Tag: BP Oil Spill

Poor Macondo Can’t Get It Up, Can We Just Give Him Cialis & Be Done With It ?

The Further Adventures of Macondo, the Misbehaving Well.

Oh, Macondo, you were supposed to save us, and now look what you’ve done!



Can you hear the drums, Fernando ? I remember long ago another starry night like this

In the firelight Fernando, You were humming to yourself and softly strumming your guitar

I could hear the distant drums , and the sound of bugle calls were coming from afar

They were closer now, Fernando, every hour every minute, seemed to last eternally.  I was so afraid Fernando, We were young and full of life and none of us prepared to die

and I’m not afraid to say, the roar of guns and cannons almost made me cry

There was something in the air that night, the stars were bright, they were shining there for you and me, For Liberty, tho we never thought that we could lose, there’s no regret,  if I had to do the same again, I would my friend, Fernando  

Friday:  The First Family puts on their color coordinated summer outfits in muggy DC,  and marches dutifully to the helicopter for the obligatory New England Summer vacation in Maine.  They will be staying at the Holiday Inn in Bar Harbor on Mt Desert Island, which was last visited by a President while in office 100 years ago,  when William Howard Taft showed up.

President,Maine,weekend getaways,Acadia National Park

Enjoying a stroll today at Acadia National Park in Maine, Properly Attired for the Neighborhood.

A small earthquake hit Washington DC, this morning.  The 3.6 magnitude rattler was the largest recorded within 30 miles of the nation’s capitol since 1974.  There were no reports of damage from the 2.0 aftershocklette.

DC earthquake,2010 July DC earthquake

Matt Simpson’s Prediction Comes True at Last.

The House of Congress adjourned the day before, and scheduled its next meeting for lunchtime on Monday, July 19, 2010.  The Senate also adjourned at 6:33 pm Thursday, and vowed to return next Monday afternoon, whereby they will take up the Jobs Bill. Or the Energy Bill. Or something.

Gov Manchin of West Virginia will have appointed a new Senator by then to fill the seat left vacant by the loss of Senator Byrd.

And thereby complete the Entire Remaining Agenda of the First Term of the Obama Administration in 12 Days.  Yes, By God, West Virginia.  

Almost heaven. Life is old there. Older than the seas, Younger than the mountains, Blowin’ like a breeze. Take me home. To the place. I belong.  

Or at least get the polling numbers up.

(sssppst, those polling numbers….  didja fire the old one yet ? )  

Home. If home foreclosures continue at the current rate this year, in 2010 there will have been a million homes lost to the banks, more than the 900,000 homes lost to foreclosure in 2009.  The usual amount is about 100,000 homes a year, before the mortgaging/bank financial meltdown started.  7.5 million homeowners are in some sort of payment problem.  The 3.2 million jobless people who had their unemployment benefits expire because of lack of Senate action so far this month   become the targets of the self righteous, who ignore the higher “unofficial” unemployment rates of 15 to 20% in places like Republican Tea Partier’s Wally Herger’s district in the rural north of California, and tell them to get off the couch, stop eating chips and sodas, and learn to live on subsistence income.  Because the system shouldn’t reward the lazy nor punish those who succeed. It is 107ºF degrees in Redding this afternoon, this Friday.  Not using air conditioning is the new patriotic.

It was the 87th day since the pierced earth in block 252 of the Macondo prospect in Mississippi Canyon, nearly a mile under the sea, had bled out all the ancient dead liquified souls that it had held for eons, and covered it, shifted it back and forth by wind, strangled it in its carbon and sulfur stench, and mired its living things in tar and fed the swimming things the liquid toxins.  People of the coastal Gulf waters watched with cynical eyes as the British Petroleum company and the government told them that first they had shut it off, and then they would wait and see, and then maybe they would turn it back on, after all.

Pressure readings after 24 hours were about 6,700 pounds per square inch and rising slowly, Allen said, below the 7,500 psi that would clearly show the well was not leaking.  He said pressure continued to rise between 2 and 10 psi per hour.  He said a seismic probe of the surrounding sea floor found no sign of a leak in the ground, one of the major concerns because oil erupting into the surroundings would be harder to contain and could weaken the well before it is plugged for good.  The news came at the dinner hour on Friday, just as it always does.  

The slow deflation of optimism continued.

All the miracles of modern technology, 4 billion dollars and 3 months later, and still couldn’t get it up.


twitter

Said from the start if pressure didn’t rise to 5- 6K PSI, no well integrity & 7,500 + PSI, we would absolutely have integrity.

-Kent Wells

BP_ America

Official BP    


http://twitter.com/BP_America/…

Maybe there is a blockage in the well.  “The pipe integrity’s still there, It’s just getting around obstacles,” said one geology professor at Columbia.

A few hours earlier, another one at the University of Houston named Don Van Nieuwenhuise had tried to say that the well had merely lost power over the time it has been leaking.  But in another source he says


“There’s a couple of weak points at 9,000 feet, and one at 17,000 feet, that they might be particularly interested in looking at watching in the seismic. ”

http://www.neurosoftware.ro/fi…

Another telegenic oil wonk, Rob Cavner, of Houston, put it thus:  


“they are just sitting there circulating on the bottom at 17,840 (feet).  Just sitting there. Wells claims they are doing that for “safety reasons” during the well integrity test. What ? …. what the hell are they doing ? They now have an ability to capture all the oil and stop this massive pollution of the Gulf, as well as measure it. We have great weather to get the relief well completed. We already know without the “well integrity test” that they have severe damage to the BOP and other surface equipment and casing. If that were not true, it wouldn’t have blown out in the first place.”

____

“As soon as they do capture all the flow, then a real, measurable number will be in front of the public, and that’s the last thing BP wants, since that number will then be used to extrapolate environmental damage, hence per barrel fines that will likely run to the tens of billions anyway.”

   So just call Dickie’s cardiologist, would you ?

But for those who need help before a heart is available, or for whom a transplant is too risky, we have a gizmo called the left ventricular assist device, a $200,000 item. The LVAD is a cumbersome almost-artificial heart that requires the recipient to wear heavy batteries, a shoulder sling with various parts, tubes going through the chest and into the heart and abdomen, and other substantial inconveniences. It helps push a portion of the heart’s blood forward, doing the work the failing ventricle no longer can accomplish. Once used only to stabilize people awaiting heart transplant, it now is referred to, not ironically, as a “destination therapy”-the exact intervention that you want, not the half-assed loaner you are stuck with till the real McCoy arrives.

Six years ago, the doctor and medical historian Howard Markel, writing in The Atlantic, assembled seven fancy cardiologists and discussed Anonymous Patient C’s medical history with them; all were surprised that he was still puttering along, and even more surprised to then be informed that he was at the time their vice president. Stated most simply, he should have died long, long ago. Most people with his heart, his weight and sedentary habits, his history of cigarette smoking and who knows what else already have heard the bell toll. But not Cheney-pointing out that, though useful to define national trends, population-based statistics are completely useless for predicting the fate of an individual. The extremely unlikely happens every day, all of the time:   Just as it’s the rare person who wins the lottery, or is struck by lightning, or rolls snake eyes 50 times in a row, so too does a bad guy with a worse heart beat all the odds to stay alive.

So too does a destructive national energy policy, with a bad deepwater oil well, beat all the odds to stay alive.

____________

Saturday Dawning:

Break out the champaign for brunch, darlings!

BP announces at its only press briefing of the day that :


http://www.theoildrum.com/node…

[13:39] “You’ll see bubbles on the 36″ casing”

[13:39] “This is quite normal. First piece of pipe put in down to 500′. Build well on top of that”

[13:39] “There are 6 or 8 valves around this piece of pipe, it’s quite caution. But we’ll go take a sample and make sure it’s not gas from deeper down in the riser”

[13:40] ahh

[13:40] “Could be nitrogen or biodegrading methane”

[13:40] “As the well cools down, that’s probably what caused those bubbles”


Next technical update will be tomorrow (July 18) at 7:30 am CT. Any other updates btwn now & then will be announced.

about 2 hours ago via web   http://twitter.com/BP_America/…

At this point, there is no evidence that we don’t have well integrity. -Kent Wells

about 2 hours ago via web   http://twitter.com/BP_America/…

The longer integrity test goes, the more confident we get & the test will end when it is the right time to make that decision. -Kent Wells  

about 2 hours ago via web    http://twitter.com/BP_America/…

Continuing to progress with long-term containment options as planned. -Kent Wells

about 2 hours ago via web    http://twitter.com/BP_America/…

Bubbles you see on the 36″ casing on one of ROV cameras is normal. Being cautious, going down to double check & get a sample. -Kent Wells

about 2 hours ago via web    http://twitter.com/BP_America/…

Well integrity test continues, with pressure currently at 6,745 PSI, building at approx 2 PSI per hr. -Kent Wells

about 3 hours ago via web  http://twitter.com/BP_America/…

Every 6 hrs we’re going to look at the info & keep making decisions at that point on what to do going forward. -Kent Wells  

about 16 hours ago via web   http://twitter.com/BP_America/…

  ooh la lah, Le Weekend Sans Fin.  Est il droit pour vous ?  Toute l’heure peut etre le bon moment avec BP.                  

Breaking: BP Claims Well Shut Off During Test

BP is claiming the oil well has been successfully shut off for now during this pressure test.

If you pray, pray.  

I’ll add more in a minute.  Staring at webcams.

Pressure will build up quickly, so they may turn it back on to release pressure so things don’t go to hell suddenly.

This is unlikely to stay the same status for much over an hour, at the most.

fastest webcam captures

http://www.occupantunknown.com…

update 1.  Well monitoring is taking place. So far, pressure steady.  A sudden drop indicates a breach somewhere and they would re open valves to let oil flow out rather than blow a hole somewhere else in the well, equipment, or well bore.

Update from twitter:  


http://twitter.com/Oil_Spill_2010

 Update: NO OIL FLOWING INTO THE GULF #oilspill  

7 minutes ago via HootSuite

New well cap would allow oil flow regulation in case of hurricane – Adm. Allen #oilspill

about 5 hours ago via HootSuite

We were no happy with the redundancy in BP equipment, asked for more – Adm. Allen #oillspill

about 5 hours ago via HootSuite

Will drill relief wells about 10 feet at a time, pause for testing each time – Adm. Allen #oilspill

about 5 hours ago via HootSuite

Relief well about 100 feet above proposed intersection point – Adm. Allen #oilspill

about 5 hours ago via HootSuite

Integrity test will inform how we’re going to perform relief well digs – Adm. Allen  

about 5 hours ago via HootSuite

Integrity test also important in predicting relief wells’ success – Adm. Allen #oilspill

about 5 hours ago via HootSuite

Much of equipment has been designed and engineered for the first time – Adm. Allen #oilspill

about 5 hours ago via HootSuite

We don’t think there’s a problem with well bore – Adm. Allen #oilspill  

about 5 hours ago via HootSuite

Consistent low pressure reading would indicate leak, stop testing again – Adm. Allen #oilspill

about 5 hours ago via HootSuite

Test scheduled to run for 48 hours, in 6-hour increments – Adm. Allen #oilspill

about 5 hours ago via HootSuite

We are ready now to restart integrity testing – Adm. Allen

about 5 hours ago via HootSuite

apparently the last thing they shut off was blowing quite a bit of plume out nearer the bottom and that was pretty spectacular in appearance, I had thought something popped off somewhere as I had watched.

Government live video feeds here.  

http://ht.ly/2c5CJ

webcams:

bird cleaning station

skandi rov 1 leak monitoring

skandi rov 2  leak monitoring

olympic rov2 leak monitoring

update 2  here’s a screengrab picture I just took of skandi cam looking at the top of the ram stack.

BP oil spill,sealing cap,stack cap,stack ram,leak stopped,leak capped

The top of the new cap and stack. Thurs July 15, 2010,  1:20 pm PDT.  No leaks.  Oil has been stopped from leaking during this pressure test .  Skandi  Rov cam was swimming around stack taking different views.  

Dillon: Is Foreign Govt. Stopping + Detaining us from looking at our own Country ?!

Is a Foreign Government Interfering with OUR OWN CITIZENS on our own soil?!

Or is this a Dispersant Cover Up story ?  WDSU channel 6 News/  Fired BP Contractor talks to  Adam Dillon 7/11/10


Scott Walker of WDSU News: ” During our visit to a Grand Isle beach in June (on the 11th) to see clean up workers, a WDSU photographer and I  blocked from getting with in a hundred yards of them.   (This was the infamous Talon security people who are threatening journalists, bloggers, and regular folk down in the Gulf )

Adam Dillon, who was fired from BP, was a cleanup contractor from North Carolina, now talks to WDSU.com. ”

video here:   http://www.wdsu.com/video/2420…

http://scottwalkertv.com/2010/…

Adam Dillon

Adam Dillon, fired by BP, now a whistleblower

more video transcript:


Dillon:  …. after the way BP treated me, I am telling you now, you deserved an answer.

Scott Walker of WDSU News:  Shortly after our beach run in, Dillon was promoted.   Now he says he was fired because he was seen as a threat to his superiors.

Dillon:  I Became a liability to their operation up there because of the info I found out

News:  Does BP have anything to hide ?  Something other than the cleanup effort going on here ?

Dillon:  I saw something when I was out there. I took pictures of something. I  brought it to the attention of the command structure.  And,  Whatever I took pictures of, 12 hours later, I was gone.

News: he believes those photos showed equations related to the used of dispersants used on the oil in the Gulf.  While Dillon has harsh words for those in charge and questions,   he is just as quick to credit the thousands of workers who are working hard to clean up our shores.

Dillon:  At the command center, I worked with some really great people. I worked w/ some great hardworking individuals in there. but the bottom line it’s just about the money.   There are some very cutthroat individuals in there they are not worried about cleaning up the spill, as is.

News:  this former special ops soldier says lost all faith in BP

Dillon:  I will never have loyalty to  this company. (BP)  I will always have loyalty to my country and my country comes first.  What this company is doing to my country is wrong.

News:  No comment from BP,  Will attempt to reach out to those in charge.   More coming Monday in my interview with Dillon, where he tells me, He was confined and interrogated almost an hour.

This is an excerpt of the last part of the video



Adam Dillon, quote:   “What this company is doing to my country is wrong.”

The 83rd Day, Gulf of Mexico. Tail of the Dead Dragon

This is the 83rd Day on the Gulf of Mexico During the BP Oil Spill.  You will not see these pictures in the MSM.

BP oil spill,Gulf of Mexico,Mississippi River Delta,Louisiana Coast

Louisiana coast

Bp oil spill,Gulf of Mexico,Macondo,Deepwater Horizon,oil slick,Louisiana coast

Dying River Delta and DeepWater Horizon Macondo wellsite

BP oil spill,Gulf of Mexico

Center of Gulf of Mexico.

BP oil spill,Gulf of Mexico,Franklin Eddy

Franklin Eddy. Oil circling endlessly in mid Gulf.

BP oil spill,Gulf of Mexico,Yucatan Penninsula bp oil spill

Tail of the Dead Dragon.  Southern Gulf of Mexico.

BP oil spill,Gulf of Mexico,Yucatan Peninsula bp oil spill

Oil Slick Streamers Brushing Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

BP oil spill,Gulf of Mexico,bp oil spill Yucatan peninsula

Eastern Yucatan Coast, Oil Slick, and Cuba to the East (upper right)

 

Froomkin: Plight of the Sea Turtle

Go read:  (warning, also has picture slideshow, sad, graphic)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Gulf Oil Spill: The Plight of the Sea Turtle  by Dan Froomkin at HuffPo 7/2/2010


In the case of the most endangered species, the Kemp’s ridley turtle, hatchlings leaving their nests in Mexico this season are swimming right into the heart of the spill area, where their instinct to seek shelter and prey among floating vegetation is betraying them by leading them straight to thick clots of oil and oil-soaked seaweed.

There, instead of finding security and food, they are getting poisoned, trapped and asphyxiated.

And if that weren’t tragic enough, it turns out that shrimp boats hired by BP to corral floating oil with booms and set it on fire have been burning hundreds if not thousands of the young turtles alive.

BP oil spill,turtle,ridley's sea turtle,oiled turtle,turtle gets bath,UC Davis

Help.  photo NOAA , of oiled Ridley’s Sea Turtle

BP Sued Over Incineration of Sea Turtles

The lawsuit accuses the British energy giant of violating the U.S. Endangered Species Act and terms of its lease with the federal government for the deep-sea drilling rig that exploded on April 20, unleashing the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The suit says rare turtles protected under the Endangered Species Act are being inadvertently burned to death when spill containment crews corral large patches of oil on the surface of the Gulf and set the petroleum ablaze to dispose of it.

Those deaths, the suit says, amount to illegal “takings” of endangered turtles. A check of federal records has found no indication that BP ever applied for special government permits that would allow for “incidental takes” of protected species under such circumstances, according to the lawsuit.

Among the creatures most at risk from the incineration of oil at sea are the endangered Kemp’s ridley turtle, the smallest known sea turtles in the world and among the rarest.

Private boat captains chartered for wildlife rescue missions in the Gulf said in affidavits filed with the lawsuits that many young sea turtles have tended to congregate among oil blobs floating in the water, apparently unable to distinguish between the oil and mats of seaweed that provide natural shelter on the surface of the Gulf.

The turtles are then presumably swept up and unable to escape when shrimp boats contracted for cleanup operations are used to drag fire-resistant booms to encircle the floating oil before it is set ablaze.

From http://af.reuters.com/article/…

The suit was brought by:

the Animal Legal Defense Fund  http://www.aldf.org/

the Animal Welfare Institute, http://www.awionline.org/

the Center for Biological Diversity  http://www.biologicaldiversity…

Turtle Island Restoration Network. http://www.seaturtles.org/

More info at the above websites.

Govt To Fed Ex Sea Turtle Eggs to Florida Coast

Because the original is so oftentimes better than the description in the “can’t make this up” category, here is the latest press release from the Government’s Deepwater Horizon Incident JIC page:

http://www.deepwaterhorizonres…


NEW ORLEANS — The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) is proud to announce that FedEx Corporation (NYSE: FDX) is joining the efforts to protect sea turtle nests and eggs from potential impacts of the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The company will be donating resources to transport hundreds of nests containing thousands of eggs to Florida’s Atlantic Coast and its logistics experts are working the Unified Command and its partner organizations to implement this complex translocation.  The relocation efforts are scheduled to begin in mid-July and continue throughout the hatching season.

FedEx is working closely with Unified Command Wildlife Branch scientists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA and other partners to create the safest transportation solution for the relocation effort.  FedEx will take extensive precautions to protect the sea turtle nests and eggs, which will travel exclusively in its FedEx Custom Critical air-ride, temperature-controlled vehicles.

“In light of the imminent threat to sea turtles, we felt it was important to help move this extraordinary project forward,” said Jeff Trandahl, executive director of NFWF. “Given our strong partnership with FedEx and our long standing relationship with the federal agencies, we were able to move quickly to develop an effective plan. We’ll continue to work with all parties so that this relocation offers the best hope for sea turtles’ survival.”

FedEx provides logistics expertise, in-kind shipping and funding for disaster preparedness, relief and recovery, working with organizations including the Red Cross, Salvation Army and Heart to Heart International. A FedEx-sponsored Salvation Army disaster response unit is in use to support responders to the oil leak right now. In 2006, FedEx donated its transportation services to deliver more than 1.2 million pounds of medical and other relief supplies to the Gulf Coast area in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

NFWF is supporting a number of wildlife projects in the Gulf region and is helping to coordinate the work of federal agencies, biologists and others who will be involved in the massive transport effort. The Foundation, established by Congress in 1984, is a non-profit conservation organization that works closely with federal agencies and private sector partners to protect wildlife and natural resources.

No word yet on whether or not the beaches in Florida will have to be at home and able to answer the phone or doorbell at the time of the delivery, or wait until the next scheduled package delivery on that route after the weekend and on the next business working day.

BP oil spill,turtle,ridley's sea turtle,oiled turtle,turtle gets bath,UC Davis

Help.  I’ve lost my habitat.

photo from US Govt. flickerstream, Deepwater Horizon Response,  6/10/2010 UC Davis

______

update 7/2/10 :  they’re going to hatch the eggs in a climate controlled warehouse, release them,  and hope the turtles know where to return years later.   http://www.marconews.com/news/…

“”America Speaks to BP”” This Afternoon

Live streaming Q&A this afternoon

July 1, 2010

Ask BP Exec Bob Dudley Your Questions for a Live Interview Thursday

BP Oil Spill Witness: Kindra Arnesen

Kindra Arnesen is part of a husband and wife fishing & shrimping team that made their living off the coast of Louisiana until the blowout of the BP Deepwater Horizon well destroyed their livelihood.   They then tried working for BP as part of the cleanup.   What do you do if you see your young child on shore getting so sick from the fumes you have no choice but to try to take her away from this ?  What do you do when you see workers told not to use respirators, and fish dying ?  This is her story.

This was originally posted on

http://GulfEmergencySummit.org

and it may be also seen here:

http://www.sott.net/articles/s…

partial transcipt highlights: (I am having trouble with some of this, due to sound quality, incomplete)

WTF? Two Drill Pipes in BP’s BOP, Nobody Admitting It

For weeks now, I’ve seen the same discussion over and over again at the Oil Drum.  Somebody looks at the picture of the sawed off riser pipe with what looks to be 2 drill pipes stuck inside of it, when they were trimming the bent over riser off the Blow Out Preventer, before they put the LMRP Oil Sucking Cap on it,  and they ask,

what is that second pipe inside the riser ?”

And the answer is, “oh, that can’t be a second drill pipe, it must have been crushed when they cut the riser off with the pipe shear.  It’s a figure eight, it’s not two pipes, it’s one pipe, crushed.”

“But it looks like 2 pipes. the diameter looks too big for one pipe. ”

“yes, but it’s one. it’s crimped. ”

Guess what.


http://www.latimes.com/news/na…

The gushing BP oil well is a mystery still unfolding, and late last month, a team of scientists from the Energy Department discovered a new twist: Their sophisticated imaging equipment detected not one but two drill pipes, side by side, inside the wreckage of the well’s blowout preventer on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

BP officials said it was impossible. The Deepwater Horizon rig, which drilled the well, used a single pipe, connected in segments, to bore 13,000 feet below the ocean floor. But when workers cut into the wreckage to install a containment cap this month, sure enough, they found two pipes.

Fancy that !  Bp Tony Deepwotter Spinmeister Hayward never mentioned this before, did he ?

Update:Storm Alex Now a Hurricane, still Warning Heading to Texas

Update. Tues June 29, 8:20 pm PDT.  NWS, Miami, FL.  Tropical Storm  Alex is now officially a Hurricane, and the first hurricane of the season and the first June hurricane since 1995.  Alex is about 255 miles / 415 km SE of Brownsville, TX, with winds of 75 mph, moving 9 mph / 15 km/hr .  All watches remain in effect.  Hurricane Alex is expected to make landfall late Wednesday evening in the Texas/ Mexico border area.  

Status of Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Area’s “City of Ships”  of Blown Out BP Well : Oil skimming operations by surface boats have been suspended.  BP Oil is still so far collecting gas/oil from the riser pipe and the BOP,  but the attempt to hook up another gathering ship to the BOP to suck up yet more oil from below the sea’s surface has been delayed due to high winds and waves.  BP says they are still working on installing yet another floating riser pipe that they can then quickly disconnect from in the case of bad weather, but it’s not finished yet.

Status of relief well. Still close to wellbore, allegedly within 20 feet yesterday,  now drilling past it and down and taking multiple magnetic soundings to locate it before attempt is made to intersect.  Still supposedly on track for August of this year.

________

Well, I’ve got bad news and good news.

The National Weather Service as of 10:00 pm CDT Monday has upgraded the Hurricane Watch for Tropical Storm Alex to a Hurricane Warning.  

But it’s heading northwest to Texas.   http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/r…   Sorry, eastern Mexico, it’s going to visit you again too.

NOAA and the NWS has also put together a page  on New Orleans/Baton Rouge/Deepwater Horizon which has every sort of weather graphic you’d want to see on this.  Satellite, radar, wind, wave, trajectories,  37 different weather maps and charts to gawk at.

Bookmark this:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lix/?n…

Wathen: BP Slick Covers Dolphins & Whales, Video + text

Warning.  Heartbreaking.  



BP Oil Slick Covers Dolphins and Whales, by hccreekkeeper, John L Wathen.  June 21, 2010.  

BP slick Covers Dolphins and Whales.mov    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

video by hccreekkeeper   aka John L Wathen , with Tom Hutchins of SouthWings, flight pilot, and author Roger David Helbar  (author of Saved By the Sea, A love story with fish) who on  June 21 2010 flew over the Gulf to find the source of the BP slick

My imperfect transcript.  (not exact, few words skipped. minute numbers added for reference)


“It didn’t take long after leaving the shore,  to find our first oil.

In the mouth of Mobile Bay, there were patches of light sheen seen behind the islands.  oil you couldn’t see it from the beach  but

there was a solid mass of oil  

on previous flights all, behind safeway ? island,  we’d seen was light sheen

now it was turning into the darker  pink mass,….     the farther out into the Gulf we got, the more consistent it became

at 17 mile out  it was obvious the entire Gulf was covered at this point.  there was no more clean water. heavy layers of oil covered the entire horizon

as far as you could see

the bands were getting thicker

at 23 miles out we encountered the heaviest sheen yet, the dark pink and purple

it was obvious this was coming to our beaches there was nothing we could do about it

at  23 mi out, we encountered the heaviest sheen yet,  the water there was a deep purple maroon blue, it looked almost like a rainbow,  boats on the surface looked tiny on the compared to the horizon

the scope of this is beyond belief.

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