Aerial Tankers Attack Massive Gulf of Mexico Oil Slick with Dispersant

I just hope BP has to pay for all the revenue lost by the Gulf fishermen.

Technology has ruined the earth. Now the technolgy used to clean up the earth is even worse than what ruined it in the first place. Idiots.

BP is willing to pay for the clean up, what they should really say is BP is willing to charge everyone more for gas to clean this mess.

BP is willing to pay for the clean up, what they should really say is BP is willing to charge everyone more for gas to clean this mess.

Whilst I do not take away any of the impact that this spill can/will have, I am not really understanding why BP is getting so much finger pointing. The drilling platform is owned by Transocean the worlds largest drilling company and was leased by BP but operated by Transocean personnel. Surly it is the responsibility of Transocean to pay up for any damaged and costs that arise. It is a Transocean equipment/personal failure that put us in the position we are in. BP only contracted them.

I don't like that it's being refered to as the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. It should be called the BP/Halliburton oil spill so that everyone is reminded that it is BP.

So much for "Beyond Petroleum."

Gotta love it, they call themselves beyond petroleum put up a sunflower logo you might almost think they where an alternate energy company.

I think they should hurry up and clean this mess because as we all know, hurricane season is approaching and another Katrina laced with oil could be one hell of a disaster to clean up/recover from.

it used to be british petrol, but they wanted to drop the british part.

and they cant jack up gas prices because they are not the only game in town.

I am disgusted by the use of this dispersant. All it does is act like soap in a greasy pan in your sink, except this dispersant makes the oil collude and sink to the ocean floor.

Thank must be great for all of the things living down there. They should have implemented a corral around the entire rig 3/4 mile in diameter and siphoned/skimmed all of the oil into a waiting tanker.

Done.

Now they have turned this into an epic f'up and people are just pointing fingers....

--GTO--

A few things here that I feel the need to mention because reading the comments only makes me believe some of you are woefully ignorant of what is going on.

- This dispersant does nothing, the fact that PopSci is even humoring us with this article is flat out insulting. Do you know that the pipe is still spewing out oil at over 2200 psi? Five thousand feet beneath the ocean and it is spilling all of that oil that fast. Capping the pipe is next to impossible as a result. Tossing a few hundred thousand gallons of dispersant into a mess this large? BP might as well try to clean it up one napkin at a time.

- Under the lease agreement they are required by law to pay for any and all costs that go into this clean up. This includes, but isn't limited to, military intervention. So all of those Coast Guard and Navy Ships trying to police the area and monitor the spread? Yeah, have to pay for those. The Air Force C-130's that PopSci mentioned? Gotta pay for those to. This isn't a charity outfit like Haiti, this is a man made disaster.

- BP is entirely to blame here. I don't care if you think that just because they didn't physically build the platform themselves somehow makes them not at fault here. Due to Cheney removing oversight from things the Government can do to oil companies they were able to build this one on the cheap and skimped on relatively inexpensive ways to make the whole thing safer. Was this a case of catastrophic failure on behalf of the parts? Well duh, but that is only because they used inadequate parts to begin with. I wonder how BP feel now, maybe it wouldn't have to hurt to tack on an extra few million now wouldn't it?

- Due to the massive problems that this whole catastrophe presents, there is a very little talk on how to fix it. Why? Well because if there was more you'd see rioting. The fastest solution is drilling more holes to elevate the pressure on the damaged well so it can then be capped. Oh, by the way, what's the timeline for that? A month at the earliest but more likely three. That's right folks for the next three months expect to keep on seeing this black mess only continue to spread and turn the entire Gulf into a Dead Zone.

- God help all of the states to the West of Florida when the next hurricane season comes around. The oil isn't going anywhere even after this gets resolved, under the right conditions the storms could actually make the situation worse and spread the residual spill on land. Thought hurricanes were bad? How about hurricanes that are perpetually on fire?

Jeremy needs to check his facts.

The C-130's deployed are Modular Aerial Spray System (MASS), not Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System (MAFFS) equipped aircraft.

Although the DoD is looking into using MAFFS, that particular system has not yet been called.

One difference between MASS and MAFFS is the amount of liquid that is dispersed per square acre.

MASS covers a larger area with less liquid, MAFFS covers a smaller area with a higher concentration.

Similar systems, different applications.

@herc-pilot Thanks, that's corrected now. You're right that the 757th Airlift Squadron uses the MASS system, not MAFFS.

why not use a system that is inert and used in fish tanks and made into fish food in San Diego, make some sence and call Rita Mc Nealy from the US Navys ARA Chem in San Diego and at least get the pollution down and the evironment cleaned up.
regards
WidarRom, Singapore

@mattf bp supervises and i believe licenses the oil company that was using the rig. Also, it's getting a lot of bad beef right now because it downplayed the incident almost as bad as Toyota did with their recalls. In the media this went from a minor leak, like what happened in ausi coral reef, to maybe one of the worst. While any sane person would not want a bad reputation to be wide spread about them, you have to take responsibility the instant an accident happens, not when bad publicity pressures you to do so.

Sjak put it better then I could, I haven't been keeping up with it that much.

In line remotely controlled shut of valve. They sould have put one in.

Amazing how BP are responsible but Union Carbide were not, how times change.

better lawyers?

"Worse, it could take three months to drill sideways into the well and plug it with mud and concrete to stop the worst U.S. oil spill since the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska, leaking nearly 11 million gallons of crude."

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100504/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_93

Just for you all to put it in perspective, 200,000 gallons a day.

In the comments where people are asking why BP is blamed when they were leasing the equipment to another company, even if the explosion was not BP's fault, they opted out of installing a remote shut off valve as thecanadian mentions above, that's why they are to blame because they should have been prepared for something going wrong.

30bcf4e2

Okay you are all Fukkin wrong, have you all seen this in person?? no you are not paying attention to the most pressing facts, the oil and that dispersal shiit will destroy the ecosystem in the gulf DEAD GONE GOODBYE SEE YA LATER, you are not seeing the whole picture yes Bp/Transocean Fukked up but pointing fingers aint going to change a damn thing, We should roll up our damn sleeves and get this damn mess clean then we can hang the snobbish bastards

well... um.... (tries to find a bright side)
errrrrrrrr............. this is oil that's not going to be burned and released into the atmosphere... but it's doing a hell of a lot more damage down there so that doesn't work..... this could help as sheer shock to convince people to swap to thorium FBRs for power.... that is all