General Kimsey: “We spend two trillion dollars a year on bankers,
and here we are, the fate of the planet is in the hands of
a bunch of retards I wouldn't trust with a potato gun.”
Posted on 06/24/2010 8:54:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The offshore drilling moratorium that is falling apart in court already contains one major loophole -- and there's little surprise which company is threading the needle.
BP plans to begin drilling two miles under the sea just miles away from a delicate wildlife reserve in Alaska. The company will get around the deep-water moratorium by constructing an artificial island -- 31 acres of gravel -- and registering as an onshore rig.
Not exactly the safest operation, reports Rolling Stone:
"Here's what BP has in store for the Arctic: First, the company will drill two miles beneath its tiny island, which it has christened "Liberty." Then, in an ingenious twist, it will drill sideways for another six to eight miles, until it reaches an offshore reservoir estimated to hold 105 million barrels of oil. This would be the longest "extended reach" well ever attempted, and the effort has required BP to push drilling technology beyond its proven limits. As the most powerful "land-based" oil rig ever built, Liberty requires special pipe to withstand the 105,000 foot-pounds of torque — the equivalent of 50 Mack truck engines — needed to turn the drill. "This is about as sexy as it gets," a top BP official boasted to reporters in 2008. BP, a repeat felon subject to record fines for its willful safety violations, calls the project "one of its biggest challenges to date" — an engineering task made even more dangerous by plans to operate year-round in what the company itself admits is "some of the harshest weather on Earth."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Someone other than BP might have a chance. The outcry against these guys will be too great.
“Not exactly the safest operation, reports Rolling Stone:”
So NOW, BECAUSE of the McChrystal/Obama expose the Rolling Stone is on a roll!?
Idiots. The islands are constructed because no vessel or other structure can be made permanent enough against moving ice to survive.
Building an island is not to avoid offshore drilling.
If these damn fools had do know how oil and gas is produced to enjoy the benefits of them they would be walking, living in small villages, sweating like the pigs they are in summer and freezing their asses off in winter.
Why is there little surprise. The company is 100 years old; it has hundreds of wells. One blew up (true, with terrible consequence). By what probability theory is there little surprise.
That's how propaganda is done. Anti-corporate, anti-capitalist propaganda. Goebbels would be proud and Pravda envious.
Sadly, this type of garbage reverberates not only with the left but also with "conservatives."
This is absolutely typical. The administration (read Democrats) ban drilling in ANWR, because that might threaten a passing caribou (although they don’t seem especially troubled by the operations already there).
But they allow corrupt BP to construct an artificial island and risk causing another huge spill by using unsafe and unproven techniques.
Sure. Who has the better safety record, BP or Exxon? Exxon, by about 100:1. Who pays the Democrats more in slush funds? BP.
Who supports Cap ‘n Trade? BP. Who gets to trade carbon credits if the plan goes through? The Chicago Exchange.
No wonder Obama just smiles and lets BP commit all the crimes it chooses to commits. He’s getting his share of the loot.
That statement is a lie... nothing delicate there and extremely little wildlife.. ok a Fox or two and a random Raindeer(Caribou) that could easy be someplace else.. Theres not even much vegetation...
Just a lot of oil and natural gas.. and prolly a lot of mineral deposits besides.. (like coal)..
“Drilling two miles under the sea.”
Is Rolling Stone worried the island will tip over? Do they understand that building an island means they will had a two mile high mound of gravel/dirt that sits on the sea floor?
This actually sounds like a clever solution. The big problem with the leak in the gulf is that it is so deep under water. If that leak had occured on land, it would have been plugged the same day. This has the advantage of drilling on land (making it easy to get to the well head if there is a problem), while allowing them to drill in deep water.
The only question is: how long till it takes some environmentalist to start complaining that BP is dumping a two mile high mound of gravel/dirt on the sea floor to create an island? Like I said, I’m not sure the Rolling Stone writers realize yet that islands don’t float on the surface.
Wouldn’t it be safer for the environment if they were allowed to just drill where the oil is, instead of having these artificial limit requiring them to drill sideways?
Although I’ve wondered when people might start dropping offshore rigs in ANWR and trying to drill under back to land.
General Kimsey: “We spend two trillion dollars a year on bankers,
and here we are, the fate of the planet is in the hands of
a bunch of retards I wouldn't trust with a potato gun.”
I’m all in favor of offshore drilling and harvesting our domestic reserves, but I don’t think BP is our friend.
bfl
How does one drill straight down and then turn in a specified direction? That has always baffled me.
If they can do this why not just dump the two miles of gravel and clay onto the well in the gulf that is leaking and PLUG THE DAMN HOLE. Just a thought.
Good post bump!
BTW..I was watching a replay of the oil companies on capitol hill on cspan the other night and every single one of them, except Exxon, were kissing up on ‘climate change’ and the cap n trade BS. Needless to say...I am getting all of my gas at Exxon stations from now on. The others were just jockeying for political favors and playing the chicago shakedown game as crony capitalists! It make me want to puke! Sadly, there are no ‘John Galts’ anymore. The CEO of Exxon was the only one that had any sense or moral clarity. He was actually very impressive.
You are assuming BP wants to plug the damn hole.
I am now of the opinion that BP, in cahoots with Obama, wants as much oil as possible to spew from that well for as long as possible, to achieve maximum ecological damage, to gin up public support for the cap-’n-trade bill, under which BP will profit handsomely.
I know, sounds like I need a tin-foil hat. But I really am a rational person. Really.
COAL!!!
The area must be quarantined. Immediately!
< /envirowhacko>
The story is not clear, but I doubt the water is two miles deep...probably drilling two miles beneath the sea bed. A pile of gravel two miles tall would have a diameter of 12 miles at the bottom.
I would guess they are in less than a hundred feet of water..although I’m just guessing.
Because this is shallow water it was already outside the scope of the ban. And this design was planned and permitted years ago. Nothing has been changed.
They started building this specific land based rig years ago to meet the power requirements of th 8 mile horizontal reach.
I see no problem with this plan. The “crimes” of BP (of which there are rumours that may or may not be true) resulted in a tragic accident that claimed the lives of 11 workers. The oil spill? No it’s not nice, but sometimes sh!t just happens, unfortunately, and this is not ANYWHERE NEAR as bad as the enviroweenies are making it out to be.
What you DON’T hear in MSM is the recovery of nature in Prince William Sound, Alaska, contrary to all the alarmist propaganda about the supposedly uniquely vulnerable arctic ecosystems. Now another oil spill is going on in a completely opposite type of coastal area - and now THIS type of coast is supposed to be the most vulnerable.
Meanwhile in Nigeria an oil pipe leak still currently going on has dwarfed the Gulf spill in volume of crude oil spilled, but do you hear so much as a mention about it in the news? No. Because not so obviously the fault of the most evil of humans: white christian Americans. Guardian tried to play it on the evil exploiting oil company angle, but it’s a bit hard with the (black, moslem) Nigerian government happy about oil companies drilling their oil, Nigerians having messed it up to begin with, and Nigerians and doing jack sh!t about the leak.
As for the Gulf of Texas. Sure, it’s not nice for the environment, and it’s particularly bad for the fishermen for whom the time of being out of business before nature re-bounces may be too much to bear financially. But the real tragedy is that once again a myth is being put forth by MSM and enviroweenies, it’s being swallowed hook, line and sinker by 90% of population (even many if not most conservatives in the US, to say nothing of Europeans), and this will simply be used as further tool by the left to push their financially catastrophic idiocy that is “green” renewable energy resources.
The same MSM and green lobby thanks to whom we have only a poor understanding idea why what insect damage to pine forests, because when some forests started dying, they succesfully put forth the acid rain myth, and silenced the research which showed that whatever it was that was killing trees, sulphuric acid from fossil fuels it wasn’t: www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/controversies/epavskrug.html
Pissed off? Damn right, but not at BP whose crimes are mild here compared to those of the left.
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