“After three full days, we have been unable to overcome the flow from the well, so we now believe it is time to move on to another option . . . This scares everybody — the fact that we can’t make this well stop flowing or the fact that we haven’t succeeded so far.” -- BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles
Right. So that's why they haven't already tried it? That's why they chose the top kill method over this?BP Managing Director Bob Dudley says they will shift strategy from stopping the spill to containing it. He says they will rely on undersea robot maneuvers to help capture the oil on the sea floor and move it to the surface for collection.[...]
Dudley told the NBC television program Meet the Press this plan is simpler than "top kill," and more likely to succeed.
And then we'll have two BP oil wells out there instead of one. Much better.The top White House advisor on energy and the environment is Carol Browner. She told Meet the Press there is a likelihood oil will keep pouring out of the deep water well until late August, when work is completed on two relief wells.
Oh, well, maybe it won't matter – after the one we have gushes for 6 months, the Gulf may be dead.
The much smaller Exxon-Valdez spill killed billions of salmon and herring eggs and as many as 250,000 seabirds. Only ten percent of the oil was recovered, with most of the rest infesting the underwater sand, being degraded by only 4% a year.[...]
The best estimates of independent scientists for the amount of petroleum being released [into the Gulf] daily is now north, possibly well north, of 25,000 barrels a day.
[...]
Every 1000 Americans consume roughly 68 barrels a day of petroleum. This statistic means that what is gushing up from the BP well equals the daily amount of oil used by 367,000 Americans per day, that is, by cities the size of St. Louis or Minneapolis. Imagine all the cars and trucks filling up in such major cities every day, and the buildings using heating oil, and imagine taking all that oil and gasoline and dumping it in the Gulf of Mexico. Every day.
[...]
If there is a silver lining in the scary and depressing Great BP Gulf Catastrophe of 2010, it is that it may finally get state and federal legislators off their duffs and legislating sane energy policy for the health of the earth.
Only if alternative companies start making really big campaign contributions.
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