New Media and Politics - BP Just Never Quits!

If BP's attitude towards stopping the oil from gushing into the Gulf, was the same as it is to trying to defend their corporate brand and defray costs, then that wellhead would have long ago been capped.

Astonishingly this morning there was a story of BP's chief wanker (CEO) Tony Hayward proclaiming there's no such thing as oil plumes and those scientific studies that are being reported all over the various medias are wrong. Oil is buoyant - it rises to the surface - anything underneath the surface is not really there nor is it our doing! To paraphrase BP's wanker-in-chief.

Actual scientists disagree however, "There's been enough evidence from enough different sources," said marine scientist James Cowan of Louisiana State University, who reported finding a plume last week about 50 miles from the spill site. Cowan said oil reached to depths of at least 400 feet. As does the physics of deepwater buoyancy:

Large quantities of natural gas may escape into the water column with the oil during undersea well blow-out or leakage events (Rygg & Emilsen, 1998). The dynamics of the contaminant plume -- and, hence, the ultimate dispersion of the contaminants in space -- may be profoundly influenced by the buoyancy of this gas phase.

 In the deep ocean environment, ambient pressures and temperatures fall within a range where many hydrocarbon components of natural gas can exist as solid hydrates (Sloan, 1989). In situ observations (Brewer et al., 1997) and laboratory experiments (Maini & Bishnoi, 1981) suggest that natural gas bubbles may transform into solid hydrates as they rise through the water. This transformation produces an increase in density that results in a loss of global plume buoyancy.

Read a very thorough look at the science behind deepwater oil plumes here.

Of course accountability is only for losers like the rest of us. As far as BP is concerned Tony's doing a heckuva' job! It matters not that they lied about their ability to handle a spill ten times this size.

Don't think I'm picking on Tony just because he's an easy target - from the NYT's on BP's culpability: Several days before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, BP officials chose, partly for financial reasons, to use a type of casing for the well that the company knew was the riskier of two options, according to a BP document.

This is the same fellah who declared the effects of the spill would be minimal and that it was merely 5,000 barrels per day spilling into the Gulf. Nothing BP says can be trusted.

In the meantime, they are going to try another unlikely fix and the people in the Gulf who are losing their livelihoods can only look on and hope. And finally, to continue the illustration that this is a usual pattern of behaviour from BP word of an impending lawsuit  from UK pension fund alleges that it lost money because of falls in the BP share price after a pipeline leak in the Prudhoe Bay field four years ago.