Unforeseen Consequences

The thirty eighth day of  our continued unnatural disaster. We're the victims, but BP has sentenced us to death by slow, lethal injection. Black gold. Texas tea.

Surprisingly, the audience is still watching. Hasn't changed the channel to American Gladiators or the latest installment of New Moon, yet. The media clowns and new hounds still circle. Parading along our beaches with their vans and satellite dishes. Looking for mucked-up corpses and angry locals pointing fingers.

BP is trying the "top kill" option, now. Use a big straw and slam fifty thousand barrels of "mud," into the existing shaft. If they can push the crude back down, they'll clog the works with rubber tires and boomerangs and unsold copies of American Idol's Greatest Hits. 60% chance of success. That's in perfect conditions, I'm betting. Nobody's done it 5000 feet down.

A couple of "What If" situations. Some unforeseen consequences of failing in these Sisyphusian efforts.:

• Hurricane season starts in four days. What happens if a CAT3 - CAT5 strolls through, picks up several million gallons of goo and deposits them on top of everything within half a mile of the coastline? How many folks will have to be evacuated due to that toxic hazzard? And for how long? Cleaning oil off of a beach is one thing. Cleaning it out of backyards and out of flood-savaged remains of semi-demolished buildings is something else entirely. Nearly five years after Katrina, we're still rebuilding. Try that after a Category Five Toxic Avenger does the two-step on your vacation community and see how long it takes the tourists (ie: income) to return.
• Speaking of tourists. The five affected Gulf states have a combined $2.2T economy. What happens if 10% of that is shuttered? A $200,000,000 loss at this stage in the Great Recession isn't going to help anyone. BP isn't going to give up a single penny more than it has to. And our government can't possibly print up more money to cover that gaping wound.
  
  Extend that damage to Georgia? The Carolinas? How about if our spill affects Cuba?
• Has anyone considered what this will do to already-suffering home owners along the coastline? The value on their homes isn't bad enough? If they're "under water" now, they'll be subterranean by the time the last seagull is degreased.Can anyone see that affecting the currently-terminal housing market? The lending industry?
• And what about the MS river? Has anyone considered the notion that a blob of crude will float over to the mouth of it and put the entire shipping fleet at risk? We can't have ships covered in oil motoring back UP the MS, sloughing off toxic love every couple of miles.

Almost forty days later. Shouldn't we start talking about these unforeseen consequences? 

It Will Be Horrific

A month has passed. At the edge of our sight, the next nightmare grows by the hour. Nobody has good numbers any more. BP says 200,000 gallons per day. Others say a million per day. The truth is somewhere in middle, I hope.

BP's sole success (a 4" pipe siphoning off some of the flow from one of the leaks) is diminishing the horror by 20%. At most. Perhaps a fraction of that.

At this moment, they're lowering a "kill" rig in place. To pump 50,000 gallons of "mud" into the pipes. Hoping to gum the works. A technique which has never succeeded at this depth. And the attempt could take upwards of two days. While everyone on every coastal city watch the grainy Internet feed from a mile down and pray to our prospective gods for salvation.

But the sad truth is that the cleanup is destined for failure. It will be horrific. We know from recent testimony that the cleanup of the Exxon Valdez was futile.  Dr. Jeffrey Short of Oceana testified in a 2009 hearing that:

Despite heroic effects involving more than 11,000 people, two billion dollars, and aggressive application of the most advanced technology available, only about 8 percent of the oil was ever recovered. This recovery rate is fairly typical for a large oil spill. About 20 percent evaporated, 50 percent contaminated beaches, and the rest floated out to the North Pacific Ocean where it formed tarballs that eventually stranded elsewhere or sank to the seafloor. 

8% success rate? Our ecosystem will drown in the rest. Wildlife. Commercial fishing. Tourism. All of it needs to learn to swim in crude, or die trying.

Nuke The Sight From Orbit

I was joking the other day when I suggested we nuke the remains of the Deepwater Horizon from orbit. But then a friend of mine said that the Russian have used nukes to seal leaks on several occasions.

The theory is that the blast shifts the sea floor and/or fuses the mud and rock, preventing uncontrolled oil from escaping into the water.

The traditional methods aren't working. Time for the non-traditional.

I'd also like to suggest we use our Earthquake weapon to seal the leak.

Or find a way for HAARP to fix it.

Plan C? D? And E?

The 100-ton, 4-story-tall, steel and concrete container failed. Pressurized natural gas combined with the freezing seawater and gave birth to some kind of icy spooge that clogged up the whole thing in a manner of minutes. The oil is seeping out around it, unfazed.

BP says that Plan C is to use a smaller widget. A "top hat" shaped device that will cover one of the leaks because it is less likely to clog. My money says the pressure will effectively keep it from sitting in place properly.

Plan D is to pierce a lower portion of the piping with a "hot tap" and siphon off the oil. Not sure if that's ever been done effectively before now. And if it has, I doubt it has been done at 5000'.

And Plan E is to keep jamming objects into the pipe until it is so clogged it stops. Tires and golf balls and sponges made of hair. Seriously. That's their plan.

I'm gong to suggest Plan F will be to train some dolphins to plunge themselves, Kamikaze-like into the pipe. They'll do anything for us. And Plan G will be to nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Meanwhile, we've got upwards of four million gallons of Earth's finest oil floating in the Gulf of Mexico. Thankfully, it hasn't touched ground in MS, yet. LA has some on its beaches. AL is waiting for us to get our toes dirty. And FL is hoping the power of prayer defends them from the worst of it.

I'm guessing we have another week or two in the headlines. After that, Americans will want something new and interesting to keep them worried. Maybe the stock market. Or a government sex scandal. But this whole "oil in the Gulf" thing is rapidly starting to bore them. See how quickly they've already forgotten about the 11 dead oil workers?

Solutions & Answers

So, the brave, tireless heroes at BP have positioned a four-story, 100 ton, steel-and-concrete condom over the grave of the Deepwater Horizon. And meter by meter, foot by foot, they are lowering it down over one of the three broken pipes.

If it works, I guess they're a third way toward getting everything capped. Then they can focus on cleaning up the mess they created. If the giant condom doesn't work, we all have to shave our heads and create a giant absorbent pad to stuff into the pipes. So. Pray, people. Pray!

In the meanwhile, the folks over at NOLA.com have put together a great explanation of What Happened On The Deepwater Horizon.

The short version is that the rig was about to temporarily cap a well it had dug, and hand the whole operation off to a permanent pipeline or production rig. But the disconnect process went completely sideways. The Halliburton-constructed cement casing blew up like a glass pinata. A thunderous  blowout belched a boiling motherload of pressurized natural gas into the bottom of the rig, where it exploded into a raging fireball and eventually sank the Deepwater Horizon to  bottom of the sea, leaving behind three very angry pipelines that are currently spewing two hundred thousand gallons of crude from the bowels of the Earth each day.

And here we are...

A Widening Gyre

Two weeks of waiting finally over. BP scored a glorious touch down. Their oil washed ashore. The Chandeleur Islands and New Harbor Island, LA. Only a couple of hours west. Both natural wildlife preserves. Makes it a two point converse for BP. Go team!

Apparently, the sludge looks like spongy orange cornflakes. All clumped up from the disperants. As if it wasn't toxic before? But, hey, even with indisputable proof that the additional chemicals are only making a bad situation worse, a good corporation never lets a little thing like evidence interfere with their public efforts to paint their efforts as viable.

Meanwhile, we've got three million more gallons turning and turning in a widening gyre. Surely some revelation is at hand. And what oily beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

(My apologies to Yeats! But hey, it worked. Didn't it?)

Wildlife Goes First

We started finding the corpses.

Pitiful, helpless birds washing up. An hour west of me. In the bays and harbors of Louisiana. Nothing most folk can do. Except find them and report them. Apparently, volunteers aren't supposed to do ANYTHING with wildlife, without being trained and certified to do it. Not that I'd dip gunked-up avians in Palmolive, but how about making some training and certification available to us so we can put a stop to their suffering?

Then, in Pass Christian, MS, just 15 minutes west, the dead sea turtles. None are covered in crude. No apparent physical damage, either. But they are most definitely dead. Perhaps food poisoning? Or something in their lungs? I'm no marine biologist, but the timing of these deaths is uncanny. If it isn't due to fallout from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, I'll be stunned.

Poisoning the environment is one thing. Coating our beaches in a grim layer of raw crude is another another thing. But being responsible for the slow, miserable death of hundreds upon thousands upon millions of innocent animals is not only unforgivably offensive but (hopefully) criminal.

And it is only just starting.

50 Ways To Fail

I have no room in my philosophies for pessimism. Doing something is better than doing nothing. Ere on the side of action. And Results kick Planning's ass every single time.

But I also believe in admitting when I do not know something. I support those that know enough to ask for help. And people ought to know when something is destined for failure.

Case in point: these feeble, wasted efforts by BP to mitigate the damage from their Deepwater Horizon oil spill. They've abandoned the robotic repairs. In the open sea, with the weather being what it is, burning the oil is not going to work. 12" tall plastic booms are not going to provide a defense against any waves over two feet. And using chemical dispersants to fight an oil spill is nothing but doubling the amount of pollutants we're releasing into the environment. We've got 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover, and BP is paying to prove there are 50 Ways To Fail in an oil cleanup.

Surely they have hired men smarter than I am? Don't they have some professionals on their payroll? Aren't they running simulations on their ideas? How can they not see that the chance of failure exponentially exceeds the chance of success? And why is BP going at it alone?

Frustrating. Frustrating. Frustrating.

The good news? We have no oil on shore.

Yet.

Oil Updates

Our thirteenth day. Some dead fish in LA. Couple of questionable sea turtles over here. No oil on our beaches. But there's a ten day ban on commercial fishing. Tourism already suffering, too. Hotel cancellations. Won't improve any time soon.

BP is using "dispersants" to break down the oil. But I don't trust that stuff. Let's use potentially toxic chemicals to clean up an already deadly oil spill?

No luck with the robots, thus far. Nothing is shut off. Still spewing 200,000 gallons per day. Short term solution is likely stillborn.

A steel-and-concrete sleeve is supposed to be in place this weekend. In theory, it will collect the oil from one of the three pipes and funnel it into a vessel of some sort. The technique has worked before. But not at five thousand feet. Odd physics going on there. I don't have much faith it will go as planned.

The long term solution? Unimaginably distant. It can't come to that...

Deepwater Horizon

We're watching a slow motion disaster. Just beyond the horizon. Out of sight but always in our minds. Where's the oil? Will it start washing up on the beach today? Tomorrow? When? How many birds will it kill? How long will our commercial fishermen be unemployed? What will it cost to clean up? When will they stop new oil from spilling into our Gulf? And a thousand other questions. None of which have real answers.

For now, eleven families have lost their loved ones. For now, there is a ten day ban on commercial fishing. For now, projected clean up costs reach $12B. For now, projected fishing losses reach $3B. For now, projected tourism losses reach $4B. And for now, there is no projected animal body count. We have to wait to see how that goes.

As for repairs? For now, six non-stop teams of remote-controlled robotic subs have failed to stop the flow. For now, it could be two more weeks before concrete-and-steel sleeves are put in place to cap the three gushing lines. For now, it could take $100M and three months to get a relief rig in place to tap the feed to the open lines.

And for now, the corpse of Deepwater Horizon continues to spew two hundred thousand gallons of raw crude into the Gulf each and every day.

That's roughly two million gallons of oil released, so far.

And it won't be stopping any time soon.