This raw footage is unbelievable. After two days of hearings with BP, Rep. Bart Stupak stated the company operates in a “culture of incompetence” and said he has little confidence that they have a plan. BP says it will take 75 days to shut down the flow, meaning the oil released in the Gulf will be double the Exxon Valdez disaster (unless it gets worse).
From NPR [via Bob Cesca]
The best view yet of the Gulf of Mexico gusher came Wednesday as the House Energy and Commerce Committee released video of the oil and gas streaming into the ocean about a mile below the surface.
No confidence in BP after hearings:
May 13: After two days of hearings on Capitol Hill, Rep. Bart Stupak’s confidence in British Petroleum’s ability to fix a massive underwater oil leak is waning.
“I don’t think they have a real plan yet,” Stupak, D-Mich. and member of the House subcommittee on Oversight.
Yesterday’s hearings revealed a long list of mistakes that possibly led to the April 20 blowout of a well in the Gulf of Mexico, including: bad cement, loose pipes and a dead battery.
Citing an internal BP memo, Stupak told CBS’ “The Early Show” that a “culture of incompetence” exists at the oil company.
“We have a serious problem, here,” Stupak said.
This spill could be double the Exxon Valdez:
BP America said Monday that it would take another 75 days to finish one of two relief wells it’s drilling to shut down the flow. By then, if the spill doesn’t worsen and the relief well stops the leak, some 20 million gallons of oil will be swirling in the Gulf, nearly double the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.
Unlike the Alaska spill, which coated a rock-strewn bay, BP’s oil will cling to a spongelike coast, entering the pores of mangrove forests and sea-grass beds and the breeding grounds for crabs, shrimp and oysters.
*******UPDATE******
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UPDATE: Oil gushing underwater in Gulf — 10X greater than thought (5/13/2010)
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More on that statement “one Exxon Valdez every four days” (5/14/2010)
NPR: Gulf oil spill more than 10X greater than thought
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That’s the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez tanker full every four days.
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…But sophisticated scientific analysis of sea floor video made available Wednesday by the oil company BP shows that the true figure is closer to 70,000 barrels a day, NPR’s Richard Harris reports.
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Via Little Green Footballs:
A pod of Bottlenose dolphins swim under the oily water Chandeleur Sound, Louisiana, Thursday, May 6, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico.
An oil soaked bird struggles against the oil slicked side of the HOS Iron Horse supply vessel at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana
See all pics at Boston.com
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Under the Mountain Bunker 
What a great blog, thanks for sharing! 😉
“Culture of incompetence” is an understatement. Sadly, while the realization of such incompetence should, in theory, make the world less willing to buy oil from such an incompetent and careless company – therefore driving prices down – the reality is that the purely monetary expense of attempting to clean up this mess, paired with the amount of oil that is lost by the minute, will only serve to drive prices higher. In the end, everyone from the wildlife to the environment to the consumer gets screwed. Who knew that “BP” stood for “Big Problem”?
Wow, that is just difficult to digest. Thanks for including the video–as the pictures are so powerful.
This is definitely sad to see. Yet people still wonder why there is ‘global warming’ and so many other changes in the world that did not exist a century ago.
Wow. Fucking awful on so many levels. Makes your stomach turn to watch that video.
The video is heart stopping. Terrifying. There are thousands of those pipes in the Gulf of Mexico!
Big Oil must be controlling the media or else this would still be making the headlines.
Humans need to live responsibly. Can that happen? What will it take to make that happen?
I hope some great innovations can make it happen. Or I’m afraid, some awful disaster might force it to happen, if we survive.
Great post… This is bad, real bad for the marine life.I wonder what will happen next? Will there be more preventive measure for offshore exploration or simply let corporate profit rules?
marco busqueda
What is reallY really surprising is that it took so much time to acknowledge the fact that universities as a WHOLE ARE MORE THAN PARTLY TO BLAME …FOR WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW ALMOST EVERYWHERE …pOLLUTION OF THE MIND FIRST THEN that!why NOT SAYING IT …wHY INDEED? BECAUSE we are afraid of losing our superficial privilege ingeniously consoling ourselves with ghost-$tatus …what kind of ethical philosophy can cause so much dirtiness so a thick vEil of economic hypocrisy…with a camouflaging of smart long word and stati$tical rationalities all that to be able to go on and on , always in a hurry and screaming :modernism !! motherni$m…?If the students of the world would just take a full session to brain storming the subject of education , pedantry would die soon enough and we could talk about what reality is :a plain mistery …May we have the right to try our fate the way we like?At our speed …stop speculating with my chromosome and my blood and water and oxygen … and let me BEe BZZZ…
Yeah…it’s bad. But not as bad as Kuwait’s oil spill back in 1991.
From wiki: “Estimates on the volume spilled range from 42 to 462 million gallons;[1] the slick reached a maximum size of 101 by 42 miles (4242 square miles) and was 5 inches thick in some areas. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the size of the spill, figures place it 5 to 27 times the size (in gallons spilled) of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and more than twice the size of the 1979 Ixtoc I blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Also, from this article: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/coal-oil-gas/biggest-oil-spills-in-history
“The largest oil spill the world has seen exacted little permanent damage on coral ecosystems and local fisheries, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission at Unesco. The study concluded that about half the oil evaporated, one-eighth of it was recovered and another quarter washed ashore, mostly in Saudi Arabia.”
04/21/2010By: Richard Bastian aka Sebastian @
The times, they are a changing, can you feel the winds blowing, can ya feel the changes from deep within, can’t ya just feel the changes, can’t ya feel the earth shaking, the hot sun baking all the earth to dry crust, from moisture’s waters to dust, can’t ya just feel all the changes.
All the changes, there commin down, commin down hard on me, oh my heart just can’t take it, and, I wonder about the children and those yet to experience birth.
I feel for all of us as well, for were acting as if life has no worth and that there’s really nothing to tell or see,
Oh but how much so there is, just look, fill your cup, fill it till it’s full, full of all the meaningful things you feel, let it run over, let it spell into the hearts as nourishing drink for all mankind and earth.
Oh say can ya see, can ya see, oh say, can’t you! can’t you see!
Look just what your doing to not only me, but to the memory of those who fought and died for you and I, so that we could have a life that had true meaning, something dear to honor and hold, oh say, can’t you SEE!
Life was never meant to be a wholesale market place
Say you can’t see! go ahead and sell yourself that lie,
that lie, that lays deep within that say’s, no I don’t see, I really just don’t understand.
You lie, you lie, you lie, and now ya want to sell your lie too me, after all this time that you dreamed and schemed on how someday that lie would pay you big dividends.
Now that were near the end, and you see and know your lie really has no worth, you want to wholesale your lie to me .
Lying on a wholesale scale, come and get the lie before it’s to late.
Come get your phony shallows worth of lie’s, buy into what you deeply know that ain’t
Wholesale mankind’s heart, go ahead, sell it off piece by piece until it’s torn all a part.
We have Wall Street and Walmart standing side by side,
yes we have Wall Street marching to the drum in step with the bull market beat, hedging the funds, while Walmart and other big chain markets go out into the small towns of this country, to sell yet another one, oh see how all the bull market boys are playing with our money, while having fun.
The markets down, with no one left to trust, and here you and I are left lurching in the dust.
All is good, all is calm, all are working for next to nothing, sound the alarm!
Like marching ants in and out the doors, shoppers searching the merchants floors for all the bargains they came for.
Only to find a welcome sign, and beneath it the tag which reads, ..discount!
Ah, were in heaven, we’ve saved a dime, not yet a life however that slaved to produce your item in hand, but we saved a dime.
Cheep labor is a must for markets to rise, go not hear for these Americans ask way to much.
Go to some far off land, where slave labor can be controlled ,while Walmart and other big chain markets beat the Wall Street drum,
look out shoppers cause here we come.
Were coming to a city near you,
too a small town, look! another small one going down.
Read the signs, build, invest and save a dime while we hedge you’re funds for more money to us make come.
Oh happy days are here again, there here again, and you lie, you lie, you lie.
Not only me, but my children and theirs to come will be working twice as hard to pay the debt which the Wall Street boys sold to you and I…
We trusted and this is what we got, oh my Lord is it too late to turn the tide, tell us how rough the the ride will be, and what it is we must now do if were to survive.
Do we continue to trust as we have, or do we now stand as the creation of man, that which we were made too be.
Let us now begin to tell them we know they lied, and that we refuse to ever be lied to again.
Add BP, Standard, Exxon, Shell, Chevron and all the rest to this as well, for money by the barrels full is attached to end of their drills.
Please! make no mistake about it
Oh my gosh, how horrible and how sad. I can’t believe the length of time it will take, just to start the clean-up.
I am very glad your posting made it to the WordPress home page so many people can see this video. As one commentor above noted it is not surprising we are having climate change with all these things happening. I live in France and the south has had huge amounts of rain this May when typically it is sunny time of year.
David
http://www.growyourwellnessbiz.com
Wow, that is unreal!
There’s a journalist from Nature New’s who’s out there blogging about the whole mess – with his reports and videos like these, very interesting to see from the “inside”.
It does not matter what we say, or think, or how horrified we are about the spill, or how much we cry for nature and the drowing oil- clogged sea birds who we love.
It does not matter. We are too many to do without oil, which fires, like air and water, every step of our lives and being.
So weep, profoundly, in silence. For this is how it is, and how we are.
And then there are the people that somehow think this isn’t serious, and that the leak can be fixed with a little bubble gum and duct tape. Sad.
Colin, you are talking out of your backside. If you cannot say something constructive, then why say anything at all. If we; as a people, cannot change the way things are; then tell me, who the hell can? I understand the need for oil, but there has to be, there MUST be a better way.
I find it ironic (or is it moronic?) that our government officials are so busy condemning the “culture of incompetence” that they have promoted. How about the officials that waved problems with the blowout preventer and allowed them to continue? How about the officials that overlooked early indications of potential problems? And let us not forget those who restricted drilling in shallower, safer areas for political gain?
Don’t get me wrong, what has happened is bad, very bad, but, like the sub-prime mortgage blowup, the folks in DC are to busy casting the blame on others to acknowledge their own errors. Overall the oil industry, despite some rather spectacular failures, has a pretty good record. Like it or not, we do need the oil, and so far we don’t have any good solutions – unless of course you want to return to the dark ages. Ethanol is a net energy consumer and diverts needed food resources. Solar panels are also still a net consumer, as is nuclear – not to mention the waste issues with both. Wind … well good idea, IF you can find someplace to build the facilities. The NIMBY crowd here just managed to kill a small wind farm citing noise, heath issues, migratory bird issues and anything else they could dream up. As usual every one wants some thing done, just not anywhere near them.
We no longer deserve to live on this planet.
Agreed. The extinction of the human race as a species would be the best thing for planet Earth…
Yeah… This is not a good situation whatsoever. I won’t be surprised if the Gulf became a dead zone after this. I can’t believe that despite all of this damage, public consent towards native oil drilling remains high…
We saw the damage it has done in the past, especially with Exxon Valdez. I don’t see how anyone can support Big Oil or the oil industry after seeing their lackadaisical practices and general apathy towards a cleaner environment.
This should be a wake-up call that Planet Earth desperately needs alternative energy sources or else we’re doomed for sure.
The “future shock” when our oceans are just a mass of sludge and heavy undrinkable wash has already begun thanks to the greed of oil companies en mass. non are without blame nor shame. just like clean AIR, clean H2O is now a thiing of the past soon. Heaven help us all. Self-deliverance seems a bettter option for birds as well as we humans.
:((( that is so saad 😦 there should be no oil spills and no sea exploitation whatsoever, AT ALL! we do all that for frickin gasoline, etc.?! what a crap.. 😦
Whoever said oil and water do not mix never worked for B.P. Seem to be very intimately related.
Good news for all the fundametalists too, probably because a rig worker was gay.
Pingback: BP Gulf oil spill & what to do | Cheap Like Me | Cheap Like Me
Now it’s not just twice as bad, Cheap Like Me. According to scientific analysis of that video, potentially 10 times as bad – or one Exxon Valdez every four days.
Both oil & gas are pouring out of that pipe and BP either won’t or can’t say how much of the spillage is gas and how much is oil. http://bit.ly/b1zrTb
Oh. It is so tragic. I cannot bear to see the wildlife damaged. It is just a sign that this is the world we have made.
What I dont understand is – these are huge corporations- how come THERE WAS NO PLAN TO BEGIN WITH!?! Nobody ever thought of a possible PLAN B if something went wrong??? Just goes to show- should not have technology you obviously cannot control….
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Cheers
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the oil leak is massive. this will destroy alot of the local economy
Thank you for your informative blog on this most significant environmental disaster. I have subscribed and will follow your updates closely. Regards, g.