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 …
Oil
Oil Spill: Debating the Static Kill
Like recovering alcoholics who’ve just come out of an AA meeting, the joint BP-government team overseeing the well containment efforts is taking it one day at a time. At his afternoon briefing, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen announced that he had authorized BP to keep the containment cap shut and the well integrity tests going …
How Safe is Gulf Seafood?
Oil Spill: The Well Holds—For Now
In my last post on the oil spill—and trust me, I’ve long since lost count—I asked whether reports of seepages on the seafloor and anomalies near the wellhead indicated that the integrity tests that BP had been carrying might have damaged the well itself, causing leakages. Turns out I didn’t have to wait long for my answer—at a …
Military Veterans Against the Oil Spill
Didn’t get a chance to link to this earlier, but on the way back from New Orleans on Friday I wrote and posted a piece on the mainpage about a trip I took to see the oil spill with military veterans from Operation Free. It’s a new think tank/advocacy group that is making the oil dependency and climate change case on national security …
Oil Spill: For Now the Pressure Holds
Quick update on BP’s well containment efforts while I’m waiting for the weather to clear in Louisiana, where the sky is leaking like a blown well. After shutting the containment cap yesterday afternoon and closing off the flow of oil, BP began pressure testing the integrity of the wellbore. About 18 hours after they began, BP vice …
Oil Spill: BP Caps the Leak (For Now)—But the Hard Part is Just Beginning
When I heard that BP has successfully close all the valves on its new containment cap Thursday afternoon—effectively stopping the flow of oil for the first time in nearly three months as it began its well integrity tests—I was at a town meeting in Port Sulphur in Louisiana’s Plaquemines parish, ground zero for the oil spill. Kenneth …
The Oil Has Stopped—for Now
The numbers tell the story better than anything else could: after 85 days, 16 hours and 25 minutes, oil at last stopped flowing from BP’s busted well in the Gulf of Mexico. Since the evening of April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, between 93.5 million and 184.3 million gallons of crude have been spilled—blowing the …
Oil Spill: A Fouled Line Further Delays the Integrity Test
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 …
Oil Spill: Now the Pressure is REALLY On
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. …