Gulf Oil Star: Tony Hayward
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In an unusual show of solidarity, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and even Buddhist leaders
announced today that BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward will be going to hell in
his next lifetime.
“There's no escaping it!”, claimed Evangelical Christian Ted Haggard.
“He will be forced to burn in hell for eternity!”
Pope Benedict XVI claimed Heaven holds no place for people who destroy the Earth.
www.huffingtonpost.com Gulf commercial shrimper Diane Wilson was arrested for interrupting BP CEO Tony Hayward's testimony on Capitol Hill ...Oil reaches Louisiana shores - The Big Picture - Boston.com
June 25, 2010 ... A ship's wake cuts through a pattern of oil near the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico Monday, May 17, 2010. ...
www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/.../oil_reaches_louisiana_shores.html - Cached -
Disaster unfolds slowly in the Gulf of Mexico - The Big Picture ...
June 25, 2010 ... A man holds a plastic bag with seawater and oil from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill south of Freemason Island, Louisiana May 7, 2010. ...
www.boston.com/bigpicture/.../disaster_unfolds_slowly_in_the.html - Cached -
FOXNews.com - Massive Gulf Oil Spill From Space
June 25, 2010 ... Following a deadly explosion at an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, ... Here, a variety of satellites capture the spill from the edge of space.
www.foxnews.com/slideshow/scitech/.../oil-rig-explosion-seen-space/ - Cached -
Hi-res photos: Gulf oil spill - latimes.com
May 4, 2010 ... The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to spread despite BP's ... Full coverage of the Gulf oil spill · Oil spill photos: High stakes ...
www.latimes.com/news/.../la-na-oil-spill-html,0,6610369.htmlstory - Cached -
BP Gulf oil spill pictures: Live feed shows Top Kill fails to plug ...
May 27, 2010 ... BP Admits Top Kill Didn't Work Video: American's were glued to the oil spill live feed since Wednesday, waiting and hoping for Top Kill to ...
www.examiner.com/x-31031-Providence-Headlines-Examiner~y2010m5d29-BP-Gulf-oil-spill-pictures-Live-feed-shows-Top-Kill-fails-to-plug-o... - Cached -
Gulf Oil Spill Picture Gallery: The Last Four Minutes of the ...
May 3, 2010 ... The remake of Nightmare on Elm Street may be hot at the box office, but it has nothing on the Nightmare on the Gulf of Mexico: the BP oil ...
industry.bnet.com/.../bp-oil-spill-exclusive-last-four-minutes-of-the-deepwater-horizon-rig/ - Cached
By Alanna Brown, LuxEco Editorial Assistant
On April 20, 2010, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon had a dire malfunction. Both its manual and emergency blowout preventers failed to deploy when the worst-case scenario became a reality. An oil rig blowout has the potential to occur when some combination of mud, oil, natural gas, and water erupt from the well, surge up the drill pipe, and ignite at the surface, exploding into an inferno.
According to the Associated Press, blowout preventers, or BOPs, have had infamous rates of failure. They write, “Cutoff valves…have repeatedly broken down at other wells in the years since federal regulators weakened testing requirements.” As many as 14 oil rig malfunctions in the past 5 years have been attributed to a faulty BOP, and its general reliability has been in question for over a decade. The device is simply and frighteningly a 640,000 pound steel plate fixed atop the well mouth, using up to 1 million pounds of force to block violent emissions. But it seems the explosive pressure pushing from beneath too often finds its way through.
So if the failure-rate of this mechanism is fairly common knowledge within the drilling industry, who’s to blame for the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe? Eleven workers were killed, our Gulf is swamped with millions of gallons of oil, and, with 5,000 more barrels of it gushing from the disaster site daily, our beaches are being contaminated as well. Naturally, no one wants to accept fault. But it’s unlikely that any one party could be held fully responsible anyway, as there are various companies, agencies, and interests involved. Pinpointing fault would be hard to do with such a dispersal of liability. For instance, BP (British Petroleum) owned the Deepwater Horizon operation, however the platform had been leased from Transocean, and Halliburton was hired to do the actual drilling. On top of that you’ve got your major government agency, the MMS (Minerals Management Service—a division of the Interior Department), which is responsible for government safety regulation over drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf.
Beginning with fundamental understanding of drilling oil versus Mother Nature, we have been at a practice that grossly misjudged its inherent danger. Disaster was only a matter of time. Because when you think about it logically, a steel pipe strung down through miles of ocean and then further submerged 18,000 feet below the sea floor, the conditions are formidable to say the least. Robert Bea, an engineering professor of the University of California, Berkeley who has also worked as an engineer on offshore drilling operations, said in an interview, “This is a pretty frigging complex system….So it has many potential weak points. Just as Katrina’s storm surge found weaknesses in those piles of dirt—the levees—gas likes to find weaknesses in anything connected to that source.” Bea found, in a study of 600 major equipment failures in offshore drilling structures, that 80% of errors can be likened to “human and organizational factors” while 50% of those derive from flaws in the engineering design. If these hazards were known beforehand, it appears there was an oversight at the executive level of BP or one of the affiliated companies; or simply, they knew and were willing to take the risk.
As for the government’s hand in all this, an article in Yale Environment 360 says, “Since the 1980s the MMS has routinely granted a blanket exemption from doing a comprehensive environmental impact statement to individual drilling operations.” The MMS again abused this authority last year by granting a “categorical exclusion” to the Deepwater Horizon lease. The reason for this exemption appears to be several misleading analyses based on checklist-type safety measures and daily environmental compliance. However, a catastrophe like this one is not a daily event, thus the likelihood and subsequent damage of an oil spill were majorly downplayed; the cataclysmic-level consequences hardly weighed.
Regardless of who’s to blame, the lack of a worst-case analysis means BP, the government, and other parties involved are far under-prepared for how to stop the wrecked pipe from gushing oil, and how to handle the cleanup.\
GULF OIL SPILL VIDEOS
2010 FIFA World CupPage 1 of 1040NewsPage 1 of 1040EntertainmentPage 1 of 1040GULF OIL SPILL PICTURES
Oil Spill Jobs Are Better500 × 353 - 116k - jpgthegulfoilspill.thedailyglobe.com
Oil Spill In Gulf Video: Video474 × 311 - 49k - jpgdbuzznews.comobama-solar-gulf-spill.jpg413 × 275 - 24k - jpgtreehugger.com
of Oil Spill Labor Jobs730 × 400 - 43k - jpgbpoilspillimages.co.cc
gulf spill economic effects500 × 334 - 106k - jpgthegulfoilspill.thedailyglobe.comImage of Oil Spill Jobs In520 × 559 - 45k - jpgoilspillimages.co.cc
2 big jobs: Spill recovery315 × 261 - 44k - jpgchandlerswatch.com
Lawyers Flock To Gulf For Oil800 × 533 - 183k - jpgmiaminewssearch.comGulf spill has hit so far,460 × 276 - 37k - jpgdisclose.tvFree Image of Oil Spill Jobs711 × 533 - 133k - jpgbpoilspilleffects.co.ccCompetitions offer cash prizes for stopping the Gulf oil spill: reminder
Independent - 22 minutes agoThe US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) now estimate that as of July 2 the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill which occurred on April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico, ...Video: Raw Video: BP Places Cap Over Leaking Oil Well
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Associated Press
Some oil spill events from Sunday, July 11, 2010 The Associated PressFlorida shoreline is untouched by BP oil spill disaster The Star-Ledger - NJ.comMore Oil Funds Could Be Needed
Wall Street Journal - - 5 hours agoWASHINGTON—The administrator of the $20 billion fund established to compensate victims of the Gulf oil spill said he didn't know if the ...BP Mulls Selling Off Billions in Assets
Wall Street Journal - - 3 hours agoA deal, which would go a long way to helping BP cope with the financial stress of paying for the clean-up of the Gulf oil spill, could be reached in the ...Report: BP ponders $12B asset sale to Apache The Associated PressTop Kill 2: BP aims to turn off Gulf oil spill spigot soon
Christian Science Monitor - - Jul 10, 2010A new containment cap could temporarily halt oil from gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. BP's gambit could dramatically alter the arc of the Gulf oil spill ...SUBJECT: PROGRESS IN GULF OIL SPILL Federal News Service (subscription)Navy blimp hovers over Gulf on oil spill duty
The Associated Press - - 4 hours agoA Navy blimp has started looking for oil and distressed wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard commander of the operation, Tony Lombardi, ...Coast Guard trains spotters for Gulf blimp duty Houston ChroniclePapp: Oil spill affects missions, work-force NavyTimes.comGulf Oil Spill - Buffett Concert
Bayou Buzz - 3 hours agoGULF OIL SPILL-BUFFETT CONCERT Stage set for Buffett concert in Alabama GULF SHORES, Ala. (AP) The stage is set for fans to enjoy the laid-back tunes of ...Jimmy Buffett concert report: Fairhope couple loves Buffett, does not hate BP Press-Register - al.com (blog)Songs to Salve a Battered Beach New York TimesGulf oil spill: Most Texas tar balls unrelated to spill
Los Angeles Times (blog) - Jul 9, 2010Preliminary lab results had indicated that the tar balls were related to the oil spill, but further testing came back negative, Bryant said. ...Tar balls from Gulf oil spill turn up in Texas The Associated PressGulf oil leak tar balls hit Texas BBC NewsTechnology's disasters share long trail of hubris
The Associated Press - - 7 hours agoThat hubris is what a presidential commission investigating the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will be looking for. Academics say the people ...Saving nature's unborn from Gulf oil disaster
CNN - - Jul 10, 2010It is estimated that 700 nests can be found in the Florida Panhandle, an area vulnerable to the oil spill. "This is a huge relocation effort," said Thomas ...Video: Some 70,000 Turtle Eggs Being Moved Far From Oil
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Associated Press
Gulf oil spill: Obama administration questions BP on containment steps
Los Angeles Times (blog) - Jul 8, 2010The Obama administration has asked BP if crews working on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico can step up oil-recapturing operations at the same time work ...Video: Drill Close to Well Spewing Gulf Oil
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Associated Press
BP Sets New Spill Target Wall Street Journal
