Its an accident for christ's sake, oh and theoretically, you could've indirectly used oil from that reserve at some point, but then thats the kind of hypocrisy you can expect among the angry and uniformed environmental nutter activists.
Another one of my pet hates is this blame culture, nobody can accept that sometimes things go horribly wrong despite everyone's best intentions, first they blame BP (although it may yet turn out that negligence contributed to the incident), then they blame Obama but what the hell can he do? Him rushing to the region and standing around looking stern wont stop the leak. Come on lets use some logic here!
What is the point in roasting a government or an oil company when there as yet isn't any proper evidence to suggest someone is at fault here? And BP are doing absolutely everything they can to stop a leak in unprecedented conditions.
I think the majority of people don't realise the difficulty in stopping a gusher on land, let alone 5000ft below the ocean surface! And also how easy it can be for a well to blow out, even with protection devices.
ok lets look at the facts here
pretty much the same thing happened in pretty much the same spot some 30 years ago
they tried exactly the same things they have tried thus far back then and guess what like today none of them worked back then either except for the relief drills they are working on right now
so the truth is
1) the relevant governments in the gulf region (and no obama has nothing to do with this but he better push for this soon) failed to require relief drills to be completed before the well hits the oil reserviour like pretty much everywhere else in the world
2) basically all they did in terms of r&d since back in the 70s was to figure out how to drill at greater depths and seemingly not a second on learning from the disaster back then and figuring out better ways to stop a leaking well
3) the only real difference in whats happened back then and whats happening now is that the bp made things even more complicated by having this happen at about 8 times the depth
Does look like regulations have been too slack, with some safety features such as remote control or triggered switches for isolating the well not required in the Gulf. But the attitudes of some have this tone as if it is a deliberate conspiracy, which isn't suprising as its the fashion to try and uncover a conspiracy behind every single headline.
If you mean the Mexican oil spill of 1979, human error had a significant role in that accident, as operators decided to quickly pull the drilling equipment up the well, dropping the pressure and drawing oil and gas into the well.
Thing is regardless of regulations humans still haven't completely tamed the power of oil reserves under pressure and so every so often horiffic spills are going to happen.
Lets not forget that before the spill was discovered BP had a burning rig to deal with which burnt for over a day. The from what I can understand when the leak was discovered 2 days after the blowout on April 22nd, there was confusion as to whether oil was leaking from the sinking rig or from the well itself.
A lot of people think we now live in a world where everything is possible, including clearly knowing and fixing a problem remotely in over a mile of water, and then people become furious when governments or corporations can't achieve the very difficult or impossible instantly. We need to realise that the ways things are currently the problem cannot be fixed and faster or easier.
youre missing the point
everything theyve tried to contain the well has be tried back then and just like today it didnt work back then either http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64N57U20100524
lessons learned from 1979? i believe the correct number is **** all
The lack of experience is certainly the problem, but what exactly can be done? There can't be that many new solutions for such a serious problem in such a difficult environment. As you probrably know the blowout preventer on the well refused to close, even when manually operated by robot.
As I said before there will obviously be a lot of head scratching afterwards.
Oh I'm sure this is a simple problem to fix and that infinite new solutions can be thought up given several decades, no actually, no I don't you can have as much time as you like but there are only so many ways. The incredibly difficult working conditions really narrow down the methods that can be tried.
More important is why the existing safety equipment failed to work, which by itself should've been enough to stop the spill at least, and possibly the initial explosion.
Dealing with oil spills is not an exact science anywhere on the planet, let alone under the Gulf of Mexico, these things can't be magically cleaned up on demand as many expect.
is it really that hard to understand that theyve tried the exact same methods that were conclusively proven to be ineffective at about a tenth of the depth of the current spill clearly indicating that no one has bothered to spend a single moment on figuring out better methods in the meantime despite being entirely aware of the fact that they dont have one single method that actually works?
one thing i've been thinking about... you know the saying "oil floats on water"... if that's true, then how come the majority of this oil remains to be seen?
given that information, in the future, could they not construct a cement structure between land and the offshore rig? that way if the rig does leak, it'll displace all that water enclosed in the structure, giving them a heads-up?
puting a dome on top complete failure in the 70s complete failure today (they even refered to it as operation sombrero back then... giving it a joke name shows some real confidence in the method)
pumping all sorts of crap into the ting from the top... very limited success back then compelte failure today
theres always plenty of room to come up with new stuff in engineering
particularly if you have 30 years in engineering which pretty much works on internet time ie anything new today is already way out of date tomorrow
Finally after Days and Days of waiting, BP said "Today we have turned a corner, we are capturing 70% of our oil , which means we at BP are still making Money" How you doing?