BP - The New Bogeyman

[Hachimitsu]

I know cbc interviewed one of the victims family and it seemed as if the employees did not feel the rig was safe. EDIT: I made a boo boo about who ran the rig at what time.

[Inanna]

WSJ just reported that the reason the alarm didn't go off first, and caused 11 deaths is because TransOcean's rig management ordered the alarm to be switched off at night because it would just wake up everyone at 3:00 am.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 90350.html

Well, it said the automatic system was disabled to reduce the amount of false alarms at 3 in the morning (were false alarms very common?), and that there was supposed to be a manual system in place. So someone was supposed to manually be "minding the store", so to speak?

I stand corrected, Anthy, you are right. There are two perspectives here, and I presented just one (See what prejudices can do? So much for my insisting I want scientific data!)

[Infidel]

And for some good news on the oil spill, mother nature seems to be taking care of it on her own:
BP Oil Spill: Clean-Up Crews Can't Find Crude in the Gulf
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-c ... d=11254252

On the Surface, Gulf Oil Spill Is Vanishing Fast; Concerns Stay
The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected, a piece of good news that raises tricky new questions about how fast the government should scale back its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/us/28 ... wanted=all

[Primula Baggins]

"Dissolving" doesn't mean "vanishing." Poison is poison, dissolved or not.

[vison]

And for some good news on the oil spill, mother nature seems to be taking care of it on her own:
BP Oil Spill: Clean-Up Crews Can't Find Crude in the Gulf
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-c ... d=11254252

On the Surface, Gulf Oil Spill Is Vanishing Fast; Concerns Stay
The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected, a piece of good news that raises tricky new questions about how fast the government should scale back its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/us/28 ... wanted=all

These guys are kidding, right?

Unbelievable.

[Hachimitsu]

When I read the article, and they were saying it was absorbed, and that bacteria ate it and stuff, I was thinking what eats bacteria? the poison ends up in the food chain and builds up in the top predators. Not seeing it deos not mean it's there, it just means it's in smaller pices and the effects are going bite us later. There is still oil in Alaska.

DDT was baned around 30 years ago and we are still seeing effects and realizing it mimics hormones (thats extraordinarily badfor living creatures). It's not being put out into the environment anymore yet what is there most certainly didn't go away. Also I am sur no one would willingly buy food from areas affected from 30 year old DDT. EDIT: Actually small amounts of DDT still shows up in human blood tests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Restrictions_on_usage

No one will willingly buy seafood products from the gulf for at least 2 decades, because to be frank those poor creatures are going to be full of the oil that "disappeared". The bigger the creature the more those poisons build up. BP opened a Pandora's Box that only was closed a couple of weeks ago.

I really didn't like the sentence saying mother nature is doing it's job, becuase to be frank it's not mother natures job to deal with oil spills and well to be frank, "mother nature" isn't dealing with it. It's just dying.

[axordil]

To be fair, some bacteria can break down some constituents of crude oil into less toxic chemicals--over many months, in ideal conditions (for the bacteria).

But: the simple fact is that with a well this deep, there's no guarantee the oil all made it to the surface, and significant evidence a lot of it remains underwater. Google "Gulf oil underwater plume" or some such if interested. We don't know where the oil went, but invisibility doesn't mean it magically went "poof."

There is still underwater tar from the Ixtoc spill in the 70s under the sea bed near Mexico.

[vison]

Mother Nature will indeed deal with this - Mother Nature works in a very long time frame - but we humans don't. It isn't that we are killing the Earth, we are killing ourselves. Even if this oil spill causes the extinction of some crab or shrimp or beach grass, Mother Nature doesn't care and it won't matter to anyone but us. Who missed the dinosaurs?

The oil was always part of the environment, but we decided to move it from one place to the other and we screwed up. It took how long to make that oil? What was it made from, where did it come from, how did it get down there? That was Mother Nature at work.

The oil will never be "cleaned up", it will slowly, very very slowly degrade and form other substances. It will always be there, except for the small amount humans gather, one way or the other.

We are the sort of disgusting bird that fouls its own nest. We deserve what we get.

[Griffon64]

We don't know where the oil went, but invisibility doesn't mean it magically went "poof."

Unfortunately, I'm just waiting for some fringes to start declaring that the oil did, in fact, go "poof" and that therefore, we can drill where we want and how we want, because "nature will take care of it" or something.

[Dave_LF]

I haven't seen those exact numbers, and I would love to have the source, please.

Here are a couple, with links to others. Google will turn up many more:
http://www.businessinsider.com/bp-has-b ... ety-2010-6
http://www.fastcompany.com/1658137/info ... ety-record

Between June 2007 and February 2010, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) checked 55 oil refineries operating in the U.S. Two are owned by BP, and those racked up 760 citations for "egregiously willful" safety violations--defined as committed with plain indifference to or intentional disregard for employee safety and health. The other 53 refineries--put together--only received one such violation.

[Hachimitsu]

You know getting back to the initial post, with all those violations BP could count as a bogeyman.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Sunday Times has an article behind its pay wall that seems to suggest that BP was not the only one trying to facilitate the release of al-Megrahi:

Revealed: Document exposes US double-talk on Lockerbie
Jason Allardyce and Tony Allen-Mills
The Sunday Times
Published: 25 July 2010
UK News News The US government secretly advised Scottish ministers that it would be “far preferable” to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya. Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals that Barack Obama’s administration considered...

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/si ... tto&pf=all

ETA: No pay wall here:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/wo ... 5896741041

THE US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be "far preferable" to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.
Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.

Nope.

The Sunday Times and Australian were wrong. See the conservative Power Line web site, which quotes from the Obama administration's request that Megrahi not be released:

Two Cheers for the Adminstration on Megrahi.

[Hachimitsu]

I had been hearing about this for a while and I finally found an article to post on it. This talks a bit about where some of the "missing" oil probably is.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ists-plume

Also I have been listening to NPR and they have had some disturbing interviews of independent scientists being barred from studying the area to the point where their samples were taken away from them, and at least one source's name was collected ( a maker of the chemical dispersant encouraged one of the groups to go investigate). [NPR: Science Friday]

I find this horribly disturbing, especially hearing about how the FDA may declare Gulf seafood is safe to eat when it seems nothing has really been studied (and made public).

[axordil]

It will be a long, long time before I eat shrimp or other filter feeders from the Gulf. I feel bad for the fishermen there, but not bad enough to risk tainted food. Compassion stops at my GI tract.

[Inanna]

Dave, thanks for all the links. I did some reading too, and it seems like BP's Ex-CEO was brought in to try and improve the company's horrible safety record. He focused on safety.... and the result was a mandate that employees could not walk in corridors carrying coffee. Yes. Really.

The govt. seems to be acting like a prat.

[Hachimitsu]

Never failing to disappoint, the FDA approved Gulf seafood as safe to eat.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38529484/ns ... od_safety/

Now when it's labeled, people can at least avoid it, but now with the FDA's seal of approval I am concerned about undeclared Gulf seafood in processed seafood products. Especially as fresh seafood is quite expensive and certain income brackets may take a hit when illnesses do start.

I am sure there was some pressure to approve Gulf seafood for the sake of the economy, but who is going to be responsible once people start getting sick? Also, isn't this sort of letting BP off the hook a bit? This could be a pretty dangerous example to other oil companies, that the government will let them off the hook, and be a partner in poisoning the public.

[vison]

Will people get sick? How much contaminated seafood would a person have to eat to get sick?

My worry isn't so much people getting sick as the effect on the sealife itself, both plant and animal.

The oil is not "gone". It's there somewhere, and in huge amounts. What is it doing to the sealife, farther from shore?

[Griffon64]

http://www.aolnews.com/story/gulf-oil-p ... st/1250268



At least reports are that this one wasn't producing - so one would hope it was capped and there won't be another oil spill. Someone should really look into the safety of these things.

[Padme]

Becuase deregulation worked so well in Banking and Insurance we applied it to all industry....