BP started pumping heavy mud into the leaking Gulf of Mexico well Wednesday and said everything was going as planned in the company's boldest attempt yet to plug the gusher that has spewed millions of gallons of oil over the last five weeks.
BP hoped the mud could overpower the steady stream of oil, but chief executive Tony Hayward said it would be at least 24 hours before officials know whether the attempt worked. The company wants to eventually inject cement into the well to seal it.
"I'm sure many of you have been watching the plume," Hayward said of the live video stream of the leak. "All I can say is it is unlikely to give us any real indication of what is going on. Either increases or decreases are not an indicator of either success or failure at this time."
A full backround report is here: "BP Streams Live Video of ‘Top Kill’ Procedure."
Also, at USA Today, "Poll: Majority give Obama, feds failing grade on oil spill response" (via Memeorandum).
Cutting edge science/engineering in action. If the drilling was done closer to shore, or on shore, we could remove the cutting edge part, couldn't we?
ReplyDeletehttp://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
[For a light hearted take on our present peril]
Someone should tell the room-temp IQ Salazar to put a sock in his mouth. He wants to call in "experts" like the "Nobel" DOE dude who doesn't know jack-s**t about oil.
ReplyDeleteI worked for Amoco before it was bought by BP and the best in the world as deep-water drilling are the Brazilians, but when they have spills, it's in deep water in the Atlantic and the prevailing currents carry it off into the middle of the ocean. Saudi Aramco had a 700-million gallon spill, about sixty-five times as big as the Exxon Valdez, and corralled a dozen supertankers to suck up the multiple spills. It happened in '93-94 and nobody noticed, because the newsies don't know crap about oil.
They still don't and to see Diane Sawyer vamping around the Louisiana coast and perky Katie C. disgracing herself with emo interviews, it says nothing about the problem, which dodo Salazar and his moron boss Barry Soetero should talk less and do more about. Like not trying every low-handed political jive-act in the books.
The salt-dome formations in the Gulf of Mexico have way over 50 billion barrels in very light crude---the stuff coming from the rig now is from 23K ft. below, and is the consistency of gasoline which will evaporate pretty quickly with so much associated gas.
Now Barry S. is starting to lose it and will start to do calisthenics in trying to punish BP---when a month before the accident, his dodo administration said that offshore rigs should be expanded. Last year, the damaged rig got a SAFETY CITATION from the Department of the Interior, which dodo Salazar is trying to dodge by talking about "foot on the neck of BP." Where did they find this clown, anyway?