So the containment box has failed...

[wildcard]

Tucked away in this innocuous looking story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100508/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill

Coast Guard: tar balls wash up on Ala. island


By NOAKI SCHWARTZ and HARRY R. WEBER, Associated Press Writers Noaki Schwartz And Harry R. Weber, Associated Press Writers – 10 mins ago

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – A Coast Guard official says tar balls that are believed to be from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are washing up on an Alabama island.

Coast Guard chief warrant officer Adam Wine said about a half dozen tar balls had been collected by Saturday afternoon at Dauphin Island. He says the substance needs to be tested, but officials think it came from the oil spill.

The barrier island is at the mouth of Mobile Bay and about three miles from the coast.

Word of tar balls washing ashore came as a BP PLC official said that icelike crystals were causing problems with an oil containment box that had been placed over the massive leak about 50 miles from the Louisiana coast. BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles says it will probably take the next two days to study the problem.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO (AP) — A BP PLC official is saying icelike crystals formed inside of an oil containment box when it was placed over a massive oil leak and that crews have had to move the contraption away to study the problem.

Chief operating officer Doug Suttles said Saturday that he is not saying that the box has failed. But he did say what they tried Friday night did not work.

Suttles says the buildup on the specially constructed box made it too buoyant and clogged it up and they've set it to the side to study the problem.

Officials had cautioned that they would meet challenges during this unprecedented attempt to divert oil spewing into the waters.

[wildcard]

http://us.cnn.com/2010/US/05/08/gulf.oil.spill/index.html

Crews dealt setback in placing containment dome in Gulf oil spill

By the CNN Wire Staff
May 8, 2010 4:11 p.m. EDT


Biloxi, Mississippi (CNN) -- The effort to place a containment dome over a gushing wellhead was dealt a setback when a large volume of hydrates -- crystals formed when gas combines with water -- accumulated inside of the vessel, BP's chief operating officer said Saturday.

Gas hydrates are lighter than water, and as a result, made the dome buoyant, Doug Suttles said. The crystals also blocked the top of the dome, which would prevent oil from being funneled to a drill ship.

The dome was moved off to the side of the wellhead and is resting on the seabed while crews work to overcome the challenge, Suttles said.

"What we had to do was pick the dome back up, set it over to the side while we evaluate what options we have to actually try to prevent the hydrate formation or find some other method to try to capture the flow," he said.

Two options officials are looking at are heating the dome or adding ethanol to dissolve the hydrates, he said.

The move to try to cap oil leaking from the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig started early Friday. The technique has never been tried at such a depth and there are no guarantees it will work, said BP, which holds the license for the well.

"It's a technology first," BP CEO Tony Hayward told CNN's David Mattingly Friday. "It works in 3 [hundred] to 400 feet of water. But the pressures and temperatures are very different here. So we cannot be confident that it will work."

The arduous process takes time, Hayward said.

"We are proceeding with a lot of caution to make sure that we don't make what was a clearly bad situation worse," he said. "This needs to be done with a great deal of care and attention."

Casi Calloway, CEO of the environmental group Mobile Baykeeper, said Saturday she hopes the dome operation is successful, but she's not counting on it.

"I'm praying for them to come up with anything," she said. "In the meantime, though, we have to be realistic and we have to be planning, because it's still a minimum of 5,000 barrels [a day] pouring out into the Gulf of Mexico until that thing is stopped."

BP hopes to connect the dome to a drill ship over the weekend and to begin sucking oil from the containment dome up to the ship by the beginning of next week, the company's chief operating officer, Suttles said at a news conference Friday afternoon.

"This has not been done before and it will undoubtedly have some complications," he added.

Like BP, the U.S. Coast Guard worked Friday to manage expectations about the success of the operation.

"This is going to take a few days and this is not going to be something instantaneous," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said. "It may or may not work."

On the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard will continue its efforts to disperse and contain the massive oil slick, which has started to reach Louisiana's outer islands. The Coast Guard performed four controlled burns, dropped 28,000 gallons of dispersant chemical and skimmed 8,000 barrels of an oil-water mix on Thursday, said Petty Officer Brandon Blackwell.

Calloway said the use of dispersants is also cause for concern.

"We don't know what's in it, we don't know much about it," she said.

"All it really does is sink the oil to the bottom and kind of get it out of sight. So the public doesn't worry about it as much but the dispersant in itself is toxic," Calloway said. "We don't know what the half-life of it is, or how it changes the composition of oil. ... We don't know how long it stays in the water."

Thursday's burns consumed between 7,000 and 9,000 barrels of oil, Suttles said, and responders conducted another controlled burn Friday, with more burns planned for this weekend. Suttles said that skimming had removed more than 50,000 barrels of oil-water mix so far.

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig caught on fire April 20 and sank two days later about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the southeast coast of Louisiana. Eleven missing workers are presumed dead.

The untapped well is gushing about 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, according to BP and government estimates.

The stakes are high for residents of coastal Louisiana who make their living from fishing in the Gulf. Oil washed ashore Thursday on Louisiana's barrier islands and drifted west past the mouth of the Mississippi River.

"It's killing everybody down here, everybody is more or less getting ulcers worrying about this, and it's something we experienced five years ago with [Hurricane] Katrina," charter boat owner Tom Becker said Saturday. "But we knew it was coming faster than this thing is and we don't know what the long-term effect of what's going to happen with this if it [the oil] does get up here."

On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it has expanded the area closed to fishing to better reflect the spill's location. The restriction, announced Sunday, is being extended until May 17, the agency said.

An ominous pinkish-orange foam mixture of seawater and crude oil streaked across large stretches of water in the northern Gulf and turned up on the shores of the Chandeleur Islands, off southeastern Louisiana.

Hopes are high that the container will collect the oil. If the operation is successful, BP plans to deploy a second, smaller dome to deal with a second leak in the ruptured pipe.

[oldmansmith]

I'm not at all surprised. I hope they are sucessful, but I doubt it. This is going to make chernobyl look like an eco-friendly event if they can't stop it.

[Book]

http://dancingczars.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/shell_game.jpg

At 5,000 feet under water.

[JDRock]

http://dancingczars.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/shell_game.jpg

At 5,000 feet under water.


a picture is worth a thousand words....

[I am me, I am free]

A group of BP execs were on the rig having a party celebrating the project's safety record at the time of the blowout. Talk about irony (as well as arrogance).

[MNeagle]

A group of BP execs were on the rig having a party celebrating the project's safety record at the time of the blowout. Talk about irony (as well as arrogance).


& they lived??

[I am me, I am free]

A group of BP execs were on the rig having a party celebrating the project's safety record at the time of the blowout. Talk about irony (as well as arrogance).


& they lived??



The BP executives were injured but survived, according to one account. Nine rig crew on the rig floor and two engineers died.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100508/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_248

Perhaps they should have postponed their celebration until AFTER the rig was off the well, as it turned out premature...

[Quantum]

Like this is a surprise.

This is going to be like Chernobyl, nearly impossible to stop. Thank God it's not radioactive.

[EE_]

Can't we stay on topic of the real important news? a car bomb that didn't explode, a stock market 1,000 point fubar, and the underage girl Lawrence Tayler didn't have sex with?

[MNeagle]

Right. Besides, it didn't fail. It was merely a setback!

[I am me, I am free]

Like this is a surprise.

This is going to be like Chernobyl, nearly impossible to stop. Thank God it's not radioactive.


What's the 'half-life' of crude on marsh grass?

[MNeagle]

Like this is a surprise.

This is going to be like Chernobyl, nearly impossible to stop. Thank God it's not radioactive.


What's the 'half-life' of crude on marsh grass?


Alaska fishermen still struggling 21 years after Exxon spill

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/06/exxon.valdez.alaska/index.html?hpt=Sbin

[Ponce]

At the end many lives will this cost......

[Awoke]

So the containment box has failed...


Based on the title of this thread, I thought you mean that GIM2.gov was shut down.

[k-os]

So the containment box has failed...


Based on the title of this thread, I thought you mean that GIM2.gov was shut down.


Now that was funny.

[ximmy]

At the end many lives will this cost......


spoken like a true Yoda

[Mouse]

success, with catastrophic failure!

We have victory!

[Uncle Salty]

Who knew compressed dinosaurs and plants could cause such harm?

[Book]

http://www.fintalk.com/ppa/template/default/images/swordfishing-1.jpg

Fish are thanking us now for "rescuing" them out of the ocean.

:oo-->

[Defender]

What's the 'half-life' of crude on marsh grass?
Hahahaha.

They don't even know the half-life of the chemical dispersants being used.
Or its composition.
Or how it works.
Or it's carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic effects on people and wildlife.

Once the leak is stopped, they're going to declare all the fishies safe to eat. Along with the shellfish that suck up and concentrate every toxin in the environment.