Obama and BP Fight PR Battle Over Oil Spew

For that matter, why is the Rand Corporation so conspicuously quiet? Where are the generals? The answers to these questions speak to the cohesiveness of the American elite no matter party affiliation. They reveal American politics as a stage show and serve as a Revenge of the Nerds style peephole into the locker room where we can see the Hulk and the Undertaker slapping each other's ass with wet towels. Oh, what a sight I've been given.

That will make sense in a minute, I promise.

The rig went down on April 20^th,and the USGS working with less than optimal information has estimated between 504,000 and 798,000 gallons of oil are daily spewing from the well.(1) The official estimate by BP and the White House for a long time, though they haven't been too keen on giving an estimate for weeks now, was 210,000 gallons a day. Many scientists watching the action via satellite and infrared aerial photography are estimating higher, anywhere from 2.1 to 3.8 million gallons a day. For a spew update, go here.

BP, with the government kindly deferring to their judgment, has refused efforts from scientific teams at Wood Hole Oceanography Institute to measure the flow with sound waves, saying this would detract from their attempts to plug the spew.(2) BP is, of course, doing what it can to cover-up the magnitude of the spew, and it is being helped by both the White House and right-wing talking heads. Knowing the rate of flow would help, and not knowing means all containment efforts are trial and error not worthy of an introduction to chemistry lab exercise.

Let's consider the "top kill" effort. The idea was to apply pressure upon objects like golf balls and shredded tires and a gooey concrete mixture in order to plug the hole. It would work but for the pesky problem that the hole is applying pressure back, pressure which could only be measured by knowing the rate of oil flow from the well. Critical observers question BP thusly:

If you don't know the pressure you're trying to counteract with the top kill, then how do you know how much pressure to apply? How do you know, if you are even capable of applying enough pressure? Were there any scientists involved with this effort, or engineers or physicists? How do they justify this action with your no need to know how much oil is coming out?

Critical observers do not get answers to their question, and we can safely assume two things from this. The White House is not a critical observer or participant, and BP had no expectation of the top kill effort working.

So let's consider the top hat method tried previously. The plan was to lower a dome, later a stovepipe hat, onto the well and siphon the oil off. I don't have a whole lot of experience with this, but there was a time...remember swimming in filtered pools? Remember the water jets alongside the pool and trying to push your hands over them, feeling the water push back? Without enough pressure, the water jets would push your hand off to the side.

The well is a big oil jet, and this was the first effort to put a hand over it. We were given some clap-trap about ice crystals to account for the failure, after which talk of this method was dropped. Maybe a several ton metal dome could be sat smartly over that hole, if it's flow were a lax 210,000 gallons a day. Maybe? What if it were closer to the 3.8 million gallon estimate? Maybe that would overturn the dome. Maybe that would overwhelm the siphoning system attached to the dome. Certainly, no one in a position of authority is applying these questions to the efforts, and they remain distinctly unconcerned with the flow volume.

My first point here is BP's lack of willingness to make serious efforts to close the well. By August, supposedly when BP will have relief wells drilled and be sucking up enough oil to make their venture profitable, there will be between 51.4 and 387.6 million gallons of oil spewed total, from the low USGS estimate to the 3.8 million a day one. While they are not going public, BP and the White House are certainly aware of these estimates, and they weren't lying. They are not going to do anything differently no matter the extent of damage.

So, where is Dick Cheney? You may recall early on, when ideas of closing the well were being tossed about willy-nilly by the media, before the ranks closed and the public relations machine got their marching papers. There was a small mention here and there of the nuclear option. Russia has used nuclear warheads to close several out of control gas wells. Here's a fun video.(3)

Now before you start hemming and hawing over a radioactive ocean, consider for a moment the theory. A hole near the spewing well is drilled, not very much depth needed. A warhead is placed inside, covered with the "top kill" material, and blown. This forces the rock together and, in the best scenario, seals the well with molten rock.

And consider the results of not stopping the spew yesterday or tomorrow or for a minimum of 61 more days. Where the oil flows, it kills. The ocean dies from oil exposure. Given this, why are BP and the White House not interested in pursuing a military operation to close the well? They foreclosed on this option well in advance of trying anything or having any real idea of the extent of the spew. I can imagine of three reasons.

1. That well cost a lot of money to drill, and there is a great deal of interest in profiting off it.

2. Having to nuke the ocean bed to close a well is bad PR for the off-shore drilling business. BP and the White House know that people can still be scared by talk of using nukes.

3. Other access points for this oil field, acknowledged as the largest to be found in recent history at the least, are not available. Nuking the well could make it impossible for another well to be drilled into the field.

Of course, it may be that the force of a nuke is unnecessary, and perhaps a smaller detonation could suffice. I'll leave it to the physicists to determine the mega-tonnage needed to accomplish this, but the whole thing begs the question. Where is our favorite bunker-buster advocate, where is Dick Cheney when you need him?

(1) http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/569235/

(2) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126975907

(3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU&feature=player_embedded