Some thoughts on offshore drilling

by Thunderthief

Some thoughts on offshore oil drilling.... crossposted at my blog, http://lurkerspace.blogspot.com/

continued at Daily Kos....

Fishgrease: Booming Feynman's Ghost

by Fishgrease

Boomers! Yesterday! A date which will live in fuckery.

"It has been indeed fuckery most foul."

-- Kossack Onomastic in yesterday's Gulf Watchers ROV liveblog diary.

REC AND SUPPORT THE MOTHERSHIP!!!

Yesterday, Our Government bought in to BP's lies and maneuvering. Yesterday, Our Government approved the Integrity Test. That test is now underway. If anything bad happens, and there are many many bad things that can happen, Our Government will be visited by the Ghost of Richard Feynman.

continued at Daily Kos....

New Offshore Drilling Rules Issued

by Senor Unoball

The Interior department has issued revised offshore drilling rules that are designed to replace the rules that were recently thrown out by the courts.

See New York Times story.

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Fishgrease: Booming Separation

by Fishgrease

Boomers! I'm going to be on Virtually Speaking with host Jay Ackroyd and fellow-guest Riki Ott! We'll be on July 8th at 6:00 PM Pacific, 9:00 PM Eastern.

BlogTalkRadio

Also HERE

There'll be a podcast available for those who want to listen later. We'll also be on Second Life. I've never done Second Life, so if my avatar scratches his balls or struts around squawking like a huge ckicken or starts humping Jay Ackroyd's leg... please forgive me. I'm really nervous about fat-fingering the Second Life controls.

The most popular feature of my diaries here has always been my explanations of oil and gas technology and processes. Today, I'm going to talk about gas, oil and water separation. It's something I actually know a lot about. Let's splash over to the other side of the baffle.

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Fishgrease: Booming The Bullsh*t

by Fishgrease

Boomers, I didn't want to have to do this. I didn't want to have to spend time and room on Daily Kos's rec list (if you so honor me) debunking pure bullshit. But in recent days, the bullshit has gotten wider and wider circulation. I've had to write a form letter to use in replying to emails asking me about bullshit. First, it was the Matt Simmons' bullshit about the seafloor opening in a huge gash, which is where most of the oil was coming from.... and so we should nuke the well (????).

Most recently, I've had to contend with the dougr bullshit from an otherwise wonderful website, The Oil Drum.

Both, doomsday scenarios (as if we needed those right now). Both, bullshit.

Jump the manure heap with me and I'll explain why this is all bullshit and I'll also issue a challenge to anyone in the Oil and Gas industry, or anyone else, to prove otherwise.

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Fishgrease: Booming BP Execs

by Fishgrease

Hiya Boomers. I guess it's time for me to get all cultural again. No tech this time. I've worked amongst BP and other corporations like them. I'm going to be discussing BP executives here, the tippity toppest of them who are the primary problem -- but I need to start with a warning:

DO NOT research where anyone lives or anything about their lives as a result of what you read here today. DO NOT picket, protest or go anywhere near the private homes of anyone. ANYONE! Doing so is stupid, overwhelmingly counterproductive and if you do it I will denounce you with language more foul than any I've used so far. My crap is being read outside Daily Kos quite a bit and I cannot control that. So I include this warning, not for Kossacks, who don't need such a warning, but for those outside of the DKos community, a very few of whom might lack common sense. You may hate corporate culture as much as I do. Maybe even more. But we effect change in Congress and in print. Not in person. You want to picket BP Headquarters, fine. Wish I could join you. I can't. I have a big opiate addiction family to support.

Here we go. Continued below.

continued at Daily Kos....

Until White House Behavior Changes....

by icebergslim

it is just more of the same.

The stimulus package needed to be minimum ONE TRILLION DOLLARS.

We knew this, but now President Obama is asking, begging, trying to make the case that he needs 50 billion dollars to save teachers, firefighters, policemen jobs out here.  (all of the stimulus money has not been spent, but 50B they don't have....)

But, when you listen to Blue Dog Democrats, wanting Republican votes you get what we got in the stimulus package.  A compromised package that many economic experts said from the very beginning was not enough money.  And we won't even get into the stimulus package creating jobs, it did not, it saved the very jobs for a short time, that now the White House needs more money to save again.

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Fishgrease: For Rachel

by Fishgrease

Rachel Maddow, Queen of Boom! Defender of Good Booming who doth Slayeth The Bad Boom and Reclaimest The Golden Boom Anchor! Boom Goddess! Most of you DKos Boomers have been following Rachel Maddow's discussions of the complete lack of Oil Industry investment in leak and spill cleanup research. This, while their exploration and research budgets supported drilling to ever more dangerous depths. She has also been the only MSM journalist to expose the way current technologies have been implemented... wrong. Rachel Maddow said, "That is bad boom right there!" and "Why is that boom so bad?". She did this while the rest of our News Media used useless boom installations as backdrop, never seeming to notice that a single thing was amiss. Jump the berm with me and I'll discuss good boom, bad boom, and as an added feature, Proper Boom Tending and how devastatingly attractive it is!

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Fishgrease: Problems with Money Shot

by Fishgrease

Yo, Boomers. In yesterday's diary, I renamed the LMRP Cap process that BP is now trying, Money Shot. Apart from any technical fitness of that name, I meant for BP to basically give all their money to people along the Gulf Coast, without those folks having to resort to litigation. Just give it to them. Just hand it to them. All BP's money from all their U.S.A. production. Now. Money Shot. I had some complaints that the technical aspects of Money Shot I discussed were, Stream of Thought... too difficult to understand. Covering simple things that the Unified Command BP LMRP teams have obviously thought of and accounted for... therefore showing arrogance on my part. Generally poorly written, a weak attempt at humor, as was that entire diary and all my other diaries. All these complaints are valid. All of them are accurate. My Bad. So leap the heap with me, Boomers, and I'll try to do this better. I'll also discuss some recent rumors regarding the demise of the LMRP, before it's even tried once.

continued at Daily Kos....

Fishgrease: Booming The Money Shot

by Fishgrease

Hello Boomers! This time I'm going to talk to BP. Maybe BP will listen, maybe not. I guess we'll see. With the failure of the Top Kill procedure that was discussed in my last two diaries, now we're moving on to what BP is calling the LMRP. Lower Marine Riser Package. If you've read my stuff up to now, you know that I've been pretty pessimistic. I've mostly made negative predictions. This ain't going to work and here's why. That's going to be a complete fucking failure because taadaaa taadaaa taadaaa. Fishgrease = Debbie Downer I mean, I've been largely right about stuff. Look where we are now! I've told some DKos Boomers my prediction trick. It's an illusion, just like a Sigfried and Roy do, only I do it without tigers and I'm generally a little more ummmm... butch about it. Let's jump through the flaming hoop and I'll continue on the other side.

continued at Daily Kos....

Fishgrease: Booming The News Media

by Fishgrease

Hey Boomers. Not feeling well right now, Ol Fishgrease isn't. We're being lied to, consistently, by BP, Our Government and in the most damaging fashion, by Our News Media. Before any of you jump my ass about making such an accusatory claim, irresponsibly, please let me admit that "Lie" is a relative term. WMDs in Iraq was such a relative lie. Some of you will claim that Bush-Cheney's use of the WMD lie to get us into a useless, probably-illegal war was in no way a relative lie. Maybe so. But Colin Powell didn't think it was a lie -- I remain convinced that he did not think it was a lie. I think there's a chance, however slim, that George W. Bush himself thought there were really Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. What makes it a lie is that there weren't fucking Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and somebody had a pretty god damned good idea that there weren't. Take the hop with me here and we'll continue. Or not, if you wish. This diary won't be as entertaining or light hearted as my previous ones because this isn't funny. OH AND PLEASE KEEP THE MOTHERSHIP TK JS DIARY REC'D UP!!!! HERE!!!!!!

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Salazar Delays Arctic Drilling!

by Senor Unoball

In light of the Gulf gusher, the Obama administration is apparently backing down from proposed oil drilling that was slated to begin this summer in the Arctic Ocean. Shell had proposed exploratory drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas; this drilling is now said to be on hold for at least a year. This is great news for environmentalists and those who care for the Arctic ecosystems!

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Vampire Blues

by Laurence Lewis

On November 10, 1995, Greenpeace released the following statement: The blood of Ken Saro-Wiwa will permanently stain the name of Shell, Greenpeace said today in response to the news that Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni were, according to widespread rumours, hanged this morning in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. "Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged today for speaking out against the environmental damage to the Niger Delta caused by Shell Oil through its 37 years of drilling in the region. Ken Saro Wiwa was campaigning for what Greenpeace considers the most basic of human rights: the right for clean air, land and water. His only crime was his success in bringing his cause to international attention," said Thilo Bode, Executive Director of Greenpeace International. Greenpeace warned that any protest in the Niger Delta today, non violent or otherwise, would likely be met with military force and further massacres. Bode appealed to General Sani Abacha to let the Ogoni people voice their grief without fear of violence and further deaths. Shell's call for "quiet diplomacy" in the 11th hour following the confirmation of the death sentence by the Nigerian Ruling Council has a hollow ring. Shell had ample opportunity to demonstrate concern over the 17 months of Ken's incarceration and trial. They chose to maintain their cosy relationship with the military dictatorship to secure oil profits rather than condemn, the brutal and unjust arrest and later sentencing of non-violent environmental campaigners. For many, it began their first full-scale boycott of an oil company. Not that the alternatives were ideal, but this was beyond rationalization or reconciliation. For others, it added Shell Oil to what was now becoming a list that had begun with Exxon. For some, the Autumn of 2007 added Chevron to the list. For some with longer memories, it might all have started in August, 1953, when the Eisenhower Administration did the British a favor by brutally overthrowing Iranian democracy. For the benefit of the Anglo-Iranian oil company. Which subsequently changed its name to British Petroleum. Last Sunday, McClatchy's Tom Knudson added a broader perspective to BP's latest contribution to global degradation: There's no denying that the rust-red plumes of oil and tar balls in the Gulf of Mexico are a potential ecological calamity for American Southern shores. More than half the petroleum consumed in this country, however, is imported from other countries, where damage from exploration and drilling is more common but goes largely unnoticed. No one's tallied the damage worldwide, but it includes at least 200 square miles of ruined wildlife habitat in Alberta, more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater spilled into the rainforests of Ecuador and a parade of purple-black oil slicks that skim across Africa's Niger Delta, where more than 2,000 polluted sites are estimated to need cleaning up. "The Gulf spill can be seen as a picture of what happens in the oil fields of Nigeria and other parts of Africa," Nnimmo Bassey, a human rights activist and the head of Environmental Rights Action, the Nigeria chapter of Friends of the Earth, said in an e-mail. "We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the USA," Bassey added. "In Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people's livelihood and environments." In Ecuador, an estimated 2,500,000 acres have been deforested by the ravening greed for oil. There are over 2000 official oil spill sites in Nigeria, alone. In northern Alberta, indigenous people are suffering and being ignored, as tar sands are mined and converted to crude, leaving behind environmental devastation. Worldwide, where oil is in the ground, democracy is not above it. Worldwide, the toxicity of the oil industry is everywhere. It is a crisis within a crisis. We can't simply boycott offending oil companies, because none have anything close to clean hands. Every step of the industry's process, from drilling to burning, damages the environment and hurts people. We can't look at oil industry offenses situationally. We can't compartmentalize. Climate change cannot be isolated or contained. But even if the climate were perfectly stable, the industry is responsible for countless other disasters and violations. We have to boycott the entire industry, but we can't realistically do that until we have alternatives. Certainly, we can do a far better job of conserving. But that has to become a national and international priority. But we also need to be developing clean, renewable alternatives, and more viable forms of infrastructure. We need to be doing it with a fierce urgency. It cannot be said often enough. Almost a year ago, and nearly 15 years after Ken Saro-Wiwa and his Ogoni colleagues were hanged, The Economist had this much-ignored news: ON JUNE 8th Royal Dutch Shell agreed to pay out $15.5m to the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta to settle a long-running court case brought against the oil giant in America by nine plaintiffs, including relatives of Ken Saro-Wiwa, an environmentalist and writer. He was executed by the brutal government of General Sani Abacha after a charade of a trial in 1995. Mr Saro-Wiwa had led a successful campaign against Shell’s activities in his homeland, even forcing the company to quit Ogoniland in 1993. The plaintiffs accused Shell of complicity in the activist’s death. Shell denies any wrongdoing. It says the payout was a “humanitarian gesture”; some of the money will go to a new trust fund for the Ogoni. Shell now hopes that it might even resume oil production in the region. But things are unlikely to be that simple. There has been a mixed reaction to the settlement in Ogoniland. Some Ogonis are disinclined to forget years of mistrust and others are in talks to clean up the oil spills that have been left untended, still oozing into farmland and rivers after 15 years. Ogoniland is just a sliver of Shell’s onshore oil fields, and the out-of-court settlement is unlikely to end the company’s longstanding troubles in a volatile part of Nigeria that is even more violent now than it was back in the 1990s. A humanitarian gesture? These people are without shame or conscience. They are poisoning the world, and they just don't care. It cannot be said often enough. At his trial, Saro-Wiwa said: We all stand before history. I am a man of peace, of ideas. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginilization and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilization, I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated. I have no doubt at all about the ultimate success of my cause, no matter the trials and tribulations which I and those who believe with me may encounter on our journey. Nor imprisonment nor death can stop our ultimate victory. It's about oil. It's about fossil fuels. It's about our future. It's about whether or not we have a future. The environment is not a sexy political issue. We take our collective survival for granted. We no longer can afford to take our collective survival for granted.

continued at Daily Kos....