Obama Calls Leak 'Assault on the People of Gulf'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704254004575275252563367276.html

MAY 29, 2010
Obama Calls Leak 'Assault on the People of Gulf'
By SIOBHAN HUGHES AND MARK LONG

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama, responding to the failure of BP's latest attempt to plug a mile-deep oil and natural gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico, on Saturday expressed outrage at the duration of the spill and said that a new method the company will attempt will be "difficult and take several days."

"Every day that this leak continues is an assault on the people of the Gulf Coast region, their livelihoods, and the natural bounty that belongs to all of us," Obama said in a statement. "It is as enraging as it is heartbreaking, and we will not relent until this leak is contained, until the waters and shores are cleaned up, and until the people unjustly victimized by this manmade disaster are made whole."

Late Saturday, BP abandoned its effort to plug a mile-deep oil and natural gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico by injecting thousands of barrels of heavy drilling fluid and said it would shift to a new method. The abandoned procedure, known as a top kill, did not stop the flow of hydrocarbons into the ocean. Engineers and experts "had hoped that the top kill approach attempted this week would halt the flow of oil and gas currently escaping from the seafloor," Obama said. "But while we initially received optimistic reports about the procedure, it is now clear that it has not worked."

Engineers will now try to contain the flow of oil from the leak with a so-called lower marine riser package cap. This operation would involve removing a broken drilling pipe, or riser, that lies atop the failed blowout preventer and cap the valve with a siphon that will take the oil to the surface. BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said the LMRP-cap procedure would take four to seven days. The LMRP cap is a newly made version of a type of device referred to as a top hat. "This approach is not without risk and has never been attempted before at this depth," Obama said. "That is why it was not activated until other methods had been exhausted."...

Why can't that be acknowledged???It is about all of us, our environment, everything & everyone...

a national emergency?

of a catastrophe will not be acknowledged.

:-(

Action begets equal and opposite reaction. That's karma. How absolutely and completely insufferably arrogant of us to be so profane as to think we have the power of gods. The people who did this were wanton in their perverted sense of entitlement. Now we will all pay the price.

by your comparison. One part flatters and the other offends. I'm so confused.

Glad to see you're are at least staying atop this. Or at last, one could say.

And I'm guess the White House has approved of this new approach.

Okay, so what are the risks, sir, and what are the odds?

Which means we're gambling big on the LMRP working correctly - if it fails, oil will gush uncontrollably at an even higher rate than now.

I know there is no known solution at this point. If there's now way of stopping it before the hurricane season hits in full, I fear the result is going to be devastation of an order not seen before.

What are the mechanics involved in possible failure?

The way things are set up, there's the well, lined with pipes, down in the ground, and right on top of the pipes, at the sea floor, is the blowout preventer, which was broken, so didn't prevent the blowout. On top of that is the riser pipe, which originally went up the Deepwater Horizon, but when that oil rig sunk, the riser pipe fell, bent, got completely mangled, and the leaks that we're currently seeing are in various sections of that riser pipe.

The oil's flowing out those gashes in the riser pipe, but have some restriction, due to the size of the gashes, and due to the kinks in the pipe after it bent when the rig sank. Those gashes got worse when they tried the top-kill - the mud is abrasive, and it sandblasted those gashes and made them wider. The junk-shot tried to clog up those gashes with pieces of rubber & such, but that didn't work very well either.

The LMRP procedure is going to start by just sawing off the riser pipe altogether, then putting the LMRP directly on top of the blowout preventer, and hoping they can capture the oil spewing out that way. The danger is that once they saw off the riser pipe, if they can't get the LMRP seated on the BOP, and capturing most of the oil flow, then there's nothing at all restricting the flow. Very risky.

Pressure?

My take on this is that Obama focused heavily on making sure correct technical actions were made to deal with this spill, and in the process, neglected the political actions.

Kudos do go to him for working to make sure technical action was done, but the fact is we have no clue how to properly deal with a disaster like this, so no matter what engineering and scientific geniuses are working on the problem, they're going to flail around for a tortuously long time before they find a solution that works.

And the political messaging was poor. It didn't help that BP's constantly lying their asses off, looking like assholes, undermining efforts to contain the damage, making things worse with their use of toxic dispersants, and so on. Obama looks to a lot of people like he was asleep at the switch, even though the administration was working hard to deal with this crisis.

At least now, he's going out, and actually expressing righteous frustration and anger at this clusterfuck. But it's going to take more than a speech and a photo-op to get on top of this political problem.

Messaging and framing are important, and if Obama doesn't improve, things will become politically worse for us.

This is not primarily a "political problem" that the President needs to "get on top of."

Look how easily they are able to "attack us over here"

The application of disperants must framed an the ATTACK that it is!