Admiral Thad Allen, head of the government’s effort to help staunch the oil leak that resulted after an offshore rig collapsed into the Gulf of Mexico, told reporters Thursday morning that BP’s latest effort to plug the leak has succeeded, according to the Chicago Tribune (and Los Angeles Times).
The so-called “top kill” effort, launched Wednesday afternoon by industry and government engineers in Houston, has pumped enough drilling fluid to block all oil and gas from the well, Allen said. The pressure from the well is very low, but persistent, he said.
Once engineers have reduced the well pressure to zero, they will begin to pump cement into the hole to entomb the well. To help that effort, he said, engineers are also pumping some debris into the blowout preventer at the top of the well.
Allen said one ship that was pumping fluid into the well has run out of the fluid, or “mud,” and that a second ship is on the way. He said he was encouraged by the progress.
[snip]
Late Wednesday, an Alabama news station alleged that fluid seen on a live video feed may have been mud and not oil. The well continues to show pressure; the job won’t be complete until the well site is entombed in cement, Allen claimed Thursday.
What you see spewing from the well in the Gulf tonight may not be oil, but drilling mud. BP Spokesperson Doug Suttles says that’s what it looks like but, there’s no way to know without testing it. From the looks of things, they say so far…so good.
Suttles says, “The job has been proceeding according to plan. We started pumping operations at 1 o’clock this afternoon. We pumped over seven thousand barrels of drilling mud so far, at varying rates but up to 65 barrels a minute.”
You’re FIRED!Obama fires head of MMS… this is all over mainstream news but I gave you link to Raw Story. Not a whole lot of meat in it, but…hmmmm… so she is not one of the (many) Bushie holdovers?
According to the Washington Post’s WhoRunsGov, Birnbaum was expected to take over as head of one of two new agencies. … Birnbaum was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009. … From 2001-2007, she was Vice President for Government Affairs and General Counsel for American Rivers, where she directed advocacy programs for the nation’s leading river conservation organization.
then theres this: at mcclatchyBP worker takes 5th, making prosecution a possibility.
WASHINGTON – A top BP worker who was aboard the Deepwater Horizon in the hours leading up to the explosion declined to testify in front of a federal panel investigating the deadly oil rig blowout, telling the U.S Coast Guard he was invoking his constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.
The move Wednesday by BP’s Robert Kaluza raises the possibility of criminal liability in the April 20 explosion that killed 11 and five weeks later continues to spew hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day.
President Obama will face the cameras and take questions from reporters Thursday about the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, giving him another chance to finesse, and perhaps even ratchet up, his rhetoric on the crisis.
The president’s news conference in the East Room is scheduled for 12:45 p.m., and it will take place even as BP’s dramatic “top kill” operation to halt the flow of leaking oil continues deep below the Gulf surface.
This will be Obama’s first full-fledged news conference in more than 300 days. It is the latest attempt by the White House to calibrate the presidential message about the oil catastrophe with the anxiety captured on television screens.
Since a BP offshore rig exploded and sank on April 20, killing 11 workers and starting the flow of oil into the sea, Obama has spoken about the matter with increasing urgency, and sometimes anger.
As we await the televised news conference and reporters’ questions, here’s a review of what the president has said about the spill so far:
President Obama on Thursday will announce a six-month ban on drilling new deepwater oil wells, the White House said, and cancel plans for exploratory drilling and new lease sales off the coast of Alaska, as well as a proposed lease sale off the Virginia coast.
The clampdown comes as the president prepares to make public the results of a 30-day safety review of offshore drilling that was ordered after the calamitous explosion of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The resulting spill is creating the most serious environmental crisis in the United States in decades.
Today, on the Ed Schultz radio program, two different callers called in, and what they said could not be scarier (I’m trying to find some information on it, but nothing yet). Each said there is considerable reason to believe that the riser has another leak in it much deeper down. A plume was found some 6 miles away from the site at very deep level, and there is evidence of oil (or oil plumes on the ocean floor. I can’t think of anything more frightening if that is the case. (If there is such a leak, I fear that the effort to “cap” the gush may have been the cause [I thought of that on May 6, as they were contemplating the “cap”], and believe me I have no technological savvy, because of the obvious pressure with which the oil was gushing from the riser.
One of the callers that pointed out this “new discovery” also made a very good comment about this latest effort of BP. He said it’s not such a good idea, because the effort could be forgotten about for years on end and then suddenly, because of deterioration of the “fix,” etc., erupt anew. That makes sense! His idea was to use these “slinky” like gizmos that are covered with some kind of absorbing material, connect as many as needed together and go down (he was not clear on how you would guide the gizmo down — into the riser?) to the leak area (5,000 feet) and siphon out the rest of the oil until it’s gone and use filtering equipment to separate the water back into the ocean and get the oil onto tankers, or whatever. Kevin Costner has such machines developed for just that purpose — we’re just hearing much about it or why they’re not yet in use. I’m not sure what the remedy is. But I think it is a little unsettling to fill this riser up with mud and have it sit for years.”
I’m not sure how that filling the riser with “mud” and then cementing it all plays out really, but how will that help the “cement floor” that was so faulty to begin with (another Halliburton gift).
BTW, you can download a large verion of this NASA map at the above linked site!
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I love you, Rachel
Just look at this drawing, it all makes sense. The combination of the “kill valve” and the “choke valve” forcing mud and “clogging the chambers”…..
~snark~ ….never assume
TMC I tried emailing you, couldn’t get through, my email on my page
RawStory:
Gov’t going through the motions
Put on a good show for teh sheeple…
Motherfuckers at BP and within our gov’t need to have their heads….
i better edit myself now
The problem is the methane.
See:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_7-yw…
gonna be a lot of news today I guess. damn.
check these out.
You’re FIRED! Obama fires head of MMS… this is all over mainstream news but I gave you link to Raw Story. Not a whole lot of meat in it, but…hmmmm… so she is not one of the (many) Bushie holdovers?
then theres this: at mcclatchy BP worker takes 5th, making prosecution a possibility.
and…. this!!! CNN OPINION piece: Lt. Gen. Honore Take punitive action against BP now
wow.
we should liveblog it here.
midday Press Conf set for 12:45 eastern (WaPo)
WaPo also has this separate report
if you look at the live feed, the methane, if that’s what it is, looks the same as in earlier pictures.
Very interesting to note the BP utilized the exact same methods to try and stop the oil leak, as were used in 1979, and didn’t work. Just amazing!!!!
~~~~~
I’m going to bring a comment (written hastily) I’ve posted elsewhere, as it may be of interest.
“Here is a NASA view (of today, May 27):
Today, on the Ed Schultz radio program, two different callers called in, and what they said could not be scarier (I’m trying to find some information on it, but nothing yet). Each said there is considerable reason to believe that the riser has another leak in it much deeper down. A plume was found some 6 miles away from the site at very deep level, and there is evidence of oil (or oil plumes on the ocean floor. I can’t think of anything more frightening if that is the case. (If there is such a leak, I fear that the effort to “cap” the gush may have been the cause [I thought of that on May 6, as they were contemplating the “cap”], and believe me I have no technological savvy, because of the obvious pressure with which the oil was gushing from the riser.
One of the callers that pointed out this “new discovery” also made a very good comment about this latest effort of BP. He said it’s not such a good idea, because the effort could be forgotten about for years on end and then suddenly, because of deterioration of the “fix,” etc., erupt anew. That makes sense! His idea was to use these “slinky” like gizmos that are covered with some kind of absorbing material, connect as many as needed together and go down (he was not clear on how you would guide the gizmo down — into the riser?) to the leak area (5,000 feet) and siphon out the rest of the oil until it’s gone and use filtering equipment to separate the water back into the ocean and get the oil onto tankers, or whatever. Kevin Costner has such machines developed for just that purpose — we’re just hearing much about it or why they’re not yet in use. I’m not sure what the remedy is. But I think it is a little unsettling to fill this riser up with mud and have it sit for years.”
I’m not sure how that filling the riser with “mud” and then cementing it all plays out really, but how will that help the “cement floor” that was so faulty to begin with (another Halliburton gift).
BTW, you can download a large verion of this NASA map at the above linked site!