Retired Admiral Thad Allen, the Federal Government's overseer of the relief efforts in the Gulf of Mexico, had another press conference today.
Most of what he talked about was just how the plan to remove the damaged Blowout Protector (BOP) and replace it so they can complete the drilling of the relief well.
He answered a question about the 3 pieces of broken riser pipe stuck in the BOP - pipe that had to be cut a couple of times to put caps on the leaking oil. That pipe is extremely fragile, and they can't remove the pipe, and so the solution is to remove the BOP that has the broken pipes stuck in it.
Here's a link to a video of his press conference today. It was only 15 minutes or so.
Because of large waves in the Gulf, they are delaying the removal of the damaged Blowout Preventer (BOP). It looks like that delay might be for a couple of days. Once they remove it, they'll replace it with another undamaged BOP and then complete the drilling on the relief well to plug the Maconda well below the ocean's floor.
They plan on lifting the pipe and the BOP at the same time, but if that fails, they will disconnect the BOP from that pipe, lift the BOP, and then cut off the pipe at the well head.
He also covered the continuous flow of hydrocarbons over the last 8-12 hours of seen coming from the cap. Allen said that he wasn't aware of any changes to the pressure readings, and said he'd look into it. That's the way they've always behaved, yet you'd think that he and BP were joined at the hip and were consistently covering each other's butts if you read this site!
He also was asked about the "evidence team" that's there to look over the underwater site. He told us that the 12 person group has been there for a long time, and will be there on site once the weather improves enough for them to proceed with the removal of the BOP.
I wish that this kind of thing were what was covered by this site - factual information rather than the stuff we saw for weeks here.
I am fed up with this site's kneejerk hysteria and their reliance on conspiracy theories and believing every rumor that they read when it fits their preconceived notions.
A couple of weeks ago, when the Woods Hole group came out with their findings about the invisible, hard to detect oil "plume" in the Gulf of Mexico they had detected in late June, the hysteria here was really offensive. People said that they wouldn't swim in the Gulf or eat any Gulf seafood for years.
And when I tried to tamp down that hysteria and inject some reality into the discussion, I was literally called a troll! Here's a link to my diary about a previous retired Admiral Thad Allen's essay in the Washington Post a week ago. As I pointed out in the diary,
In the colder waters (deeper) in the Gulf, as I posted above, some scientists think that the Woods Hole people overly minimized the microbial activity going on and likely to continue.
Well, it turns out that those hysterical readers of the Woods Hole study were reading it wrong, and going off the deep end without justification. The New York Times Environmental and Energy reporters told us on August 20th about how the Gulf opportunistic bacteria were actually doing a really good job of eating up the oil suspended underwater. Since the Woods Hole study in late June, the oil leak had been stopped, and the oil plume has disappeared. As I documented in another diary, scientists weren't able to find the oil plume, and that info was readily available - but before I posted it, it wasn't exposed to the DailyKos readership by the people who have been obsessed with the Gulf Oil Leak since the beginning! Why not? Well, because it didn't fit their preconceived notions about the oil in the Gulf, and so they didn't believe it, or didn't want to believe it, so they ignored it! It didn't fit their hysteria about the dangers from this oil plume and so they simply rejected it, and called me a troll for bringing it up!
And just a couple of days later, the NYT Energy and Environment journalists did another story on the "oil plume". The headline was
Scientists Find Oil-Eating Bacteria Plentiful in Deep Gulf Waters
Oil-eating bacteria exist in significant quantities even in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and may be breaking down submerged oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil leak faster than previously believed, scientists are reporting today.
The bacteria were found in a plume of microscopic oil droplets more than 3,000 feet below the surface, in the vicinity of BP’s blown-out well, by a group of scientists led by Terry Hazen, a senior ecologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Their presence may have been overlooked by other researchers because the variety found in the plume do not seem to be consuming much oxygen from the water column, unlike most oil-digesting bacteria, the scientists said.
Now, of course that doesn't mean that all the problems are over with, nor does it mean that the damages already done are to be ignored!
But as I said in a previous diary
I just want this site to be fact-based. I don't want us reacting solely out of an emotional response that's not grounded in reality. I think we need to be responsible, even if the right isn't. I believe we desperately need to restrain those who go off the deep end, but instead, too often, this site eggs them on and rewards them. The echo chamber atmosphere is not a good thing.
Stories like that Corexit bioaccumulates. It doesn't. Multiple diaries about the Woods Hole study with people in panic-mode about the "oil plume", but then absolutely no diaries when the NYT debunks those horror stories! Stories like those that tell us that BP and the US Coast Guard had a systemic plan to deny access to reporters - they didn't. Allegations that photos of people working in the Gulf were photoshopped - crazy nonsense that, even after the diarist was fully debunked, people were still reccing up! A long-time contributor to DailyKos posted a GBCW diary, and it was nonsense, yet an unbelievable number of people believed that it was true that BP had manipulated the image! They didn't.