Where was this cap for the last 89 days? Why don't they have three of them or more, at least one on each continent where they have off-shore wells?
Why was every procedured they did reported with the caveat, This has never been done before. Why not?
Why haden't they tested all the procedures and devices when they first started underwater drilling, again when ty started deep water drilling, and again every time a new procedure or device was developed?
And this maybe because they weren't required to by the fox-guarding-the-henhouse regulatory agency in charge, the Minerals Management Agency. (Such regulatory laxity having been most pronounced in Bush-Cheney time, but seamlessly continued by Obama ...)
Eh...more reason to prepare for catastrophes. If they can't do it safely they shouldn't do it. And yes, there have been deep water oil blow outs before.
What one BP guy said since I posted was that they had had the idea in their head since the leak started, but afaict: didn't start building it for what I guess was a month or more, or even two.
If they had thought about it and started building it last year, it would have been done 3 months ago.
What do the other oil companies plan for such an event. Instead of jut making them testify that BP shouldn't have drilled this well where it was, did any in the congressional hearing ask about their own plans in case of a leak?
Did they test those in shallow water at least. The news never says. The news "reporters" probably never ask them.
NASA still managed to test its space capsules before it launched them.
I've heard at least one person use fail-safe without even knowing what it means, as if it were synonymous with fail.
Today I heard on the radio, no discussion of when the cap was first conceived or how long it took to make, or why it wasn't conceived and made long ago, but that it was used last because methods that couldn't make things worse were used first.
A) Even if this is a good reaso;n, there still seems to have been too much time in between. Even more delayed afaict was bp's efforts at cleanup. It seems they didn't even contract for most of the skimmers until weeks or a month had gone by. They were "on their way" 6 or 8 weeks in, and not ships that were newly built. No one has said they were skimming other oil leaks elsewhere.
In addition was one days' report, a long interview, 5 or 8 minutes, with two people who were there but not allowed to enter, by Mother Jones reporters that they weren't allowed on some beaches either by BP guards or by local police, working afaict at the behest of BP. The normal situation is that "for the public safety" the public is not allowed where someone decides its dangerous but reporters are allowed everywhere. At the most, they have to sign a release, releasing as many as anyone and everyone from repsonibiity for harm that comes to them. It's not like Godzilla was waiting down the beach to eat them. It was tarballs and oily water. Too hot to use my web browser so I can't look at the mother jones site for updated info, if any.
Not hardly. When I was working as a reporter, there were plenty of police and fire lines I could not cross. If I went on private property I was subject to arrest for tresspass, etc. etc.
Conceived at or before the other top kills failed. It took weeks to design and build -- from my observation and reading.
Many boats, locally, were modified to work as skimmers. Even that takes a little time. I see what looks like a shrimp boat doing double duty as a skimmer. Not what they were built for.
Okay, I overstated it, but what do you think about not letting reporters on a public beach because of tarballs and oily water? What other excuse might they have had which would have been better?
Right. What I'm saying is it should have been conceived, designed, and built years ago.
I agree it takes some time, but I've heard no one say they were contracted for less than a month after the leak started. Plus there are skiimmers already built for that purpose. If they ordered some immediately, I would think they would be talking about that. Because they have commercials which give plenty of opportunity to say what they are doing, but they don't say anything specific.
They had one commercial, with a black guy from the area, which said, "We won't always do things perfectlly...." I saw that twice, but I think they got ridiculed, because afaik they haven't done anything perfectly. So they rewrote his script more artfully.
I suspect there was some legal angle that the beach being a work site, then BP had the right to keep people out (like a construction site). They certainly had the right to prohibit people they hired from talking to the press during work hours. I'm sure not on BP's side, nor do I approve of their conduct of passing along information...just sayin'.
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