What could possibly go wrong?

Written By: - Date published: 2:05 pm, May 13th, 2010 - 11 comments
Categories: Environment, International - Tags: , ,

From Slashdot:

Oil Leak Could Be Stopped With a Nuke

“The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico could be stopped with an underground nuclear blast, a Russian newspaper reports. Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. The idea is simple, KP writes: ‘The underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well’s channel.’ It’s so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn’t work once.”

Sounds like a great idea, after all – what could possibly go wrong? That was sarcasm, by the way. But the situation is beyond desperate. After the containment dome failed the oil is still flowing:

Gulf oil keeps on flowing

Today marks the three-week anniversary of the oil-rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil continues to spill into the ocean, at the rate of about 33,000 litres per hour. Marine damage mounts. Beaches and coastal environments are threatened with devastation. …

Companies involved in the offshore industry maintained this kind of disaster couldn’t happen. If something did go wrong, they insisted, backup safety plans would allow a quick, effective response. But the disaster did happen. And three weeks later, there has been no effective action.

This is a “potentially unprecedented” environmental disaster. The various oil companies involved in the incident are falling out trying to blame each other, and BP stock has fallen by billions of dollars. Wouldn’t have been cheaper to have had adequate safety measures in place instead of this mess? What a complete cockup all round. Enough of the high risk extraction of difficult reserves. Peak oil is here. Time to start planning for the post oil future.

11 comments on “What could possibly go wrong? ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. randal 1
    13 May 2010 at 2:36 pm

    re the caption, what could go worng weel the answser is everything.
    the jig is up anyway.
    in 300 years the mean world temperature will have risen by 12 degrees and most of the earth will be uninhabitable.
    all the consequences of this petty politicking on the back of rising populations and unlimited desire to use resources for the sole purpose of self gratification will be zilch.

  2. Lew 2
    13 May 2010 at 2:37 pm

    Violence is like gaffer tape: if it doesn’t work, you’re not using enough.

    L

  3. marty mars 3
    13 May 2010 at 2:43 pm

    did you see them in front of the committee?

    1,2,3

    1 blame 2
    2 blames 3
    3 blames 1

    and i almost spewed when I saw on TV3 a night ago – “The benefits of Oil rigs” yes they provide a lovely habitat for sealife… sort of an artifical reef – about the only kind left in a few years.

  4. Carol 4
    13 May 2010 at 2:56 pm

    And there’s a claim BP knew it was cutting corners and not ensuring that the device was working properly that would be used to shut down a gushing well:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/12/bp-whistleblower-claimed_n_573839.html

  5. Herodotus 5
    13 May 2010 at 3:27 pm

    Just wait until we start getting insurance increases on our premium (Remember the EXXON Valdez), as insurance coys recover the cost resulting from this.
    Insurance coys should be saying “your fail safe equipment failed” you did not do as you should have, like house maintenance your fire alarm was broken thus you are not covered, no payout on your claim. BP and associated coys will have to come up and suffer financially. Will this happen? NO as I am sure that BP and the such will have operating/trustee and other legal coy setup that will have a limited exposure. Coy 1 owns coy 2 ….. BP owns coy 1000. Distancing itelf from direct liability. The only saving grace is that this is happening in US and not some 3rd world county where the oil barrons can play bully boys and walk away.

  6. freedom 6
    13 May 2010 at 4:26 pm

    here is a fun game
    start by putting in Lake Taupo, New Zealand for a real view of this disaster. Then try fun ones like Hawaii or Paris. This area graphic is based on ‘official figures’ and only shows the surface of course. The thing to remember is this is an inverted mountain of oil spewing from a mile below the surface, not a leak from a storage facility.

    The other thing to remember is much of the oil is well below the surface and has already past the coast of Florida and is merrily on its way into the Atlantic cruising on the Gulf Steam beginning its steady and unstoppable destruction of large areas of the food chain.

    Thanks Bp, Halliburton and Transocean, your ignorance and greed has once again shown that the lifeform known as Man is an evolutionary disaster zone hell-bent on global termination.

    Also, It seems the News people are having trouble sourcing independant verification of facts regarding The DeepwaterHorizon oil disaster.
    Here are some fact based charts and a couple of their calculation tables and otherpages— —

  7. freedom 7
    13 May 2010 at 4:36 pm

    damn links, and edit locked somehow. let’s try that again
    here is a fun game
    start by putting in Lake Taupo, New Zealand for a real view of this disaster. This area graphic is based on ‘official figures’ and only shows the surface of course. The thing to remember is this is an inverted mountain of oil spewing from a mile below the surface, not a leak from a storage facility.

    The other thing to remember is much of the oil is well below the surface and has already past the coast of Florida and is merrily on its way into the Atlantic cruising on the Gulf Steam beginning its steady and unstoppable destruction of large areas of the food chain.

    Thanks Bp, Halliburton and Transocean, your ignorance and greed has once again shown that the lifeform known as Man is an evolutionary disaster zone hell-bent on global termination.

    Also, It seems the News people are having trouble sourcing independant verification of facts regarding The DeepwaterHorizon oil disaster.
    Here are some fact based charts and math
    tables

    [fixed links (I think) –r0b]

  8. freedom 8
    13 May 2010 at 4:51 pm

    The Map Overlay for google Earth: http://paulrademacher.com/oilspill/
    The Math and working charts for Oil Volumes:
    http://blog.skytruth.org/2010/05/bp-gulf-oil-spill-how-big-is-it.html
    http://tinyurl.com/235x8yd
    http://tinyurl.com/22osz2k

    will now go and create a suitable penance for stuffing up a simple link writing task twice

  9. infused 9
    13 May 2010 at 4:52 pm

    It’s a pretty sad situation. But hey, why not try it? It’s probably better than letting the oil continue to gush out.

    • r0b 9.1
      14 May 2010 at 4:01 pm

      Why not try it? Oh, dunno, how about this….

      If the rock gave way due to the out of control gushing (or due to a nuke being detonated to contain the leak), it could become a Yellowstone Caldera type event, except from below a mile of sea, with a 1/4-mile opening, with up to 150,000 psi of oil and natural gas behind it, from a reserve nearly as large as the Gulf of Mexico containing trillions of barrels of oil. That would be an Earth extinction event.”

  10. mach1 10
    13 May 2010 at 7:53 pm

    The big picture has some heart breaking images.

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.