

Oil May Be Leaking at Rate of 25,000 Barrels a Day in Gulf - cwan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703871904575216382160623498.html?mod=rss_Todays_Most_Popular

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adriand
Palin, October 2, 2008, vice-presidential debate: "The chant is 'drill, baby,
drill.' And that's what we hear all across this country in our rallies because
people are so hungry for those domestic sources of energy to be tapped into."

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pinko
Actual comment from a fan on Palin's Facebook page:

 _Beth Hartman: From what I hear the earth takes care of it's own natural
substances and oil is from the earth. The chemicals to clean up are more
harmful. Ecology takes care of itself. An example, a forest fire. In fact, it
recreates better._

~~~
TNO
So a commenter is ignorant, therefore the owner of the page the comment is on
is also ignorant. Nice logic there bud.

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angstrom
I don't profess to understand the challenges of developing an oil well 5000 ft
beneath sea level, but does anyone know why there isn't a valve installed that
could be shut off by a submersible?

What I do know is BP initially said it was roughly 1000 barrels/day when they
knew it was probably more. So the rate is now at 25 times the original
estimate. That's either incompetence or PR disaster control at it's worst.

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briancooley
There is. It's a 450 ton device called a blowout preventer It didn't activate
and they have been trying to do it manually for several days.

I work in the oil and gas industry and live along the gulf coast. It's a heart
wrenching situation.

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vaksel
wasn't there supposed to be a secondary device, that cost $500,000 that they
decided not to install saying it was "too expensive"

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pinko
Yes, an acoustic switch.

Google for "Leaking Oil Well Lacked Safeguard Device" for a good WSJ article
on it.

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by
But from reading the article

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870442350457521...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212031417936798.html)

the acoustic control just activates the blowout preventer, and the dead-man
switch should do the same thing. But I don't know anything beyond reading the
article.

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morphir
I actually don't have words for how sad this is..

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mikeyur
_"Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill baby drill' should have to report to
the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty"_

-Bill Maher <http://twitter.com/billmaher/status/13089003490>

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anamax
Of course Maher, and the upvoters, only consume and encourage things that are
always completely safe.

WRT the upvoters, none of you ever wanted to go into space or thought that the
space program was a good idea. Right?

Snark isn't a basis for good policy.

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DrSprout
Completely false dichotomy. Deep sea drilling, while an important part of
world production, is not essential, and certainly in no way necessary for
spaceflight. Furthermore, spaceflight's biggest disasters are roughly on the
scale of plane crashes. This looks like it's going to impact most of the gulf
coast, with significant losses to food industries.

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anamax
> Deep sea drilling, while an important part of world production, is not
> essential, and certainly in no way necessary for spaceflight.

I never said that it was. The relevance is that spaceflight has had disasters.

And, thanks for bringing up plane crashes. Spaceflight has killed less than
100 people. Plane flight kills that many every month or so, with incidents as
much as 300 people.

> This looks like it's going to impact most of the gulf coast, with
> significant losses to food industries.

You mean like the Exxon Valdez, which actually didn't despite all the
predictions? Talk about crying wolf....

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nfnaaron
I would gladly give up most to all space exploration for as long as it takes
for equivalent resources to move us from oil to something else.

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MikeCapone
For those who haven't been following this story, here's a timeline overview
with some pics, and the contact info of a few orgs where you can volunteer if
you want to help with the cleanup:

[http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tech-
transport/gulfofmexico...](http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tech-
transport/gulfofmexico-oilspill-whatwhenwhere-whatyoucando.html)

