Monday, November 21, 2011
Douglas Brinkley vs. Don Young
It starts at about the 31 minute mark.
Brinkley was testifying on the historical background to the ANWAR debate. The former-Tulanian book-factory has cranked out another one, The Quiet World.
H/T Fuel Fix
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Links of the Day - Economics
If you read no other link, scroll down and read the last one.
"Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff -- it's that we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff." Unconventional story will give you a new way of looking at things.
This symptom probably applies to the majority of Air Force procurement projects. More Air Force officers can fly Powerpoint than fly an aircraft (sad but true).
...Due to having the largest portion of their supply chain within the US.
So says one of the stars of "Deadliest Catch"
German executive arrested under Alabama's Immigration laws. That'll attract foreign investment...
A free market, until it's their neck in the noose.
Nabors Drilling Exec gets fat payday
Isenberg's payment would exceed Nabors' third-quarter profit of $74.3 million. A horrible executive gets a gigantic payday, against the wishes of the stockholders.
Banks are unpopular with #OWS'ers and conservatives.
With Christmas shopping around the corner, long live the Consumer?
And people accuse the #OWS crowd of hating bankers...
Can you imagine letting prisoners save your house? Coming to a budget-strapped city near you!
World Power Again Swings back to America
Talks about 80's US/Japan fall/rise trend that ended up with a lot of journalists with egg on the face. One key factor: a weaker dollar helps out US manufacturers. There were also some interesting discussions on Twitter about how NOLA-area merchants LOVED it when the dollar was weaker because they had European tourists spending like mad. Now, with the Euro in the gutter, those tourists are gone.
Fascinating article
Michael Lewis is the best writer out there when it comes to the economy. He covers the German/Greek debt crisis from an unusual perspective.
H/T @muffuletta: "Read this then tell me who has done more damage to the country, Al-Qaeda or business schools"
Statistics-rich article.
Over the past decade, on average, wages have risen only for Americans with graduate degrees
Report: Rich-poor gap growing - Mackenzie Weinger - POLITICO.com
50% of US workers made less than $26,364 last year
A sobering read.
Now THIS is an interesting monkey wrench.
Linked to by LGM.
"American firms have been laying-off their engineering staffs for years. In today’s world of MBA-managed companies, R&D is perceived as not being a good use of money." Horrifying.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Blum and Roberts 2009 - "Drowning of the Mississippi Delta due to insufficient sediment supply and global sea-level rise"
As I referenced earlier, Blum and Roberts 2009 is an extremely important paper published in Nature that deals with feasibility of rebuilding the coast. Here's a presentation I submitted to class with some notes.
That's a really stark title for an academic paper. No messing around, just going for the jugular.
The drainage basin of the Mississippi. The sediment load basically comes from clastic deposits of material washed down from the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains.
"All these lands are drained by the Mississippi" - Armand St. Martin
Problem is, the sediment load is not what it used to be. The main loss comes from the damming of the Missouri River.
Here's a snapshot of a few of the dams. Each one pictured generates several hundred MWe's.
From Blum and Roberts' paper, you can clearly see the dropoff after the dams are completed. This data comes from USGS samples of suspended sediment load. Note that we're also losing the coarsest-grain sediment, which is the best at creating new land.
And, to make matters worse, we don't just have a choked off river and low sediment loads. We have to deal with increasing rates of sea level rise. Historical data indicates a rise of ~1mm/yr for most of the 19th and 20th Centuries. We've been increasing to closer to 1.25-1.5mm/yr since about 1970. Future projections are for a MINIMUM of 2mm/yr. There's quite a bit of disagreement on how quickly sea-levels will rise. Here's some discussion on Dr. Jeff Master's blog.
The biggest culprit in sea-level rise? It's not deglaciation. It's thermal expansion.
So, Blum and Roberts put together a mass balance of the sediment coming down the river and what we'd need to keep up with sea level rise. Even if we blew up every single dam on the Mississippi and unleashed the lower Mississippi, we'd continue to lose prodigious amounts of land.
There are some flaws in their model, though. For one, they couldn't come up with a way to count organic buildup of soils due to plant activity. They (as they pointed out in their own paper) said that since they couldn't come up with a way to quantify it on a macro scale, they just neglected it altogether, but admitted that organic buildup could be significant.
This is from the Times-Picayune writeup of the Blum and Roberts paper. Note the slide shows a "no-action" scenario with a 1-meter sea level rise (over 100 years), which is on the middle-to-upper-end of sea level rise projections.
Quite an ending quote. Note that Dr. Harry Roberts might be THE foremost authority on Coastal Louisiana subsidence. He is also from Louisiana, so it's not like he's some grad student on the other side of the country throwing this out. He's right in our backyard. This paper was also published during a major push for diversions to save the coast and he went and said that diversions were nearly pointless (not what you want when you're trying to drum up political support). The paper was extremely contentious within the scientific community.
That's a really stark title for an academic paper. No messing around, just going for the jugular.
The drainage basin of the Mississippi. The sediment load basically comes from clastic deposits of material washed down from the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains.
"All these lands are drained by the Mississippi" - Armand St. Martin
Problem is, the sediment load is not what it used to be. The main loss comes from the damming of the Missouri River.
Here's a snapshot of a few of the dams. Each one pictured generates several hundred MWe's.
From Blum and Roberts' paper, you can clearly see the dropoff after the dams are completed. This data comes from USGS samples of suspended sediment load. Note that we're also losing the coarsest-grain sediment, which is the best at creating new land.
And, to make matters worse, we don't just have a choked off river and low sediment loads. We have to deal with increasing rates of sea level rise. Historical data indicates a rise of ~1mm/yr for most of the 19th and 20th Centuries. We've been increasing to closer to 1.25-1.5mm/yr since about 1970. Future projections are for a MINIMUM of 2mm/yr. There's quite a bit of disagreement on how quickly sea-levels will rise. Here's some discussion on Dr. Jeff Master's blog.The biggest culprit in sea-level rise? It's not deglaciation. It's thermal expansion.
So, Blum and Roberts put together a mass balance of the sediment coming down the river and what we'd need to keep up with sea level rise. Even if we blew up every single dam on the Mississippi and unleashed the lower Mississippi, we'd continue to lose prodigious amounts of land.There are some flaws in their model, though. For one, they couldn't come up with a way to count organic buildup of soils due to plant activity. They (as they pointed out in their own paper) said that since they couldn't come up with a way to quantify it on a macro scale, they just neglected it altogether, but admitted that organic buildup could be significant.
This is from the Times-Picayune writeup of the Blum and Roberts paper. Note the slide shows a "no-action" scenario with a 1-meter sea level rise (over 100 years), which is on the middle-to-upper-end of sea level rise projections.
Quite an ending quote. Note that Dr. Harry Roberts might be THE foremost authority on Coastal Louisiana subsidence. He is also from Louisiana, so it's not like he's some grad student on the other side of the country throwing this out. He's right in our backyard. This paper was also published during a major push for diversions to save the coast and he went and said that diversions were nearly pointless (not what you want when you're trying to drum up political support). The paper was extremely contentious within the scientific community.
Also, an honorable mention to Maitri's coastal retreat costume.
Monday, November 14, 2011
1st Down, Saints!
We need Brees Circle, Gleason's blocked punt in bronze, and this as a giant inflatable hanging from the Superdome (or at least an animated .gif to play over and over).
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Coastal Geology & "Engineered Avulsions"
So, I'm in grad school now and that's eating up a whole ton of time. I'm going to take one of my projects and post a bit of it on the ole blog because I think it's interesting.
The assignment for a class on coastal geology was to take a scientific paper, write your own abstract and make a presentation to the class. Two of my projects were Blum and Roberts 2009, "Drowning of the Mississippi Delta due to insufficient sediment supply and global sea-level rise" (quite the pessimistic title, especially for a scientific journal). Here's a writeup by Dr. Len Bahr and here's the original paper [PDF] as published by Nature Geoscience.
The second one I did was was Mohrig, Kim, et. al. 2009, “Is It Feasible to Build New Land in the Mississippi River Delta?”. Note that the second paper directly references the first. Here's a writeup from Dr. Bahr and here's the supplemental material from Eos / American Geophysical Union (Thanks, Maitri and Helena on the assist!).
Here are my slides with my presentation notes interspersed. I skipped a couple slides in the middle, but this should be the gist of it.
So, the last time I presented, we went through how screwed South Louisiana is. We went through Blum and Roberts' extremely pessimistic projections for coastal rebuilding efforts. Well, now I'm going to present an alternative scenario.
Mohrig, Kim, et. al. presented their paper shortly after Blum and Roberts presented theirs.
We've all heard the dire predictions. 10,000+ km^2 of land loss over the next century. Look at all the red on that map and of course red = bad.
We should just give up and move to Cleveland, right?
Let's take a closer look at one of those "red" maps. You see a bit of green. The Atchafalaya basin is still growing. One lobe is the main Atchafalaya. The other is Wax Lake, which is actually artificially created.
What is Wax Lake? In 1941, there were big river floods and people were worried about Morgan City being inundated, so the Corps cut a channel (the Calumet Cut) to divert ~30+% of the water away from Morgan City. The Corps cut the channel, Morgan City was saved, and everyone forgot about the cut and left it at that. And then something interesting happened...
(Progression of images of delta building; note Belle Isle Salt Mine)
(Some images omitted for post)
Note that all this delta building took place in an area that WAS affected by oil and gas activity, that WAS affected by major erosion from Katrina/Rita, etc.
So, in the paper, Mohrig, Kim, et. al. constructed a model of delta building based off Wax Lake, then backchecked their results on the actual Wax Lake delta. Here's the model results 1941-2005 (the two sets of lines represent variation in % sediment load captured by Wax Lake vs. main Atchafalaya).
Mohrig, Kim, et. al. then modeled two major diversions in Lower Plaquimines Parish. Note that these diversions are AT LEAST an order of magnitude greater than West Bay, which is the largest diversion project built to date.
So, here are the results. From 2010-2110, considerable land is created. One important note: the diversions are only opened during flood events. During low river levels, the diversions are closed. If you "save" New Orleans, but kill the Port of New Orleans, you've sorta shot yourself in the foot. We can both save the city and keep the river navigable.
Another thing to note: everyone says, "we just gotta blow up the levees" and that will fix everything, right? Well, not quite. Mohrig, Kim, et. al. said that wouldn't give you a deep enough channel (to capture the coarsest-grain sediment) and you don't really have enough control over the river dynamics.
They advocated an "Engineered Avulsion" (*I love this term*), like the Old River Control Structure.
Here's another view of an "Engineered Avulsion"
That's the presentation. There was some nice discussion at the end of the presentation. Gotta run to class now.
UPDATE: Fixed some minor typos.
Here's the full progression of images on the Wax Lake building. Found it via this Field and Stream article: Wax Lake Delta: Accidental Eden in the Atchafalaya. I reformatted the images to make them easier to read, but the raw source has a lot more slides on it.
Here's a presentation on "Optimizing Engineered Avulsions". Once again, I love the term "Engineered Avulsion."
Here's the definition of an "Avulsion": In sedimentary geology and fluvial geomorphology, avulsion is the rapid abandonment of a river channel and the formation of a new river channel. Avulsions occur as a result of channel slopes that are much lower than the slope that the river could travel if it took a new course. (Wikipedia)
The assignment for a class on coastal geology was to take a scientific paper, write your own abstract and make a presentation to the class. Two of my projects were Blum and Roberts 2009, "Drowning of the Mississippi Delta due to insufficient sediment supply and global sea-level rise" (quite the pessimistic title, especially for a scientific journal). Here's a writeup by Dr. Len Bahr and here's the original paper [PDF] as published by Nature Geoscience.
The second one I did was was Mohrig, Kim, et. al. 2009, “Is It Feasible to Build New Land in the Mississippi River Delta?”. Note that the second paper directly references the first. Here's a writeup from Dr. Bahr and here's the supplemental material from Eos / American Geophysical Union (Thanks, Maitri and Helena on the assist!).
Here are my slides with my presentation notes interspersed. I skipped a couple slides in the middle, but this should be the gist of it.
So, the last time I presented, we went through how screwed South Louisiana is. We went through Blum and Roberts' extremely pessimistic projections for coastal rebuilding efforts. Well, now I'm going to present an alternative scenario.
Mohrig, Kim, et. al. presented their paper shortly after Blum and Roberts presented theirs.
We've all heard the dire predictions. 10,000+ km^2 of land loss over the next century. Look at all the red on that map and of course red = bad.
We should just give up and move to Cleveland, right?
Let's take a closer look at one of those "red" maps. You see a bit of green. The Atchafalaya basin is still growing. One lobe is the main Atchafalaya. The other is Wax Lake, which is actually artificially created.
What is Wax Lake? In 1941, there were big river floods and people were worried about Morgan City being inundated, so the Corps cut a channel (the Calumet Cut) to divert ~30+% of the water away from Morgan City. The Corps cut the channel, Morgan City was saved, and everyone forgot about the cut and left it at that. And then something interesting happened...
(Progression of images of delta building; note Belle Isle Salt Mine)
(Some images omitted for post)
Note that all this delta building took place in an area that WAS affected by oil and gas activity, that WAS affected by major erosion from Katrina/Rita, etc.
So, in the paper, Mohrig, Kim, et. al. constructed a model of delta building based off Wax Lake, then backchecked their results on the actual Wax Lake delta. Here's the model results 1941-2005 (the two sets of lines represent variation in % sediment load captured by Wax Lake vs. main Atchafalaya).
Mohrig, Kim, et. al. then modeled two major diversions in Lower Plaquimines Parish. Note that these diversions are AT LEAST an order of magnitude greater than West Bay, which is the largest diversion project built to date.
So, here are the results. From 2010-2110, considerable land is created. One important note: the diversions are only opened during flood events. During low river levels, the diversions are closed. If you "save" New Orleans, but kill the Port of New Orleans, you've sorta shot yourself in the foot. We can both save the city and keep the river navigable.
Another thing to note: everyone says, "we just gotta blow up the levees" and that will fix everything, right? Well, not quite. Mohrig, Kim, et. al. said that wouldn't give you a deep enough channel (to capture the coarsest-grain sediment) and you don't really have enough control over the river dynamics. 
They advocated an "Engineered Avulsion" (*I love this term*), like the Old River Control Structure. 
Here's another view of an "Engineered Avulsion"
That's the presentation. There was some nice discussion at the end of the presentation. Gotta run to class now.
UPDATE: Fixed some minor typos.
Here's the full progression of images on the Wax Lake building. Found it via this Field and Stream article: Wax Lake Delta: Accidental Eden in the Atchafalaya. I reformatted the images to make them easier to read, but the raw source has a lot more slides on it.
Here's a presentation on "Optimizing Engineered Avulsions". Once again, I love the term "Engineered Avulsion."
Here's the definition of an "Avulsion": In sedimentary geology and fluvial geomorphology, avulsion is the rapid abandonment of a river channel and the formation of a new river channel. Avulsions occur as a result of channel slopes that are much lower than the slope that the river could travel if it took a new course. (Wikipedia)
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
West Bay Diversion to close?
West Bay Diversion Project to End. Or at least, that was the headline in early 2010.
Backing up, West Bay was the first diversion project optimized for sediment diversion. It's also WAY larger than either Canarvon or Davis Pond (ea. ab. 10,000 CFS vs. 50k+ for W. Bay). Canarvon and Davis Pond are sometimes called failures, but that isn't really fair, since they were optimized to fight saltwater intrusion only and NOT to carry sediment.
West Bay is located near Head of Passes (scroll down on the link for the maps). Planning started in 1991 and it was the first diversion optimized for sediment diversion. It was opened and petered along for a while, but was considered a disappointment. The Corps, who hated the project from the start (they believed it would be a hazard to navigation or would just plug up), trumpeted the failure and pushed for its closure.
Here's a quote from Dr. Len Bahr about the Corps and West Bay:
Despite its recent construction in 2003, bathymetric surveys in 2009 showed that sediment accretion from the West Bay Sediment Diversion project had exceeded subsidence in parts of the project receiving area for the first time in almost a century. Nevertheless, the public was told that a lack of significant wetland accretion contributed to a decision to shut down this ‘youthful’ sediment diversion project.
They also forced CWPPRA to pay for the dredging of the Pilot Town anchorage, despite modeling that proved West Bay was responsible for 20% (or less) of the shoaling and that the anchorage was built in an area that was prone to shoaling anyway. Here's a presentation from a past Tulane Engineering Forum describing the sediment transport modeling [PDF]. Furthermore, the port people weren't really complaining because the anchorage is hardly ever used (pilots are almost 100% available within a few hours notice at Head of Passes; the anchorage is almost a vestige of the old sailing days).
Enter the 2008 and 2011 Mississippi River floods (both of which were BIG, especially 2011 which was at least a 100-year event). West Bay, which wasn't a total failure like the Corps was making out, but also wasn't lighting the world on fire, explodes in activity and they figure out the missing ingredient: sand and gravel. The normal river flow has almost no sands in it; it's all mud and fine sediment (good for nourishing plants, but not enough of a base for land-creation). In flood events, there's a totally different dynamic. During flood events, sediment load per unit volume of water is at least 50 times larger, with much coarser sediment mobilized. The Corps continues to call West Bay a failure.
There was also an interesting side story that happened about this time: CWPPRA was investigating barging sediment from one area to another and asked the Corps about shortcutting through the West Bay diversion instead of going all the way around to SW pass. The Corps said, 'bah, it'll be too shallow and you'll just get stuck on a sandbar and we know everything there is to know about river dynamics because we've been studying it for 100+ years.' Well, the barging project was shelved because of cost, but they did to a hydrographic survey and the depth of the West Bay channel: 84' (barges draw ~20' or less).
More and more, the science community wants to study West Bay (being wrong in science is a good thing; you learn something new). The Corps is doing what a bureaucratic organization does to something it sees as embarrassing them: kill it with fire. The Corps had finally blackmailed CWPPRA into closing West Bay in 2010 when 2 monkey wrenches were thrown into the mix: the 2011 floods and the shipping people 'stabbed the Corps in the back' (or so that's how the Corps felt, so I'm told). Note that that link is dated October 13th.
My theory behind the objection: the port people know SW Pass is hydraulically inefficient and a pain to keep dredged. They're looking into a new, deeper pass much closer to Venice and see West Bay as an interim solution to accommodate New Panamax-class ships (Panamax=39.5' draft, New=49.9' draft) in a cost effective manner (as opposed to Miami's expensive Deep Dredge Project that's caught up in Tea Party-type stalls). The Port of New Orleans has been doing extremely well with containerized cargo this year (highest ever for NOLA?) and want to get an even bigger slice of that pie going forward.
How will this all shake out? Will the Corps force the closure of West Bay? Will we ever learn how to save the coast? We shall see.
Backing up, West Bay was the first diversion project optimized for sediment diversion. It's also WAY larger than either Canarvon or Davis Pond (ea. ab. 10,000 CFS vs. 50k+ for W. Bay). Canarvon and Davis Pond are sometimes called failures, but that isn't really fair, since they were optimized to fight saltwater intrusion only and NOT to carry sediment.
West Bay is located near Head of Passes (scroll down on the link for the maps). Planning started in 1991 and it was the first diversion optimized for sediment diversion. It was opened and petered along for a while, but was considered a disappointment. The Corps, who hated the project from the start (they believed it would be a hazard to navigation or would just plug up), trumpeted the failure and pushed for its closure.
Here's a quote from Dr. Len Bahr about the Corps and West Bay:
Despite its recent construction in 2003, bathymetric surveys in 2009 showed that sediment accretion from the West Bay Sediment Diversion project had exceeded subsidence in parts of the project receiving area for the first time in almost a century. Nevertheless, the public was told that a lack of significant wetland accretion contributed to a decision to shut down this ‘youthful’ sediment diversion project.
They also forced CWPPRA to pay for the dredging of the Pilot Town anchorage, despite modeling that proved West Bay was responsible for 20% (or less) of the shoaling and that the anchorage was built in an area that was prone to shoaling anyway. Here's a presentation from a past Tulane Engineering Forum describing the sediment transport modeling [PDF]. Furthermore, the port people weren't really complaining because the anchorage is hardly ever used (pilots are almost 100% available within a few hours notice at Head of Passes; the anchorage is almost a vestige of the old sailing days).
Enter the 2008 and 2011 Mississippi River floods (both of which were BIG, especially 2011 which was at least a 100-year event). West Bay, which wasn't a total failure like the Corps was making out, but also wasn't lighting the world on fire, explodes in activity and they figure out the missing ingredient: sand and gravel. The normal river flow has almost no sands in it; it's all mud and fine sediment (good for nourishing plants, but not enough of a base for land-creation). In flood events, there's a totally different dynamic. During flood events, sediment load per unit volume of water is at least 50 times larger, with much coarser sediment mobilized. The Corps continues to call West Bay a failure.
There was also an interesting side story that happened about this time: CWPPRA was investigating barging sediment from one area to another and asked the Corps about shortcutting through the West Bay diversion instead of going all the way around to SW pass. The Corps said, 'bah, it'll be too shallow and you'll just get stuck on a sandbar and we know everything there is to know about river dynamics because we've been studying it for 100+ years.' Well, the barging project was shelved because of cost, but they did to a hydrographic survey and the depth of the West Bay channel: 84' (barges draw ~20' or less).
More and more, the science community wants to study West Bay (being wrong in science is a good thing; you learn something new). The Corps is doing what a bureaucratic organization does to something it sees as embarrassing them: kill it with fire. The Corps had finally blackmailed CWPPRA into closing West Bay in 2010 when 2 monkey wrenches were thrown into the mix: the 2011 floods and the shipping people 'stabbed the Corps in the back' (or so that's how the Corps felt, so I'm told). Note that that link is dated October 13th.
My theory behind the objection: the port people know SW Pass is hydraulically inefficient and a pain to keep dredged. They're looking into a new, deeper pass much closer to Venice and see West Bay as an interim solution to accommodate New Panamax-class ships (Panamax=39.5' draft, New=49.9' draft) in a cost effective manner (as opposed to Miami's expensive Deep Dredge Project that's caught up in Tea Party-type stalls). The Port of New Orleans has been doing extremely well with containerized cargo this year (highest ever for NOLA?) and want to get an even bigger slice of that pie going forward.
How will this all shake out? Will the Corps force the closure of West Bay? Will we ever learn how to save the coast? We shall see.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
So much catchier than "Drill, Baby, Drill"
H/T Fuel Fix. Actually pretty cool. They even get what a Christmas Tree is.
Remember kiddies, don't drink and drill, no matter what the Russian guy says.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Sneak Peek of the BenzDome
Took a break from grad school to go to the Tulane/Memphis game. It was Tulane's homecoming game. It was an interesting game to watch, but unfortunately Tulane lost. Oh well. It's not like it isn't the first time I've seen Tulane football lose.
There were 25,000+ people in attendance, but, because it's the Dome, it still looked empty. A bright spot: got an early preview of tomorrow's Premiere of the new "Mercedes-Benz Superdome":
There were 25,000+ people in attendance, but, because it's the Dome, it still looked empty. A bright spot: got an early preview of tomorrow's Premiere of the new "Mercedes-Benz Superdome":
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Reggie Bush vs. Darren Sproles
Reggie Bush:
Games 1-3: 104 total yards, 1 TD, 2 Fumbles (1 Lost)
Darren Sproles:
Game 1-3: 235 total yards, 2 TD, Zero "Fiddle-Farting Around"
If the Dolphins gave us a pizza for Reggie, they were robbed:
Games 1-3: 104 total yards, 1 TD, 2 Fumbles (1 Lost)
Darren Sproles:
Game 1-3: 235 total yards, 2 TD, Zero "Fiddle-Farting Around"
If the Dolphins gave us a pizza for Reggie, they were robbed:
USCG/MMS Final Report on the Loss of the Deepwater Horizon
Full Report here.
Direct link to PDF of main body of Report.
There's nothing big in the report that we haven't already seen somewhere thus far.
David Hammer's Wrieup. Hammer focuses on the difference between the Presidential Commission (no subpoena power, said it was a systemic problem) vs. the USCG/MMS (later USCG/BOEMRE) Report (which had subpoena power and focused on very specific errors they "laid at BP's feet").
As I read through the report, I found the most interesting part is where they go through the CFR's (Code of Federal Regulations; The LAW on how to do everything) and they systematically list the CFR's that were violated and why. They also go through the ones that need to clarified. CFR's tend to be written by lawyers (or at least engineers with lawyers looking over their shoulder) and tend to use notoriously impenetrable language. Clarification of CFR's is a great idea for a part of regulatory reform.
One of the post-Macondo regulatory changes was a shift from a prescriptive-regime (do X, Y, and Z and you're assumed to be safe) to putting the onus on the companies to prove they've managed risk on a systematic basis (the North Sea's regulations are along these lines). I personally don't have too much of an opinion as to which is "better" and BP looks like it would have screwed up either way.
Note that it was published the same day as the report about the BP Geophysicist testifying in a deposition that they "missed" a 2-foot gas zone hundreds of feet above the top of the cement plug. She "assumed" that it was passed to the rig for them to modify their P&A procedures. BP now claims that it was a water-bearing instead of gas-bearing zone.
Another thing to note is that the lead investigators are being held back, probably to preserve their testimony for the (imminent?) indictments of BP management (or at least quintuple fines under the "gross negligence" clause). Another recent development: BP puts in for their first post-Macondo drilling permit. BP's been a minority partner on a few wells, but this is the first one where they are the operating company (with their own company men on the rigs running the show). The Sunday Money section in the Times-Pic had more about the drilling push by BP.
Going forward, I see all but the largest independents squeezed out of the Gulf and deepwater drilling left to the majors (Shell, Exxon, etc.). This was a transition that was underway well before Macondo, but the post-Macondo world (insurance, regulation, increasing technical challenge) really accentuates. The other guys are discovering they really don't have the manpower to put together permits that can withstand post-Macondo scrutiny. Here's an erl industry exec that says BOEMRE isn't holding back permits for political reasons, they're just checking them very thoroughly. Here's gCaptain's reprinting of an excellent WSJ article about getting back to work in the Gulf.
And as a side note, the NTSB has released their report on the fatal California gas pipeline explosion. The keys were very old, substandard pipe. It was an intra-state pipeline, so there was never any requirement to hydrotest the pipe (an incredibly important safety procedure in ASME Pressure Vessel Code).
Direct link to PDF of main body of Report.
There's nothing big in the report that we haven't already seen somewhere thus far.
David Hammer's Wrieup. Hammer focuses on the difference between the Presidential Commission (no subpoena power, said it was a systemic problem) vs. the USCG/MMS (later USCG/BOEMRE) Report (which had subpoena power and focused on very specific errors they "laid at BP's feet").
As I read through the report, I found the most interesting part is where they go through the CFR's (Code of Federal Regulations; The LAW on how to do everything) and they systematically list the CFR's that were violated and why. They also go through the ones that need to clarified. CFR's tend to be written by lawyers (or at least engineers with lawyers looking over their shoulder) and tend to use notoriously impenetrable language. Clarification of CFR's is a great idea for a part of regulatory reform.
One of the post-Macondo regulatory changes was a shift from a prescriptive-regime (do X, Y, and Z and you're assumed to be safe) to putting the onus on the companies to prove they've managed risk on a systematic basis (the North Sea's regulations are along these lines). I personally don't have too much of an opinion as to which is "better" and BP looks like it would have screwed up either way.
Note that it was published the same day as the report about the BP Geophysicist testifying in a deposition that they "missed" a 2-foot gas zone hundreds of feet above the top of the cement plug. She "assumed" that it was passed to the rig for them to modify their P&A procedures. BP now claims that it was a water-bearing instead of gas-bearing zone.
Another thing to note is that the lead investigators are being held back, probably to preserve their testimony for the (imminent?) indictments of BP management (or at least quintuple fines under the "gross negligence" clause). Another recent development: BP puts in for their first post-Macondo drilling permit. BP's been a minority partner on a few wells, but this is the first one where they are the operating company (with their own company men on the rigs running the show). The Sunday Money section in the Times-Pic had more about the drilling push by BP.
Going forward, I see all but the largest independents squeezed out of the Gulf and deepwater drilling left to the majors (Shell, Exxon, etc.). This was a transition that was underway well before Macondo, but the post-Macondo world (insurance, regulation, increasing technical challenge) really accentuates. The other guys are discovering they really don't have the manpower to put together permits that can withstand post-Macondo scrutiny. Here's an erl industry exec that says BOEMRE isn't holding back permits for political reasons, they're just checking them very thoroughly. Here's gCaptain's reprinting of an excellent WSJ article about getting back to work in the Gulf.
And as a side note, the NTSB has released their report on the fatal California gas pipeline explosion. The keys were very old, substandard pipe. It was an intra-state pipeline, so there was never any requirement to hydrotest the pipe (an incredibly important safety procedure in ASME Pressure Vessel Code).
Saturday, September 24, 2011
News and Notes - Local Edition - 24 September
Corruption in the New Orleans Taxi Certificate Markets. From The Lens. Excellent reporting. But, but, but, the Times-Picayune told me Nagin eliminated corruption in the taxi bureau?
Another one Louisiana can be proud of: David Vitter named one of the most crooked members of Congress. If you go to CREW's website, they like to point out how many people on their old lists are now behind bars.
Poor John Fleming. At least he made The Daily Show.
Watching Jay Cutler thrown to ground repeatedly was extremely satisfying. I'm actually glad Ingram fumbled. He got taught a lesson in ball security in a situation that didn't really matter and we got to watch more of the Cutler beat-down. 1/21/07: Never Forget.
Tulane brings back CS. The first of the Cowen-eliminated programs returns. Note that for years, Tulane has done without an ABET-accredited Computer Science program in the 21st Century. How can you call yourself a University without at least CS?
Back to Bacchanal. Great expose on the whole flap. Especially searing on the out-of-towner, absentee-landlord next door.
SOS from Avondale. Gambit coverstory. Note there might be some interesting Avondale news coming down the pipeline shortly...
Garland violated the Public Trust, Stephanie Grace. James Gill's epic takedown of Garlandfill. Everyone is taking a whack at the pinata.
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