Now the BP engineers gets graded.
By deep water ROV engineers, camera and 3D experts and real scientists.
Cameron gets together 23 top experts on a videoconference setup at EPA HQ in D.C.
"Over the last few weeks I've watched as we all have with growing sort of horror and heartache watching what's happening in the Gulf and thinking those morons don't know what they're doing."
They worked the problem for 10 hours.... More BTF :::
UPDATE:
"I know a lot of smart people who regularly work a whole lot deeper than that well," says Cameron, referring to BP’s 5,000-foot gusher. "I figured this group of top sub guys and deep-ocean scientists and engineers could maybe come up with something constructive." The director did not, as many news outlets reported, respond to a call from the Environmental Protection Agency, but rather organized the meeting himself, and invited government bodies including the E.P.A., the Department of Energy, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the Coast Guard to participate.
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Read more: http://www.eonline.com/...
"For 22 years, I've been working with a number if not most of the top people in the very small deep submergence community...I'm really involved in deep ocean archaeology," he said. "I thought I know a lot of smart people in deep submergence...they know the engineering that's required to get something done at that depth so I thought why don't I get all those people together for a brainstorming session."
Cameron called BP and pitched some outside-the-box ideas. But after receiving a polite brush-off, he went ahead anyway and gathered together 23 people (a "who's-who" of submersible experts) for a private meeting Wednesday at the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. The EPA hosted but did not participate in.
"It's a very very complex problem and it starts 18,000 feet down," Cameron said. "It's not a plumbing problem. If they make a mistake they can blow out down below. It [a multiply fragmented oil leak ] can come up in 30 places and then you'll never contain it."
Read more: http://www.eonline.com/...
Typical participant: Phil Nuytten.
"Everybody in the world has seen the damage to the wetlands, but what no one has seen yet is the damage that’s being done underwater." Mr. Nuytten Vancouver-based Nuytco Research, was among a group of about 23 people who convened in Washington on Tuesday to brainstorm engineering and environmental strategies in connection with the spill.
Cameron clearly knows more about underwater video than the BP crew. Same for his 23 people, relative to their specialties.
BP has screwed up repeatedly:
-- the initial blow-out
-- failure to get together any physical response over the first month
-- the blown 10,000 PSI Top Kill effort
-- the botched diamond serrated cable cutting effort, and
-- seem to have screwed up the capping effort so far
-- the BP crew are still resisting outside expertise.
Asked this morning why there is oil coming out of the cap ?:
-- "We're trying to keep water out of the system."
No-No-No. Read this bit about water getting in as a bald faced lie.
The well head was measured at 14,000 PSI and the water is at 2,500 PSI. The oil flow effortlessly pushed aside the 10,000 PSI "mud" injection during the Top Kill effort.
Welcome to America's Chernobyl.
That's pretty much a replay of SNAFU at Chernobyl. The on-site crew insisted on doing things their own way. They blew the reactor, similar to what will happen if the BP crew damage the underground structures feeding the riser.
EPA was not speaking at the table for Cameron's work party. Of course they watched.
Finally, Cameron insists that the government needs its own submersibles on site. Otherwise:
"You're asking the perpetrator for the surveillance tapes...."
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This sounds like the right course of action for managing the crisis. Get top experts together. Make things work outside the political, Chernobyl-in-meltdown atmosphere of the BP team.
And make sure the people involved know what they are doing. Not just that they got promoted in the BP system.