The guys controlling the ROVs, jesus, haven't they heard of HD large displays? The resolution doesn't even look HD either, never mind higher, and we know the full video you cannot see jack due to the plumes of oil often.
Get these guys some high resolution 24", 32" displays man.
The estimates on the spill rate vary widely, which is why I attached the latest report so you can see the methods and the details and the disparity. I'm going with at least 20,000 barrels a day and assume that's a minimum so this means, if BP isn't lying, they hit a 50% collection rate with the cap.
That's pretty good really all things considered. It's obviously a tuning game, dealing with pressures, stability and so on, I've watched them on spillcam continually "tune" it to try to collect more.
I think they need a second system.
That said, I just checked spillcam and right before the videos went off line, I could see the cap moving. It's a pressures/freeze game they are playing, truly a bitch.
Last reason I saw on why they cannot remove the BOP 5000 miles below the sea with a gushing well is it's too dangerous and it might all blow up. The details I do not know.
That is the heart of the matter. The only thing that is dictating decisions is that quarterly profit report to Wall Street and lining their own executive pockets.
We've had some great policy recommendations to change corporate governance and executive pay compensation.
The real problem is our government. The American people have been royally shafted by our elected representatives, that's Obama on down. Health care reform is a joke, they did not reign in insurance companies or costs, financial reform is a joke, they did not stop TBTF, it looks like what is there on derivatives will be ripped out, they put a consumer protection agency under the Federal reserve....
Even Stimulus, money poured overseas, they did not do a direct jobs program....
On pretty much every issue the people lost and the Lobbyists won.
"For all the criticism BP executives may deserve, they are far from the only people to struggle with such low-probability, high-cost events."
Let's look at the history of industrial safety for a moment. Workers on Erie Canal, Tran-Continental Railroad, skyscrapers, Deepwater Horizon workers did not make a free, informed choices and paid with their lives.
In purely economic terms, the choice is not rational. You and I and other readers know that this is because they are not 'liberated'. Others see the choice to work for low compensation and high risk as a modern form of slavery.
Times looks at the issue from the standpoint of capital, not lives or environment. Once you open these discussions up, you get to the heart of how this economy really works, and its flaws.
A good article talking about how bean counters not only labor arbitrage workers but also cut corners on safety with our favorite "rare event" modeling.
New York Times article on it (but not in depth enough on cost management analysis).
This is a company that tried to morph into a "green" company. You can flush that down the toilet.
Their brand has become toxic.
People are refusing to buy from their stations. If people are pissed off enough, this may be a bigger problem than they can solve.
I attached the latest estimates on the total amount of oil spilled and the current spill rate.
Despite the big paranoia out there, frankly, the people on this team is a bunch of geeks and I think this is a valid estimate and document, even if HuffPo wants to get all flipped out about it.
It's probably 20,000 barrels a day and believe this or not, I see various ratios out there on what makes up a barrel. It's 42 gallons, end of story. It's not 72, it's not 52, it's 42.
There will be plenty of lawsuits and the states want them all heard in state courts so the Feds can't throw out punitive damages the way they did for Exxon.
I'm sure a good analysis will be worth its weight in gold to the plaintiffs. Food for thought before you or who ever publish something a bit too detailed.
Funny JP Morgan Chase created the credit default swap specifically for Exxon, it ends up helping bankers kill the world economy and then the courts throw out punitive damages nullifying its original purpose (cds).
saying they were working on this so I've held off. But I've put up a few posts on this, the latest numbers I saw were from the DPC @ $70 Billion.
I am game to go into the regional economic databases via the BLS and the Fed and plain number crank what we believe the real losses to be. You can take the entire fishing industry of the gulf, the tourism industry, hotels, then, if they continue the ban on offshore drilling, that's a huge, there are all of the support services, the workers, and plus the secondary effects with consumer spending crashing because people don't have jobs...
I think those are the biggest sectors, so it's a matter of tallying them up for the entire gulf region from New Orleans East (I think the currents and wind all mean the oil goes east and south).
There might also be issues with additional shipping of unrelated things, New Orleans is a major port, have no idea about the general state of shipping lanes in the gulf.
Bottom line, Hurricane Andrew was about $41 billion, Katrina was $90.3 billion
but that's massive infrastructure damage, I don't think the fishing industry was that damaged long term.
Anyway, I just don't buy only $70 billion if it turns the entire gulf coast into an oil slick and kills everything in it's path.
They should be spending much much more on cleanup than they are. That area should look like its being invaded by clean up workers and clearly it doesn't.
Something about the damage and a live well, but I cannot remember the details or where i read them. If you dig it out, link it up. I'm finding the best technical discussion is the oil drum.
While the bad guy du jour is BP, all that has happened is they usurped Goldman Sachs, who dethroned Citigroup, who took the heat off of Microsoft...
I mean they are all sociopathic feudal kingdoms who pour way more money into "messaging" and lobbying than actual solid engineering and their core business.
I mean it's ridiculous, the engineers beg for money in comparison to some idiot who "manages image and messaging".
This time though I think the focus on BP being evil (of course they are evil! They are the 2nd (?) largest corporation plus an oil company!) is almost adverse to working on getting this solved and cleaned up.
It should be more BP cough up the money now, BP, let the super tanker in now, BP put more bird rescue boats on the water now, BP give this wildlife refugee more money now and so on as the focus.
I wish they'd have given him a shot if only so he'd have fallen on his face.
Cameron knew his offer wouldn't be accepted but he got the publicity he wanted out of it.
One side of BP caused this and an entirely other side is trying to fix it. The idea that Cameron would know anything about sealing a highly pressurized reservoir of oil a mile under the water is ludicrous. If his help was needed then the US government should have accepted since they are 'in charge'.
The Navy probably has the equipment to at least attempt a fix but I'll bet politics wise they don't want to own this and give BP an out either.
Most of the ideas that involve increasing pressure in the BOP seem to be rejected out of hand from a fear that the BOP will simply 'break' and make things worse or involve not having enough muscle to do things down there such as removing a flange and installing a new fitting.
If they completely removed the BOP they could put a plug into the pipe on the sea bed but that would be filled with a lot of 'what ifs' which scare them.
BP is toast and its all about damage control right now till someone buys them out.
I cannot handle looking at those photos, it just breaks my heart and I knew this would happen, but now they are seeing massive dead birds, wildlife, dolphins, you name it showing up for miles and miles.
I about cried when I first looked at the real spill rate estimates, knowing this would happen and I wish they could pick up every single living thing and relocate all of them.
It will make you cry to read the stories so I'm not posting links, just because it's so upsetting just to know it's going on.
I think that shutting off just one value greatly reduced the spill amount. I could be wrong and now it looks like they are checking all of the pressure gauges they have placed around and on hoses, but it sure looks reduced, I can make out the cap when before on Enterprise you couldn't see any of it and the other two plumes on camera appear to be smaller 2.
I have no idea why we don't have a least official running tweets as commentary on what's going on or at least some Academic doing that. I'm so surprised for this would be the mechanical/engineering spectacular I would think.
and admitted his claim they were a bunch of morons was "wrong" and that they had the right gear, the right ROVs available.
I mean I was never impressed with "top kill" and some of the other stuff suggested originally but now it looks to me like they are more "on it" in terms of trying to architect/engineer using the data they are seeing, on the fly vs. "throw golf balls at it". I mean originally some of the engineering ideas looked like panic, almost pure panic vs. using the data to architect out something that had a prayer's chance. I wouldn't say that's true at this point though.
On the cleanup/containment side, that seems to be another story, I think they should be doing a massive engineering effort to suck up that oil, at the site, top side, some sort of gigantic collections via vacuums, pumps, etc.
But Cameron is an underwater film maker (now a 3D one), not an underwater engineering guy per say and this is really coming down to mechanical/oil engineering.
I'm not impressed with some fancy filmmaker coming on national TV and calling a group of engineers are bunch of morons when he doesn't know what's happening. I know these guys (where are the ladies btw?) are under enormous stress and one does not think clearly when there is that much pressure. Insulting them assuredly didn't help things, esp. when you're relying on people to use their wits, on the fly, to figure out ways never been tried to stop the leak.
It's Oceaneering that's clearly doing at least all of the underwater ROV and deployment stuff. That's a contractor to BP, not BP itself. You can see their hats and titles on each spillcam, (there are 12 spillcams) even the task that's happening now, they are putting titles on the video stream.
I've been wondering about the Navy. I know they have submarines and all sorts of stuff to go deep and then there is that lovely nuclear bomb retrieval issue at the bottom of the sea, along with sunken submarines, so where's that technology and could it be applied?
All of that said, I'm watching spill cam right now, just watched a robotic arm spend a good 15 minutes trying to latch onto the knob to turn off a value in the middle of a massive velocity oil gushing force which makes the entire screen go black so you can't see shit. I mean at least 15 minutes to make 1 90 degree right turn on a knob.
Another time it was like a half hour watching them untie a knot in some tubing/cabling. It's clear the conditions are extreme, even taking under consideration these are robot arms, manually controlled.
I mean I can see some technology that needs to be added pronto, #1 being 3D cameras, #2 being touch sensitivity sensors to the robotic arms...
Does Cameron have 3D Cameras that do not require blue suits, reference points in action but truly can coordinate the images to create 3D in real time in that mess/junk down there? I do not know, I honestly do not know if that issue has even been solved, to image process multiple cameras, with absolute reference points computed, on the fly, in real time, plus produce a real time accurate 3D image. As far as I know filmmakers have to reference position, which is why you see actors in leotards with little ping pong balls attached all over it. Those ping pong balls are the absolute position reference points.
but in terms of stopping this well, it looks like a massive hydraulics, avoiding freezing, velocity, flow directions, interactions with deep sea pressure nightmare frankly, assuredly out of my pay grade. and I don't see what kind of submersible technology can deal with that one.
I see some vacuum technology maybe, piping it up to a ship, oil rigging stuff...
Anywho, this is one of the reasons I decided to keep oil open threads going on EP, to put the focus on real technology because there are just way too many people, who really do not know what they are talking about, all over the place and some of it is true misinformation.
It's bad enough one has the barracuda BP PR machine on full throttle.
Cameron appeared on Hardball. Said he offered expertise from Academia and other Oil Patch experts. There is plenty of talent and ideas if they would deploy it. The entire problem resolution was single threaded.
Both Cameron and Cousteau offered deep water submersibles to BP and the U.S.
Neither the U.S. nor BP own deep water submersibles. As late as the 1969s there were deep water submersibles as Military assets
I could be wrong in checking in on spill cam but it looks like they might be dealing with hydrates forming again. I'm seeing what I believe is frozen gas particles around, a lot of 'em. They are just firehosing disbursements down there too, so maybe it's a molecule formation happening, but it sure looks like hydrates from spillcam.
Last report is they are using one of the most least effective and highly toxic of them all top side. Dunno what is being used at the leak source, 5000 feet down.
That said, I wouldn't freak out about this for it's clear there is a balancing act going on on the sea floor and I suspect this is going to be baby steps, two ahead, one back, and so on trying to capture a larger and larger oil percentage.
There is also an amazingly amount of gas and that's highly volatile.
Reports are the relief well is faster along than August, but that said, there are hurricanes plus a lot can go wrong in drilling a relief well, kind of doing an elephant through a keyhole in terms of the target area the drill must hit.
If so, you could create an account here and cross post, discuss. I'm watching the never ending IMF demands and the focus on destroying pensions, social safety nets, wage levels, unions.....and also noted Hungary has been busy already ripping this asunder. Bottom line this is what happens when you bail out fictional finance to half a trillion bucks and counting. (Europe).
The guys controlling the ROVs, jesus, haven't they heard of HD large displays? The resolution doesn't even look HD either, never mind higher, and we know the full video you cannot see jack due to the plumes of oil often.
Get these guys some high resolution 24", 32" displays man.
The estimates on the spill rate vary widely, which is why I attached the latest report so you can see the methods and the details and the disparity. I'm going with at least 20,000 barrels a day and assume that's a minimum so this means, if BP isn't lying, they hit a 50% collection rate with the cap.
That's pretty good really all things considered. It's obviously a tuning game, dealing with pressures, stability and so on, I've watched them on spillcam continually "tune" it to try to collect more.
I think they need a second system.
That said, I just checked spillcam and right before the videos went off line, I could see the cap moving. It's a pressures/freeze game they are playing, truly a bitch.
Last reason I saw on why they cannot remove the BOP 5000 miles below the sea with a gushing well is it's too dangerous and it might all blow up. The details I do not know.
That is the heart of the matter. The only thing that is dictating decisions is that quarterly profit report to Wall Street and lining their own executive pockets.
We've had some great policy recommendations to change corporate governance and executive pay compensation.
The real problem is our government. The American people have been royally shafted by our elected representatives, that's Obama on down. Health care reform is a joke, they did not reign in insurance companies or costs, financial reform is a joke, they did not stop TBTF, it looks like what is there on derivatives will be ripped out, they put a consumer protection agency under the Federal reserve....
Even Stimulus, money poured overseas, they did not do a direct jobs program....
On pretty much every issue the people lost and the Lobbyists won.
"For all the criticism BP executives may deserve, they are far from the only people to struggle with such low-probability, high-cost events."
Let's look at the history of industrial safety for a moment. Workers on Erie Canal, Tran-Continental Railroad, skyscrapers, Deepwater Horizon workers did not make a free, informed choices and paid with their lives.
In purely economic terms, the choice is not rational. You and I and other readers know that this is because they are not 'liberated'. Others see the choice to work for low compensation and high risk as a modern form of slavery.
Times looks at the issue from the standpoint of capital, not lives or environment. Once you open these discussions up, you get to the heart of how this economy really works, and its flaws.
A good article talking about how bean counters not only labor arbitrage workers but also cut corners on safety with our favorite "rare event" modeling.
New York Times article on it (but not in depth enough on cost management analysis).
This is a company that tried to morph into a "green" company. You can flush that down the toilet.
Their brand has become toxic.
People are refusing to buy from their stations. If people are pissed off enough, this may be a bigger problem than they can solve.
I attached the latest estimates on the total amount of oil spilled and the current spill rate.
Despite the big paranoia out there, frankly, the people on this team is a bunch of geeks and I think this is a valid estimate and document, even if HuffPo wants to get all flipped out about it.
It's probably 20,000 barrels a day and believe this or not, I see various ratios out there on what makes up a barrel. It's 42 gallons, end of story. It's not 72, it's not 52, it's 42.
There will be plenty of lawsuits and the states want them all heard in state courts so the Feds can't throw out punitive damages the way they did for Exxon.
I'm sure a good analysis will be worth its weight in gold to the plaintiffs. Food for thought before you or who ever publish something a bit too detailed.
Funny JP Morgan Chase created the credit default swap specifically for Exxon, it ends up helping bankers kill the world economy and then the courts throw out punitive damages nullifying its original purpose (cds).
saying they were working on this so I've held off. But I've put up a few posts on this, the latest numbers I saw were from the DPC @ $70 Billion.
I am game to go into the regional economic databases via the BLS and the Fed and plain number crank what we believe the real losses to be. You can take the entire fishing industry of the gulf, the tourism industry, hotels, then, if they continue the ban on offshore drilling, that's a huge, there are all of the support services, the workers, and plus the secondary effects with consumer spending crashing because people don't have jobs...
I think those are the biggest sectors, so it's a matter of tallying them up for the entire gulf region from New Orleans East (I think the currents and wind all mean the oil goes east and south).
There might also be issues with additional shipping of unrelated things, New Orleans is a major port, have no idea about the general state of shipping lanes in the gulf.
Bottom line, Hurricane Andrew was about $41 billion, Katrina was $90.3 billion
but that's massive infrastructure damage, I don't think the fishing industry was that damaged long term.
Anyway, I just don't buy only $70 billion if it turns the entire gulf coast into an oil slick and kills everything in it's path.
They should be spending much much more on cleanup than they are. That area should look like its being invaded by clean up workers and clearly it doesn't.
Something about the damage and a live well, but I cannot remember the details or where i read them. If you dig it out, link it up. I'm finding the best technical discussion is the oil drum.
While the bad guy du jour is BP, all that has happened is they usurped Goldman Sachs, who dethroned Citigroup, who took the heat off of Microsoft...
I mean they are all sociopathic feudal kingdoms who pour way more money into "messaging" and lobbying than actual solid engineering and their core business.
I mean it's ridiculous, the engineers beg for money in comparison to some idiot who "manages image and messaging".
This time though I think the focus on BP being evil (of course they are evil! They are the 2nd (?) largest corporation plus an oil company!) is almost adverse to working on getting this solved and cleaned up.
It should be more BP cough up the money now, BP, let the super tanker in now, BP put more bird rescue boats on the water now, BP give this wildlife refugee more money now and so on as the focus.
Whats all this going to cost?
The fishing industry will be dead there for decades and thats multiple billions per year.
Area employment will be affected for decades.
Area housing prices will be affected for decades.
Area tourism will be affected for some time.
Area taxes will have to go up because tax revenue will fall.
This could cause a shift in the population away from coastal areas.
I wish they'd have given him a shot if only so he'd have fallen on his face.
Cameron knew his offer wouldn't be accepted but he got the publicity he wanted out of it.
One side of BP caused this and an entirely other side is trying to fix it. The idea that Cameron would know anything about sealing a highly pressurized reservoir of oil a mile under the water is ludicrous. If his help was needed then the US government should have accepted since they are 'in charge'.
The Navy probably has the equipment to at least attempt a fix but I'll bet politics wise they don't want to own this and give BP an out either.
Most of the ideas that involve increasing pressure in the BOP seem to be rejected out of hand from a fear that the BOP will simply 'break' and make things worse or involve not having enough muscle to do things down there such as removing a flange and installing a new fitting.
If they completely removed the BOP they could put a plug into the pipe on the sea bed but that would be filled with a lot of 'what ifs' which scare them.
BP is toast and its all about damage control right now till someone buys them out.
I cannot handle looking at those photos, it just breaks my heart and I knew this would happen, but now they are seeing massive dead birds, wildlife, dolphins, you name it showing up for miles and miles.
I about cried when I first looked at the real spill rate estimates, knowing this would happen and I wish they could pick up every single living thing and relocate all of them.
It will make you cry to read the stories so I'm not posting links, just because it's so upsetting just to know it's going on.
I think that shutting off just one value greatly reduced the spill amount. I could be wrong and now it looks like they are checking all of the pressure gauges they have placed around and on hoses, but it sure looks reduced, I can make out the cap when before on Enterprise you couldn't see any of it and the other two plumes on camera appear to be smaller 2.
I have no idea why we don't have a least official running tweets as commentary on what's going on or at least some Academic doing that. I'm so surprised for this would be the mechanical/engineering spectacular I would think.
and admitted his claim they were a bunch of morons was "wrong" and that they had the right gear, the right ROVs available.
I mean I was never impressed with "top kill" and some of the other stuff suggested originally but now it looks to me like they are more "on it" in terms of trying to architect/engineer using the data they are seeing, on the fly vs. "throw golf balls at it". I mean originally some of the engineering ideas looked like panic, almost pure panic vs. using the data to architect out something that had a prayer's chance. I wouldn't say that's true at this point though.
On the cleanup/containment side, that seems to be another story, I think they should be doing a massive engineering effort to suck up that oil, at the site, top side, some sort of gigantic collections via vacuums, pumps, etc.
But Cameron is an underwater film maker (now a 3D one), not an underwater engineering guy per say and this is really coming down to mechanical/oil engineering.
I'm not impressed with some fancy filmmaker coming on national TV and calling a group of engineers are bunch of morons when he doesn't know what's happening. I know these guys (where are the ladies btw?) are under enormous stress and one does not think clearly when there is that much pressure. Insulting them assuredly didn't help things, esp. when you're relying on people to use their wits, on the fly, to figure out ways never been tried to stop the leak.
It's Oceaneering that's clearly doing at least all of the underwater ROV and deployment stuff. That's a contractor to BP, not BP itself. You can see their hats and titles on each spillcam, (there are 12 spillcams) even the task that's happening now, they are putting titles on the video stream.
I've been wondering about the Navy. I know they have submarines and all sorts of stuff to go deep and then there is that lovely nuclear bomb retrieval issue at the bottom of the sea, along with sunken submarines, so where's that technology and could it be applied?
All of that said, I'm watching spill cam right now, just watched a robotic arm spend a good 15 minutes trying to latch onto the knob to turn off a value in the middle of a massive velocity oil gushing force which makes the entire screen go black so you can't see shit. I mean at least 15 minutes to make 1 90 degree right turn on a knob.
Another time it was like a half hour watching them untie a knot in some tubing/cabling. It's clear the conditions are extreme, even taking under consideration these are robot arms, manually controlled.
I mean I can see some technology that needs to be added pronto, #1 being 3D cameras, #2 being touch sensitivity sensors to the robotic arms...
Does Cameron have 3D Cameras that do not require blue suits, reference points in action but truly can coordinate the images to create 3D in real time in that mess/junk down there? I do not know, I honestly do not know if that issue has even been solved, to image process multiple cameras, with absolute reference points computed, on the fly, in real time, plus produce a real time accurate 3D image. As far as I know filmmakers have to reference position, which is why you see actors in leotards with little ping pong balls attached all over it. Those ping pong balls are the absolute position reference points.
but in terms of stopping this well, it looks like a massive hydraulics, avoiding freezing, velocity, flow directions, interactions with deep sea pressure nightmare frankly, assuredly out of my pay grade. and I don't see what kind of submersible technology can deal with that one.
I see some vacuum technology maybe, piping it up to a ship, oil rigging stuff...
Anywho, this is one of the reasons I decided to keep oil open threads going on EP, to put the focus on real technology because there are just way too many people, who really do not know what they are talking about, all over the place and some of it is true misinformation.
It's bad enough one has the barracuda BP PR machine on full throttle.
Cameron appeared on Hardball. Said he offered expertise from Academia and other Oil Patch experts. There is plenty of talent and ideas if they would deploy it. The entire problem resolution was single threaded.
Both Cameron and Cousteau offered deep water submersibles to BP and the U.S.
Neither the U.S. nor BP own deep water submersibles. As late as the 1969s there were deep water submersibles as Military assets
It looks like they are shutting off a value. I sure hope it doesn't freeze the damn thing.
I could be wrong in checking in on spill cam but it looks like they might be dealing with hydrates forming again. I'm seeing what I believe is frozen gas particles around, a lot of 'em. They are just firehosing disbursements down there too, so maybe it's a molecule formation happening, but it sure looks like hydrates from spillcam.
Last report is they are using one of the most least effective and highly toxic of them all top side. Dunno what is being used at the leak source, 5000 feet down.
That said, I wouldn't freak out about this for it's clear there is a balancing act going on on the sea floor and I suspect this is going to be baby steps, two ahead, one back, and so on trying to capture a larger and larger oil percentage.
There is also an amazingly amount of gas and that's highly volatile.
Reports are the relief well is faster along than August, but that said, there are hurricanes plus a lot can go wrong in drilling a relief well, kind of doing an elephant through a keyhole in terms of the target area the drill must hit.
If so, you could create an account here and cross post, discuss. I'm watching the never ending IMF demands and the focus on destroying pensions, social safety nets, wage levels, unions.....and also noted Hungary has been busy already ripping this asunder. Bottom line this is what happens when you bail out fictional finance to half a trillion bucks and counting. (Europe).
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