Gulf Explosion's "Fire-Boom-Gate"

You would think that after Katrina the Feds would be at least as prepared as Boy Scouts. Since 1994 they have had a plan to contain spills in the Gulf using fire-booms, and the former coordinator of Gulf response was scathing in his criticism of the response as not executing on that. It turns out they didn't have any fire-booms in stock, and the fastest they have gotten one in is eight days late. This might come back to bite the Obama Administration:

Representatives from the Obama administration emphatically maintain that from "day one" preparations were in place to handle accidental oil spills. Maybe the administration can explain to the residents of Louisiana why not one fire boom was available when an actual crisis took place?

Comments

[Tony]

Thanks DG for your well thought out and quick response to my question in the last post. It was inspired by my stuffing up exit on the tanking euro and getting out to early.
Maybe I can return the goodwill by planting a seed for the future. Have you tried currencies? Mate, from all your posts your systems are perfectly suited to currencies- take another look (maybe you did previously and dropped it but your systems have evolved).
Also- I said this about 6 months ago- thanks Yelnick, I read this blog everyday and find it never fails to educate (and sometimes even amuse!)

[Alex]

Bulls: Keep the faith. New Moon rally is dead ahead. (over next 7-10 days)

[marketman]

Did we just hit the end of Wave (v) in the 1161 SPX handle ( around 2:50PM Eastern ) that was 61.8%
of Wave (i) down off the 1209 SPX high?

[yelnick]

Tony, amusing is good! you cannot take this too seriously, as the market is like a big machine designed to separate traders from their money.

[Hank Wernicki]

Precther was on Bloomberg this morning.

What did he have to offer ? Anything new ?

thanks

[market man]

I guess we are still in Wave (iv) and a "c" up to finish off Wave (iv) could take us all the way back up as high as 1178.72 should c = a.

1171.92 would = (c)x.618 of (a)

[Alex]

Prechter on Bloomberg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x72lW0k5t6w

nothing new to offer....just the same old bearish gloom and doom hes been peddling for the last 23 years (since 1987)

[Mamma Boom Boom]

There were signs of exhaustion, today. And, the multi-day rally I predicted has not finalized, yet, even though it has taken on a strange structure. So, a wisenheimer might conclude that some longs may be profitable.

Of course, in the long run, Prechter is right.

[marketman]

"Of course, in the long run, Prechter is right."

Posted by: Mamma Boom Boom | Wednesday, May 05, 2010 at 02:08 PM

Yeah, just like he was "right" during the infamous Lost Decade between 1993-2003.

Good Luck with that.
:)

[Alex]

"America's Baaaaaaaaaaack"

http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-americas-back-2010-4

(I think market has one more rally but for contrarians this is scariest Newsweek cover in awhile)

[MHD]

marketman.... I'm sure you think a country that is nearing 100 trillion in debt has a very bright future. Prechter has been wrong because of massive government bailouts, which is just more debt being used to solve a debt problem.
Good luck with your "happy ending". When you wake up from your dream world, you will find reality much different.

[nspolar]

It will all come out, as stated.

This just in: Becnel tells me that one of the platform workers has informed him that the BP well was apparently deeper than the 18,000 feet depth reported. BP failed to communicate that additional depth to Halliburton crews who therefore poured in too small a cement cap for the additional pressure caused by the extra depth. So it blew.

Why didn't Halliburton check? "Gross negligence on everyone's part," says Becnel. Negligence driven by penny-pinching bottom-line squeezing. BP says its worker is lying. Someone's lying here: the man on the platform - or the company that has practiced prevarication from Alaska to Louisiana?

http://vaticproject.blogspot.com/2010/05/slick-operator-bp-ive-known-too-well.html

Why did they replace the drilling mud and fluids with salt water, before pulling all the tools and drill pipe out of the hole? I would still like to know this. Why remove your last line of defense? At some point you have to I suppose, but before the drill pipe is out of the well bore, and only hours after the cement plugs were set? Do cement plugs have a cure time? Are they normally pressure tested, like by slowly lowering the specific gravity in the drilling mud and fluids, and measuring the leakage?

What they have now is a sub sea night mare. I do not give the dome a great chance. It will likely do some good, but .... let me see here. The pressure at 5000 ft is ~ 2200 Psi. I suspect downhole pressure is maybe up to 9000 Psi. This would infer the pressure at the wellhead might be pushing 5000 Psi at the no flow condition (if it was shut in). It in any event it is greater than 2200 Psi or no oil would be coming out. Given the amount flowing, there has to be a fair amount there, given the size of the tubulars. So the dome goes on. Pressure inside the dome is greater than outside so oil has to leak out. Initially it has a big hole in the top, before they connect the hose. So the oil flows out the hole. Then they connect the hose. Now we have line losses (if it flows up the hose) and there is 5000 foot column of head to the surface, maybe combined worth about 2200 to 2500 Psi. Any way I look at it the pressure inside the dome is still going to be quite a bit greater than at the sea floor. They gonna get a tight seal to the sea floor in mud, with one side setting over an approximate 20 inch riser? Does not make a lot of sense to me.

A Louisiana Prof was a bit skeptical as well. Said the performance depended on the chimney effect. I don't see a chimney. A chimney vents hot gases. This hose would be venting liquids it appears (might be a little gas mixed in). What I see is a dome, and any way I look at from what has been presented, the pressures inside the dome have to be greater than outside. Gonna work? I dunno but it looks like the chances for leaks would be pretty good. Maybe they can pump a bunch of cement around it, and over the top of it, after they get the hose connected. Who noz.

But of course we can hook a pump to the end of the hose on the surface so it can suck, right? Sucks the guts right out of the that dome. Wrong, any pump I know about that is readily available does very little sucking. This is a wives tale. Certainly no sucking to a depth of 5000 ft. from the ocean surface. If they could stick a submersible pump inside the dome and pump from the inside out, well another story. But that would be major engineering to do this, and would probably take a multi thousand HP submersible. No such thing is readily available.

It appears to me their best bet is to remove all the wreakage above and around the moon basin. But this is not easy. If they could and did, they could likely cut off the crap sticking out of the BOP and set new one on the top of the one in place. Not sure of this but would seem to make more sense to me than this dome.

BP .... only BP. Sarah Palin should have kicked them out of AK when they had the spill on the North Slope. It was imo no different than criminal negligence. I believe she could have done so, but she likely knew it would have would have wound up in a big court battle. So they are still in AK.

As you can tell I 'ain't' too impressed with BP. Their record of recent speaks volumes.

They are all about contracting, and then blaming their problems on the contractors, or trying to. Shove accountability else where. Do not take responsibility for your own business.

Digress to Apollo 13. Remember Gene Granz ... he was in total control in the movie, and I suspect that is the way it really was. At the end Jack Swigert was exonerated, the failure mode was built in to the capsule years earlier. But during the return to earth, Gene led a group of engineers very professionally to a successful outcome. Was a good movie, and something an engineer enjoyed watching.

Now imagine the atmosphere on the Transocean rig. Probably only a few engineers on the whole rig. Contractors galore, chawing and drawling, and all making decisions independent of a lead. Haliburton not even informed of proper hole depth ... could it be? You bet it could be. Maybe there was no lead for the the whole job. Various parties, all with contracts to fulfull, all quite possibly with different agendas. Big money rolling across the rig floor ($1M per day), performance bonuses likely at stake .... and well the perfect atmosphere for a chain of events.

Is this the oil patch as I know it? You bet. To a tee.

It used to work to a certain extent maybe. But it is not the best organizational set-up for a deepwater drilling rig. Deepwater drilling is hi tech stuff, very serious business, very risky, and with liability out the gazoo. The good ole boy system works fine, until it does not. Then it literally caves in.

All in my humble opinion.

I really do not see the Obama or Fed connect here. The best way to prevent an oil spill is to not let it happen in the first place.

ns

[Gucci Shoes]

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