Oily disastrous death of DOOM!

So I’ve been keeping half an eye out on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill news. In fact, ‘oil spill’ is putting it lightly. It’s the single largest environmentally destructive man made force EVER! Surprising then that the worldwide media has sidelined the whole affair in favour of Lindsay Lohan’s jail sentence for violating parole… or some such rot. I don’t care if some juvenile lesbo has to spend TWO WHOLE WEEKS in jail for being an idiot. The only time ‘Li-Lo’ deserves to be put in the papers ahead of an environmental disaster of this magnitude is if they found… a cure for HIV AIDS made from a paste constructed primarily of her dried crushed bones, organs and brain matter.

I’m drifting…

In any case I thought I would summarise the whole oil spill and the way it was managed by those clever guys at the ‘BP science, engineering and brainyness’ division. Why, you ask? It’s just that I found looking at individual pieces and media reports gave a somewhat hazy and incomplete picture. Putting all those bits together will help us average people understand the steps BP have taken to ensure nothing but the best (or least worst) results from this whole ordeal.

April 20 2010: Blowout preventer on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico fails resulting in… a blowout>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Hey Chuck, one of our deep sea rigs had a blow out in the Gulf of Mexico.” BP Engineer 2 “Erm, yeah we shoulda realised something would happen after Jay took apart the old blowout preventer for a valve he needed to fix his mom’s Studebaker.” BP Engineer 1 “So what are we going to do about mate?” BP Engineer 2 “This needs some thought… I’ll get back to you”

7 May 2010: Oil leaks out at a rate of approximately 60000 barrels a day for 17 days before>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Hey Chuck, we could lower a huge box over the leak.” BP Engineer 2 “That’s a great idea Dave, that way we can minimize our losses by harvesting and selling the spilled oil!” BP Engineer 1 “What about the excess oil that leaks into the ocean?” BP Engineer 2 “Meh, it has to go somewhere…”

9 May 2010: The box-funnel idea failed and eco-warriors put pressure on BP Engineers to come up with environmentally friendly solutions>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Hey Chuck, maybe the oil will stop spilling out if we shovel dirt into the hole” BP Engineer 2 “Hey, yeah Dave, I recon that will work. When I was I kid we used to hide stuff by shoveling dirt onto it…” BP Engineer 1 “Heck and getting rid of dirt is environmentally friendly too, EVERYBODY wins!”

11 May 2010: After failing to stop the leak (which has since grown to a maximum of 800000 liters a day) by dropping sand bags filled with dirt, golf balls and bits of old tire onto it (!!!) BP engineers need to find another new solution>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Say Chuck, what if we were to use a big old submarine to go down there and plug the leak?” BP Engineer 2 “You is genius Dave! But what to plug the leak with?” BP Engineer 1 “…Concrete?” BP Engineer 2 “Doesn’t that need air to dry and cure?” BP Engineer 1 “Heck no, how do you think they build them bridges in rivers…”

10 July 2010: Shoving concrete into the leak fails. The oil spill, now visible from outer space, destroys all life in its path. BP Engineers finally come up with a solution>>>

BP Engineer 1 “So Chuck I noticed this morning that the water in my bath was prevented from escaping using a solid plug like device to cover the outlet hole.” BP Engineer 2 “What exactly are you trying to say Dave?” BP Engineer 1 “Well, if a plug can stop water from going down a drain surely we could use a similar device to stop oil gushing up from a hole” BP Engineer 2 “Hmm, a radical idea Dave. We would have to reverse engineer this ‘plug’ device to function the other way around but it sounds crazy enough to work.”

15 July 2010: The main sources of the oil spill are finally stopped after BP engineers effectively shove a plug into to hole really REALLY hard! A permanent solution to the oil spill has YET to be found but is expected to be in place by September. In the mean time the CEO of British Petroleum maintains that the amount of oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico is a tiny tiny tiny amount relative to all the water in all the oceans on the planet Earth.

Phew! Thank goodness for that…

(Image http://3.bp.blogspot.com)