A week ago, Scarecrow at firedoglake speculated that the cause of the enormous upwelling of natural gas from the ocean surface to the drilling rig on the Gulf of Mexico, that led to fire, collapse and uncontrollable oil spill, might be found in a publicly available powerpoint presentation (PDF) Haliburton had produced in November 2009, about dangers in deep water drilling when encountering methane clathrate, or fire ice. I used Scarecrow's speculation to further speculate that if methane clathrate is the culprit at this drill hole, it might put the entire adjacent field at risk.Now, it seems that buildups of methane clathrate are making the cap, dome, tent or whatever you want to call it that BP has lowered to the site of the leak, unusable.
Was the scenario being acted out right now in the Gulf, to paraphrase Riki Ott's prediction about the Exxon Valdez, "just a matter of when, not if"?
Meanwhile:
2 comments:
Phil carries the water of the right again.
The national Repugnant Party leaders ought to start paying him for all the wingnut idiocy Phil willingly and repeatedly echoes for them.
Phil claims not to be attempting to lay blame on Obama, then he continues to post 'blame Obama' material, thus presenting the narrative he hopes will replace the reality.
Phil takes his pointers directly from the Drudge Report, and then pretends he's running a progressive blog.
Phil has repeatedly shown he has no intention of presenting a reality based perspective, he's interested in presenting the false and distorted narrative of the opposition, a distorted framing he'd like offer up to replace the reality based view.
..
As far as anyone getting a 'scoop' on Haliburton's powerpoint, in August of 09, there was the same kind of failure in the Timor Sea, north of Australia, Haliburton was the company doing the cementing on that well, that also blew out and caused a massive spill less than one year before the latest blowout.
Petroleum engineers and producers have known of the risks of encountering methane clathrate since the 60s, they've been dealing with the same type of risk for decades.
What is different is the deregulation which gave the oil companies a pass as far as having to plan for failures that were known to commonly occur.
The only 'scoop' is that the malfeasance was allowed to happen, even encouraged to happen.
The ensuing disaster is just collateral damage, easily dismissed as 'the cost of doing business'.
The real 'scoop' is that we give a free pass to the corporations so they can pursue profits, and should they incur a loss, well that loss will be paid for by the public.
..
.
Post a Comment