Top Kill turns out to be Buzz Kill

According to the Christian Science Monitor and other news outlets, BP's third attempt to stem the flow of oil from the Macondo wellhead by pumping copious amounts of drilling mud down the shaft - a.k.a. top kill - has failed.


Apparently engineers were unable to match the overpowering flow of oil, which is surging out of the mangled pipeline at an estimated 26,000 psi.

On Saturday, President Obama issued a statement "While we initially received optimistic reports about the (top kill) procedure, it is now clear that it has not worked. Rear Admiral Mary Landry today directed BP to launch a new procedure whereby the riser pipe will be cut and a containment structure fitted over the leak."

The danger of course is that once the riser pipe is cut the oil, which is currently flowing out several small breaches, will now be shooting out at a much higher flow. Should the containment structure fail to seat or function, the increased amount of oil being discharged into the Gulf could dwarf anything we've seen thus far.

"Unprecedented"

Several times this week, we've heard President Obama and others refer to the Deepwater Horizon / Macondo spill as "unprecedented." But as we've mentioned previously on this blog and elsewhere that is hardly the case...

One only need to go back to August of last year and the Montara spill in Australia's ecologically sensitive East Timor Sea - which lasted 72 days - to appreciate how hard it is to control these situations.

Of course many critics are going back even further; 31 years ago to be exact - and another spill that is eerily similar to the current situation in the gulf. We're talking of course about the Ixtoc I oil spill, which took place in 1979 off the coast of Mexico. Currently listed as the second largest spill in history, oil from the Ixtoc I poured into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly 10 months until it was finally capped.

In fact, a simple search on Google or Wikipedia will produce a lengthy list of oil spills of varying size and scale, some dating back as far as the 1940's.

So let's be honest here people... NO ONE should be surprised at what we are seeing transpire in the Gulf of Mexico.



Let us close this post with a quote from the Spanish novelist George Santayana:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Cool widget

One of our activists forwarded this cool widget.



Mahalo to Rob Pleskoff for the heads up on this!

White House announcements and Surfrider's response

This morning, the White House announced that it will be extending the moratorium on new deep water well drilling for six months, along with plans to cancel the proposed lease sales off the coasts of Virginia and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as suspending planned exploration of two sites in Alaska.

In response to this announcement, the Surfrider Foundation has release the following statement:

“While the Surfrider Foundation lauds the steps taken today by the White House, we are steadfast in our stance that this is not enough and call upon President Obama, as well as our congressional representatives, to immediately enact a permanent moratorium on new offshore drilling.”

The announcement was followed by a press conference in which Obama was grilled by reporters on the government's response to the calamity, which has been widely criticized by everyone from Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, to longtime Democratic party strategist James Carville.

Gulf leak stopped?

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the "top kill" effort appears to have successfully stopped the flow of oil and gas from the well.

According to U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, engineers were able to inject heavy drilling mud into the well head and stop the flow of oil for the first time since the incident began 36 days ago. If the mud holds, engineers will then inject concrete into the well to seal it.

-- UPDATE 3:48 pm PST --

According to various news sources, BP's top kill effort was suspended at midnight last night. There's no word yet on why BP suspended the effort, only that efforts to plug the well have just begun within the past hour.

-- UPDATE 4:08 PST --

In viewing the live cam it appears that the oil is continuing to spew forth unabated.

Who knew oil companies could be so metal?

Is it us or does all of BP's control methods sound like bad hair-band names?




Just saying...

Why Accurate Measurements of the Blowout are Essential

There's been lots of speculation lately on just how much oil is leaking from the Deepwater Horizon blowout. Unfortunately BP has been low-balling their estimates from the very beginning, first estimating it at 1000 barrels/day, then raising that estimate to 5000 based on early calculations by Skytruth and Dr. Ian MacDonald. Surfrider has been using Skytruth's more recent calculations as the basis for the counter running at the top of our site. As of today, this calculation puts the total volume of oil released at a whopping 35 Million gallons, more than 3 times the size of Exxon Valdez.

In the meantime, BP has resisted efforts to accurately measure the flow of oil, saying that it's unnecessary and not even possible.

• Lamar McKay, President of BP America: “The volume estimates are based effectively on surface expression, because you can’t measure what’s coming out at the seabed.” [Senate testimony, 5/12/10]
• Tom Mueller, BP: “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.” [5/14/10]
  

BP finally relented to pressures to allow a live video stream from the leak but still insist that measurements are not needed.



Today, the New York Times ran an Op-Ed by a team of researchers arguing very clearly why knowing the true volume is important, and how it could be done simply and accurately.

• "It is our view that accurate, continuously updated measurements are not only possible, but absolutely essential if we are to respond effectively to this and future disasters." ... "Without knowing the flow’s true magnitude, how can anyone judge the success of any approach? Without determining how much oil is beneath the ocean’s surface and how much is floating toward land, how can we best direct response efforts?"
  
  
  
• "...our preliminary estimates indicate that the discharge is at least 40,000 barrels per day and could be as much as 100,000 barrels. Certainly, our assessments suggest that BP’s stated worst-case estimate of 60,000 barrels has been occurring all along. What matters most is that we take the steps to find out if it has"

Understanding the full extent of oil in the water will have huge implications for cleanup planning, especially as the oil is carried to Florida (and beyond) by the Loop Current and possibly into the Gulf Stream.