BP claims tube capturing 2,000 barrels a day from oil leak

Reports the AP. Shame about the 3,000 barrels a day that it isn't. Interesting and relevant anagrams of British Petroleum: Blithesome Irrupt, Terrible shit u mop, Their rum be spoilt, The Impurest Broil, Blither Mire Spout, Bioshmup Litterer, and "Plumb It? Rhetorise."

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Anonymous

I’m working on some “BPissed” Tshirts. That’s the best I can do with their name.
Anonymous

Hey everybody, here’s a thought: we could stop using petroleum!

Impractical? Yes, because we’ve built our infrastructure and economy on cheap, unlimited petroleum. Which was itself a lie.

So, are we willing to at least TALK ABOUT serious plans to move away from petroleum? Really, really TRY to encourage biofuels? An honest effort at developing electric vehicles and a smart grid (based hopefully primarily on wind and solar) to power it?

What amazes me is how the discussion about this disaster never really mentions the obvious fact: our addiction to oil inevitably leads to environmental disaster: fast and obvious, or otherwise.
Anonymous

boycott oil?

Hope you don’t like eating any kind of fresh produce. Or use any kind of plastics…

This is one major suckfest, but lets not forget all the things oil has allowed us to do.
- querent
  
  “Hope you don’t like eating any kind of fresh produce. Or use any kind of plastics…”
  
  my fresh produce is local (coop and csa)…for the most part at least. going fully local would not be difficult.
  
  plastics can be made from plant oils, and they’re biodegradable.
lyd

Infinite?

Don’t makes us sit you down with Maggie for a math lesson, Rob.
Anonymous

they should just stop it from leaking.
Anonymous

…. except they aren’t called British Petroleum any more … it’s ‘Beyond Petroleum’,and has been since they expanded from outside the UK.

… well technically anyway.
Anonymous

British Petroleum, as part of any payment or settlement or recompense for the oil spill, should be required to donate the thousands of solar energy patents they’ve snatched up over the last half century to the public domain.
Boomshadow

I’d like to boycott big oil, and go with the mom & pop oil operations, but unfortunately, there are none. It costs big money to suck the dead dinosaurs out of the crust of the planet.

I’m one of those poor ten-thumbed schmucks who commutes 30 minutes to work (on a good day), and since I managed to total my beloved 1997 Nissan Sentra, I’m currently driving a Saturn Vue AWD, which means I’m only getting 22 MPG instead of 30. Far from a Hummer’s gas mileage, but less than I’m comfortable with.

However, presented with a viable alternative, which for me would mean one that does not pollute (at least not as badly) or require the abusive contracts oil companies sign in impoverished nations, and at the same time allow me the same mobility I currently enjoy without too much extra difficulty.

Essentially, we in the U.S. and other nations with millions of miles of highway have to rebuild our energy infrastructure starting at the consumer level if we want anything done. Europe has a leg up because they have light and high-speed rail in many regions. We have almost the same total square mile area as Europe (we’re only short by about 300,000 square miles or roughly 480,000 to 500,000 square kilometers) and far less coverage by rail. So we can either build millions of miles of rail or fuel our cars with something different or both.

Fueling our cars with something different would require establishing nationwide distribution for the new fuel, which would need to work with as many existing cars as possible with as little modification as possible. (Biodiesel, for instance, requires filtration and diesel engines; ethanol degrades rubber parts, so all rubber hoses and fittings have to be replaced; etc.)

Bottom line: any energy solution that completely obviates the use of petroleum products–and I agree that such change is necessary and good–will require scads of time and money. We must manage this change to ensure that it provides the maximum benefit across the entire population.
invictus

Hey wait, I’ve got a better idea…boycott big oil!

Let us know how that goes for ya.
- querent
  
  It’s going well, friend. It’s not perfect, sure, but I bike (own no car), shop local, and my home energy is renewable.
  
  I know there’s hidden’s, but I guarantee I’ve cut my usage by at least 85%. At least.
  
  Don’t forget we will all inevitably get to boycott one day. That shit is finite, friend.
  
  Also: Snide one-liners make you sound kinda like a troll. Just saying….
  - invictus
    
    So while you shop local (good thing fertilizers have nothing to do with oil, and all your local vegetable growers use horse-drawn tillers), bike to work (how’re those hemp fiber tires holding up?), and read this on your pedal-powered computer…
    
    You didn’t say “reduce your use of oil!”
    You didn’t say “regulate big oil much more strictly!”
    What you said was “boycott big oil!” — an absolutist position you clearly aren’t willing or able to apply to yourself, what with your self-reported (and doubtlessly far too optimistic) 85% reduction of oil use.
    
    My one-line response was really all your position merited, but if you would rather I spell it out, I’ll oblige. When you wrote your pithy little call you went from an earnest and idealistic — though I suspect, rather naive — environmentalist to sloganeering blowhard, in one fell swoop. I merely called you on it.
Anonymous

Nice anagrams, but irrelevant. The company’s name has been BP since 2001, when British Petroleum and Amoco merged.
pentomino

Well, if they can reclaim and then sell that oil, then they can use that cash flow to pay for the cleanup, and have that much less motivation to try and duck out of it.

@querent: “Boycott big oil”? Think about that for a minute. I know you like to think about douchebags in Humvees, but think about the people who have two hour commutes by car, because the only housing they can afford and the only employment they can find are that far apart. The only way big oil is going to go away is if something else gets bigger. Where’s the push to bring back nuclear power?
- querent
  
  And, of course, there’s the point that nuclear also entails inevitable environmental devastation.
  
  Inevitable when the only impetus is profit, not safety, for sure.
  
  Nuclear is not what I would call an elegant solution.
- dculberson
  
  I’d join that push. Some journalist likened this spill/leak to “oil’s Three Mile Island.” Except that the Three Mile Island incident, which I believe was the worst incident at a nuclear power plant outside the horribly mismanaged Soviet system, didn’t result in appreciable damage to the environment or human population. To me that means that oil is far worse, and this is more like the 100th occurrence of oil’s Chernobyl. But for some reason nobody minds as much as they should.
- querent
  
  There are problems, yes. I have fought to live near where I work for about a decade now. I could live more cheaply if I chose to commute, but I choose not to.
  
  Nothing is going to get as big (in terms of raw energy availability) as the fossil fuels have been. Nuclear will not fill the gap. Neither will renewables.
  
  The whole “commute to work” social phenomenon rose with oil and will fall with it. It will take effort, but redesigning along more energy efficient lines is the only option. That and mass starvation.
  
  Thrice now my call for boycott has been called impossible. That is a convenient assumption. It’s not impossible. More difficult for some than for others, perhaps, given circumstances, but not impossible. If I can do it on a grad student salary in a university town (NOT cheap to live), it can be done.
  - querent
    
    hm…meaning mass starvation is the *other* option. just so we’re clear that I’m not endorsing that shit.
  - mdh
    
    They say impossible, but they mean inconcievable… and that doesn’t even mean what they think it means.
Tdawwg

Love the ‘shop!
SkullHyphy

So pouring concrete on it won’t work? The pressure is too much and will push any wet concrete out of the way?
And that metal box they put over it – why didn’t they leave it there? I know the hole that they were going to suck oil through got clogged, but isn’t that good? no leaking oil?
- liquis
  
  They’re planning on filling it this week:
  
  “In the meantime, BP is working on what the company hopes will be a more complete fix, a “top kill” operation that could be in place by the end of the week. The procedure involves pumping heavy liquid into the blown-out well head to block the oil and water that is pouring into the mangled riser pipe feeding the spill.
  Cement would then be pumped into the well hole to permanently seal it. “There is absolutely no intent to ever, ever produce this well,” Suttles said. “We intend to fill up the bottom portion of this well with cement.”
  
  And then there’s an additional procedure to drill from another location at an angle to meet the hole very deep, and seal it there. That will take several months and will apparently be considered the more permanent seal.
  
  Back to whence it came, ancient goo.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    The procedure involves pumping heavy liquid into the blown-out well head
    
    Heavy liquid. Like mercury?
Anonymous

I feel there is a correlation between the oil spill and the lagging of our nation behind others like China in educational technology. With the pollution and the slowness for this nation to use technology correctly in all schools, we are doomed. In our lifetime we will not see the world disappear. We are just all witnessing the destruction that is never ending. (So sad), and we cannot sit back and not work out solutions for now and the future. It takes a small group of ordinary people to change the world.

Margo
Anonymous

So far, I haven’t seen anyone in popular media (and very VERY few in media in general) call out BP for focusing on saving what oil is left, instead of just outright containing the problem. Shouldn’t their main focus be to stop the oil from destroying entire aquatic populations before figuring out how to make money off of this disaster?

How is the entire upper tier of this company not in shackles as we speak?

These people are criminals of the highest degree, and we keep letting them go about their way.
- sgreddin
  
  Excuse me? are you suggesting that BP is just looking to make money off the lost oil? My father, a longtime BP employee, is now working nights and has had to spend much more of his time away from home and his family trying to help figure out how to clean this up.
  
  We can all agree that this is a disaster, nobody intended for this to happen. That’s why they are working on cleaning it up. 2,000 barrels less a day. That’s a pretty fucking good start, nearly half. Sure you can contain whats out there, and if it wasn’t for their efforts in doing just that, we’d be facing a much bigger problem, I think you can agree. But containing whats already there doesn’t fix the problem. You have to keep more from getting out otherwise the problem doesn’t end.
  
  Now, they have work ahead of them yes, but I’d say that getting rid of 40% per day that’s pumping out is still pretty damned good.
  
  Cleaning this spill was not an issue of how to recollect the lost oil for profit, it is an issue of how to most quickly clean it and prevent the largest environmental impact. Such as using dispersant. A huge mass of oil is much harder on the environment than smaller bits. Or going to the source of the problem and doing your damnedest to cut off the supply as soon as technologically possible.
  
  I say, if you aren’t out there doing something about with your own hands, mind, and ideas, then quit whining, go out, and actually do something productive about it.
technogeek

… The _more_ than 3,000 it isn’t. Still, capturing any of it is a huge step forward — that much less mess, and possibly replicatable to capture another N% of the plume. Still strictly stopgap, but don’t let the quest for the best keep you from taking better when you can get it.

(Capturing some of the oil also may help cover some of the costs of the mess, which would in my opinion not be a bad thing — it would encourage them to continue trying.)
maitrix

It’s definitely not 5000 barrels per day anymore. Various measurements indicate the flow is at least 20,000 bpd a day, but would it hurt AP, NYT, etc. to do the public a solid and state each time that 5000 bpd is a BP-given figure and is questionable?
Church

And lets not forget about the methane, which may be a bigger problem.
Ito Kagehisa

Don’t worry, they are spraying millions of tons of “dispersant” into it – so every barrel’s worth is at least twice as toxic.
Rob Beschizza

I think there are an infinite number of good anagrams you can get out of the name.

The Impurest Broil
Hurt, Limp, Bioreset.
Empires built loth.
Impure Bile Troths
- Anonymous
  
  Empire built sloth. What a difference moving an “s” makes.
  
  (captcha: program spasmed!)
Rob Beschizza

Hi, Bumper Torts? Lie.

Stop me.
Patrick Austin

Does anyone have a better idea?
- gobo
  
  Not lying would be a good start.
- grimc
  
  Sure do. Collapse the whole thing. BP has had more than enough time to try and save its well–it’s time to blow it up and seal it for good.
  - Ito Kagehisa
    
    Centralia, PA, and Darweze, Uzbekistan make me loath to advocate Soviet-style “blow it to hell” solutions. Applying lots of force without any finesse is quick, but very risky! Unexpected complications may arise.
    
    I’d rather fire a barbed plug down the hole. The math should be more manageable, and I’m not good at math.
    - agnot
      
      I’d rather fire a barbed plug down the hole.
      
      Nice idea. If not a plug, anything that lodged reliably would help manage a fix.
    - RedShirt77
      
      Why can’t you bury it?
      
      Haul a 100 tons of rock and clay out there and cap the fucker
      
      maybe use a small explosion to start a cave in of the shaft.
Anonymous

The BP oil spill is giving us a chance to see this country for what it is. We have deregulated and subsidized our companies like no other country. Banks, giant farms and the oil industry have been given every advantage including billions in subsidies from taxpayers. To what end? The average citizen is broke and the companies are bigger and greedier than ever. Stop worrying about welfare and food stamps, those things cost a fraction of what we give to big companies every day, and the citizens that receive them donâ€™t take their money overseas.
Sunflowerpipes.com
EarthtoGeoff

Metro Bile Pit. Best I could do — it’s a Tuesday, after all.
querent

At Purdue prof has pushed the range up to a max of 70,000 barrels/day.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/14/headlines

Not lying would be a great start. So would not subverting environmental protections.

Hey wait, I’ve got a better idea…boycott big oil!