"DANGEROUS DEEPWATER DRILLING"

Oil spill underwater video - 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill

From NOLA.com:

The failed blowout preventer on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig had a hydraulic leak and a dead battery in one of its control pods, and testing in the hours before an April 20 explosion revealed that pressure in the well was dangerously out of whack, a House committee investigating the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico said Wednesday.

"The more I learn about this accident, the more concerned I become," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who has cast the explosion and the ongoing oil spill that followed as a cautionary tale of America's dependence on oil and what he characterized as "dangerous" deepwater drilling in particular.

In recent days, the Energy Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has been combing through documents provided by BP, the oil giant that had been on the verge of announcing a huge find in the deep waters 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, and Transocean Limited, the contractor whose offshore rig blew up three weeks ago, killing 11 workers and opening an undersea gusher that is releasing about 5,000 barrels of crude a day into the Gulf.

The investigation by the subcommittee, of which Rep. Henry Waxman is chairman, obtained more information than the two Senate committees which grilled the CEO's yeaterday. Waxman is one of my heroes in Congress. He's a bulldog. He won't let go.

The finger-pointing blame game amongst the corporations involved continues unabated, but the consequences of the disaster will affect all the companies involved, no matter their efforts to throw the blame off themselves.

According to Waxman, just after midnight the morning of April 20, Halliburton finished cementing the well. Waxman said that James Dupree, the BP senior vice president for the Gulf of Mexico, told the committee staff that a 5 p.m. pressure test, to determine whether any gas was leaking into the well through the cement or casing, had an unsatisfactory result, and a second test also discovered a disturbing imbalance between pressure in the drill pipe and in the kill and choke lines.

Waxman said that while Dupree indicated that the well blew right after the second test, BP lawyers told the committee that additional tests were done and well operations resumed. Two hours later the well blew.

"The investigation will have to tear that apart piece by piece," said Lamar McKay, the president and president of BP America, of the discrepancy in the pressure tests.

Why, why, why wasn't the well shut down when the tests showed unsatisfactory results? Why?

Rep. Charlie Melancon (D), my rep in Congress, is running against Sen. David Vitter for his Senate seat, but he's far behind Vitter in the polls. He needs to wake up to the reality of conditions in the US today. Melancon says:

"We're the United States, and I would have thought if this was going to happen, it would have been in maybe a South African continent or some Third World country that just looked the other way or said, you know, if there's still such a thing -- and I'm sure there is -- kickbacks, that that would have happened there and not here in the United States," Melancon said. "And, of course, having come through Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike and now Horizon, it's just, I guess, the anxiety is building on South Louisiana as though there's a bull's eye on us."

Where ya been, Charlie? Asleep? Are you just now noting all is not hunky-dory in our country? Although our decline started before the Cheney/Bush regime, didn't you see the trashing of our institutions and agencies during the 8 years those guys were in charge? You voted their way a good many times, loyal Blue Dog Democrat that you are.


My hero.