Page 1 2
Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
Needs a bigger boat |
Have been recently involved in a couple of heated discussions about the Trump administration's plan to expand multiple new areas of coastal and offshore waters to drilling. (I'm in favor) The "Against" faction seems to be basing their arguments on antique arguments from the 70's, random things they read on Facebook, and the movie "Deepwater Horizon." For the record, I spent 17 years as a Mate and Master on oceanographic research ships in every ocean of the world. I have now been working in offshore O&G and subsea well installation for 5 years, with an additional 5 early on in my maritime career. It seems no one wants to have a rational discussion based on any actual facts or the expertise of someone who works in this industry as a professional specialist. I'm advising them all to go perform their own amateur brain surgery, since they probably actually are more knowledgeable about that than they are the specifics and technical details of subsea wellhead and pipeline installation. With current technology, we could install hundreds of wells within 10 miles of the coast and John Q Public would have no idea whatsoever, except there would be a funny looking ship parked (on DP) over the site of each well for a month or 2. Of course all the local liberal rags, and national Fake News outlets would equate it with planetary armageddon. MOO means NO! Be the comet! | ||
|
| I believe in the principle of Due Process  |
Somebody might make money from it. Who needs facts when you are faced with that? Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me. When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown | |||
|
| Gracie Allen is my personal savior! |
It's a little appreciated fact that all kinds of people see burning gasoline every day without having oil rigs off of their portion of the coast is some kind of status symbol. Oil rigs? That's for dirty, backward places like Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi... It's the same "I'm so special" mentality that drives Californians to insist that square miles of Nevada and Utah have to be off-limits to economic development of any kind - just so that Californians have somewhere "nice" to go ride their $6,000 mountain bikes on vacation. Screw 'em. I'm looking forward to having my picture taken on Huntington Beach with a few oil rigs in the background. Smash liberal economic imperialism! | |||
|
| Ignored facts still exist |
How do you respond to that Deepwater Horizon issue? ---------------------- Let's Go Brandon! | |||
|
| Member |
Just because Feds open up more leases, it doesn’t mean it’s economically or technically feasible. Oil companies prime driver is profit. Santa Barbara is safe to future drilling simply because SB County is dragging their feet to allow PPL to reopen the main pipeline in the area. Exxon and other platforms have been idle for about two years now. CA uses 66M gallons of fuel each day plus a few million in JetA. The oil and refined products don’t magically appear out of the Democratic-controlled state capital. NIMBY at its best. P229 | |||
|
| Member |
The entire reason oil companies are drilling that far out and that deep, is because they can't drill where the oil is close to shore in shallow water anymore that is almost risk free. That deep the risk factor goes way up that an accident may occur. I've seen plenty of these near shore rigs that were built in the 70's, they're so small that most people couldn't tell if they're a channel marker or platform from 2 miles away. They're a joke that people even refuse to want them built. | |||
|
| Needs a bigger boat |
What issue? That a blatant disregard for safety and best practices can result in a serious industrial accident? That putting profits ahead of safety is dangerous? Yes, true. If you are getting the story from a movie instead of the court transcripts and official investigation you have no idea what actually happened. My wife was right up in the thick of the investigation and I was toting scientists around the well head within 2 weeks of the blowout. Drilling for oil and gas can be and is done safely all over the world every single day. The gulf has fully recovered, I think it would have recovered even faster without the use of Corexit, but the jury is still out on that. MOO means NO! Be the comet! | |||
|
| Needs a bigger boat |
Everything can now be done subsea, so there are no surface platforms at all. All of the equipment is on the sea-floor. It is more expensive, but it is certainly technically feasible, and if it can be done profitably on areas of rich reserves to make it more politically palatable, there's no reason not to. It's a win/win at the right price point. MOO means NO! Be the comet! | |||
|
| Member |
Yes, I know. I've seen those too (well the pipes coming out of the water where they go on shore). But my point was, the near shore, inshore platforms are so frickin small, I cannot see how anyone could complain about them, they're just big enough to land a helicopter on, and from 2 miles away or further (ie land) you don't even notice them. | |||
|
| Big Stack |
And you don't think companies won't cut corners in the future?
| |||
|
| Needs a bigger boat |
MOO means NO! Be the comet! | |||
|
| Ignored facts still exist |
CaptainMike: Lighten up dude. I'm sure BBMW didn't come here looking for a slam-down. I know I didn't. Some of us just want to learn more, and expand our own knowledge about a controversial current event.
He never said that. Not even close.  ---------------------- Let's Go Brandon! | |||
|
| Member |
Great reply to what I'm sure a lot of us think is a perfectly legitimate question. You probably do wonders for the public's perception of the industry. And I'm pro-drilling. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "And it's time that particularly, some of our corporations learned, that when you get in bed with government, you're going to get more than a good night's sleep." - Ronald Reagan | |||
|
| Big Stack |
You may want to brush it off, but a number of major players played fast and loose, and created a major disaster. I'm not against offshore drilling, but another disaster like Deepwater Horizon is going to get it shut down. Probably 40% of the population would like to get rid of the oil industry to begin with.
| |||
|
| Needs a bigger boat |
I apologize for my tone with you BBMW. I spend so much of my time being attacked over my profession, that I start immediately taking the defensive. My terminally ill MIL just recently asked me how it feels to have sold my soul to the devil, and she's not even the first. I'm not going to point out to a dying woman that the plastic tubes she eats and pisses through, the SUV she rides to and from the hospital in, the technology that has allowed her to live this long are all oil based. Not to mention the money I am contributing to her care and all the plane ticket for my wife and kids to fly back and forth to visit her. (but I'm pretty sure those 737's are now powered by carbon credits and unicorn farts) I challenge anyone who is anti offshore drilling to do "A Day Without Oil." Unless you are going on an episode of Naked and Afraid, or primitive camping wearing skins and moccasins, it is impossible. IMO a main contributor to the Deepwater Horizon incident was the well completion bonus structure. That has pretty much gone away across the offshore industry. I have worked on the completion of over 40 wells for Chevron, most with Transocean, none of them blew out, even in very similar geology to macondo. It absolutely can be done safely. The corporate culture has to support safety, and the overseeing agencies need to be independent. Some people may be unaware of this, but prior to offshore drilling in the GOM, there were quite a few major offshore seeps. One in the Green Canyon area was producing over 20,000 gallons a day as late as 1996. In the early days of offshore technology, that is how they decided where to drill. They would simply punch holes where there were oil slicks. The GOM has far less oil on the beaches now than it did prior to the offshore industry, as those near surface seeps have all been drawn down. Petroleum is a part of the natural world, there are entire ecosystems which are oil/methane based, rather than photosynthetic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_seep The idea that the Deepwater Horizon disaster was going to sterilize the gulf, end all seafood production, poisoning the world's oceans for generations, etc etc, was just media hype and the worst kind of fake news. Sadly it had a major negative impact on how the general public views oil drilling, completely out of proportion to it's actual environmental impact. MOO means NO! Be the comet! | |||
|
Tinker Sailor Soldier Pie |
I'm in 100% agreement with Mike on this.
Nah, no it won't.
Then 40% of the population are either wholly ignorant on the matter or morons. ~Alan Acta Non Verba NRA Life Member (Patron) God, Family, Guns, Country Men will fight and die to protect women... because women protect everything else. ~Andrew Klavan "Once there was only dark. If you ask me, light is winning." ~Rust Cohle | |||
|
Nosce te ipsum |
There are 30,000 wells in Los Angeles County right now, many disguised. There is a difference between the drilling of 100 years ago, sans environmental reviews, and the technologies of today.  https://gizmodo.com/los-angele...-derricks-1469825345 | |||
|
| Ammoholic |
Have been going to the Faria Beach (just west of Ventura) for over 50 years. We always had turpentine and paper towels by the doors to the cabin as you *always* came back from the beach with tar on your feet. Funny thing happened after the platforms became common - the tar on the beach went WAY down. Some envirowhackos still whine about offshore drilling, but it has certainly made the beach a lot cleaner in that area. In the last few years there is starting to be a little tar again where there used to be none. I'd guess they have backed off on the pumping... | |||
|
| Gracie Allen is my personal savior! |
By spreading the risk. First, there's the location. Drilling in the Gulf seems to have historically been done on a faster and looser basis than elsewhere. Oil companies, IMHO, have more to fear from lawsuits on the Pacific coast if only because the appeals courts are a lot more activist and a lot more willing to see making profits as a suspect activity. You're also going to see different regulatory and oversight personnel involved - and none of them (companies included) want to have to go through what happened when British Petroleum screwed up in the Gulf. Second, there's also the direct impact of BP's little screw up on itself. There were times when costs and lousy publicity almost seemed capable of breaking the company, so I believe that shareholders would skin any petroleum company's Board alive if that happened. In that sense, the risk - or at least awareness of the risk and the potential consequences - has already been spread because the owners of petroleum companies have universally had the fear of A Big Leak pounded into their heads. Third, why would there be any more or less of a risk of a Deepwater Horizon happening on the Pacific coast than on any other coast? We all burn the gasoline, we should all share the risks that come with extracting the oil. Paranoid Californians may be more apt to step up to putting pressure on companies to avoid these accidents than they would be if they thought that such spills only happen to rednecks and Mexicans rather than what the lotus eaters are prepared to consider "real people". | |||
|
Member |
Balze, I must contend that those 40% also got us to have stricter gun laws in some states. Used guns deserve a home too | |||
|
| Powered by Social Strata | Page 1 2 |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
|
© SIGforum 2024