[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Absolutely nothing wrong with “Drill, Baby, Drill!” The problem is we have placed our easily accesible oil reserves off limits and so companies do have to resort to deep-ocean drilling which is by far much more risk-inherent than land-based oil wells. In fact, there should be an escalation of land based drilling in response to this accident in deep-sea drilling![/quote]
I have to say that I can understnad this, but I don’t know how much land-based wells we really have left in this country.
One would think that if it was easier to get to it, these companies would have already done so.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
Okay, sorry for the sarcasm. But everybody here knows exactly what would have happened to Bush had he been president when this happened. He would have been raked over the coals for not solving this issue.[/quote]
If Bush was still president it would still be a fuck up of epic proportions… on the part of BP.[/quote]
Please explain why you think this is a fuck up on the part of BP and what you think BP’s role in drilling this well was?
[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Absolutely nothing wrong with “Drill, Baby, Drill!” The problem is we have placed our easily accesible oil reserves off limits and so companies do have to resort to deep-ocean drilling which is by far much more risk-inherent than land-based oil wells. In fact, there should be an escalation of land based drilling in response to this accident in deep-sea drilling![/quote]
I have to say that I can understnad this, but I don’t know how much land-based wells we really have left in this country.
One would think that if it was easier to get to it, these companies would have already done so.[/quote]
Noone wants to drill in deepwater if they can help it, it’s so damned expensive. Deep water drilling is not more risky than land based or other types of drilling. And yes land based drilling has increased and will be increasing massively in the US and Canada over the next 20 years.
I don’t blame Obama for this and I would like it if he picked right now to go on vacation somewhere. My jaw dropped open when I saw him intentionally take ownership of this. This is a political blunder of monumental proportions.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
I don’t blame Obama for this and I would like it if he picked right now to go on vacation somewhere. My jaw dropped open when I saw him intentionally take ownership of this. This is a political blunder of monumental proportions.[/quote]
If you had seen how relaxed the regulations in the US are with respect to operating offshore and drilling it’s pretty amaturish compared with the requirements in other parts of the world. The US government basically allows the operators (oil companies) to set their own standards. When you allow this type of freedom to private companies you leave yourself exposed to this type of incident occuring and then being blammed for doing nothing which is what is now happening. So why did Obama do nothing about this?
[quote]The Mage wrote:
Okay, sorry for the sarcasm. But everybody here knows exactly what would have happened to Bush had he been president when this happened. He would have been raked over the coals for not solving this issue.[/quote]
If Bush was still president it would still be a fuck up of epic proportions… on the part of BP.[/quote]
Please explain why you think this is a fuck up on the part of BP and what you think BP’s role in drilling this well was?[/quote]
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
I don’t blame Obama for this and I would like it if he picked right now to go on vacation somewhere. My jaw dropped open when I saw him intentionally take ownership of this. This is a political blunder of monumental proportions.[/quote]
If you had seen how relaxed the regulations in the US are with respect to operating offshore and drilling it’s pretty amaturish compared with the requirements in other parts of the world. The US government basically allows the operators (oil companies) to set their own standards. When you allow this type of freedom to private companies you leave yourself exposed to this type of incident occuring and then being blammed for doing nothing which is what is now happening. So why did Obama do nothing about this?[/quote]
I am wholly unqualified to comment on what led to this. I am however pretty sure that some things did not lead to it. The idea that any company, including BP, would not take every precaution, regulated or not, to avoid a disaster like this is ridiculous on it’s face. Even if they stomped puppies and ate children, from a purely business standpoint they are the very last people on Earth who would ever want to see this happen. We will find out that no amount or type of regulation would have prevented this and that it was either a technological failure or a procedural failure or both.
Obama’s bookworms are probably only slightly more qualified than the people in this forum to even have an opinion on why this particular event happened and even less on what to do about it now. The truth is NOBODY knows what to do about it now. All the methods for dealing with offshore spills were designed for much lesser depths than where this one occurred.
Obama and his people are entirely unequipped to handle this through no fault of their own and it was politcal suicide for them to take ownership of it. At least in the absolute terms they did it with.
I am wholly unqualified to comment on what led to this. I am however pretty sure that some things did not lead to it. The idea that any company, including BP, would not take every precaution, regulated or not, to avoid a disaster like this is ridiculous on it’s face. Even if they stomped puppies and ate children, from a purely business standpoint they are the very last people on Earth who would ever want to see this happen. We will find out that no amount or type of regulation would have prevented this and that it was either a technological failure or a procedural failure or both.
[/quote]
While parts of that may be true, it’s common practice for businesses to cut corners on whatever to save money and time.
“Not wanting it to happen” is not the same as “making sure it doesn’t happen.”
I am wholly unqualified to comment on what led to this. I am however pretty sure that some things did not lead to it. The idea that any company, including BP, would not take every precaution, regulated or not, to avoid a disaster like this is ridiculous on it’s face. Even if they stomped puppies and ate children, from a purely business standpoint they are the very last people on Earth who would ever want to see this happen. We will find out that no amount or type of regulation would have prevented this and that it was either a technological failure or a procedural failure or both.
[/quote]
While parts of that may be true, it’s common practice for businesses to cut corners on whatever to save money and time.
“Not wanting it to happen” is not the same as “making sure it doesn’t happen.”[/quote]
Here’s the part nobody wants to hear. Where human engineering is concerned there has never been and never will be any such thing as “sure” of anything. I am going to grope in the dark here and guess that they did quite a bit more than simply not want it to happen. As we are seeing they had EVERYTHING to lose if it did.
Of course you’re right. Businesses do cut corners and sometimes in unforgivable ways, but not usually in a manner that puts themselves at great risk of both global front page PR disaster and astronomical financial loss. Folks have already all but forgotten that people died on day one. There is no way that there wasn’t already regulation and precaution enough to the limits of present technological know how to prevent this. If we ever do find out what exactly caused it it WILL be either present knowledge was insufficient for these depths or somebody didn’t follow the rules. It will NOT be because there wasn’t enough federal government.
Listen, Obama’s own inspection gurus passed this rig recently. Were they not doing their job? I don’t believe that. I’ll repeat. This is not Obama’s fault and he cannot fix it. It was unbelievably stoopid of him and his people to tattoo it on themselves like they did.
"…For too long, we evangelical Christians have maintained an uneasy ecological conscience. I include myself in this indictment.
Weâ??ve had an inadequate view of human sin.
Because we believe in free markets, weâ??ve acted as though this means we should trust corporations to protect the natural resources and habitats. But a laissez-faire view of government regulation of corporations is akin to the youth minister who lets the teenage girl and boy sleep in the same sleeping bag at church camp because he â??believes in young people.â??
The Scripture gives us a vision of human sin that means there ought to be limits to every claim to sovereignty, whether from church, state, business or labor. A commitment to the free market doesnâ??t mean unfettered license any more than a commitment to free speech means hardcore pornography ought to be broadcast in prime-time by your local network television affiliate.
Caesarâ??s sword is there, by Godâ??s authority, to restrain those who would harm others (Rom. 13). When government fails or refuses to protect its own people, whether from nuclear attack or from toxic waste spewing into our life-giving waters, the government has failed.
Weâ??ve seen the issue of so-called â??environmental protectionâ?? as someone elseâ??s issue…"
[quote]Sloth wrote:
<<< When government fails or refuses to protect its own people, whether from nuclear attack or from toxic waste spewing into our life-giving waters, the government has failed. >>>[/quote]
Bingo
When you have a government that is every bit as greedy and corrupt as the businesses it pretends to regulate AND the additional power to do just about whatever it wants, you arrive at 21st century America.
However, in this particular instance it was the “protective” government itself that regulated the oil companies right out into the deep where they are now and where they are facing the unnecessary challenge of capping a spill that would have taken a day or 2 to deal with had it happened closer to shore where they wanted to drill in the first place.
This guy has a real point. No Christian should interpret God’s giving to man dominion over the Earth as a license for irresponsible environmental destruction. Quite the opposite. The trouble here is that when you have two parties, one interested in profit and one interested in power, and neither interested in the least in the environment or their responsibility to God for it, whose judgment should prevail?
I say the greater good is served by those motivated by profit even if for no other reason than they will develop all the relevant expertise much more efficiently and at no expense to the tax payers. But that’s not the only reason. Governments have the power to simply manipulate and force circumstances along with the businesses into their own favor regardless of anything else. Businesses, at least these kinds of businesses, MUST maintain some reasonable level of safety and public relations or they will cease to be one.
Right now liberals are jumping up and down and wailing that Obama isn’t doing anything when there isn’t anything he CAN do. That’s another huge problem. People look to government to make the rules, they do and when it blows up in everyone’s face the government blames the company when in reality if the company would have been allowed to follow their profit motivated plan by drilling closer to shore this would have been over a long time ago.
Now, ironically, the religious environmentalists, whose ass the government was kissing by forcing this operation so far offshore, are the very ones demanding undeliverable action of the government… again… to fix it.
When you have a government that is every bit as greedy and corrupt as the businesses it pretends to regulate AND the additional power to do just about whatever it wants, you arrive at 21st century America.
[/quote]
Oh, well that’s a nice way to have your cake and eat it too. With that philosophy you can bash on anything that the government does, be it too much or too little for your tastes.
[quote]Neuromancer wrote:
‘Every precaution’ means different things in different places.
[/quote]
I’ve been trying to understand how on earth there isn’t a manual override on the ocean floor.[/quote]
It blew up. The well head is damaged and that is what is causing the oil to spew out. Oil is lighter than water. Usually the oil drillers even on land pump water into the well so the oil floats to the top and it is pumped out. On land you stop the water and the oil stops leaking out. In the ocean it is full of water. So there is a hole that is concreated to withstand the pressure of the earth on the ocean floor. This concreat is so think that it is not going to collapse. Hopefully the two holes they are drilling will take some of the pressure off the main well, and then they can do some of the things they have already tried and get the main damaged well under control. Only time will tell.
[quote]Neuromancer wrote:
‘Every precaution’ means different things in different places.
[/quote]
I’ve been trying to understand how on earth there isn’t a manual override on the ocean floor.[/quote]
It blew up. The well head is damaged and that is what is causing the oil to spew out. Oil is lighter than water. Usually the oil drillers even on land pump water into the well so the oil floats to the top and it is pumped out. On land you stop the water and the oil stops leaking out. In the ocean it is full of water. So there is a hole that is concreated to withstand the pressure of the earth on the ocean floor. This concreat is so think that it is not going to collapse. Hopefully the two holes they are drilling will take some of the pressure off the main well, and then they can do some of the things they have already tried and get the main damaged well under control. Only time will tell.[/quote]
If the well head was damaged, the remote device in the WSJ article wouldn’t do anything, correct?
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
That’s another huge problem. People look to government to make the rules, they do and when it blows up in everyone’s face the government blames the company when in reality if the company would have been allowed to follow their profit motivated plan by drilling closer to shore this would have been over a long time ago.
[/quote]
Or it would have happened and been even worse because it was a mile from the shore.
Drilling closer is not better than drilling farther, and people should not have to see oil rigs a mile off their beaches.
[quote]Neuromancer wrote:
‘Every precaution’ means different things in different places.
[/quote]
I’ve been trying to understand how on earth there isn’t a manual override on the ocean floor.[/quote]
It blew up. The well head is damaged and that is what is causing the oil to spew out. Oil is lighter than water. Usually the oil drillers even on land pump water into the well so the oil floats to the top and it is pumped out. On land you stop the water and the oil stops leaking out. In the ocean it is full of water. So there is a hole that is concreated to withstand the pressure of the earth on the ocean floor. This concreat is so think that it is not going to collapse. Hopefully the two holes they are drilling will take some of the pressure off the main well, and then they can do some of the things they have already tried and get the main damaged well under control. Only time will tell.[/quote]
If the well head was damaged, the remote device in the WSJ article wouldn’t do anything, correct?[/quote]
That is possibly correct. Maybe if it had one, it is possible that it could have survived the explosion, but I guess we never will know. Hopefully they can get this thing shut off. I am speculating, but I think BP, British Petroleum, was trying to salvage the well so they could pump out the crude, and in waiting it is possible that no they can not do a thing. This is going to be one hell of a story. Might make the Exxon Valdez a distant memory.
If this was done closer to shore there would not be an issue. They have capped these things all the time. This is the first time this has happened at this depth. The oil companies have been forced to go deeper and deeper because the government will not open up new leases to them. The technology is pretty much full proof at the shallower depths, but is speculative at the depths we are talking about now.
