EcocentricOil
Bonnie is a bust. Saturday morning the National Hurricane Center discontinued tropical storm warnings for Bonnie as it crossed the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and made for landfall along the Gulf coast Saturday evening. It remains a tropical depression—one step down from a tropical storm—with winds around 30 mph and sea …
EcocentricOil
As tempests go, tropical storm Bonnie would barely be strong enough to cause a Louisianan to look up from his gumbo. As of Friday evening, the National Hurricane Center actually downgraded Bonnie to a tropical depression, with winds only around 35 mph—below the 39 mph minimum needed for to be an official tropical storm. If this were …
EcocentricOil
With a tropical storm looking more and more likely to hit the site of BP’s blown well in the Gulf of Mexico, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen made a difficult decision on Thursday night. In the end, however, the evacuation order was given. The rigs and ships involved with the relief well and the containment operations began …
EcocentricOil
Time to play good news/bad news on the Gulf spill once again. Good news: retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen told reporters today that he was all but ready to authorize BP’s static kill procedure, which would involve pumping mud in through the containment cap, and that it could begin within 48 hours. If it works, the procedure …
EcocentricOil
A quick post before I head back out. Yesterday evening BP had begun closing down the valves on its new containment cap, in preparation to pressure test the integrity of the wellbore—and find out whether the well might be able to be fully capped. Overnight, though, they hit a snag—the kill line, one of three valves on the cap that the …
EcocentricOil
Call it oil spill interruptus. A day after Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen—on the advice of academic and government scientists led by Energy Secretary Steven Chu—abruptly stopped a planned attempt to halt the flow of oil from the new containment cap and measure the integrity of the wellbore, the all-important test is now back on. …
EcocentricOil
When he spoke at a briefing yesterday morning, Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen told reporters that it would be a “very consequential 24 hours.” At the time BP had just connected the new, tighter cap over the blown well and was ready to begin pressure tests that—if successful—would have been one of the last steps to finally stopping …
EcocentricOil
A brief update on BP’s containment procedures while I wait for the presidential oil spill commission to begin its second day of hearings here in New Orleans. (By the way, you can watch the hearing, which begins at 9 AM Central, here.) Yesterday evening BP managed to successfully connect the new containment cap—the 3 ram stacking …
EcocentricOil
Greetings from New Orleans, where I’m about 1200 miles closer to BP’s complex containment procedures above the site of the Deepwater Hozion sinking—yet I’m pretty much still dependent on subsea camera web feeds like the rest of you. I’m here to check out how the spill—and the cleanup—are progressing, and how the community is …
EcocentricOil
Of course, when we say “early,” it is important to remember that we’ve now passed Day 80 of the oil spill, and up to 150 million gallons of crude have already leaked into the Gulf of Mexico, if not more. But BP may be close to finally ending the leak. On Saturday, the company began a complex multi-day operation that involves removing the …
