Spill Here, Spill Now 2
Remember back in grade school jamming soda straws together and then trying to suck up your Coke (that’s Coca-Cola, wise guys) through them?
That worked really well, now, didn’t it?
Company spokesman Bill Salvin said BP hopes to start moving the 6-inch tube into the leaking 21-inch pipe — known as the riser — on Thursday night. The smaller tube will be surrounded by a stopper to keep oil from leaking into the sea.
Raw Story reports:
Matthew Simmons, retired chair of the energy-industry investment bank Simmons & Company, said that BP and the US military’s engineers are more or less clueless about cutting off the flow.
“We don’t have any idea how to stop this,” Simmons said. The former banker mocked a proposal to try and plug the leak with trash, saying it was a “joke.”
Listen to Neil King of the Wall Street Journal recite the failures on the Diane Rehm Show (starting about 10 minutes in): A summary of the high points of the litany:
- Halliburton–shoddy cement seal.
- Transocean–“blowout preventer” with leaks and a dead battery.
- BP–choosing to proceed when, four hours before the explosing, sensing equipment showed that something really freaky was going on down below.
I would not recommend listening to the entire hour of the Diane Rehm Show. It’s pretty depressing.
May 14, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Ok, I’ve never done the straw thing, but being married to a plumber, I know a thing or 2 about pipes. And I know that putting a 6″er in a 21″er, then expecting the oil to slow down enough to fit in the 6″ has about as much chance of working as I do trying to make my dog mind.
What are they thinkin’? Wait, I know. Of their wallets.
May 14, 2010 at 10:03 pm
BP should have never been allowed to buy Sinclair.
I’d call them bozos, but that would give clowns a bad name.