Fwd: Thoughts on the oil spill from a specialist

[Ora Uzel]

Something that's going around.  It's a fascinating read, though I only got to skim through it.  Some of you might have more time to read this in full.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 11:26 AM
Subject: FW: some powerful info

Friends,

If you've received this with my name at the bottom, it's because you're someone I trust. You may feel free to forward this or use this as you wish, but I ask; no make that beg, please, please, redact and delete my name from any forwards in both the header and at the bottom. I'm deadly serious about that, please if you forward it, remove any reference to me from it, and you'll just have to vouch for it's veracity to those you know. I'd like to be able to continue to pay my bills, and act as a source for some real truth, real numbers and clear fact. Some of you did receive parts of this in an earlier e-mail, but those weren't the whole package, as at least, as best I can put one together right now. And for those who know me personally, I cannot stand silent, it's not in me, and I'm not wired that way. This is long, for that I can't apologize, it's complex, and with the impact it's having, and will continue to have for decades, it deserves some thoroughness. There are some thoughts around real solutions in the final section, but it's important to understand the background of something to understand to get to real solutions.

 

If you're received this from someone you know, and there isn't an originator's name at the bottom, it's because it came from someone I trust, who can vouch for the veracity, my identity, my job and the accuracy of what's here, and you will have to trust them.

 

It is difficult to know where to begin to start, I am in the middle of this, and get very few breathers from it, but it's best to start at the beginning, at what happened, then proceed to why it happened and on to how people can help, and what they can do that will provide real solutions in the long term. I am inundated daily with e-mails of all stripes and varieties, receive phone calls and text messages that completely fill my inbox on the phone within the first 24 hours of my going back offshore, and I realize that people are being assaulted hourly with media and it's hard to separate out fact from fiction.

 

There will be some facts and figures here, they are accurate, and some technical terms, I will try to keep those to a minimum, but they are important, and I ask you not to skip over them.

 

First as to the what happened. By now, someone would have to have been living in a monastery to not know that the BP Transocean Rig went down some 45+ days ago, killing 11 men, and leaving a damaged drill pipe on the ocean floor of the Gulf of Mexico, this is a 4" wellbore pipe, open to a depth of 18,000 feet, on top of a reservoir that was estimated to contain enough oil for it to continue to pump for 30 years. The real calculated flow right now, after 5 failed attempts to cap it is 33,250 gallons per hour.

 

Here's how it happened:

What I’m providing are three links to a 60 minutes interview a Part 1, a Part 2, and a Part 3 for those of you who haven't seen it, with an ET (Electronic Technician) on the Deepwater Horizon, and is the most accurate of the "what happened". This interview is the best I've seen yet creating clarity and discernment around what occurred. Hopefully some of it will be a little clearer

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLJHTTOSkpg

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skDR0h2EsyU

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxFtnQdKwXk
 
What the interview tells, and I'll boil it down is that:
(a) the BOP (Blowout Preventer) was damaged, damaged beyond the ability to control a blowout, and that damage, and the extent of it was known to the men who worked on the rig, and their bosses 4 weeks beforehand. The accumulator (basically a gasket, like a faucet spigot gasket,) had been pummelled into pieces and was coming back up in pieces, in the mud, due a drill operator's pushing a drillhead straight through it. The decision was made by the bosses to continue to run it the way it was, since "they'd had gas pocket well control problems before, and nothing happened then". The men who worked on the rig continued to run it, since their boss told them to, and they wouldn't push back on that decision.
(b) One of the control pods, (there are two) on the BOP was not damaged, it was downright non-functional and broken, and again, this was known, but the decision was made to continue to run it "since the job was behind, and BP was losing money". 
(c) The night of the disaster, Halliburton's Well Completion crew had only put two cement plugs in place. Before taking off a well, three have to be in place, to put redundant plugs in place, but again, "the job was behind, and BP had lost $25 million on well."
(d) The entire original problem was caused by pushing the drill too fast and fracturing the well pocket, allowing too many pockets for gas to come up from. The Transocean and BP "company men" (translates to "managers") made the decision to push the machinery beyond it's limits since they'd lost the first well and "were losing money and time, and it was behind schedule". The morning before the disaster, in the morning community meeting, the BP representative and the Transocean rep, and the tool pusher (the person in charge of drilling) had a very loud, aggressive argument about the best way to proceed that day. The BP rep won, with the Transocean rep and tool pusher "reluctantly agreeing".

    (1) The high pressure hydraulic pressure unit that operates the BOP was damaged, and full functional control of it was lost, there were cut lines and leaks somewhere in the unit, not allowing it to reach pressure necessary to put enough force behind the rams to cut the pipes.

    (2) A full two hours before the blowout, the charts that are run at the remote operations center in Houston showed that the well was out of control, enough time to shut down drilling, shut down electrical equipment preventing the explosion and save every life. The decision was made to push on.

    (3) A full 15 minutes before the explosion, the tool push and Transocean rep left the rig floor and headed down to the mud room. The men who worked in the mud shack were screaming, the pits were overflowing out of control with mud, indicating that more mud was coming back up the pipe being pushed by gas, than was being put in it.

 

In other words, in my own opinion, those 11 men were murdered, and the entire spill was caused by stupidity, greed and not caring at all about consequences by just 3 men, and an entire crew of 100+ going along with that decision.

 

I don't often talk about the specifics of what I do out there, and I think many of you assume that I'm an xxxxxxxxxxx on a rig. Not so.

What I started out to do, and what I was hired to do, was to design, devise and deploy standardized Preventive Maintenance and Predictive Maintenance programs for large rotating equipment; turbines, generators, compressors, pumps, cranes; my specialty for 20 years with XXXX XXXXX XXXXXXX. That evolved rapidly.

Over the last 3 years, as XXXXX XXX XXX (not BP, I contract with another company) got more deeply involved in what they considered a "maintenance program", it what evolved into a program that looks at, and redesigns every procedure and process on an oil platform and drilling operation, to absolutely, 100% guarantee that nothing can happen from a Safety, Health, Environmental or Operational standpoint. I won't go into the details of it, but it does involve an entire culture change, and very different retraining into a different mindset, but it can be done.  Everyone, and I mean everyone who works out there, that I'm associated with, is acutely and deeply aware of the consequences of every movement, every action, 24 hours a day. It is, in best description, absolutely a life and a job that very few people are aware of the real facts. You are completely dependent on the people around you, everyone one of them, making absolutely the right move, every time, every day, every minute, 24 hours a day and vice versa for their relationship with you. There are no insignificant people, or actions, on a platform. Every little thing counts. All of us, even the galley and catering staff, can operate a survival capsule, fight a fire, operate emergency equipment. Every last one of us is aware of the impact and implications of what we do.

 

Now let's talk about the why of it's happening, which is very, very different than the how. The why is simple, and it's a point that many, many people are missing.

 

So, for the enlightenment and benefit of everyone let's do some facts & figures (courtesy of Dick Gibson) - 
- America has 5% of the world's population. It consumes 27% of the world's oil production, and a full, whopping 45% of the world's gasoline production. That'smore than all the countries of the European Union combined. China and India do not come anywhere near us in consumption or usage.
- America consumes an average of 8,980,000 barrels, that's 8.9 million, of gasoline (not oil, gasoline, bear with me, it's a relevant point) daily. That's ignoring jet fuel, home heating oil, diesel fuel, asphalt, plastics and everything else that uses crude oil as it's base material.
- With a population of 306,000,000, this works out 1.22 gallons per day for every person, every single, last, living person, young, old, car owner, non-car owner, drivers license or not.
- That's 446 gallons of gasoline, per year, per person. Again, every last, single, living human being in the United States.
- In terms of crude oil, the base for gasoline, and all the other substances listed above, America consumes 20, 680,000 barrels per day. That's 20 million barrels per day, every day, day in and day out.
- There are 42 gallons of crude oil in one barrel of oil. That breaks down to 19 1/2 gallons of gasoline, 9 gallons of fuel oil, 4 gallons of jet fuel, and 11 gallons of other products including hydraulic and lube oil, kerosene, asphalts and the feedstocks for plastics (all plastic uses crude oil feedstock grains as it's base; anything you own or use that is plastic came from crude oil). Now the mathematically astute amongst you will notice that the total comes out to more than 42 gallons, in fact it equates to about 44 gallons. This is called processing gain, and it happens in refining processes when the hydrogen and carbon bonds are broken in molecules and there is a corresponding increase in volume.
- What this other little tidbit tells us is that every living person, every soul in America, if we do the math, is responsible, personally, for around 200 barrels a year in the "other products", especially plastics; cell phones, laptops, drinking water bottles, Tupperware, baggies, Ziploc bags, and other plastic containers.

 

What it comes down to when you do the math is that everyone, due to using averages, everyone, no matter who you are, is presently, at current usage rates responsible for about 600 barrels a year of crude oil in personal consumption.

 

Now, truly I do understand that in this society today, very few people really know where things come from, or what the base materials and raw construction are, but the bottom line of why this happened is simple, and it involves the complicit guilt of every single person living here in the United States. It wouldn't have happened, not all, if the demand for it wasn't there, and demand is economic, not verbal. Economics, the purchases we all make everyday are the engine that drives it, and the engine that drove this horrific episode. In strictly personal opinion, anyone that cannot look at themselves and see their own part in it is in complete denial.

 

Now as to what's happening now. Let me say, I believe, from being there, from seeing it, that BP's response has been pathetic, horrendously pathetic. Now, let me qualify that, Before I take off on ripping them, and what people can do, let me go to technicals one more time. The technical side of capping the well, plugging the pipe, stopping the leak is tremendously complicated. The unfortunate part of robot cameras and 24 hour a day media coverage makes it seem much closer than it really is. I suppose I ought to relate it to something that I think everyone can relate. At your nearest Taco Bell, while you've been standing at the counter, there's the little water filled thingy that you put quarters or dimes in to make a contribution, and try to guide it onto the little paddles. It's about 6 inches tall, and is absolutely still, no currents, no oil and gas blowing back. Now, try to do that from a mile and a half away, that's what 5,000 feet is and guide it blind without seeing it, onto the top of something that is blowing out a stream at the calculated number I gave above, 33,250 gallons per hour. It isn't easy, it's like trying to perform open heart surgery, in the dark, blindfolded with a pair of remote arms trying to cap a gushing aorta.

As for any number of other solutions that anyone else has given, or come up with, there are a number of options on the table. Let me tell you that the well is in a basaltic formation, the most brittle rock known, so the thought of "blowing the well" using conventional explosives has been explored, but thrown out, as it stands the possibility of fracturing the entire dome. There is only one known explosive reaction on Earth that can generate enough heat to fuse the basalt into glass and seal it off, I'll let your intelligence take over from there, so far that option isn't on the table.

 

Now as far as what's happening and the truly pathetic part of BP's response, let's take a look at the region. Understand that Plaquemines parish (a parish is a county in Louisiana) was completely wiped out by Katrina, I mean wiped off the map. I know, there's only road down that boot, US-23, and I drive the entire length of it to the heliport every two weeks, (now every week). It hadn't fully recovered and was still shaky, and is comprised mostly of bayous, marshes and wetlands, and is home to population, the bulk of which is shrimp and oyster fisherman and commercial fisherman. There isn't a miraculous solution for it, these people have lost a way of life, forever. The shrimp and oyster beds will not recover, the fisheries in the Gulf will not recover. This isn't doomsaying, it's biological fact. The coast of Louisiana contains a full 40% of America's wetlands, and acts as the biofilter for the Mississippi River, the brackish marshes providing the filter to keep the saltwater from intruding into the freshwater. These marshes are dead. I'm not even counting the other Gulf Coast states right now. Remember that it's now summer all across the Nation, but come Fall, these wetlands and marshes are home to migrating ducks, cranes, herons and other migratory birds that don't go all the way to Mexico or Central America. The dispersant that BP used also kills the microbes and bacteria that act as the foundation for the food chain in the Gulf and in the marshes. BP has hired some locals, but not many, in the clean-up effort, and is putting a gag order on them to keep them from talking in order to receive the check. Some of them, fortunately, as they see what's happening, have walked away and are starting to talk. Please remember that just because someone has a lot of tattoos, likes to drink beer on Friday nights and says "fuck" a lot, they're not that different than you, and in their case, they're watching their family's legacy and future, their own way of life being destroyed. As for the people who are doing the clean-up, BP is providing absolutely no personal protective equipment; no respirators, faceshields, or gloves; things we wouldn't even think of handling crude oil without, and is providing no HAZMAT training; just paper coveralls. BP has already gone to court and to the U.S. Congress in order to limit their liability, cap it and their CEO has publicly said (matter of public record) "I'd like my life back", as if this was a bother to him. I'm sure there are 11 families that would like their loved ones life back too, and countless families right now in Louisiana that would like their own lives back, which have now been irrevocably, irreversibly changed. He's also said "People can get their shrimp and oysters from other places than Louisiana."

 

Here are the things you can do, that will make a difference, and also the things that you can't do, that won't make any difference, and I'll say this: there's two types of people in the world. Talkers and Doers, and we all notice and know who the Doers are, they make a difference. All the rest? Well, all the rest is just coffee house bullshit.

 

 - First and foremost, and most imperative, please, please, please look at your own consumption and use. It's most likely much higher than you believe it to be. There are no "magic bullets", no hidden things. All that garbage you've heard about 100 MPG carburetors for cars, it's garbage and myth. I know, I've worked on the front lines of every dirty industry there is; nuclear power, automotive, oil and gas. For now, there's only one workable solution, that's hybrid vehicles (or motorcycles, much better mileage) but hybrids use electricity; which brings up another dilemma, coal vs. nuclear power. That whole business about the Bakken oil field through the Midwest that is trillions of barrels and can provide oil for another century? Yup, it's there, we just can't get to it. It's trapped in oil shale, and the choice there is either to strip mine the entire Midwest, bake the shale the get the oil out and put the toxic slag somewhere; or come up with the technology to insert heaters 5 miles deep into the Earth, bake the oil out at high enough temperatures to capture it, without methane, dioxane and hydrogren sulfide emissions; capture it somehow, and do it without causing underground fractures. We don't have that technology yet. Remember that demand, verbal demand is known by another name, "opinion". The only demand that a multi-national corporation knows, or responds to, is economic or political.  I urge you to take a look at the following links and websites, first up is T. Boone Pickens, who made his fortune in oil, and knows the business inside and out, and knows that the term Peak Oil means, I strongly urge you to investigate The Pickens Plan and sign up to do what you can. The other site I highly recommend is one that is a Veteran's organization, started by Iraq/Afghanistan veterans and laying some plain truths out about what we're doing in the Mideast, and asking people to stop and think about what they're doing putting young American servicepeople in harm's way to satisfy this country's insatiable energy needs. Called Operation Free: Securing America's Energy Needs, it's one that is worth your time to investigate fact and truth with.

 - Contact your State Representative or Senator and demand, absolutely demand that BP provide protective gear for the people doing the clean-up work to the latest OSHA and API (American Petroleum Institute).

 - On that note, when talking to your Senator or Representative's office, demand that they use local workers, from the Gulf Coast. Most of those people have been out of work since Katrina, are were just getting back on their feet, and will have no work, and have to relocate once this is over. Demand that any contracts that BP lets for clean-up go to local fishermen and their families, and that they be provided with the standard in protective gear and training. Tell your Congressperson that you don't want clean-up contracts going to local weekend yacht owners, who already have enough money to be able to afford weekend yachts, and that's where the contracts are going right now.

 - Don’t boycott BP! That is absolutely the most backwards thing to do. On a local level, all that will mean is that you will put Ahmed, Tony, Alejandro, Shawreesh, Al or Willy out of business, and put one more person on the unemployment line locally who will not be able to feed their family. Your local BP gas station doesn't buy their gasoline straight from BP's rigs. A platform or rig sells it's oil down the pipeline to a refinery somewhere, not necessarily one of their own, just the closest one. The refinery cracks it, makes gasoline, and sells it to a wholesale distributor, who then sells it to a depot. The depot sells it to the gas station. The gas you put in your tank at a BP station is a mix of BP/Chevron/Marathon/ExxonMobil/Shell/Hess/Valero/Apache and host of other small independent's production. BP, if you boycott their stations, and do nothing about your own personal consumption will only sell their oil through other refineries. Secondarily to that, BP would love nothing more than to go bankrupt right now, or into receivership, it would exempt them, from paying any damages at all, and that my friends, is a something they would dearly love. Any court case to get the damages from them, if they were bankrupt would drag on for years, if not decades, and the families affected would not see a penny.

 - While talking to your Senator or Representative, demand that BP not be allowed to cap their liability for damages, or insurance claims and be held accountable for their entire damage bill.

 - Demand that BP not be allowed to put a "gag order" on it's workers in talking to the media. This is a Constitutional First Amendment issue and is criminal, and is stopping the free flow of information about the extent of the damage already to the wetlands, the Gulf and the bayous.

 - If you're not working right now, and want to help, get down there and volunteer, (that means free, leave the money for the locals who have lost their way of life).

 - I refer again to the website above started by veterans, Operation Free: Securing America's Energy Needs before you demand a halt to offshore drilling. With consumption on the curve it's on in this nation, what it would mean is putting more young men and women in uniform in harm's way in the Mideast in America's oil wars, and more of them coming home in coffins, and more families making the ultimate sacrifice to guarantee that people could be outraged on FB while typing away on their crude oil based keyboards and computers, and texting their friends on their crude oil based cell phones to drive down to the coffee shop and meet them to be angry about it. Instead, in that same letter or phone call to your Senator or Representative, demand that the Minerals Management Service, the arm of the Department of the Interior that has oversight of offshore drilling demand that every rig and platform perform to, and operate under the existing standards and protocols, which, when actually applied by the inspectors, are very, very stringent, and go 85% of the way towards guaranteeing safe, secure operation of platforms and rigs. In the past 10 years, these standards and protocols, have in some instances and some platforms, not been applied or enforced.

 

I've received a few e-mails about prayer, about praying that it all get cleaned up, that something miraculous happen. Now, I believe in prayer, I've seen miracles occur for individuals, but I don't believe that I want a Creator who would exempt an entire nation from their responsibility and accountability in squandering and greedily hoarding and using the Earth's natural resources, and let everyone off the hook from their own individual responsibility in being part of the causal chain that brought this about, and their own individual responsibility in looking forward and doing their own part to insure that it doesn't happen again. I can't say the words "Mitakuye Oyasin" meaning "we are all related", without understanding that I can't step in and out of the circle as I choose, and as I find things uncomfortable, or ugly, or inconvenient. Just as we all are related in what is occurring in the Gulf, in the wetlands, in the bayous, so too, are we all related in it's cause, so too are we all related in acting on (not talking about, not wishing on) real long-term solutions.

Now, us down here? We're just blue collar guys, not millionaires trying to make a living, pay the bills, and support our families. Trust me, over 50% of the guys I work with are right from the marshlands, from the bayous, and no one feels as sick about it as them, as those of us in the industry, guys who know that the other members of their entire family, shrimpers, oystermen, commercial fishermen, have now been wiped out, for generations to come, and will have to relocate, move and try to find work in a country that now has 17 million unemployed. We know the inherent risks in what we do, and we're real flesh and blood people, and if there aren't guys like me, like us out here, then the Gulf and it's platforms will be filled with guys like the 3 men who made the decisions that killed 11 men and caused this catastrophe. In some fashion, we like to believe that every barrel we pull out of the ground here safely, environmentally responsibly, is a barrel that a family doesn't have to bury a son or daughter over, with the Westboro Baptist Church in the background telling them how much God loves it that their son or daughter died. We all have our niche, the thing we're called to, the thing we're supposed to do, were born to do, and this is mine

 

My prayer? It's that people wake up, look at their own part in it, in their own demands that contributed to it and do the right thing about it, and stop blaming everyone else, and stop waiting for someone else to do something about it.

[Glenn Powers]

Senator Bill Nelson was interviewed by Andrea Mitchell yesterday
morning on MSNBC and confirmed reports of oil seeping up from
additional leak points on the seafloor.

http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/senator-confirms-reports-that-wellbore-is-pierced-oil-seeping-from-seabed-in-multiple-places

[Jameson Wallace]

Chicago Cubs & Sox complicit in catastrophic environmental disaster,
continuing BP advocacy...

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/dailypitch/post/2010/06/cubs-white-sox-sticking-by-bp-sponsor-of-interleague-series/1

...even as Tate Modern is bombed with oil balloons and dead fish for
same.

http://artthreat.net/2010/05/tate_bp_intervention/

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[Monica]

Each and every one of the pictures, articles, videos, etc have made me sick to my stomach - literally, metaphorically, philisophically, [enter latin roots here]-ly.  The total disregard for use of protective gear and training is like a repetitve punch to the face as I work for the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation -a disease where your lungs eventually scar over, slowly taking away your right to breath - which could very well be caused by breathing in this type of material.  It's heartbreaking for me to hear that the simplest of safety precautions are being disregarded - for NO REASON other than money(??).

 

Unfortunately I'm unable to actually go and volunteer.  Instead, I wrote up this draft to a congressperson and thought that I would post it here, for people who may not have time to write something up.  It states most of the points touched upon in this email.  I have also included the websites for you to find your senator and state rep.

 

Please send an email, its a simple matter of a few clicks and could impact our country in a very BIG way. 

 

List of senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

 

List of house of representatives: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

 

 

[Ora Uzel]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Jameson Wallace <xchi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Chicago Cubs & Sox complicit in catastrophic environmental disaster, continuing BP advocacy...

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/dailypitch/post/2010/06/cubs-white-sox-sticking-by-bp-sponsor-of-interleague-series/1

If you read the article first posted here, you would note that he pointed out that if BP goes bankrupt from boycotting, the government (you) will have to foot the bill for the rest of the cleanup operations.  Boycotting is pointless and irrelevant.

The issue here is US. Are you going to go to Cubs and Sox games?  Because the gas you spend or the electricity you spend on the El will probably be more of an environmental impact than buying gas from BP who will make it one way or the other, and will have people buy it one way or the other.

Don't like the oil spill?  Look in the mirror for what you can do.

[Glenn Powers]

A first hand report:
http://cdn2.ash1.k-srv.info/camelotproductions/jamesfox2010.mp3