Talk:Deepwater Horizon oil spill/Archive 5

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Emphasizing barrier islands and peninsulas

Tar balls were found at the Pensacola Beach community on Santa Rosa Island, similar to barrier islands reporting tar balls in Mississippi and Alabama.

It is important to note, for tourism events in the article, how barrier islands (and peninsulas) protect many of the coastlines of major cities along the Gulf Coast. These barrier islands have northern shores that are likely to remain clean for tourism, swimming, and perhaps fishing, in waters coming from inland rivers and bays (fresh+salt), rather than from Gulf waters on the southern shorelines of those barrier islands. As each town reports oil, check WP maps city-data.com maps (such as Destin, Florida: http://www.city-data.com/city/Destin-Florida.html) to see their particular islands & peninsulas (people have not completed Wikipedia maps for Florida cities). I have amended the article to state the barrier islands affected, and included a map of Santa Rosa Island, Florida (right) to illustrate the extreme protection provided by such an immense barrier island. Note "Pensacola Beach" is NOT Pensacola's "beach" but rather, a separate community (on the island) connected by a 2-bridge link, north via Gulf Breeze, to Pensacola (on the mainland). The oil will have a very difficult time getting past the barrier islands, so that is why the emphasis. Because WP is a wikilinked encyclopedia, we can spot errors in news stories (where they think it's Pensacola's beach). Note that further down the Florida peninsula, the bay waters of Tampa Bay are protected by the thin peninsula of St. Petersburg, FL. Hence, it is a combination of barrier islands AND peninsulas (both) that protect the inner tourist areas for beach games, boating, swimming and probably fishing. It is likely that some cleanup workers, during off hours, might even swim or fish near areas they are cleaning, at this stage. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:02, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

• On 6-7 June 2010, some oil sheen was observed passing the barrier islands, and entering Mobile Bay (Alabama) & Perdido Pass (Florida), due to days of strong winds from the south, and no 6-foot barrier-booms claimed as former promises by U.S. Coast Guard officials. Because the nearby rivers empty out into the Gulf, those areas could be expected to partially push the oil back out to sea, when south winds are not as strong. Numerous tarballs and oil splotches have appeared on some outer Alabama & Florida beaches; however, mainland Mississippi (MS) beaches have not been hit, only Petit Bois Island and other MS barrier islands. Similar winds might affect Florida beaches further to the east, pushing some oil sheen partially around those barrier islands, if floating booms are not there to be anchored for closing the bays. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:06, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
• On 9 June 2010, oil-glob pools entered Perdido Pass, around floating booms at a barrier island near the Alabama/Florida state line, causing the Coast Guard to close the pass, to install a V-shaped boom (web: PNJ28). -Wikid77 (talk) 04:29, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Consequences section

What on earth happened to the Consequences section?!? It's completely out of control. 11 sub sections is far to many.--Labattblueboy (talk) 22:42, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah - there are some sub-sections that are wrongly placed in that section and should be moved to more appropriate locations. Cgingold (talk) 23:01, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. But ... Search for "new" in last 200 edit summaries shows no clues: people are apparently adding sections with edit of entire page to avoid such summary, perhaps. But what is inconsequential? This is very important; please excuse the length: I can't let this pass.

Plan ahead for split of Consequences section to Economic effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill, among other sub-articles, & related articles on other effects, social, political, by region, by state or city, etc., a la the very many branches of the Hurricane Katrina article. See that article for Aftermath section, as well as search for Wikipedia for Hurricane Katrina effects: [1]

In the meantime ... what are the fewest categories that might contain all relevant and well-sourced Consequences? Let's aim for 5, plus or minus seven

1. Ecology
2. Fisheries
3. Tourism
4. Other economic effects
5. Public Relations, reaction & opinion
6. Effect on offshore drilling policy

Public relations, Public reaction & Public opinion were well discussed above, with good input, suggested consolidation into one section, & no objections, with every single edit well commented. Move at will -- I suggest immed. after Discovery of oil spill section as one possibility -- but please do not summary edit or delete any of those sections without further discussion -- such PR efforts and their reception and measurement by polls are a vital part of this story and are highly consequential of this oil spill and, no doubt, future ones.

Many other sub-section additions to Consequences section have no such history at all of edit summaries, and absolutely no discussion. Some have only one or two sentences, and may easily be moved.

Without ditching valuable content, let's plan ahead for eventual split of Economic effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Political effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill by region, Effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Louisiana, Effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Mississippi, Effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Alabama, Efects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Florida, Social effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and others, as they become necessary. And they will.

Consequences (as of 2010-06-07):

1. Ecological effects -- obvious consequence; keep
2. Impact on fisheries -- obvious consequence; keep
3. Effect on tourism -- obvious consequence; keep
4. Sick workers -- two sentences, not widely corroborated & not needed as separate section; weave into Short term efforts section
5. Impact on BP -- Consolidate in Other economic effects section
6. Insurance -- two sentences, not widely corroborated & not needed as separate section; Consolidate in Other economic effects section
7. Other economic impacts -- holder sub-section
8. Litigation -- questionable placement. Consolidate in Other economic effects section
9. Public relations -- discussed
10. Public reaction -- discussed -- may fold into sub-section of Public relations
    1. Public opinion -- discussed -- may fold into sub-section of Public reaction
11. U.S. and Canadian offshore drilling policy --may well be summed up and linked to appropriate article, as well as doing the same with Atlantis Oil Field safety practices in following section

Paulscrawl (talk) 03:14, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

No objection to merger and consolidation of Public Relations, reaction & opinion. I think fisheries and tourism should be merged. Tourism doesn't have much of anything currently whereas the other financial economic effects (litigation, market capitalization, etc are well cited and far larger). In short tourism doesn't merit its own section at this time. So mine would be;

1. Ecology
2. Fisheries and tourism
3. Other economic effects
4. Public Relations, reaction & opinion
5. Effect on offshore drilling policy

--Labattblueboy (talk) 03:42, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Well done. Let's make it so! Paulscrawl (talk) 03:53, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I've started the merge work but I have found the litigation section a difficult one to merge into economics. I will take a run at merging Public Relations, reaction & opinion tomorrow.--Labattblueboy (talk) 04:47, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Just a reminder to capitalize "Public" but not "relations". Great work! MichaelWestbrook (talk) 05:21, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

• I just moved the Public relations & Public reaction sections out of "Consequences". In no way should these two sections be merged - they deal with very distinct issues. However, they could probably be grouped under a single umbrella if someone can think of an appropriate heading. The Litigation section also deals with a very distinct subject and should not simply be merged into Economic impacts. Cgingold (talk) 14:27, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I grouped both under a section tentatively refered to as Reactions. I suspect we should, at some point, also include the gov't reaction as well to cover all 3 bases.--Labattblueboy (talk) 05:57, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

• Excellent move, Cgingold! Also agree with the heading edit. I see no need for a single umbrella, and placement of these sections at the end of the article is appropriate. MichaelWestbrook (talk) 15:55, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

• As someone who edited the Hurricane Katrina article quite a lot, I can give some advice: don't split it into a plethora of Effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill in χ articles. After the proverbial storm of interest passes, having that many articles becomes unmanageable, and with the exception of a few, most of them will be neglected for a long time. Maybe a general effects article would be all right, but individual regions is overkill IMO. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 18:40, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for your contributions to that fine article on Hurricane Katrina. I was a bit busy at the time attempting to evacuate wife (easy) and cats (somewhat difficult) from New Orleans or I would have helped, but I relied on it daily for months. We can learn a lot from your editing experience on such a very complex, evolving disaster with manifold long-term effects. I made the analogy to this article because it is especially apt and worthy of careful consideration as we structure this article with bones to grow on and levees that won't break. I like the current structure of the main article on Hurricane Katrina, with separate sections for Impact by region and Aftermath (our Consequences), with many of their subsections linking to subsidiary detail articles. Granted, some such detail articles may not be strictly necessary (particularly, the regional ones, as you noted), but tell that to those intimately affected. Maintainability of the main article is not the only, or even the main, criterion: special interests have special considerations of notability that fall well within Wikipedia guidelines. I don't see any way to fairly control such branch articles other than to plan ahead for them, using your experience and that of the article you worked on, by structuring the main article to accommodate such easily foreseeable detail articles, so that they may be easily summarized, categorized, and linked to and from the appropriate section of the summary article. Many different constituencies (regional, as well as those with special interests and editorial contributions to make re: legislation, regulation, rig safety, ecology, fishing, tourism, media, culture, etc.) will naturally and quite legitimately come to different evaluations than the editors and self-designated maintainers of this summary article on what supporting "details," notable by a critical mass of reliable sources, are themselves article-worthy.

Let a million flowers bloom, with cultivation.

For instance, the passing of the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act is certainly a noteworthy and long-lasting legislative effect of the hurricane, not at all noted in the main article, and that is only one "relatively tiny" example in a "very big ocean" of effects such a disaster as this oil spill will likely lead to: witness the Category of the hurricane's Category 5 effects -- [[2]]. The PETS Act is not in the main article, but in the Political effects sub article, a maintenance issue, perhaps, or is it a difference of opinion as to importance to main article? Regardless, it now has its place in Wikipedia and the Category of the effects of the hurricane and inter-article links keep it findable, and as maintainable as desired. With that example in mind, let us structure this article as a holding tank for the inevitable branch articles, to be summarized in main article when the page weight of accumulated details and citations of a section make it prudent to summarize after branching off detail article. As I wrote somewhere else, this article will likely be the basis of an encyclopedia in itself: I would hate to see good and important details and citations -- not to mention dedicated editors -- lost in a premature concern for maintainability or summary style of the main article on the oil spill.

Planning article structure carefully can prevent such losses of facts, citations, and editorial contributions with no loss of maintainability. Paulscrawl (talk) 20:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Without getting into a detailed debate on the structure of the Katrina article (this is the wrong talk page for that), the main issue is that there is an exponential decline in the number of eyeballs interested in editing the articles as time goes by, and Katrina was an event with enough effects to fill a small library of pure prose. We ran straight-on into article size issues, so we had to decide to provide only a broad overview of the main themes surrounding the storm, following the existing guidelines for tropical cyclone articles (History->Impact->Aftermath->Records). As relevant as the PETS Act is, it does not rise to the same level of importance as 80% of NOLA flooding, for example.

That said, the main issue is maintaining citations; most AP wire stories expire after a given amount of time, and this article has several expired or expiring links already. We get around that using WebCite; I recommend you use it too. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 21:04, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I was not at all debating the Katrina article structure, I was making an apropos argument by way of analogy to this article's structure, and likely future course, and this page is indeed the place for that discussion. (Since you bring it up, many owners of the 600,000 pets killed or left without shelter would disagree with your assessment of the relative significance of the PETS Act; thus, such sub-articles most definitely have their place). The predictable decrease in persons interested in editing sub-articles of limited scope relative to a subject's summary article is no argument against their creation, when the perceived need presents itself. The alternative is to lose details and citations -- and dedicated editors, a far more valuable commodity.

Agreed as to citations: tools help, but so does good judgment. If experience is a guide, New York Times and Times-Picayune citations can be counted on for years; AP URLs are not at all robust. We can all be more discerning in choosing amongst the many possible sources for a given citation. Paulscrawl (talk) 21:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

"Debate" was probably the wrong word to use, true. However, we ran into the opposite problem: there were too many articles for the number of people that were updating them, and we had to deal with quite valid (and quite uncomfortable) criticism from editors who asked why we were "ignoring" them, when we simply didn't have to manpower to deal with everything at the same time. It's just something I was noting that I'd do differently if I had the chance to do it again...

Agreed as to the tools; hence the external links checker that is used at WP:FAC would be useful, as it uses the reviewers' collective experience of which links die and which links will become problematic in the future (e.g. requiring registration to view). Sometimes a citation is only available from one place, and that is where WebCite comes in. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 22:27, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Greatly appreciate the pointers to those awesome tools. Blown away by interactive editing capabilities of Webchecklinks; amazing. Looking forward to checking out WebCite soon. Actively looking for lossless two-way street between Zotero export of citations to Wikipedia refs (functional, but a bit lame at present for formatting choices) & well-formatted Wikipedia refs to Zotero. Pointers such as those are greatly appreciated. Thanks! Paulscrawl (talk) 23:50, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

We can't take Haywood as an authority

BP CEO Tony Hayward said he estimated the amount captured to be "the majority, probably the vast majority of the oil." No way: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill&action=historysubmit&diff=366736988&oldid=366733998

Get 3rd party sourcing or change that wording. He is not an authority on much of anything at the moment, is not a reliable source on anything but his or BP's opinion, and that wording standing makes it sound like they've declared it under control. They can say that, but we can't report it as anything but their 'opinion' —Preceding unsigned comment added by Merrill Stubing (talk • contribs) 06:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

All ya had to do was change the wording slightly (as I just did). Cgingold (talk) 09:35, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

This is not a fact–this is an opinion of BP's CEO and as such, it is relevant notwithstanding if it is true or not. Beagel (talk) 16:23, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

The more he says, the better the story gets. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:19, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Are all those Citation Templates to blame...

...for the unbelievably long time it takes to load the article??

This likely connection was just pointed out in an edit summary by User:SlimVirgin. I rarely use a template when I create a citation, so I hadn't given it any thought - but it does make sense. If this is in fact what is responsible for the appallingly long load time, then I think we need to give serious consideration to converting all of the templates back to standard inline citation format. Cgingold (talk) 14:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

The references section currently accounts for 277K of the generated HTML, out of a total of 459K. That's 60% and over 1K per reference. So yes there is a cost. But the other info in citation templates is valuable. Thundermaker (talk) 15:00, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree, without templates there would be chaos! Also, the article loads ok on my computer... TastyCakes (talk) 15:32, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

The citation templates only cause the article to load slowly when you are editing and saving the article. This means that for most readers, the article does not load slowly. Gary King (talk) 16:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Don't all templates get parsed at page render time? Are citation templates an exception? Paulscrawl (talk) 17:40, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Pages are cached. After submitting an edit, you essentially recreate that cache since you are redirected back to the page. Therefore, templates should only slow down the page rendering time for the person who edits the page. Gary King (talk) 17:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

• There are better ways to render a leaner, faster page: split & summarize. References are absolutely key to making lasting contributions and citation templates serve several useful functions well worth their marginal cost: 1) friendliness, 2) uniformity, 3) maintainability, and 4) re-usability of captured metadata.

1. Editors new and old, but esp. new editors, can certainly use the help of citation templates: Citation generator makes it easy. I'm not so new but I use cite news and cite web templates all the time for consistency and (usually ;) getting it right the first time. I am a recent convert to the user-friendly Wikipedia:RefToolbar 2.0, which adds these templates to my edit box for super ease of use. Inline ref style creates instant headaches for new editors and are very often re-formatted, if not deleted, by subsequent editors, a waste of time and brainpower all around. Refs are a bar of entry to Wikipedia -- let's lower the bar for humans and raise it for computers.
2. A well-formatted and complete reference has a longer lifetime, in my experience: nothing could be more discouraging to a new or less experienced editor than to see a series of their edits deleted for improper or missing reference. This is quite a common experience. Formatting inline references is indeed "chaotic" with no consensus on style possible in a multinational, multi-disciplinary world -- let citation templates and related tools' defaults and overrides help automate a tedious job that computers do best.
3. I also think the metadata, or tagged fields, preserved by use of cite templates can be very usefully extracted by other tools helpful in maintaining references -- the awesome Webchecklinks tool, for example, uses tagged fields to help identify, search, and replace broken or missing links and other reference data, which sure beats the alternative of free-form Googling -- or simply deleting both cite and referring sentence.
4. A soon-to-be announced tool to intelligently export such field-tagged Wikipedia reference metadata to the corresponding fields in Zotero's citation manager will leverage such well-formatted Wikipedia references many fold, allowing conversion to any of hundreds of standard scholarly citation formats. No such tool can possibly be designed for mapping freeform reference text to discrete fields.

Finally, I seriously doubt if replacing a few hundred citation templates with a few hundred inline citations would trim the load speed noticeably. This is an empirical question, easily tested in two sandbox articles, with a cleared cache, one with, say, 300 citation templates and one with the same realistic number of inline refs. Judicious splitting of article can do more, at far less cost to editors' contributions, reference display, maintenance, and re-use. Paulscrawl (talk) 17:40, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Ooh, first I've heard of the ref toolbar, it seems great. Thanks for pointing it out. TastyCakes (talk) 18:54, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

• There is an amazing amount of complexity in the cite templates: I checked {{cite news}} and found it spans over 800(!) lines of template coding and invokes up to 40 other templates, for just one time of using {cite news|...}. This is the problem, warned here for years, to avoid "creeping featurism" - when the complexity provided by a vast set of features becomes excessive. To streamline other templates, I have used the 80/20 Rule: find those few templates used for roughly "80%" of all usage, and optimize them. Result: the page-load becomes 5x times faster for those templates. For this article, total cites=224:
    · cite news=162 (72%), cite web=32 (14%), cite article=20 (9%), cite video=5 (2%).
  If only {cite news} & {cite web} were streamlined, then 86% of all cites would be faster, or the cite-generation would become 6x times faster. Also, I find it bizarre that {cite news} cannot be implemented as 1 template (not invoke 40 more). In fact, imagine how fast a "smart cite" template could prepend "http: //" so we could leave that out everywhere and have a cite template instantly check and insert the HTTP protocol prefix, or simply have a smart-cite template say that "htttpp:" is "close but invalid". Again, either defaulting "http:" or rejecting "htptt:" (as invalid URL) can be done in a lightning fast single template. I'm NOT saying using 40 templates to generate 1 cite is horrible, just that 1 template should be sufficient for 1 cite, most of the time, and 1 template could also check for "http:" in this article. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:02, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

For anyone able to understand the technical issues, several explanations were given at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Citation templates (technical) for why citation templates slow down load time. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 06:37, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Understood. Yet Gary King (above) is correct: this is only an issue for the small handful of this article's editors, not the vast legion of its readers. From that none too technical article: "Templates by themselves do not make loading an article slower. The templates are expanded by the servers when the page is saved, not when it is viewed." The advantages outlined above far outweigh the delays experienced by editors. Editors' note well this from Eubulides, whose work to optimize vcite templates is certainly appreciated: "Of course editing the page in sections will improve page-generation times, since you needn't wait for the whole page to be recomputed." Lesson: Edit discrete sections and use the cite templates we have today. Leave the Intro alone unless you have a very good reason to edit. Paulscrawl (talk) 10:53, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't by any means pretend to know where the truth lies on this question. But a couple of quick observations: 1) the article often takes awfully long to load even when I'm not editing it (and I have a DSL connection). 2) I *always* edit in sections, and while that does help when I hit the "preview" button, it doesn't make the slightest difference in the load time when I finally save the edit. Cgingold (talk) 14:01, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

See here then. If you log out and load the same page, you'll find that the page loads much more quickly. This means that when logged in, you have preferences set that slow down the page's loading time because you are using non-default settings for some things, which are outlined in the link I provided. Gary King (talk) 18:56, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Need more on the technology of oil spill prevention

But this article is already too long, so I started a new article Deepwater oil spill prevention to focus on just the technology. I am not an expert in well drilling, however, so I am inviting anyone with better knowledge of this technology to help write the article. The problem with most engineering articles I have seen is too much detail. What we really need is sufficient detail to answer questions about what we are seeing in the news, but not so much that the average Wikipedia reader won't understand.
--Dave (talk) 15:35, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm the "other" audience - an engineering geek. In an effort to better serve one audience, please don't cut out the other one (i.e me:-). Perhaps a better way to shorten entineering articles _and_ still serve us geeks is to put most of that over-detailed information into simple schematic drawings rather than into text. (Drawings have more than just these advantage - besides shortening articles and moving much detail out of the mainstream text, they are _much_ easier to comprehend and creating them doesn't involve buckets of head-scratching tyring to figure out how to express the details in words.) My plea: if you were going to spend an hour wordsmithing, instead spend that hour telling a computerized drawing tool where to put the lines and colors and legends - then capture it in a "universal" format (i.e. .gif). 68.163.210.245 (talk) 16:53, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Hello fellow geek, I agree completely that drawings are worth 1000 words, and I believe that we can explain blowout prevention technology with drawings simple enough that it won't take an engineer to understand. I can make a simplified drawing, but I still need the orignal available at least as a link. All I can find on the blowout preventer are BP's cartoonish drawings that don't show the important details. Help in locating a better source will be greatly appreciated. --Dave (talk) 18:53, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Check this article's archives for some copyright-free drawings you can use or adapt. US Govt. drawings also qualify. I have more specific suggestions in the articles for deletion discussion Paulscrawl (talk) 19:05, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Korn boycott BP

This might make an interesting addition to the "Public reaction" section: Heavy metal band Korn is boycotting the use of BP oil as fuel in their tour buses for all all upcoming tour dates. Korn is also headlining the 2010 Mayhem Festival and will be encouraging the other bands on the tour to join the boycott.[3][4][5] Fezmar9 (talk) 17:34, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Suggestions/Questions on stopping the leak

Is this a feasible solution? ... The "OVERSIZED NATURE" of the components of this suggestion could possibly be the secret to counter-reacting the enourmous pressures in the pipe from the gushing oil !! !! Concrete cures in water, even totally submersed in water ... here is a very brief description of "Outside Kill." Form concrete around the existing pipe sticking up from the ocean floor ... the form shall come up near where the pipe has been cut off recently (first week of June, 2010)... have a large valve with a large operation (on/off) wheel attached to a constructed "cap" ready to place. Pour concrete underwater with dump truck beds, detatched from the dump trucks and modified to be hoisted with cable down to the ocean floor ... when the concrete reaches near where the pipe has been cut off then place the cap with the valve all the way open allowing the oil to continue to flow through the valve ... when the concrete cures in several days time then close the valve with the large closing wheel with the underwater robots. Unknown factors: whether or not such a large valve already exists in a warehouse somewhere so that the valve would not have to be designed and fabricated; Let us post this suggestion now ... we will return soon to edit and improve our explaination. WhitneyMaslow (talk) 22:42, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Feasible solution to stop the BP oil gusher

there is what America is waiting of: Solution to stop oil gusher --Inventor 02:21, 4 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Inventor (talk • contribs)

If the inside of the oil pipe is not accessible there is a solution seen there: Stopping the BP oil leak

visit the article before deletion.--Inventor 18:28, 10 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Inventor (talk • contribs)

I dont know who is editing this wiki page, all i can see, is that BP is using one of my methods now and that it has been removed from the wiki, well great super fantastic, are we not allowed to write here anymore, because you editor are so all knowing???... Apparently you didnt knew all, and BP had read my Emails. Good job wiki guys, what a laugh.

Your suggestion was archived, as all sections on this page are after 2 days of inactivity. It also doesn't seem to bear much resemblance to what BP is currently doing. Regardless, you seem to misunderstand the purpose of this page. It is not to provide judgment on solutions but to describe the event, and it's certainly not for gloating about your somewhat dubious claims of having solved the problem by telling BP what to do. TastyCakes (talk) 20:52, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Is anyone asking the question: Could BP be dragging their feet on capping the well because they quickly reaslized public sentiment would prevent them from harvesting any of the oil under the gulf ever. Whereas, if they use a relief well as the only "solution" to the leak, they will have solved their problem of capping it while also giving them a new working well, maybe even 2! Amazing. Why is nobody discussing this very real possibility? BP execs can easily run the numbers of the cost of cleanup versus the potential revenue of oil produced from the relief wells. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.179.208.91 (talk) 15:34, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

BP has spent about a billion dollars so far on cleanup efforts. Their stock has lost about a third of its value, about $73 billion in lost market cap. They cannot "run the numbers" on a cleanup because nobody knows how much it will cost, although estimates are getting increasingly extreme. It is absurd to suggest they aren't doing everything they can to end the spill. TastyCakes (talk) 16:15, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I second. BP is a company - like every company, they are out there to make money. It's not evil, it's economics. Right now, every second that the oil leak is leaking is costing BP money - more money than fixing it. This is damaging enough to them economically that they care about fixing it. Deathanatos (talk) 03:49, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone here think that dialysis tubing won't be useful in any way, because if you do then you're stupid. the dialysis tubing should be capable in containing the oil and water can flow through it. me 22:31, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Ixtoc I oil spill

So has the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill surpassed the Ixtoc I oil spill yet? Abductive (reasoning) 06:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

No, but a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation using the new 30,000 barrel/day rate says that the spill is about half that size (assuming a constant spill rate in the high end of the estimate). Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 08:08, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Simple Grammar / Logic Check Needed

Part of the article reads:

"While BP does not own any gas stations in the US, it does sell gasoline to BP, ARCO and other gas stations in the US and internationally."

This needs clarification or removal, as it makes no sense. To highlight: "BP does not own any gas stations in the US ... it [sells gas] to BP ... and other gas stations in the US." BP owns no US gas stations, yet it's selling to US BP gas stations? Deathanatos (talk) 03:44, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I believe the explanation for this poorly-phrased puzzling paradox is that all of the BP stations in the US (there's one in my town) are franchises -- i.e., they're owned by individual businesspeople rather than by BP itself, a common arrangement in the US if not elsewhere in the world. Cgingold (talk) 12:01, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Wdiermen, 11 June 2010

Simultaneous live video feed of all underwater robots (ROVs) used to repair the leaking well.

Wdiermen (talk) 09:27, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

 Done MichaelWestbrook (talk) 10:22, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Agenda21z, 11 June 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} Please add this within the public relations part of the page.

Michael Scully at Agenda 21 Digital has been talking to BP about the possibility of working with effected communities to encourage both holiday makers and business travellers to visit them. Because there are still facilities that can be used within these communities and its important to communicate that message. Agenda 21 Digital has worked with a number of major tourist and business destinations to successfully promote awareness and increase visitor numbers. Agenda 21 Digital says it is keen to help BP and the local communities effected by the disaster.

Agenda21z (talk) 09:57, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

? ! -- 220.101 (talk) ^\Contribs 10:42, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. SpigotMap 11:58, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Removed Merrill Stubing's addition of Category:Domestic terrorists in the United States to Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Labeled a "minor" edit : "(Adding category Category:Domestic terrorists in the United States (using HotCat))"

Looks like a chronic problem: User_talk:Merrill_Stubing. Paulscrawl (talk) 17:44, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Relocate entire section "Atlantis Oil Field safety practices" to existing article on that oil field

All cited dates precede date of Deepwater Horizon explosion and we already have a perfectly good article by the name of Atlantis Oil Field. Entirely tangential to this article on oil spill: relocate and put link in See also, perhaps. Paulscrawl (talk) 18:23, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Support. This information may be good for background; however, it suits better in the Atlantis Oil Field. Beagel (talk) 18:29, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Support. The information is important but I think it's more appropriate for the Atlantis Oil Field article than this one. I think you can go ahead on this one--Labattblueboy (talk) 20:01, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

 Done Linked to most relevant article re: "Atlantis oil field safety practices" -- Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion (not oil spill). -- Paulscrawl (talk) 22:22, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Units

Could we replace liters with cubic meters? Beagel (talk) 18:26, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

upgraded spill volume

Did the new official values from govmt get added in? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rick "I shoot dead people" Grimes (talk • contribs) 19:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

"Minor" edits are supposed to be just that: not worthy of discussion or review

Applies to us all: Please check your default preferences and always check your edit summaries before posting: it is a matter of trustworthiness to label as "minor" only such things as:

"typographical corrections, formatting and presentational changes, rearrangement of text without modification of content, etc. A minor edit is one that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. An edit of this kind is marked in its page's revision history with a lower case, bolded "m" character (m).

"By contrast, a major edit is one that should be reviewed for its acceptability to all concerned editors. ...The distinction between major and minor edits is significant because editors may choose to ignore minor edits when reviewing recent changes; logged-in users might even set their preferences to not display them. If there is any chance that another editor might dispute a change, it is best not to mark the edit as minor." WP:MINOR Now we have to look at every edit. What a waste of time. Paulscrawl (talk) 00:43, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

So sorry! I got so excited that there was a place to combine the reactions together, I took it as a green light.:) Let me know wat you think so far. Thank you! :) USchick (talk) 01:34, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Understood. "Reactions" is nicely generic, and could certainly use organization. I like new International Govt. section, but think White House too specific, as Congress involved, too. Started section below, as I expect we all have ideas on this. Paulscrawl (talk) 01:40, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Context (and Background) ???

Despite the great deal of information here, I couldn't find answers (either in text or in schematic drawings) to my specific seemingly simple questions:

How does this water depth compare with other wells? -- I'm looking for something like a histogram graph of wells by water depth (The graph could be "Gulf" wells or "US" wells or "worldwide" wells or ... Hopefully counts would distinguish abandoned, exploratory, and producing wells. If data is sufficient, comparable graphs at different times would be nice.)

What's this bore hole casing like? -- How deep does the casing pipe of this well go? - How many layers does the casing pipe of this well have? - How are segments of casing pipe of this well joined? - How are such long casings inserted? - How strong is the casing compared to various possible events (gas explosion, abrupt clamp-off, "top kill", etc., etc.)? - What events would exceed the capacity of the existing cement and so loosen the casing?

What kinds of material does the well pass through? -- I'm looking for a pictorial or graphic of what' at each depth: mud, unconsolidated, impermeable rock, porous, salt, etc.

What's the target oil formation like? -- When was it first discovered? - When was it first mapped in detail? - What is the estimated area for wells that would tap into it? - How many different oil companies could tap this formation? - What is the total estimated hydrocarbon content of the formation? - What is the estimated content of oil vs. gas? - When did the first exploratory well tap this formation? - When did the first producing well tap it?

68.163.203.189 (talk) 20:35, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Good technical questions, though not necessarily simple to answer from reliable secondary sources. Some questions are perhaps answerable today, with a little digging, and some, no doubt, may be answered only in investigations, as some answers to these questions may well be considered proprietary trade secrets at present. However, this article is about the oil spill itself. Try checking the articles covering the drilling operations of the rig Deepwater Horizon and the oil field Macondo Prospect for pointers and references that might help you answer such questions today. Feel free to register and contribute your findings to the appropriate articles Paulscrawl (talk) 21:19, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Same anonymous reader again: Unfortunately neither the Deepwater Horizon nor Macondo Prospect (nor Casing (Borehole)) articles were enlightening. I expected a histogram of oil well depths could be constructed immediately from public MMS data, and will be very disappointed if this is not true. My generic (not proprietary) questions about oil well casing technology are unfortunately not addressed at all by the article on Casing (Borehole), which seems to say the only common casing technology is each segment smaller in diameter than the one before it, which clearly can't be true for deep wells like this. (Also, that article doesn't contain even one schematic drawing.) While I understand that very accurate and detailed information (ex: exact depths where unconsolidated material was found) may be proprietary, even just a bit of generic information (ex: approximately the last X-thousand feet are through a "salt dome") would be very helpful, and I don't believe information at that level is proprietary. (Or does Wikipedia have an informal policy of not saying anything at all unless the _exact_ facts can be provided?) Yes, my main questions about the Macondo Prospect field (whether or not it's exclusive to BP and whether or not any part of it is already "producing") would be better addressed in the Macondo Prospect article ...but they're not! 68.163.203.189 (talk) 05:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Too technical by FAR for this, or any readily conceivable Wikipedia article -- unless you are willing to write one, of course -- but try digesting this, a Dept. of Energy published BP doc of 2010-06-10, "Well Configuration (.pdf)- showing the depths and sizes of the different casings installed during the well's construction" at http://www.energy.gov/open/documents/3.1_Item_2_Macondo_Well_07_Jun_1900.pdf

SOURCE: http://www.energy.gov/open/oilspilldata.htm Paulscrawl (talk) 21:32, 11 June 2010 (UTC) this diagram from the energy dept. is showing the well's completion plan by BP, starting with the very large diameter casing at the mud-line of 36" x 2" thick, graduating smaller and smaller as you go down the hole. MD=measured depth, TOC=top of casing and note the temp. F. increasing as the hole gets deeper. Note also the productive hydrocarbon zones further up the hole, notably the 8067' depth, where gas is encountered. btw-the $64 billion question everyone has is 'what pressures can the casing withstand' and for how long. 67.142.130.18 (talk) 06:35, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

New estimate of the spill

This must jibe with the first portion of the page (which is not part of talk page and can't be edited) which erroneously still gives the first low-ball numbers as current flow instead of these corrected numbers - —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.130.18 (talk) 06:48, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

New estimate suggests that, if the flow has been more or less consistent since the April 20 blowout, approximately 53.6 million to 64.3 million gallons of oil have emerged from the well. That is roughly five to six times the amount spilled in Alaskan waters in 1989 by the Exxon Valdez.

The new figures, obtained Thursday by The Washington Post and soon to be officially announced by the U.S. Geological Survey, indicate that early estimates of the flow rate by the federal government and oil giant BP were not even close to the mark.

This converts to 1,276,190.4762 barrels [US, petroleum], or 24,542 barrels a day, making Oceanographer Ian MacDonald and other sources using satellite imagery the closest estimate so far.120.16.146.78 (talk) 23:26, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Spill flow section is getting too hard to navigate, or I'd update it, but "according to Marcia McNutt, the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey and Chair of the Flow Rate Technical Group, ... 25,000 to 30,000 barrels a day ... the new official estimate."

New Estimates Double Rate of Oil That Flowed Into Gulf http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/us/11spill.html Paulscrawl (talk) 23:49, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

This shows an estimate too. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100611/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_1207 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.107.0.73 (talk) 13:48, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

As usual, it's saddening to see our government and corporate interests so cozy with each other. When the FRTG was formed, right on the web page they stated that the idea was to find the lower estimate of the flow. Then the USGS released the figures and called them the higher and lower ends of their findings, to which some members of the FRTG disagreed publically. Now on this recent release from their (Deepwater) site, they admit that they were asking the FRTG to find only the low estimate:

The Plume Modeling Team of the FRTG is pursuing the approach of observing video of the oil/gas mixture escaping from the damaged well, using particle image velocimetry analysis to estimate fluid velocity and flow volume. On May 27, the Plume Modeling Team, which analyzed video obtained from BP, provided an initial lower bound estimate of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels (now that 25,000 is according to the government site, but I note that our article says 19,000, so I assume that that is what was released in the USGS press release) of oil per day, but at that point were continuing their work to provide an upper bound estimate. http://ht.ly/1WVNn Gandydancer (talk) 15:04, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

This section is very hard to read and navigate. In the light of the latest figures by FRTG, by my understanding there is no need to list all previous estimates, particularly taking account the range of minimum and maximum estimates. For the estimates timeline, the timeline article suits better. I propose the following shorter version of this section. Please feel free re-add any piece of information you think should be remain in this section.

Beagel (talk) 18:20, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

BP is gonna get raped. Seriously. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.228.183.168 (talk) 16:41, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Why did you leave all this out?

The Flow Rate Technical Group put the volume of oil flowing from the blown-out well at 12,000 to 19,000 barrels (500,000 to 800,000 US gallons; 1,900,000 to 3,000,000 litres) per day,[58] and the government increased its official estimate to that range on May 27, 2010.[59][60][61] While the United States Geological Survey put forth that range as the best estimate for the lower and upper boundaries of flow rate, other scientists involved in drafting the figure viewed it as an estimated minimum.[62] According to Ira Leifer, a member of the Flow Rate Technical Group, the group was only provided an approximately seven minute time segment of low-quality video selected by BP, which showed a lot of variability from very low to very high flows. Gandydancer (talk) 22:59, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

My reasoning leaving this out was the fact that the current estimates (which are probably more precise) oversize the previous estimates of FRTG. As a timeline, it should be added to Timeline of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, of course. However, if you think that this selection should be re-added, I have nothing against it. My only intentions is to trim this section and make it more readable and better to navigate without loosing any important information. Beagel (talk) 09:13, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I feel that the present section is fairly easy to follow. A lot of numbers and names, but that is what this section is about, so not unreasonable. Also, something that does irritate me is the thought that an article needs to be dumbed down to the lazy wikipedia reader's level.

On the other hand, I can understand your feeling that some trimming would be in order. A while back, after the video was released, I deleted the pre-video names and exact numbers and left only the range and the references, thinking that they were now unnecessary. I was immediately reverted and told to quit doing such drastic surgery! As time has passed, I tend to agree with that editor. The progression of flow rates has almost become a story within a story. The numbers continue to be mentioned almost daily in the media, for instance listening to the Today show this morning they were all mentioned. They are still evolving, and I feel that the section should document the history of the evolvement. Gandydancer (talk) 13:33, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if a table might be helpful here, organized chronologically. It would certainly help me make comparative sense of all these flow rate estimates, which are indeed a story within the story. |Date |Source | |High: (US/Metric) |Low: (US/metric)| -- Paulscrawl (talk) 17:06, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Paul, I certainly do trust your judgement, however in this case I sincerely hope that the figures do not turn into a chart. IMO it is too early for that. Are you finding the flow rate section hard to read? I don't find it hard at all, but perhaps that is because of late I have mainly concentrated on just this one section and know it so well. Gandydancer (talk) 20:07, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

It has improved, but I was the one who said above it was so hard to read and navigate I couldn't place and add an updated ref with confidence. What helps me read it straight through at one shot for the first time in few days is a sense of progression -- from small to large, which works well up to interruption in 2nd sent. of 2nd para. (with uncited flag), when that mental model of small->large is broken. Then it seems to switch to chronological progression, with back and forth in time, to no great purpose. Focusing this second part on actors would better help readers model inter-personal controversy, something we all do as well as comparing small to large. Working those reader-friendly mental models in separate paragraphs (1. gallons/barrels/whatever to deal with ever-increasing progression up to a point, concluding with semi-official current estimate; 2. actors, i.e., different flow rate estimators, to summarize sources of their disagreements) would help obviate perceived need for table. Hope that helps you see it as I did on once-through cold read. Paulscrawl (talk) 21:57, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Reactions -- ideas for organization welcomed

Current changes were not discussed. Let's discuss them now. Sections & sub-sections, when critical mass of reliable sources dictate, should be collectively exhaustive & mutually exclusive to avoid redundancy & as place holders for on point references, without being as excessive as Consequences grew to be.

• U S Government
• International Govt.
• BP PR
• Media
• Public
  • Public opinion

Just as a basis for discussion. Paulscrawl (talk) 01:28, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

A major event will have major consequences. Is there a way to collapse portions? I imagine in time, these can be summarized, but as a current event, this article is important, especially since very little information is forthcoming. I like your breakdown. Please review my edits and comment. Thank you. USchick (talk) 01:43, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I have reviewed your edits and I find them arrogant and inconsiderate. The article now reads like a mishmash of stuff rather than the good article it was. Perhaps there were some good ideas in the edits, but you did so much, and all without consulting the other editors, that it makes it very difficult to even know where to start to review the changes. If I was the boss of this article I would want to see all your edits reversed and ask that you ask for feedback before making such excessive changes. Many good editors have worked very hard on this article, a little at a time and sensitive to feedback. That one new editor thinks that they can move in and make so many changes is very irritating. Grrr Gandydancer (talk) 02:07, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

See USchick's talk page -- I think she gets it now. Reactions section did need work and a few sub-sections may be renamed or moved again with no loss of content: it was almost all just moving things around. No major harm done. We needed an International Govt. section. Let's work on it now. I restored Investigations to its proper place. Paulscrawl (talk) 02:13, 12 June 2010 (UTC).

Thank you for your comments. For the most part, I took what was already there and simply moved it to the reactions section. Hopefully this incident will not drag on and on, but if it does, the reaction section will likely become its own page. By the way, when we willingly choose to work in an environment where there is no "boss," on a current event that changes rapidly, change is to be expected. If this is too fast paced for you, you may want to consider editing a topic that doesn't change rapidly, like ancient history. :) I WILL be more considerate in the future. Peace! :-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by USchick (talk • contribs) 03:10, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, just lost my post in an edit conflict. I did say I was sorry if I had over reacted. Of course, after reading your post, I'm not much in the mood to say it again. Gandydancer (talk) 03:18, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry as well. :-) I can appreciate that you have worked very hard and then someone comes in and changes everything. Thank you! USchick (talk) 03:25, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

• Reactions section is messy. I am cleaning it up now with sufficient edit summaries. MichaelWestbrook (talk) 06:17, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I cleaned up a lot, especially paying attention to these key issues in my edits: reliable sources, redundancy, and conciseness. Now I need sleep. MichaelWestbrook (talk) 11:59, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

 Done (for now -- this should get us through weekend ;) Reactions:

• U.S. government
• International governments
• BP public relations
• Media reaction
• Public reaction
  • Public opinion

Paulscrawl (talk) 17:59, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 83.79.58.146, 12 June 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} I think this blog http://oilspillfigures.wordpress.com might be an interesting addition to the Blog section. It provides updated calculations of the percentage of the waters of Gulf of Mexico replaced by oil for given dates.

Ant

83.79.58.146 (talk) 08:30, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Not done: Unnotable blog to further load down the external links section. Can you provide notability for the writer? SpigotMap 14:04, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't he realize that oil floats? The relevant question is how much of the surface is (or will be) covered. Thundermaker (talk) 16:19, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

BP sets up a new unit

I will restore the following paragraph deleted from the other economic consequences section:

BP has announced that it is setting up a new unit to oversee management of the oil spill and its aftermath, which will be headed by former TNK-BP chief executive Robert Dudley.

This information is highly relevant and the establishment of this new unit is a direct consequence of the oil spill. Not only oil spill response activities, but also all legal claims would be moved into this unit to keep rest of BP operations uninvolved. If you find a better place to include this information, please feel free to move it, but please do not remove it without discussion. Beagel (talk) 11:13, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

International reaction

I'm restoring this section. This is an ongoing development. There are two independent sources in English that confirm it. [6], [7] Here's one in Dutch [8] It was discussed on FOX News [9] —Preceding unsigned comment added by USchick (talk • contribs) 15:13, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Here is a plea from Florida’s Attorney General for the Jones Act to be waived [10] Thank you. USchick (talk) 15:05, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

This is a good opportunity for you to contribute collaboratively. Agreed as to need for what I would call International governments sub-section, to mirror U.S. government (not just "White House") sub-sections of Reactions section. Sub-sections need not repeat the word "reactions". ("Public reaction" section is global by default; we need no divide it US/International).

The Foreign Policy source is reliable, but does not mention the Jones Act, reporting only the bare facts; the Business Insider blog seems too far editorial, imputing motive. In any case, as the Florida story makes clear, the Jones Act is automatically waived in emergencies, so not truly relevant. No reliable source says "the U.S. government refused the offer because it would violate the Jones Act." That clause is pure speculation and will be deleted.

Another international story you might try your hand at summarizing and citing (an International governments subsection with only one sentence and story has no reason for existing):

"Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called on the world's leading economic powers on Saturday to consider creating a fund to insure against large-scale environmental disasters like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill." & "Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin on Saturday said Russia would introduce stricter safety requirements for oil producers as a result of the Gulf spill" -- http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6541R720100605 Paulscrawl (talk) 15:48, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Paulscrawl (talk) 15:48, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I didn't see anything about the Jones Act being automatically waived. The Dutch source mentions the Jones Act specifically.

Thank you for the Russian article. Once I have a summary, would you like me to post it here for discussion? USchick (talk) 16:08, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for working with me. I'm sure you can concisely summarize and cite the Russian article directly without discussion here: it is pretty matter of fact.

"Automatic" waiver of Jones Act in emergencies may be my projection. But on the Jones Act's relevancy to the US refusal of foreign help, that appears to be a projection from non-US commercial interests, based on Business Insider's highly editorial commentary on Dutch source. Recommend replacing that with 1. the reliable Foreign Policy source, for naming the specific countries in the first sentence and the US refusal, period, and 2. the Florida Attorney General source, for an English-language RS bringing up the Jones Act. Paulscrawl (talk) 16:35, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, thank you. USchick (talk) 17:31, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

The article mentions under International Reactions that the United Nations and TWELVE countries have offered help, yet then goes on to list THIRTEEN separate countries. Either the first figure should read 13, or there is one country too many in the subsequent list. 92.5.126.29 (talk) 17:02, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Good catch. UN is thirteenth. Foreign Policy source makes that clear. Paulscrawl (talk) 17:10, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

corrected: 13 countries plus UN. Changed reason for refusal to official one cited in Foreign Policy: State Department email to reporters stating, "there is no need right now that the U.S. cannot meet." . Paulscrawl (talk) 17:28, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

This is a different topic, but probably also the British reactions should be added, particularly the statement by Cameron that "it is in everyone's interests that BP continues to be a financially strong and stable company." in response to Obama.[11] Beagel (talk) 17:16, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, that belongs in there, too. Paulscrawl (talk) 17:28, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Russian reaction

I recognize that other people may see this event in a different light, so I'm posting it here for discussion. Have at it! :-)

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for the creation of a new legal framework of international law to deal with such large-scale disasters. He is expected to raise the issue at a G20 summit in Toronto, Canada on June 25 and 26. The Russian Federation is the world's leading oil producer and a stakeholder in the Moscow-based joint venture TNK-BP, which produces 25 percent of the British energy giant's global output.

Russian partners in TNK-BP are private companies (oligarchs), not the Russian federal government. Beagel (talk) 18:04, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for the creation of a new legal framework of international law to deal with such large-scale disasters. He is expected to raise the issue at a G20 summit in Toronto, Canada on June 25 and 26. The Russian Federation is the world's leading oil producer and home to Moscow-based joint venture TNK-BP, which produces 25 percent of the British energy giant's global output. USchick (talk) 00:49, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I am very impressed with our team of dedicated editors...

Wow. Just... wow. What I see transpired here in the past few hours while I was sleeping makes me proud to associate with all of you. The "Reactions" section is totally awesome now! Thankyou kindly for making my first Wikipedia editing experience such a joy. I never anticipated the editing atmosphere would be this democratic. Kudos to all of you... I am hooked! :D MichaelWestbrook (talk) 19:14, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

That's right Michael, and we should all just get down on our knees and thank whoever it is that has given us this marvelous brain (the internet) that we all have where we can share information with each other. I am old enough to remember the Three Mile Island melt down, and since it was invisible it was completely hidden from public view. And it always will be. Search for information and you will find nothing at all other than our government's version of it. And it should be obvious to all that even today, perhaps even more so today, that corporate interests and governmental interests are one and the same. Viva Wikipedia! (Gandy gets off her soapbox) Gandydancer (talk) 20:38, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. We should all get down on our knees and thank Mr. Al Gore. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.102.132.196 (talk) 21:04, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Please check sources, they must be reliable...

Back on the Chain Gang, please read and discuss before further reverting the latest revert of your edit... You added:

U.S. government prevents other parties from helping in cleanup

"The governments of Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, and the United Nations all offered to help clean up the oil, but the U.S. government turned down all of their offers of help because it would have violated the Jones Act."

Your source for this is: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-real-reason-america-refused-international-help-on-the-oil-spill-2010-6#ixzz0qOvqHe6K

This is not a reliable source. I didn't just revert without doing substantial research. I welcome edits with good faith, but I will not allow this article to turn into a collection of editorial blog soundbites. The author of your source is Dian L. Chu. Here is her blog profile: http://www.blogger.com/profile/05115822159646453406 Now, read her blog. She wrote the exact same speculative opinion there, where she headlines "Here, you will find my conclusions on the economy, commodities, stock markets, as well as appropriate sector investing and trading strategies.": http://dianchu.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-did-us-refuse-international-help-on.html Putting it politely, your source is an editorial (in this case a blog). Nothing wrong with a blog, but please consider proper placement, which is not in the body of the article, where you placed it. Let's not turn this into an edit war. My revert was warranted and appropriate. If you can find a reliable source that quotes the government as factually using the Jones Act for any reason regarding the oil spill, I welcome it. But I researched myself, and so far, no reliable source exists to that end. If you can find one, then I stand corrected.

Now, your last sentence I reverted:

"Actor Kevin Costner demonstrated his own technology that could be used to clean up the oil http://www.wdsu.com/news/23550079/detail.html, but the U.S. government would not allow that either, because the technology could only clean up 99.9% of the oil instead of 100%."

Your first source here is reliable in the sense that it is simply a news story covering the fact that Kevin Costner demonstrated his own technology to clean an oil spill. But where are you going with that? To another blog: http://www.floppingaces.net/2010/06/11/bureaucracy-epa-napolitano-stop-us-from-keeping-up-with-the-joneses-on-oil-spill-clean-up/ ... and your last source http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/file/Commdocs/hearings/2010/Energy/9jun/Costner_Testimony.pdf is just the transcript of Kevin Costner's testimony before a House Subcommittee.

Here is the profile of the author of your source (her blog) concluding that "the U.S. government would not allow that (Kevin Costner's solution) either, because the technology could only clean up 99.9% of the oil instead of 100%." :

MATAHARLEY

Vietnam era Navy wife who continued the military/gypsy lifestyle long after the former hubby’s deployment ended. By 1980, and after extensive travel of all the beautiful US, she planted not-too-deep roots in LALA land, working as a sound editor in the film sound business for 17 years. In the late 80s, she bought a Harley – a move that started her on the path to political awareness. There’s nothing like being “profiled” for your ride to kick up a body’s involvement, eh? The glitter and glamour of LA tarnished with time, exposure to the denizens, and her own age. So Mata moved north to Oregon just before the Millennium. Now hiding out in Oregon’s greenery – cleverly undercover as a speck of red in a sea’o’blue – she’s political research junkie, a skeptic of just about everything (thus the research junkie status…) and a fierce Independent who ended up registering GOP to have some say in ANY primary. Mata started blogging in early 21st century when friend and activist, Alia Darrow invited her to be a co-contributor to Alia’s Vibes. They’ve since moved on to their newer site, called Sea2Sea. Per MataHarley’s account, “I never cared if anyone read my blog rants. I use it to vent my frustrations… these dissertations give my emotions a much needed release. Because, ya know, life’s just too short to be consumed with anger.” She’s moved on from the original, local motorcycle issues that started her on this path. Now she keeps a weather eye on the international and national horizons – most especially the Middle East and the global Islamic jihad movement. Like everyone else, 911 redirected her focus.

In conclusion, these are not reliable sources. I now realize that stating your edit is "satire" was inappropriate. I apologize. So I am clarifying now: Your sources are not reliable sources. Again, nothing against blogs, but they have their place, and that is not in the body of the article where you placed them. If you want to include Kevin Costner's solution somewhere, please do so appropriately. But then you would have to consider possibly hundreds of other solutions posed since April 2010 as well, maybe thousands as this event continues. We must try to maintain as concise an article on the subject as possible. I welcome your thoughts as well as those of any editor regarding this matter. Thankyou kindly. MichaelWestbrook (talk) 22:41, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Proposed ways to cleanup - a new section is needed

There in the article should be a section about proposed ways to cleanup the oil-contaminated water, including actor Kevin Costner's suggestion about using his oil separators [12], and other such decisions (and, it's interesting that some of them are claimed to be more effective - see, for example, Oil Skimmers, Voraxial® Separators etc.). Krasss (talk) 23:06, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Cause

The cause of the explosion has not been identified and needs to be removed from the info box. USchick (talk) 00:44, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Independent monitoring

According to CNN, the oil washing up on beaches near in and around the Gulf is not just from the Deepwater Horizon spill. So far the Coast Guard doesn't know exactly where the oil in Florida came from, but Gronlund said foul play is a possibility. [13] USchick (talk) 01:39, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Sources might be getting lost

I restored this revision, because it seems a source is still required in Deepwater Horizon oil spill#Spill flow rate for the following:

In a permit submitted May 13, 2010, BP estimated a worst case spill of 240,000 barrels (10,000,000 US gallons; 38,000,000 litres) per day for each of the two relief wells that are being drilled in an attempt to stop the uncontrolled release.

I also looked for where supporting inline citations may have been removed from the article, only very quickly, and I did find http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/regulate/environ/nepa/grid16ea.pdf which is dated December 2002 and 175 pages long. That source was in the article in the May 23 revision but is not in the current revision. It might be useful for sourcing. If any editor can give more details of what other sources have been removed, please give details here at the Talk page. -84user (talk) 01:51, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Update I am still reading through the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT MEMORANDUM dated March 10, 2009 (which is in the article) and page 28 (Initial Exploration Plan Page 7-1) has Section 7.0 Oil Spills Information with paragraph 7.1. following 7.1.3. That paragraph starts:

Worst-Case Scenario Determination - A comparison of the appropriate worst-case scenario from BP's approved regional OSRP with the worst-case scenario from the proposed activities in this Exploration Plan is provided in the table below.

I'll skip the last sentence and show selected rows from the table here:

Category	Regional OSRP (Exploration)	EP
Facility Location	MC 727	MC 252
Volume Uncontrolled Blowout (per day)	300,000	162,000

The document then mentions "its regional OSRP approved on November 14, 2008". Unfortunately text search did not work for me in the PDF so I needed to manually read it to find anything. -84user (talk) 02:33, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Media blackout

I'm beginning to understand why all of a sudden editors appear out of nowhere, with no previous history on Wikipedia, with a renewed interest in this topic. :-) I'm posting this for discussion and clearance. USchick (talk) 20:29, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

In April, Obama authorized SWAT teams to investigate 29 oil rigs in the Gulf and said his administration is working to determine the cause of the disaster.[14]

On May 11, Department of the Interior released a press release announcing that the inspection of deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico found no major violations.[15]

On June 9, the FAA issued a no fly zone over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and affected area until further notice. [16]

According to the New York Times, the Department of Homeland Security is limiting access to the area for major media outlets including ABC News and CNN. [17]

According to the European Union Times, the United States has ordered a complete media blackout over North Korea’s torpedoing of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform owned by the World’s largest offshore drilling contractor Transocean that was built and financed by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd.[18]

re: This link: [19] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.32.182.180 (talk) 19:49, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Your first source -- CBS News -- only mentions SWAT, but not the number of rigs. EUTimes seems to exist only to get different nations and races to hate each other more than they already do. If you want to start a new section titled "crackpot theories," then go for it, otherwise I'll be helping to remove your unreliably sourced agenda from the article. - JeffJonez (talk) 13:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

The EUT is an unreliable source and most likely a hoax. USchick (talk) 13:58, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

There are 5 footnotes given for the statement that a North Korean torpedo attack caused the Deepwater Horizon blowout. Only two of those references actually mention a torpedo attack, and one of them is a summary of speculation based on the other. The cited truthout article actually ridicules the conspiracy theories rather than supporting them, stating that "the impetus for the tale is so vague and thinly rendered that it strains the limits of credulity". The one source reference (EUTimes) is also just speculation. This is extremely misleading. Aa74233 (talk) 14:03, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Preliminary BP source

The details BP presented are slanted in technical ways. This primary source may be useful for article development comparison and checking on chronology and well hardware.--Stageivsupporter (talk) 06:05, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Reference: Insurance Market Impacts Study

The Deepwater Horizon Disaster: Insurance Market Impacts StudyGeo8rge (talk) 22:08, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Censorship

I don't mean to be a pest, but is anyone else concerned that there is a combined effort to limit public access to information? Why are BP contractors answering the phones at the US Coast Guard? Why are citizens turned away from public beaches? Why is the media denied access? If you insist on removing this information from each place, it needs to be addressed in a new section that deals with information blackout. USchick (talk) 17:56, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Summary style is a bitch, something I'll venture to say we've all learned the hard way from more experienced editors. This is a big article with lots of juicy details. However, the first source in Media reactions section covers censorship well and those two retained paragraph sum it up nicely. Future roundup articles may someday soon replace these sources to document catalog of attempted & successful censorships. Keep your eyes peeled for those. Paulscrawl (talk) 18:06, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

: There are confirmed CNN sources about a media blackout and the FAA has issued a no fly zone. I'm posting this while the rest is under discussion. USchick (talk) 01:53, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I may have experienced some censorship myself. I posted a question to eng-tips.com, an engineering forum I have been a member of for years. I got a reply, but before I could get to the website, my question and the reply were deleted, and my account blocked. Repeated attempts to contact the editor have been ignored. My account is still blocked. I don't believe BP is behind this, because it would be a PR disaster if some memo directing it were leaked. Rather I think that some member of the forum who has connections with BP, or perhaps one of the companies responsible for the equipment that was the subject of my question, took it on himself to do the censorship. It just seems to be a knee-jerk reaction, not a well-planned strategy. It might have worked, had they been able to stop the leak in a few weeks. Now, their censorship efforts have backfired, and BP is looking worse than if they had just let the discussion go where it may. --Dave (talk) 17:05, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Censorship is kind of uncool. We seem to learn more on Obamas asskicking retorics, but less on his leniency as to not share the blame on others. He has also blamed the traditional ties that are between the oilcompanies, and these Gov't bureaus that are meant to controll them. No one cares to mention that Obama has been in office since 2009, so these are not his 100 first days. No real change has happened in Obama's energy policy

For whatever reason, it is not newsworthy that the rig was registered in the Marshall Islands. Why are they to be blameless? Is that funded in the Law of the Sea, or is it just that no one has noticed?(82.134.28.194 (talk) 09:25, 15 June 2010 (UTC))

Ecology

Hi, I'm definitely not an expert here, but ocean life is a tremendously important thing, and just subjectively, if you look at bays like in New Jersey where small amounts of oil have leaked, those marshes look dead. As someone who grew up by the sea, with such rich diversity of life and changes (small plankton that would sparkle like stars, clams that would spurt out when you walked nearby etc etc), I just can't believe that the only concern here is 'higher up the food chain.' How bad is it going to be, I would like to know? I don't care about crops and food chains, is the whole actual Gulf Coast and a huge section of the Atlantic Ocean going to be badly polluted now? Is it going to be like those huge stretches of the American Coast where there is now nothing living? Where are the credible, balanced experts here that can weigh in on this and answer my questions? Createangelos (talk) 16:46, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

"Is the whole actual Gulf Coast and a huge section of the Atlantic Ocean going to be badly polluted now?" Yes. :-(

Intellectuals solve problems. Geniuses prevent them. – Albert Einstein USchick (talk) 15:30, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

 Done added interview with coordinator of 140-scientist, 15-nation, all-species inventory of Gulf of Mexico completed last year. Good insights on entire food chain at all depths in area of spill; he discusses effects of Loop Current, hurricanes, & comparison to Exxon Valdez long-lasting effects; also linked to summary of primary source, with great map of species in vicinity and link to affected species database. That's the state of the science today: all else is speculation, as interviewed expert freely acknowledges. Paulscrawl (talk) 18:43, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi,

Thanks for that. Somehow I sense that the problems will be more extensive than can be conveyed by counting species, just from my anecdotal experiences, for instance a Maine beach where there were huge mussels on all the rocks, and any tidal pool had so many little creatures in it, when I was a kid. Now the mussels are the size of a fingernail and tidal pools seem emtpy of life. This is over 40 or 50 years, far away from any oil spills.....yes I guess counting species is a way of expressing it. Anyway thanks. Createangelos (talk) 12:20, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

US dumping ground of unexploded explosives

2007 Minerals Management Service indicates a growing concern about Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) located in close proximity to deepwater exploration and development sites within the Gulf of Mexico [20] U.S. military dumped chemical warfare agents in U.S. coastal waters prior to 1970. [21] US Nautical chart explosives in the Gulf [22] Location of explosion [23] USchick (talk) 14:13, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I appologize if I sound rude, I'm just wondering what the relevance is? Jcarle (talk) 05:18, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Pension holdings

BP is a popular stock with pension plans so perhaps that aspect should be recognized in any ownership section.

• US and UN: [24]
• BP is obviously owned by many British and other pensions. Geo8rge (talk) 22:37, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

BP shares represent 1/6 of British pension holdings, by some sources, and a considerable amount of US mutual fund holdings. However, loss of market capitalization or expected dividends affects only BP shareholders and those who sold at loss, not company at all, which already got its money from market, except to the extent company owns its own stock. What goes up, goes down: you lose money only when you actually sell at a loss, or when you lose expected dividends, not otherwise. Not particularly relevant to oil spill. More relevant to BP article: BP stock may well be a bargain for speculative raiders intent on takeover, a point already cited in article. Might be relevant to BP PR and public reaction. Paulscrawl (talk) 02:57, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

If Stocks are worth less than what you paid for it, that becomes income deductable. It is the next thing, that you have a tax reduction.(82.134.28.194 (talk) 09:29, 15 June 2010 (UTC))

Not in my country. Kittybrewster ☎ 10:12, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

"Not in my country." Really? What country is yours? I am so curious! See, I am confused here. As long as we are discussing your personal take on this environmental disaster, I mean, pensions, stocks, taxes, what have you, in your country, as opposed to some other human's country, does that mean killing off entire species of the Animal Kingdom, who don't claim any country, who just want to flap their wings and fly, or breathe oxygen through their gills, reproduce and carry on the natural cycle of life, does that mean I can forget for at least a second, while contemplating the financial situation in your country, that those animals may not care one way or another anything about Wikipedia's take on pension holdings? But please, continue, say more, as I see you do with each and every edit, where you always meticulously express in every edit summary that is not marked "m" (minor edit) what it is you are doing, allowing for other editors to not be baffled or perplexed, allowing them to trust that you have no agenda, but rather that your intentions are noble and democratic, open and forthcoming. Yes, I am all ears regarding your country. Please do tell. After much research, I know I will get an earful. MichaelWestbrook (talk) 10:47, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

The fact that BP's top executives may not take a loss is important to the article especially if we are talking about criminal investigations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.125.171.215 (talk) 23:22, 15 June 2010 (UTC)