the media is mixed on this quoting everyone.
Its impossible to know the flow rate absolutely but the gas would be the first thing through that 6 inch riser now as opposed to the heavier oil.
Another thing that has been ignored is that not all oil is alike. This oil is VERY heavy dense oil with low viscosity that does not mix easily with water that should be obvious to anyone who sees it. I'm wondering what the weight of a barrel of this oil is versus the weight of a barrel that comes from Texas lets say.
There is still a huge amount of oil leaking into the GoM from what I can see anyway.
"Based on these considerations, coupled with studies suggesting severe limits to economies of scale in banking, it seems that mostly as a result of public policy—and not the competitive marketplace—ever larger banks have come to dominate the financial landscape"
Unfortunately he did not mention what public policies caused large banks to dominate the financial landscape. It would be nice to know what these public policies were because TBTF appears to be a major problem and it would be nice to know what public policies we should NOT pursue any longer.
From BP press release update, BP is reporting 7541 Barrels were collected from 12AM to 12PM, a 12 hour period. This means they are collecting over 15,000 barrels of oil per day!
That's great news people! There is also an astounding amount of gas coming up, in 12 hours, 15 million cubic feet.
Obviously the 20,000 barrels per day is assuredly a minimum spill rate, but they really need to get an accurate real time reading. There are fines associated with the spill rate and of course the Internet is claiming this is the reason we do not know, but looking at the designs, I'm wondering if the engineers do not have an accurate estimate either, because they designed for a lower overall flow rate.
You'll see a host of misinformation on population due to various special interests wanting no controls on immigration or corporate cheap labor supply, etc.
The reality is population does affect labor supply, which in turn can cause "worker substitution", i.e. worker displacement in favor of cheaper labor. Right now, you'll see a host of groups trying to deny these economic realities.
So, back to your question, there are also a lot of other variables, such as overall economic growth, the skills of various labor supply groups, labor laws, immigration policy and so on.
So, with globalization we have a host of jobs, parts of the overall supply chain, also offshore outsourced. The U.S. labor market, is not favored with a "hire American" within it's borders, or doing anything to stop offshore outsourcing, or stopping the jobs from going overseas. This means instead of a 154 million or so labor supply, multinational corporations more than access to a 1 billion labor supply.
Productivity only counts "domestic" hours of all workers (that's consultants, contractors, part time, workin' for free, the entire lot of U.S. labor). That said,
many products these days have a good portion of their development done in foreign countries, work that used to be done within the U.S. borders, thus counted as domestic.
We also have a massive underground economy with a significant illegal labor supply, est. about ~5% at least of the total U.S. work force.
So, if "hours" are not being counted, due to not being reported or really offshore "hours", this implies one can have productivity increases but no translation to passing those benefits down to the U.S. labor force in terms of jobs (real jobs) and wages.
The BLS as well as others will try to deny any of these factors or say they are trivial, but there are other economists who have looked into this and frankly it's not trivial. I'd say the proof in the pudding are the graphs themselves. They correlate more to when companies are firing people and offshore outsourcing jobs way more to any major technological innovation happening, although technological innovations do improve productivity.
The econ story of the going on quarter century is the uncoupling of productivity increases and increases in standard of living. Standard of living increases had been tied/explained by productivity gains shared with the workforce. For almost 20 years now business has been keeping more and more of the increases in productivity for itself. I'm sure that the baby-boom created ample supply of workers to allow business to capture all the extra money for itself. So does the tide go out as the baby boom workforce retires, and does a shortage of workers lead to a pre-baby boom sharing of productivity?
Dylan Ratigan just had these guy on again. Folks, we'll see but spewing crap on TV claiming there is a 2nd massive leak on the seabed floor, 7 miles away and they should 'blow up the well' and "this will never been stopped" and so on ...
well, frankly, you need to read real engineers, real oil people, real mechanical engineers, real geologists and real scientists to obtain real information.
I'm just not seeing anything to back up these MSNBC rants frankly and each time, this guy's credibility is going further down the pipe.
I mean the entire nuclear bomb thing has been debunked, re-debunked and further debunked. How many debunkings does it take?
My understanding is this guy is an executive, not an engineer, so I'm starting to find this stuff a distraction.
It's bad enough, getting real data, real facts on what's going on and throwing CT rants around just is not helping.
Ratigan would do everybody a great favor to have on his show independent experts, research Professors, engineers to give a better feel for what BP is really hiding as well as commentary on the current efforts.
To date we have had denial after denial after denial on the true economic impact the oil spill will have on the U.S. economy. Now Obama admits it will be substantial.
Recall Katrina was about $100 billion. The highest impact study we have to date is $70 billion from the DPC.
Yes, Katrina was a disaster, leveled huge sections of the gulf, all construction, roads, businesses, fishing boats and so on were wiped out.
That said, it was a one time event per say, you had mass destruction and then massive clean up. Oil isn't the same thing. It gets into the marshes, the food chain of the fishing areas, the oceans, the water and it's a nightmare to even get it out and that's just the surface stuff.
I think our best example on how to really model an economic impact is the Exxon Valdez on Alaska, which has affected the local economies ever since.
And just today I saw a justification for those of us "doom and gloomers" predicting a double dip just had residual negativity...i.e. we're just a bunch of bummer people.
uh, no, we have statistics, EIs and catastrophic events!
There is a real question on the true flow rate out of the broken BOP. Firstly, BP ran out of production capacity, which is 15,000 barrels per day (bpd). This means either BP didn't believe their cap would work, or BP itself is grossly underestimating the spill rate.
I took as the absolute minimum 20,000 bpd, but obviously designing for the minimum is not wise if one plans on capturing > 90% of the spill amount.
They have pressure gauges sensors now all around that BOP and cap. Also, those ROVs are each equipped with Sonar. Assuredly they could put some measurement sensors somewhere in the stream and find the true spill rate. I have no idea why they don't that, but maybe they believed their own denials and thus designed for a low spill rate.
Even now they are shooting for 20,000 bpd capacity, but is that really wise and shouldn't they be preparing for at least 30,000 bpd?
There is a massive amount of gas coming out of the well. It seems they have no other solutions but to burn it off at the surface. These are some scary pictures watching the controlled gas burn from the ship.
Right now, they have more of these caps moving to the sea floor. It looks like they have taller valves, closures on the valves that can be remotely controlled (which if you watch a mechanical arm try to close a value, that sure sounds more efficient!) and a host of new sensors and pipe heights. So, it looks like they are learning from their current cap design and doing redesigns top side to improve efficiency.
In other words, they are mechanically engineering new caps as a result of what they are learning about each attempt. This truly is engineering on the fly, anyone with a technical background can tell that by watching them through spillcam.
On the current cap, with 3 of the 4 vents open, just one vent closure increased the oil capture rate by 600 barrels per day. Last report was 11000 bpd and that is when they exceeded production capacity top side. Recall them must separate out seawater, gas, whatever from the actual oil before storage. That's not to make $$, that is to make sure they do not blow themselves up.
The more you let oil not escape, i.e. close valves, the more the overall force of the gusher grows, the pressure grows and potential hydrates can form and so on. The cap weight is 2 tons and is loaded with lead, trying to counter the force pressure net of the well vs. the sea pressure.
This is why it's an iterative process. Last thing you want to see is that cap get blown off by the gusher force itself. Or worse, it gets clogged.
Why I am focused so much on the engineering of this effort is all things are affected by total amount spilled and the rate.
It's the key thing, to stop the spill at the source. That should not diminish the efforts to capture the spill as close to the source as possible or to diminish the efforts to keep the oil out of marshes and all else that is going on.
The spill response is now massive, as if the spill, covering 4 states. Most of the wildlife recovered is already dead. They are putting up some nice images of pelicans getting washed and rescued, but for each lucky bird saved, it's a good 9 that are dead behind it (or more). Then there is all that one cannot see, a mammal maybe able to live counted in oil for awhile, but you can bet a host of other life, the minute the oil reaches it, dies and it's just falling to the bottom of the sea, you'll never see it.
While all are looking at the relief wells as the real solution, those too have had problems, so it's not guaranteed.
The good news is engineers are clearly in charge now and making some progress. Frankly the entire globe is dependent upon these cats figuring this out, which is why these oil open threads are so focused on the technical aspects and obviously highly supportive of their efforts.
Yup, they are seriously considering Vietnam, but they do not like their currency instability and potential for inflation, which hurts their cheap numbers profit games.
Why we never see the Chinese currency become unpegged, multinationals want that guaranteed profit advantage. We blame the Chinese but it is U.S. multinationals also in that mix.
I was pretty disgusted (obviously by the Populist rant) that they were issuing "sells" when you have conditions so bad workers are killing themselves.
Frankly it's just as bad here but notice how the U.S. doesn't report those suicides. They act like all is caused by a "chemical imbalance".
I should do a piece (or if someone else is of a mind to write about it) on the percentage of financial distress related suicides in the U.S.
There was a romantic time, so long ago, when it was thought that the only answer to what the 'bosses' do, was One Big Union Worldwide.
The will shred us to pieces before that, but something big like this may at least come out of the darkness, at least some talk anyway. How much do we need unions? Even if they are commie or mob they way many not so long ago.
I am glad for the Chinese at Honda and Foxconn. It has been a long time coming for them. Multinationals have been looking to Vietnam. Bush created a bi-lateral trade agreement with Vietnam for the day when the Chinese stood up.
A universal story that touches upon many of the themes that cross the modern world we live in: dislocation of people, destruction of their dreams overnight by crises they are not responsible for and their efforts to survive.
(Spanish with English subtitles)
National Young Artists Awards InJuve 2006 (Spain)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1603491
-----
With the Participation of:
ÁNONIMOS (Anonymous) / TOMÁS ABRAHAM / ANDRÉS BLANCO / LUÍS CARO(TENUTO) / GABRIELA CAROTENUTO / JUAN CAROTENUTO / MARIANA CAROTENUTO / MIGUEL CAROTENUTO / NORA CORTIÑAS / RODOLFO DE DIAGO “EL TURCO” / ENRIQUE / “MARITA” GIOIELLO / RAÚL GODOY / MARGARITA GROPPER / Madres de Plaza de Mayo / RODOLFO TRONCOSO
Written & Directed by
XAVI SATORRA LARRIBA
Produced by
XAVI SATORRA LARRIBA
ÀLEX LORA CERCÓS
LUIS CARO
in association with
http://www.thevisualsuspects.net
Filmed by
XAVI SATORRA LARRIBA (Argentina/Spain)
ÀLEX LORA CERCÓS (Argentina)
IRENE MENA (Spain)
JAVIER DE GREGORIO (Spain)
IVAN GONZALEZ (Spain)
Music by
Music Score Composed by JORDI HOMS (2006)
LUÍS CARO
From the Album 'El Rastro' (2002)
CABO SAN ROQUE
From the Album 'França Xica' (2005)
LOS NIÑOS PROBETA (2004)
A SILVER MT. ZION ORCHESTRA
From the Album 'This Is Our Punk-Rock' (2003)
This work is licensed under a:
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
-----
New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival 2008 (USA)
Vercelli Art Movie Festival. 2008 (Italy)
In asociation with Amnesty International
The British Museum - 2008 London Premiere
In asociation with the London International Documentary Festival and PocketVisions (UK)
Argentina - Catalunya Culture Festival. Barcelona 2008 (Spain)
1001 International Documentary Film Festival
Official Selection. Istanbul 2007 (Turkey)
Document5 – International Human Rights Documentary Festival. Glasgow 2007 (UK)
Fest-i-Kült – Intercultural Film Festival. Ankara 2007 (Turkey)
Mercadoc – Malaga Film Festival. 2007 (Spain)
Young Artists National Exhibition – Injuve (Various cities, Spain) 2006/2007
Krakow Film Market 2007 (Poland)
Ojocojo International Film Festival
Member of the Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity - UNESCO. Madrid 2006 (Spain)
L’Alternativa Independent Film Festival of Barcelona 2006 (Spain)
We have these sorts of posts, pointing to what they believe is "gushing" oil to "prove" BP is lying and the cap isn't working and yes this is a published article.
Yes, it looks bad. But the base of the cap is 4 feet in diameter. it's difficult to know the volume and density of the "gushing" oil outside the cap, but safe to say it's less than what is inside of it. That's bouncing off the cap walls and out. The plume looks huge but contained within is the cap itself, one cannot assume that plume is spherical in volume, it's not, it's a "ring". That is the visual illusion folks are freaking out on.
It's in the diameter of those fins, which from the cap dimensions are much less than the diameter, so in other words, it doesn't look to be 4 feet of pure oil, in a ring, outside the cap.
They also do not have the relief valves shut. There are 4 and they have only shut one. the reason is pressures and make sure the entire thing doesn't fall apart and they are back at square zero or worse.
They also are pumping so much oil they had to get more ships and add more "oil trains" to cart it out than they prepared for.
Unless BP is lying, which wouldn't be unheard of! (ha ha) assume it is capturing so much oil they had to line up new drilling ships and tankers to cart out the oil.
But bottom line is the most one can say is there is a butt load of oil escaping from the cap, but the total percentage, one cannot say without knowing the volume area of that "gush", the density and then the internal press/velocity and volume going up the pipe and at what rate.
I'm assuming that they had it planned for 15,000 barrels a day already which is supposedly what the ship could process so the fact they ran out of room
is a very good sign!
I also watched one of those mechanical arms trying to get a socket wrench around a bolt to the point you would assuredly either need valium, or throw the computer screen across the room.
Seriously, trying to fit a socket wrench on one bolt went on for hours.
From 1850 to 1860 Kansas settlers fought a guerrilla war against Cantrell's Raiders from Arkansas. Cantrell was fighting for the slave owners in Arkansas to kill any settler who would stand up for a Free Kansas. Kansas settlers continued to fight against a slave Kansas until the Civil War began.
In 2010, IT workers in the U.S. noticed that not only were they dealing with labor arbitrage (replace domestic with cheaper foreign Visa workers) but some U.S. based firms were using prison labor in India to offshore work from the U.S.
So the claim of increased productivity on technology alone continues to be a justification for old and new forms of the plantation economy in the United States for 150 years. The facts show that 2.2 million
H1B Visas have been granted in 20 years for
purpose of labor arbitrage. The firm cited
in this report has offices throughout the U.S.
But I thought it important to graph it out again for after this BLS release, we had the usual flurry of idiot reports out there trying to claim all job losses and increased productivity are due to more iphones and blackberries. (I think not).
Point Number (2) should be (1):
"
(2) Constitutional reforms which enhance democratic processes and civil liberties, and create more representative and pluralist systems
"
It would take initiatives on direct democracy and devolving political power locally. Devolution is taking hold due to absence of Federal help and a survivalist mode of thinking.
At a State or Federal level Constitutional change is very big and difficult. The best move is a Plebiscite, analogous to Ancient Rome's but with a few Reps who take
orders from us (yes, Romans did this!). No Constitutional amendment necessary, people's lobby.
If you don't Devolve and Democratize, then
we got the the status quo of the K-Street.
We will not survive the status quo.
In 1936, reacting to stinging criticism of the Keynsian Pump, FDR cut back the New Deal to the bone. Corporate Tax rate went to 12.5 percent, Capital gains rates were set to 50 percent of ordinary income.
The tax thing always got the rap for the double dip of the Great Depression but it was less than half the picture. Deficit spending had reached 35 percent of GDP, Keynes wanted a full 50 percent.There was a 1 percent FICA tax added, so what? FDR commented on Keynes, "I don't understand a word that man says."
We are seeing a repeat of 1936 on the Fiscal side, without the federal taxes. The drop in M3, and dump of GSE losses is alarming. If Reich is right about the loss of state spending, then we get at least another 1 percent loss of GDP (times multiplier), before the next Credit Crunch.
As the opponents of the New Deal love to say, "It was only WWII that got us out of the Depression." So how many years have we got left till WWIII to "get us out" of this Depression? The WWIII Planning is going better than many realize.
I yield to their expertise but they are not above 'make it fit math' and 'I have experience so thats not true' to reach their desired conclusion and they are oil professionals whose livelihood is dependent on 'oil'.
There have been loud roars over any talk of stopping offshore drilling so the site may be about peak oil and alternatives but that doesn't follow to the posters I am seeing.
They debunked the estimates of anymore than 20,000 bbpd coming out of the well with 'wells aren't that big in the GoM' but the nearby BP Atlantis rig has a design capacity of 200,000 bpd processing capacity for some odd reason. I realize its surely over engineered but by 1,000% just in case or is it that wells of that size exist in the GoM? If that rig was designed for much bigger wells then it would be elsewhere.
How I found out about the fines being directly scalable to the real spill rate was on Oil Drum.
I think what you are reading is a lot of professionals in the field, so I wouldn't claim they are on the side of BP, they started by exposing peak oil and their agenda was to move to alternative energies.
I think they are simply analyzing the engineering as best they can because they are technical people for the most part.
But on the spill rate itself, if BP can put over 20 gauges they are obviously reading even through Cameras they could put a sensor of some sort and get a real flow measurement. After they sawed the pipe off, that's when they had a good shot to get an accurate rate, but honestly I just don't know. On one hand it would seem in BP's interest to low ball it as much as possible. On the other hand, they just underestimated the rate so much they did not have production capacity in place...which any delays isn't in their interests.
but all things arise from the spill rate, so it drives me nuts.
Myself, I switched into geek mode on this simply because I know all things follow shutting down the spill and I have the technical background enough to track and dissect.
Its a 6 inch pipe over a 21 inch pipe. How can they get 80% of the oil? I'd say they are getting 100% or there about of the gas coming up though.
I have noticed (maybe especially on the Oil Drum) there are clear efforts to minimize the size of the leak in the first place.
Its certainly in BP's interest to have the public believe the minimized estimates since the fines they pay will in part be from that data.
The long time posters with info on the Oil Drum are either in the business or retired so their sympathies are also with BP. Thats clear from the tone of the posts from those users imo.
Certainly the media is mixed on this quoting everyone.
Its impossible to know the flow rate absolutely but the gas would be the first thing through that 6 inch riser now as opposed to the heavier oil.
Another thing that has been ignored is that not all oil is alike. This oil is VERY heavy dense oil with low viscosity that does not mix easily with water that should be obvious to anyone who sees it. I'm wondering what the weight of a barrel of this oil is versus the weight of a barrel that comes from Texas lets say.
There is still a huge amount of oil leaking into the GoM from what I can see anyway.
Fisher states:
"Based on these considerations, coupled with studies suggesting severe limits to economies of scale in banking, it seems that mostly as a result of public policy—and not the competitive marketplace—ever larger banks have come to dominate the financial landscape"
Unfortunately he did not mention what public policies caused large banks to dominate the financial landscape. It would be nice to know what these public policies were because TBTF appears to be a major problem and it would be nice to know what public policies we should NOT pursue any longer.
From BP press release update, BP is reporting 7541 Barrels were collected from 12AM to 12PM, a 12 hour period. This means they are collecting over 15,000 barrels of oil per day!
That's great news people! There is also an astounding amount of gas coming up, in 12 hours, 15 million cubic feet.
Obviously the 20,000 barrels per day is assuredly a minimum spill rate, but they really need to get an accurate real time reading. There are fines associated with the spill rate and of course the Internet is claiming this is the reason we do not know, but looking at the designs, I'm wondering if the engineers do not have an accurate estimate either, because they designed for a lower overall flow rate.
You'll see a host of misinformation on population due to various special interests wanting no controls on immigration or corporate cheap labor supply, etc.
The reality is population does affect labor supply, which in turn can cause "worker substitution", i.e. worker displacement in favor of cheaper labor. Right now, you'll see a host of groups trying to deny these economic realities.
So, back to your question, there are also a lot of other variables, such as overall economic growth, the skills of various labor supply groups, labor laws, immigration policy and so on.
So, with globalization we have a host of jobs, parts of the overall supply chain, also offshore outsourced. The U.S. labor market, is not favored with a "hire American" within it's borders, or doing anything to stop offshore outsourcing, or stopping the jobs from going overseas. This means instead of a 154 million or so labor supply, multinational corporations more than access to a 1 billion labor supply.
Productivity only counts "domestic" hours of all workers (that's consultants, contractors, part time, workin' for free, the entire lot of U.S. labor). That said,
many products these days have a good portion of their development done in foreign countries, work that used to be done within the U.S. borders, thus counted as domestic.
We also have a massive underground economy with a significant illegal labor supply, est. about ~5% at least of the total U.S. work force.
So, if "hours" are not being counted, due to not being reported or really offshore "hours", this implies one can have productivity increases but no translation to passing those benefits down to the U.S. labor force in terms of jobs (real jobs) and wages.
The BLS as well as others will try to deny any of these factors or say they are trivial, but there are other economists who have looked into this and frankly it's not trivial. I'd say the proof in the pudding are the graphs themselves. They correlate more to when companies are firing people and offshore outsourcing jobs way more to any major technological innovation happening, although technological innovations do improve productivity.
The econ story of the going on quarter century is the uncoupling of productivity increases and increases in standard of living. Standard of living increases had been tied/explained by productivity gains shared with the workforce. For almost 20 years now business has been keeping more and more of the increases in productivity for itself. I'm sure that the baby-boom created ample supply of workers to allow business to capture all the extra money for itself. So does the tide go out as the baby boom workforce retires, and does a shortage of workers lead to a pre-baby boom sharing of productivity?
Dylan Ratigan just had these guy on again. Folks, we'll see but spewing crap on TV claiming there is a 2nd massive leak on the seabed floor, 7 miles away and they should 'blow up the well' and "this will never been stopped" and so on ...
well, frankly, you need to read real engineers, real oil people, real mechanical engineers, real geologists and real scientists to obtain real information.
I'm just not seeing anything to back up these MSNBC rants frankly and each time, this guy's credibility is going further down the pipe.
I mean the entire nuclear bomb thing has been debunked, re-debunked and further debunked. How many debunkings does it take?
My understanding is this guy is an executive, not an engineer, so I'm starting to find this stuff a distraction.
It's bad enough, getting real data, real facts on what's going on and throwing CT rants around just is not helping.
Ratigan would do everybody a great favor to have on his show independent experts, research Professors, engineers to give a better feel for what BP is really hiding as well as commentary on the current efforts.
To date we have had denial after denial after denial on the true economic impact the oil spill will have on the U.S. economy. Now Obama admits it will be substantial.
Recall Katrina was about $100 billion. The highest impact study we have to date is $70 billion from the DPC.
Yes, Katrina was a disaster, leveled huge sections of the gulf, all construction, roads, businesses, fishing boats and so on were wiped out.
That said, it was a one time event per say, you had mass destruction and then massive clean up. Oil isn't the same thing. It gets into the marshes, the food chain of the fishing areas, the oceans, the water and it's a nightmare to even get it out and that's just the surface stuff.
I think our best example on how to really model an economic impact is the Exxon Valdez on Alaska, which has affected the local economies ever since.
And just today I saw a justification for those of us "doom and gloomers" predicting a double dip just had residual negativity...i.e. we're just a bunch of bummer people.
uh, no, we have statistics, EIs and catastrophic events!
There is a real question on the true flow rate out of the broken BOP. Firstly, BP ran out of production capacity, which is 15,000 barrels per day (bpd). This means either BP didn't believe their cap would work, or BP itself is grossly underestimating the spill rate.
I took as the absolute minimum 20,000 bpd, but obviously designing for the minimum is not wise if one plans on capturing > 90% of the spill amount.
They have pressure gauges sensors now all around that BOP and cap. Also, those ROVs are each equipped with Sonar. Assuredly they could put some measurement sensors somewhere in the stream and find the true spill rate. I have no idea why they don't that, but maybe they believed their own denials and thus designed for a low spill rate.
Even now they are shooting for 20,000 bpd capacity, but is that really wise and shouldn't they be preparing for at least 30,000 bpd?
There is a massive amount of gas coming out of the well. It seems they have no other solutions but to burn it off at the surface. These are some scary pictures watching the controlled gas burn from the ship.
Right now, they have more of these caps moving to the sea floor. It looks like they have taller valves, closures on the valves that can be remotely controlled (which if you watch a mechanical arm try to close a value, that sure sounds more efficient!) and a host of new sensors and pipe heights. So, it looks like they are learning from their current cap design and doing redesigns top side to improve efficiency.
In other words, they are mechanically engineering new caps as a result of what they are learning about each attempt. This truly is engineering on the fly, anyone with a technical background can tell that by watching them through spillcam.
On the current cap, with 3 of the 4 vents open, just one vent closure increased the oil capture rate by 600 barrels per day. Last report was 11000 bpd and that is when they exceeded production capacity top side. Recall them must separate out seawater, gas, whatever from the actual oil before storage. That's not to make $$, that is to make sure they do not blow themselves up.
The more you let oil not escape, i.e. close valves, the more the overall force of the gusher grows, the pressure grows and potential hydrates can form and so on. The cap weight is 2 tons and is loaded with lead, trying to counter the force pressure net of the well vs. the sea pressure.
This is why it's an iterative process. Last thing you want to see is that cap get blown off by the gusher force itself. Or worse, it gets clogged.
Why I am focused so much on the engineering of this effort is all things are affected by total amount spilled and the rate.
It's the key thing, to stop the spill at the source. That should not diminish the efforts to capture the spill as close to the source as possible or to diminish the efforts to keep the oil out of marshes and all else that is going on.
The spill response is now massive, as if the spill, covering 4 states. Most of the wildlife recovered is already dead. They are putting up some nice images of pelicans getting washed and rescued, but for each lucky bird saved, it's a good 9 that are dead behind it (or more). Then there is all that one cannot see, a mammal maybe able to live counted in oil for awhile, but you can bet a host of other life, the minute the oil reaches it, dies and it's just falling to the bottom of the sea, you'll never see it.
While all are looking at the relief wells as the real solution, those too have had problems, so it's not guaranteed.
The good news is engineers are clearly in charge now and making some progress. Frankly the entire globe is dependent upon these cats figuring this out, which is why these oil open threads are so focused on the technical aspects and obviously highly supportive of their efforts.
Yup, they are seriously considering Vietnam, but they do not like their currency instability and potential for inflation, which hurts their cheap numbers profit games.
Why we never see the Chinese currency become unpegged, multinationals want that guaranteed profit advantage. We blame the Chinese but it is U.S. multinationals also in that mix.
I was pretty disgusted (obviously by the Populist rant) that they were issuing "sells" when you have conditions so bad workers are killing themselves.
Frankly it's just as bad here but notice how the U.S. doesn't report those suicides. They act like all is caused by a "chemical imbalance".
I should do a piece (or if someone else is of a mind to write about it) on the percentage of financial distress related suicides in the U.S.
There was a romantic time, so long ago, when it was thought that the only answer to what the 'bosses' do, was One Big Union Worldwide.
The will shred us to pieces before that, but something big like this may at least come out of the darkness, at least some talk anyway. How much do we need unions? Even if they are commie or mob they way many not so long ago.
I am glad for the Chinese at Honda and Foxconn. It has been a long time coming for them. Multinationals have been looking to Vietnam. Bush created a bi-lateral trade agreement with Vietnam for the day when the Chinese stood up.
A universal story that touches upon many of the themes that cross the modern world we live in: dislocation of people, destruction of their dreams overnight by crises they are not responsible for and their efforts to survive.
(Spanish with English subtitles)
National Young Artists Awards InJuve 2006 (Spain)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1603491
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With the Participation of:
ÁNONIMOS (Anonymous) / TOMÁS ABRAHAM / ANDRÉS BLANCO / LUÍS CARO(TENUTO) / GABRIELA CAROTENUTO / JUAN CAROTENUTO / MARIANA CAROTENUTO / MIGUEL CAROTENUTO / NORA CORTIÑAS / RODOLFO DE DIAGO “EL TURCO” / ENRIQUE / “MARITA” GIOIELLO / RAÚL GODOY / MARGARITA GROPPER / Madres de Plaza de Mayo / RODOLFO TRONCOSO
Written & Directed by
XAVI SATORRA LARRIBA
Produced by
XAVI SATORRA LARRIBA
ÀLEX LORA CERCÓS
LUIS CARO
in association with
http://www.thevisualsuspects.net
Filmed by
XAVI SATORRA LARRIBA (Argentina/Spain)
ÀLEX LORA CERCÓS (Argentina)
IRENE MENA (Spain)
JAVIER DE GREGORIO (Spain)
IVAN GONZALEZ (Spain)
Music by
Music Score Composed by JORDI HOMS (2006)
LUÍS CARO
From the Album 'El Rastro' (2002)
CABO SAN ROQUE
From the Album 'França Xica' (2005)
LOS NIÑOS PROBETA (2004)
A SILVER MT. ZION ORCHESTRA
From the Album 'This Is Our Punk-Rock' (2003)
Edited by
ARAN GARRIGA / ÀLEX LORA
Sound Mixing/Postproduction
Houtech Produccions (Barcelona)
Archive footage by
Venteveo Video (Argentina)
English Translation by
FRED HALLIDAY
Running Time: 48 minutes
-----
This work is licensed under a:
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
-----
New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival 2008 (USA)
Vercelli Art Movie Festival. 2008 (Italy)
In asociation with Amnesty International
The British Museum - 2008 London Premiere
In asociation with the London International Documentary Festival and PocketVisions (UK)
Argentina - Catalunya Culture Festival. Barcelona 2008 (Spain)
1001 International Documentary Film Festival
Official Selection. Istanbul 2007 (Turkey)
Document5 – International Human Rights Documentary Festival. Glasgow 2007 (UK)
Fest-i-Kült – Intercultural Film Festival. Ankara 2007 (Turkey)
Mercadoc – Malaga Film Festival. 2007 (Spain)
Young Artists National Exhibition – Injuve (Various cities, Spain) 2006/2007
Krakow Film Market 2007 (Poland)
Ojocojo International Film Festival
Member of the Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity - UNESCO. Madrid 2006 (Spain)
L’Alternativa Independent Film Festival of Barcelona 2006 (Spain)
We have these sorts of posts, pointing to what they believe is "gushing" oil to "prove" BP is lying and the cap isn't working and yes this is a published article.
Yes, it looks bad. But the base of the cap is 4 feet in diameter. it's difficult to know the volume and density of the "gushing" oil outside the cap, but safe to say it's less than what is inside of it. That's bouncing off the cap walls and out. The plume looks huge but contained within is the cap itself, one cannot assume that plume is spherical in volume, it's not, it's a "ring". That is the visual illusion folks are freaking out on.
It's in the diameter of those fins, which from the cap dimensions are much less than the diameter, so in other words, it doesn't look to be 4 feet of pure oil, in a ring, outside the cap.
They also do not have the relief valves shut. There are 4 and they have only shut one. the reason is pressures and make sure the entire thing doesn't fall apart and they are back at square zero or worse.
They also are pumping so much oil they had to get more ships and add more "oil trains" to cart it out than they prepared for.
Unless BP is lying, which wouldn't be unheard of! (ha ha) assume it is capturing so much oil they had to line up new drilling ships and tankers to cart out the oil.
But bottom line is the most one can say is there is a butt load of oil escaping from the cap, but the total percentage, one cannot say without knowing the volume area of that "gush", the density and then the internal press/velocity and volume going up the pipe and at what rate.
I'm assuming that they had it planned for 15,000 barrels a day already which is supposedly what the ship could process so the fact they ran out of room
is a very good sign!
I also watched one of those mechanical arms trying to get a socket wrench around a bolt to the point you would assuredly either need valium, or throw the computer screen across the room.
Seriously, trying to fit a socket wrench on one bolt went on for hours.
From 1850 to 1860 Kansas settlers fought a guerrilla war against Cantrell's Raiders from Arkansas. Cantrell was fighting for the slave owners in Arkansas to kill any settler who would stand up for a Free Kansas. Kansas settlers continued to fight against a slave Kansas until the Civil War began.
In 2010, IT workers in the U.S. noticed that not only were they dealing with labor arbitrage (replace domestic with cheaper foreign Visa workers) but some U.S. based firms were using prison labor in India to offshore work from the U.S.
So the claim of increased productivity on technology alone continues to be a justification for old and new forms of the plantation economy in the United States for 150 years. The facts show that 2.2 million
H1B Visas have been granted in 20 years for
purpose of labor arbitrage. The firm cited
in this report has offices throughout the U.S.
See this link on MSNBC:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37114046/ns/business-world_business/
But I thought it important to graph it out again for after this BLS release, we had the usual flurry of idiot reports out there trying to claim all job losses and increased productivity are due to more iphones and blackberries. (I think not).
Point Number (2) should be (1):
"
(2) Constitutional reforms which enhance democratic processes and civil liberties, and create more representative and pluralist systems
"
It would take initiatives on direct democracy and devolving political power locally. Devolution is taking hold due to absence of Federal help and a survivalist mode of thinking.
At a State or Federal level Constitutional change is very big and difficult. The best move is a Plebiscite, analogous to Ancient Rome's but with a few Reps who take
orders from us (yes, Romans did this!). No Constitutional amendment necessary, people's lobby.
If you don't Devolve and Democratize, then
we got the the status quo of the K-Street.
We will not survive the status quo.
In 1936, reacting to stinging criticism of the Keynsian Pump, FDR cut back the New Deal to the bone. Corporate Tax rate went to 12.5 percent, Capital gains rates were set to 50 percent of ordinary income.
The tax thing always got the rap for the double dip of the Great Depression but it was less than half the picture. Deficit spending had reached 35 percent of GDP, Keynes wanted a full 50 percent.There was a 1 percent FICA tax added, so what? FDR commented on Keynes, "I don't understand a word that man says."
We are seeing a repeat of 1936 on the Fiscal side, without the federal taxes. The drop in M3, and dump of GSE losses is alarming. If Reich is right about the loss of state spending, then we get at least another 1 percent loss of GDP (times multiplier), before the next Credit Crunch.
As the opponents of the New Deal love to say, "It was only WWII that got us out of the Depression." So how many years have we got left till WWIII to "get us out" of this Depression? The WWIII Planning is going better than many realize.
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