It's good for BP that if they say the leak is stopped and it starts leaking again months/years...

[Poll_Blind]

...later, it's going to be damned near impossible to quickly pinpoint where the oil is coming from.

What we're seeing now is oil just gushing the mother-fuck out of that hole and that makes it pretty clear where it's coming from. But if their junk shot or top hat or rim job or whatever the fuck they finally do, where it doesn't leak for say a 48-hour period and they can land on the carrier, declare Mission Accomplished and get the fuck out of Dodge- then, if that "solution" eventually fails, the plug pushes out and this toxic crap starts leaking out but at a far-less-noticable rate, well...

Nobody's ever going to know, are they? Oh, the crabs and the mussels and the fish will know, but we won't.

It's not like some intrepid DU-er can grab a kayak and go check on it and report back to us.

I'm thinking about that possibility and so, out of no mean-spiritedness towards you, share the thought.

A lot of these solutions are really reminding me of how the Russians ultimately dealt with Chernobyl. A big concrete sarcophagus. Despite that sounding like a permanent solution, it's not.

PB

[NYC_SKP]

1. If it doesn't leak there, oil will leak somewhere else here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8385057

:mad:

[Poll_Blind]

4. Yeah, I saw that. That's a great thread, BTW. The image reall hits home just....

..exactly how....well, how the situation is. I was shocked by all those little pinpoints and what they represent. Also, notice the ones off the coast of Texas are farther away, probably because of laws about offshore drilling but by Louisiana (where the laws are presumably more lax) they get much, much closer?

Very interesting to see the effect of laws in a situation like that and be able to notice it, visually.

PB

[NYC_SKP]

6. Different maps show different zones of oversight, like Florida's West Coast...

...is relatively unexploited.

The further offshore projects come as a result of more sophisticated tools for finding deposits and for exploiting them.

The Deepwater Horizon rig is such a piece of technology, capable of going out to drill in very deep water, then move somewhere else.

I had no idea, none, of how much pipe is out there!

[pnwmom]

2. I would think there is a sensor technology that could be used for this purpose. n/t

[Poll_Blind]

7. This is a good idea but I imagine it would communicate via radio and I know....

...that that would pose some problems. I had to look something up to see just how much of a problem it would be and based on the depth and the relative remoteness of the location, you'd basically have to have some kind of vessel (maybe not manned) tethered (probably by a cable which also contains the wires which communicate whatever data) to the sensor which would be about a mile beneath the surface.

And whatever vessel they had would also be at the mercy of the waves, storms, etc.

I dunno, maybe there's an easier way than I thought but based on their attempts so far I don't have much hope they're going to spend a lot of effort, technology or money to put something like that in place.

:shrug:

PB

[Statistical]

3. Their rebuttal.

The more wells we drill the faster we drain that "troublesome" oil pocket.
If the pocket is empty then there is no risk of failure.

Could see them spin it into a lobbying campaign.
Prevent another Gulf disaster like 2010 allow even more drilling in the Gulf!

[flamingdem]

5. BP spokesperson: "OIL, SCHMOIL, WHADDAYA TALKIN ABOUT" nt