momoese

What say you about this?

$500K device may have prevented oil spill

I certainly am no expert, just sorting through tons of info. This seems pretty logical to me.

momoese

Lonie in the link you provide they say this:

How do they know?

mckoinld

Let me see if I can explain this more clearly. A BOP is a series of valves. Some of the valves are suppose to seal around the drill stem and some have shear rams. The shear rams are the shut down device of last resort. They are suppose to cut the drill stem completely and seal the well. How do they know something jammed the shear ram? It did not seal the well.
Why it did not seal the well is something we may never know. The bottom line is BP knew there were problems with the BOP and did not correct the problems.

An acoustic switch is like a remote control. It is the thing that tells the shear rams to close. Having an acoustic switch does not change anything other than the method of signal delivery.

It does not make up for negligence.

It is not a substitute for responsible operations.

If it were placed on all wells in the GOM it would be a nice tool to have available but in some cases would not make any difference.

Let me put it this way. If you put a remote start on your car it in nice to have but if you don't maintain your car eventually it wont start.

I don't want any one to be led on by false hope. There is no quick fix that will make everything safe.

There are oil companies operating in the Gulf that are scrupulously contentious and there are companies that are totally unscrupulous.

What I'm saying is that we need more than any devices is a move to only doing business (issuing drilling permits) to companies that have demonstrated global environmental responsibility and commitment to safety.

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GOOOO TIGERS

Jack Daw

Guys, it's no good discussing, you'd better discuss your future and present in that area. It has to be stopped and cleaned. Arguing baout what would have been if that hadn't happened won't change the present.

__________________
Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

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momoese

Well after reading and watching videos I get the idea how a BOP and an acoustic switch work, what I don't understand is why the BOP didn't work. Was it because it was never triggered in the first place, possibly because the crew had already been killed or was unable to activate it? If that the case then a remote acoustic switch would have worked.

I still think this whole thing sounds fishy. I'm just not buying that the shear was jammed without solid proof.

I disagree Jack. If this happened on one it can on others too. Things need to be looked at and fixed asap before we have another disaster on our hands.

Jack Daw

Since the BP Gulf of Mexico problems, 3 separate drilling wells collapsed. One in Northern Ocean (oil), one in Venezuela (gas, article maybe here) and one in the Pacific (oil). In all of these cases, regulated by the same international standards, preemptive systems and people managed to close everything so that no damage of those proportions has been caused (except the platforms collapsed, nothing really happened).

What happened in Gulf of Mexico is a tragedy, but not a problem of norms or technology, apparently. It would seem that it was either deliberate "solution" (I don't know to which end, yet), or absolute and utter ignorance of any rules, in which case it doesn't really matter, what mechanism wasn't present/didn't work, if it simply wasn't present only because nobody really cared about the regulations. As we've seen in the past months, similar platform problems were dealt with (even without broader public finding out) and no damage to the enviroment has been done in those cases either.

__________________
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Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

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momoese

Interesting. Did they have acoustic switches on them?

Jack Daw

I don't really know that, try browsing on the net, but I doubt that any platform is actually secured only by one fail-safe mechanism, there's always even a reserve of a reserve. Just like in electrodistribution network.

__________________
Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

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mckoinld

My intent was not to argue a point but to educate. Either you didn't read my explanation or just simply don't under stand. Oil field control systems are simple if you understand them and unfathomable if you have no experience with them. A rig and a platform are totally different structures with totally different safety shut down systems.

Either way I'm done. Back to planting things and petting horses.

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GOOOO TIGERS

momoese

Same here, not trying to argue with you, just trying to understand and compare notes from what your saying to what's being said elsewhere. Thanks for trying Lonie!

Jack Daw

Maybe I couldn't find the proper word. Sorry guys, cheer up. Oil spill how people see it...

__________________
Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

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Jack Daw

In celebration of what seems to be a succesful leak test, I give you...
The Real News.

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Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

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Gardener972

Great picture! We do have a warped society focusing on the wrong thing, don't we? Meanwhile, how many people are out of work and for how long? How many animals, birds, fish, etc. have died and will be dying? All to feed our addiction to oil and to fill our giant gas-guzzlers.

momoese

You want to talk about warped, I heard an interview with a man that was unemployed until he was hired to perform clean up on the beach. He said "this oil spill is a god send"

Jack Daw

I wonder how he will be talking about it 20 years from now. I've read that there are not many survivors of Exxon Valdez cleaning party. They have a nice expactancy age of 56. About 20 years less than our average.

__________________
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Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

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momoese

I heard it was 52. They never gave them safety equipment that could deal with the toxic oil dispersant "Corexit" Some things never change!

aupoet

And just what proof do you have that no enviromental damage was done in those cases? The words of the party/parties responsible maybe or the reports being put out by some government reporting agency. Yeah, there are no motives for either one of them to push lies off onto the public are there? I live along the Gulf Coast and all I keep hearing are the lies about how everyone should come on down to the beach, the water is fine and the seafood is safe. Yet the beach cleaners are still wearing hazmat suits and the fish kills are increasing. One of our local news stations conducted water tests for the levels of petroleum hydrocarbons in several area Gulf waters. They collected water samples right along the beach fronts in Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, and Dauphin Island. They then collected water samples up the beach some 20 yards from the surf, after digging down into the sand and letting the water seep into the hole. They also collected sand samples and finally they collected a sample farther out near one of the oil booms. All the samples looked clean without any noticeable cloudyness or oil droplets. The chemist found levels of petroleum hydrocarbons in the water samples from 16 to over 200 parts per million and said normally they should be undectable or under 5 parts per million. The sample taken off the boom could not be tested because it exploded in his lab when he added a solvent to it to get the hydrocarbons to parcipitate out. The government and media keep telling the public that the beaches are safe yet they post signs telling those with weakened immune systems, who might be pregnant, or young children should stay out of the water. Oh yes, the beach sand samples and waters taken higher on the beach had the highest levels of contaminants. I have yet to hear anything about any government tests being conducted. It was just reported yesterday that sand is being hauled in from New Jersey to cover up the oil soaked beach sand rather than cleaning it up and guess what they are doing with all the oily sand and tar balls they are collecting -it is all going to our local landfills to leach out and pollute our ground water. The government and its bedfellow the big oil companies are both white washing this disaster and trying to hide everything from the publics eye as fast as possible. People such as yourself are only helping them by believing them when they say that "No damage has been done".

Jack Daw

I haven't read about dead fauna and flora covered in oil lying all over the beaches or floating on the water. That's why I assumed it wasn't that big of deal.

Blogs and other form of alternative media would be all over these types of things (like they were in the case of BP spill and other envirocatastrophes).

__________________
Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

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sbl

What kind of pictures would you like to see---oil covered birds, dead sea turtles, dead dolphins, dead whales, dead oysters--they are all out there.

jeffreyp