News roundup

Not again... oil rig blows up in Gulf (not the same well):  
 
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_rig_explosion

The petrochemical money behind part of the anti-Obama, anti-Democrat tea party "movement":

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

You probably haven't heard of David & Charles Koch, but they control the 2nd largest private company in the US (Koch Industries), which is a major energy company as well as the people who brought you Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra. The Koch family has an oil legacy, and their rich father helped build refineries for the Soviet Union under Stalin. But after Koch's Russian business partners were caught up in Stalin's purges, Pappy Koch became strongly anti-communist, and one of the John Birch Society's founding members. The sons and current heirs to the empire modified those feelings into a rejection of centralized and federal government. They are hardcore libertarians and anti-environmentalists who are fundamentally devoted to declawing or dismantling the federal government (specifically taxation and environmental regulation), partly due to their financial interests in reducing pollution regulation, taxes, and fines for their businesses. This is quite hypocritical because the Kochs have also enjoyed millions in government energy subsidies, tax breaks, and no-bid contracts over the years, especially during the Bush years.

The Kochs founded the Cato institute, and one actually ran for vice president against Reagan/Bush from the right, but the ticket failed miserably (probably too extreme for 1980's America). Therefore the Kochs decided that direct political participation was not the best way to further their agenda, and think tanks can only spread a message so far, so now they are one of the biggest architects of the "tea party movement." One of the TP's major funding sources is Americans for Prosperity, which is run by the Kochs. So these mobs of grassroots, angry white people who don't like the feeling that their country is slipping away, and believe that their protests are acts of patriotism against socialist tyranny, are really just pawns of big business hoping to derail Obama's progressive agenda to keep their profits up, regardless of how the country and world suffer as a result. Of course the teabaggers are a very diverse group, from outright racists to mildly frustrated, law abiding conservatives, so it's not like the Kochs control them all. But their money and covert influence, with the complicit or fortuitous assistance of conservative media and somewhat justifiable public concern over the size and reach of government, is quietly advancing their ultra-libertarian agenda that most sub-billionaire Americans probably do not share.

How Obama can deal with the misinformation over his identity:

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/28/alter-how-obama-can-fight-the-lies.html

What caused the Deepwater Horizons to sink?

Earlier AP investigations have shown that the doomed rig was allowed to operate without safety documentation required by MMS regulations for the exact disaster scenario that occurred; that the cutoff valve which failed has repeatedly broken down at other wells in the years since regulators weakened testing requirements; and that regulation is so lax that some key safety aspects on rigs are decided almost entirely by the companies doing the work.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_inspections

L also informed me of a great "60 Minutes" interview with a Transocean (world's biggest offshore drilling company) Deepwater Horizons worker who was there during the explosion. That rig did the drilling, and another would handle the oil collection. Apparently the DH did already successfully drill the world's deepest well that I mentioned last week (4k feet water + 35k feet rock), and the current well was a "mere" 5k water + 13k rock. Much of the accident is due to BP's reckless, rushed, greedy timeline. In their haste to tap the huge Tiber reserve (since drilling cost BP $1M/day), they drilled too fast and destroyed their first well. That set them back 2 weeks (delaying the job from 21 to 42 days), showing that haste makes waste.

Regarding the blowout preventer (BOP), they ran a test 4 weeks before the accident. There is a giant rubber seal called the annular that closes around the drill pipe and essentially shuts off the well like the washer in your faucet. But during the test, a worker accidentally moved the drill pipe. So it rubbed on the annular while it was fully engaged (like driving with your parking brake engaged), which probably damaged it. Workers on the surface found chunks of rubber coming out of the well later. A damaged annular may skew pressure tests/measurements (and those tests are the main data for drillers to determine whether it's safe or not to let oil in the well), but the manager said it was "no big deal". Also there are 2 electrical control pods that connect the BOP to the surface (1 primary, 1 backup). They lost communication with 1 of them. A later investigation showed that the BOP was also leaking lubricant and had weak battery charge. But rig tests showed full functionality, so they went ahead as planned.

BP and Transocean managers were fighting over how fast to finish the job too. Drillers use a heavy metal-doped fluid nicknamed "mud" to fill the well and keep the pressurized oil from shooting up. But it needs to be removed before the oil can start to be pumped. Halliburton was paid to install a set of concrete plugs along the well to reduce the pressure without mud. One of the plugs wasn't finished yet, but BP ordered Transocean to remove the mud and get rolling. If the mud and third plug were in the well, it's quite possible that the blowout wouldn't have happened. Each of these mistakes may not have been critical, but the sum of the errors led to the catastrophe. Though the terrible part is that it was all human error and human decisions, not really technical failures. But no matter how infallible our tech gets in the future, how can you divorce human frailties from the offshore drilling equation? Laws can't be written to safeguard against every possible circumstance and bad judgment.

Despite all these concerns, they "stayed the course". Just as a crew was flown in to celebrate the rig's record of 7 years without accident, the explosion occurred. Flammable gases from the well probably leaked through the damaged annular and reached the rig, where it was sucked up by the rig's diesel electricity generators and blew them up. 11 people were incinerated and the rig sank soon after.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6490348n&tag=contentMain;contentAux
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6490378n&tag=contentBody;housing