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Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on June 5, 2010 at 8:06

Alex Jones and the rest of his infowars group give nutjobs a bad name. If it's midnight and Alex says it's dark outside, you'd better go check.

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Permalink Reply by RAZORBACK on June 5, 2010 at 9:56

Could be just smoke, but, no one knows at this point just what the true story is. It is a fact that some type of disagreement happened just before the rig went up in flames. Hide and watch, somebody will go to jail over this before it is over.

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Permalink Reply by Stevew on June 5, 2010 at 16:46

I agree about Alex Jones - but Razorback's second link is much more from oil people. There are a lot of comments, many of which disagree with the article, and they are mostly written by people who have experience in the gulf.

As long as Tony Baloney is in charge we don't have to look for anything more than a Conspiracy of Dunces. (never read the book, just like the phrase) I have seldom seen such an arogant upper class Brit who makes it chrystal clear that he does not see what his company has done.

I imagine we will have a good investigation and find where the problems happened. Soon. But, I want to see the real science explain it. Razorback's second link is a good read.

PS I am a person who generally loves a good conspiracy theory.

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Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on June 5, 2010 at 16:59

Logger, as this thing folds out, you might be right about the conspiracy theory. I get the feeling that there is much more to come, buckle your seat belts, we may be in for a ride. Hey, I read "Dunces", one of the worst reads of my life, maybe because I had to read it.

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Permalink Reply by Kat Bloomfield on June 6, 2010 at 2:50

The following is not to be taken seriously, just a rambling thought -- but, effectively, haven't our land and waters been "taken" by O&G with the blessings of the federal and state government? If so, aren't we entitled to compensation for the takings??? Effectively, haven't the governments already handed our land and water over to the petrochemical industry? So, why not just collect our money, and move elsewhere.

BTW, I couldn't read "Confederacy of Dunces," and I tried. The character made me so queasy, I tossed the book.

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Permalink Reply by RAZORBACK on June 6, 2010 at 9:08

BP DOES HAVE AN ATTITUDE PROBLEM ALONG WITH MANY OTHERS, SEE THEIR COMMENTS IN THE FOLLOWING LINK:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/shrimp.asp

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Permalink Reply by Kat Bloomfield on June 6, 2010 at 9:18

GREAT book, "The Last Gentleman!"

Louisiana is stuck b/n a rock and a hard place. It threw all of its eggs in the petrochem basket and, unlike Texas, never figured out that it needs more baskets. . . . Texas survived and did well post 80s oil/gas crash; Louisiana survived . . . barely. Tragic, really.

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Permalink Reply by Kat Bloomfield on June 6, 2010 at 3:19

Deepwater Horizon disaster a product of the ole "the exceptions and exemptions swallow the rules."

". . .
New government and BP documents, interviews with experts and testimony by witnesses provide the clearest indication to date that a hodgepodge of oversight agencies granted exceptions to rules, allowed risks to accumulate and made a disaster more likely on the rig, particularly with a mix of different companies operating on the Deepwater whose interests were not always in sync.

And in the aftermath, arguments about who is in charge of the cleanup — often a signal that no one is in charge — have led to delays, distractions and disagreements over how to cap the well and defend the coastline. As a result, with oil continuing to gush a mile below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico, the laws of physics are largely in control, creating the daunting challenge of trying to plug a hole at depths where equipment is straining under more than a ton of pressure per square inch.

Tad W. Patzek, chairman of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at the University of Texas, Austin, has analyzed reports of what led to the explosion. “It’s a very complex operation in which the human element has not been aligned with the complexity of the system,” he said in an interview last week.

His conclusion could also apply to what occurred long before the disaster.

Exceptions Are the Rule

Deepwater oil production in the gulf, which started in 1979 but expanded much faster in the mid-1990s with new technology and federal incentives, is governed as much by exceptions to rules as by the rules themselves.

Under a process called “alternative compliance,” much of the technology used on deepwater rigs has been approved piecemeal, with regulators cooperating with industry groups to make small adjustments to guidelines that were drawn up decades ago for shallow-water drilling.

Of roughly 3,500 drilling rigs and production platforms in the gulf, fewer than 50 are in waters deeper than 1,000 feet. But the risks and challenges associated with this deeper water are much greater.

“The pace of technology has definitely outrun the regulations,” Lt. Cmdr. Michael Odom of the Coast Guard, who inspects the rigs, said last month at a hearing.

So, for example, when BP officials first set their sights on extracting the oily riches under what is known as Mississippi Canyon Block 252 in the Gulf of Mexico, they asked for and received permission from federal regulators to exempt the drilling project from federal law that requires a rigorous type of environmental review, internal documents and federal records indicate.

As BP engineers planned to set certain pipes and casings for lining the well in place in the ocean floor, they had to get permission from company managers to use riskier equipment because that equipment deviated from the company’s own design and safety policies, according to internal BP documents obtained by The New York Times.

And when company officials wanted to test the blowout preventer, a crucial fail-safe mechanism on the pipe near the ocean floor, at a lower pressure than was federally required, regulators granted an exception, documents released last week show.

Regulators granted yet another exception when BP sought to delay mandatory testing of that blowout preventer because they had lost “well control,” weeks before the rig exploded, BP e-mail messages show.

The Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling, went along with these requests partly because the agency has for years had a dual role of both fostering and policing the industry — collecting royalty payments from the drilling companies while also levying fines on them for violations of law.

Its safety inspections usually consist of helicopter visits to offshore rigs to sift through company reports of self-administered tests.

Even Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, who oversees the minerals agency, has said that oil companies have a history of “running the show” at the agency, a problem he has vowed to correct"

full story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06rig.html?om_rid=Di3M79&o...;

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