Nobody Could Have Predicted

Has BP ever been asked why they were having Halliburton cap a well with so much oil left under so much pressure in the first place? It seems like if they had just kept pumping the oil from the well this entire disaster would have been avoided. Surely BP couldn’t have been shutting off a perfectly performing well a mile under water simply to limit the supply and make the remainder of that oil deposit worth more money.

How does BP’s economic strategy of limited supply sound to the clueless “Drill baby drill” nutjobs?

Oily birdie makes me haz a sad. I’m going to post pictures of baked’s puppeh at this rate.

@Dave H:
My impression is that this is one of the deepest underwater wells ever drilled (please, some body correct me if I’m wrong). It could be that the oil companies have reached the boundararies of their technological abilities. That implies some of the undeerwateroil fields they’ve surveyed are out of safe reach, sort of like a junkie discovering a heroin stash just out of reach. Will the junkie risk his/her neck trying to get it? Well, yes. Will the junkie have to pay for the hospital bills? Of course not.

Hey, BP has opened up the floor to suggestions:
Do you have ideas to help us?:
+1 281 366 5511
Srsly, it’s posted on their website.

@Jesuswalksinidaho: That junkie metaphor is the best explanation I’ve seen yet for this whole disaster.

Make no mistake, as long as profit is involved in supplying our liquid fuel fix, no environmental catastrophe will deter us.

Nationalize the fuckers. Not that I believe for one second that our government, even under the enlightened, benevolent guidance of the Hopey Changey Unicorn, would ever put ecology above private sector profit, but nationalization of natural resources could be a (symbolic) step in the right direction.

There is a known and effective way to stop the eruption of oil, and it involves drilling a new well, intersecting the one that is spewing, the interesection takes plave deep underground, they have started drilling this relief well, and have been drilling it for weeks. Its amazing to me, they are drilling a new well, and they are going to guide it to intersect the drill hole of the old well, thousands of feet under the sea floor, which is 5000 feet under the surface of the sea.

Leave aside the criminal negligence that caused this to happen, the fact is that fixing it, is not like sending a plumber in with a wrench, its more like building a stadium. It involves enormous logistics and bringing in drillings rigs from far away, and embarking on an emormous act of engineering, and I have no doubt that they are doing everything remotely possible, but the public will never understand the scope of the effort necessary to solve this problem.

The crime was in the shortcuts and risks taken which resulted in this disaster, but, I am not ready to criticize the response, BP has every motive possible to do everything possible, and I am sure they are, the fact that dealing with this is so difficult, is an indictment only in so much that it points out how much more care should have been taken to prevent it happening.

@Promnight: the public will never understand the scope of the effort necessary

I agree, somewhat.

But I would say the public will never understand the catastrophe we wreak upon the environment, even especially when everything goes according to plan, in order to maintain our happy motoring cheap electronics super-connected lifestyle.

They will never understand it because understanding it necessitates a moral choice not to participate in it, which is pretty much impossible. I admire squatters and raw vegans and hippies who retire to a patch of fertile land to grow their own, etc.

But without a community that supports your choices, it is almost impossible to have a good conscience in this world.

I know you’re not asking for sympathy for the poor, beleaguered, helpless multi-national conglomerate, but at this point it’s hard to make a case against stripping BP of any right to exist as a corporation person. In this particular case, I’m in favor of the death penalty.

@Promnight: Someone will have to confirm, but I think Canada requires a relief well as part of the original drilling. That’s socialism for ya.

I like that, Nojo, what a simple, clear rule. Yes, lets do that. Or, better yet, solar, wind, and nukes, and come up with something better than batteries to store energy to run cars, because we all love the idea of clean, silent battery-powered cars, but batteries, from the simplest, plain old lead-acid, to new lithium batteries, are ferociously poisonous, in and of themselves, and in their manufacture and disposal.

@Promnight: And while we’re waiting, let’s build all external costs into the prices of products we consume. That’s a market-based solution I could live with.