104,000 gallons an hour

That's how much oil is once again blowing out of BP's broken pipe five thousand feet under the ocean. And it looks like this:

BP's oil catastrophe is now back IN FULL MUTHAFUCKIN EFFIZZECT

Alright! We have now finally returned to blowing out several million gallons of crude oil a day!

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says an underwater robot bumped into the venting system. That sent gas rising through vent that carries warm water down to prevent ice-like crystals from forming in the cap.

Allen says the cap has been removed and crews are checking to see if crystals have formed before putting it back on. In the meantime, a different system is still burning oil on the surface.

Before the problem with the containment cap, it had collected about 700,000 gallons of oil in the previous 24 hours. Another 438,000 gallons was burned.

The current worst-case estimate of what's spewing into the Gulf is about 2.5 million gallons a day.

I knew BP could make good things happen.

New official estimates for oil hemorrhage are 60 times what they were

Yes, now the federal government says that BP's hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is blowing out up to 2.52 million (2,520,000) gallons of oil per day. That is now sixty thousand (60,000) barrels, compared to the initial figure of one thousand (1,000) barrels.

BP is well on its way to claiming the world's largest oil catastrophe (with the exception of the daily annihilation that is human industrial existence), already easily claiming number three, and perhaps number two.

Way to go. People are awesome.

A fervent love based on a deep fear

Seems some people in Britain are unhappy with Americans' public views of BP. Aww.

“When you consider the huge exposure of British pension funds to BP, it starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on the airwaves,” Mr. [Boris] Johnson [the Conservative mayor of London] told BBC radio’s Today program.

Prime Minister David Cameron refused to criticize the United States, however, saying he sympathized with its “frustration” in dealing with its worst environmental disaster in memory. But the chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, signaled careful support for BP, saying that he had spoken to its chief executive, Tony Hayward, and that it was important to remember “the economic value BP brings to people in Britain and America.”

BP is the third largest oil company in the world, after ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, with 80,000 employees worldwide as of last December, sales of $239 billion in 2009 and a market value — even after the recent losses — of more than $100 billion. At a time when Britain is desperate to reduce its deficit, BP is a huge contributor to British tax revenue, paying nearly $1.4 billion in taxes on its profits last year.

Its reputation for reliability and its generous dividends have long made it a favorite of British pension funds. The company’s dividend payments accounted for about 13 percent of the dividends handed out by British companies last year, according to FairPensions, a London-based charity.

The message - BP can do whatever it wants, just don't do anything in response that might hurt anyone else financially. It's like having a crackhouse in your neighborhood and everyone agreeing that is indeed thoroughly a detriment, but hey, don't get rid of it, cause it keeps up foot traffic for the corner store.

This reminds me of people saying how you shouldn't boycott BP stations because the ballyhooed small businessman will get hurt, not BP. That's unfortunate, but the reality of the situation is that when you deal with the devil, you should expect some negative consequences. It's that same mentality - coercing people to still buy from BP.

Here's some "vicious" criticism from some bank fuck:

Iain Armstrong, an analyst at Brewin Dolphin, an investment manager here [in the UK], said that the situation had become “overpoliticized” and had confused the markets about BP’s actual strength.

“It’s gotten completely out of hand,” he said. “Ironically, by being extremely strong financially, BP has become a target.”

Well, no, it's more that they have a big pipe on the ocean floor that is shitting oil and gas into the water at the rate of well over one million gallons per day since April 20th (4/20 bro). It is now June 12th. Long time, yeah? And you see, even though it is a big body of water, like CEO Tony Hayward has said, it's a whole lot of oil. It really is. And the problem with all that is that oil and water still don't mix. I don't know why, I guess oil is stubborn, or maybe water is racist. Then you wind up killing lots of birds, dolphins, fish (I wish Phish as well) and many smaller organisms (though not walruses, seals or sea lions) that are essential for the ocean to function as a source of life, not to mention all those jobs you wipe out. You could put those people to work cleaning up your big mess, but you generally don't, you give those jobs to rich people instead. To conclude, Iain Armstrong has no fucking point. At all.

Finally, we see the most ostentatious and offensive manifestation of this attitude, casting BP as the victim:

Writing on his Web site, a Conservative peer, Lord Tebbit, called the American response “a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan, political, presidential petulance against a multinational company.”

Yes, Americans are crude, bigoted, xenophobic and partisan, not to mention racist, homophobic, sexist, rude, hostile, selfish and destructive, but they are mostly not political. Poor multinational company with $100 billion value with a $17 billion profit last year. Stop kicking it around, America! It's from another country, so you have to accept it, no matter what! Otherwise you are an asshole! You can't criticize!! Fuck, this sounds like Zionism. Financial Zionism. Capitalist Zionism.

Video to prove that there are oil plumes under water

and that they are killing everything. And that the wild usage of dispersants is wrecking the water in new ways. Here's an accompanying story:

I make my way to the back of the boat unaware of just how covered I am. To be honest, I look a little like one of those poor pelicans we've all been seeing for days now. The oil is so thick and sticky, almost like a cake batter. It does not wipe off. You have to scrape it off, in layers until you finally get close to the skin. Then you pour on some Dawn dishwashing soap and scrub. I think to myself: No fish, no bird, no turtle would ever be able to clean this off of themselves. If any animal, any were to end up in this same puddle there is almost no way they could escape.

The cleaning process goes on for half an hour before the captain will even think about letting me back in the boat. I'm clean, so I stand up. But the bottoms of my feet still had oil, and I fall back in the water. The process starts again. Another 30 minutes of cleaning and finally I'm ready to step into the boat.

BP says they aren't there.

In a shocking development, BP is still lying about how much oil is shooting out of their hole in ocean floor

BP refuses to provide any estimate aside from that old 210,000 gallons a day bullshit scenario that the government put forth way back when. Why? They say something to the effect of "it does not matter how much oil is coming out. All that matters is that we stop it." Actually, it matters quite a bit how much oil is coming out, and not just for the obvious environmental holocaust reason. They get fined on every barrel (42 gallons) of oil that comes out of that hole, and will likely be charged royalties on each barrel as well. Of course they are not going to help dig that part of their grave:

Some scientists involved in the Flow Rate Technical Group say that they would like to produce a better estimate, but that they are frustrated by what they view as stonewalling on BP’s part, including tardiness in producing high-resolution video that could be subjected to computer analysis, as well as the company’s reluctance to permit a direct measurement of the flow rate. They said the installation of the new device and the rising flow of oil to the surface had only reinforced their conviction that they did not have enough information.

“It’s apparent that BP is playing games with us, presumably under the advice of their legal team,” Dr. Leifer said. “It’s six weeks that it’s been dumping into the gulf, and still no measurements..."

The company, which for several weeks had publicly rejected the idea of using subsea equipment to measure the flow rate, now says it is up to the flow-rate group itself to decide whether to undertake such a step.

The government doesn't seem to be willing to do it either. They really need to do what it takes and put some kind of measurement device down there.

Anyway, despite their assurances that they are capturing most of the oil, or as big lying piece of shit CEO Tony Hayward has said, "the majority, probably the vast majority," the reality is that they aren't. They are probably not even getting half of it, and since removing any hindrances from the mangled pipe last week in their preparations to lower the containment dome over it, are releasing way more oil into the water than they originally were:

[Ira] Leifer [a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California Santa Barbara who is also a member of the government's flow-rate panel, tasked with determining the size of the oil spill] said based on the data he's seen so far, the rate of flow from the broken well has increase since the initial April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers. He believes BP's decision last week to sever the well's damaged riser pipe in order to install the containment cap has increased the flow by far more than the 20 percent BP and government officials had predicted.

In fact, Leifer says, the well may be spewing what BP had called before the spill its worst-case scenario — as much as 100,000 barrels a day from a freely flowing pipe.

He said he's seen no evidence from BP to date that would be inconsistent from that dire scenario.

Judging by live undersea videos, "it looks like a freely flowing pipe," Leifer said. "From what it looks like right now it suggests to me they’re capturing a negligible fraction."

It's unclear how much oil is still escaping because scientists don't have access to enough data and the video feeds show a "disorganized cloud" of oil shooting out of open vents in the containment cap and between the riser and the cap, Wereley said.

"It’s very difficult to judge flow rates from these multiple sources," he said. "My position is that the claims (of capturing the 'vast majority' of oil) cannot be made because the flow is too complicated."

100,000 barrels is four million, two hundred thousand. 4,200,000. People have been estimating this number all along, but the government has been blowing them off, and the newspapers have all been reporting the pathetically low number of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels, which is shit.

Today is day 51 of this. Anywhere from 51,000,000 to 200,000,000 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic death dispersants.

Florida is now fully benefitting from BP's free oil initiative

Fucking communists, just taking and taking:

Driftwood and seashells glazed with rust-colored tar lined the surf along the Gulf Coast's once-pristine white sand beaches Saturday, the crude from a busted oil well deep underwater showing up in greater quantities and farther east.

A cap placed over the gusher was collecting only a fraction of the oil, which had stained beaches with a waxy mess of tar balls and created an unusual orange foam in the surf.

In Gulf Shores, Ala., wooden boardwalks leading to beachfront hotels were spotted with oil from beachgoers' feet, and some condominiums were providing solvents for guests smeared with the brown goo. At Pensacola Beach, the retreating high tide left an orange stain in its wake.

Erin Tamber moved to the beach area after surviving Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, where she had lived for 30 years.

"I feel like I've gone from owning a piece of paradise to owning a toxic waste dump," she said as she inspected the beach Saturday morning.

I wish I could have the slightest feeling that this is going to be a turning point, where people really push back in a sustained way against destructive capitalism and the government that loves it, but I don't. People don't care. Now that Lost and American Idol and whatever else are going to repeats, I guess people have to find some other distraction. Baseball? I don't know. I'm fairly confident that people's attention, in significant amounts, will not turn to BP and the federal government. I would love for it to, but it's not realistic. Katrina didn't do it; why should this? I guess it's a bit more spread out, but it hasn't killed anyone aside from Deepwater Horizon workers. People just don't care. Too fucking busy with hating immigrants or Muslims or whatever the political distraction issue of the day is.

Anyway, Florida's western beaches are getting fucked and people can't go in the water anymore:

Swimmers at Pensacola Beach rushed out of the water after wading into the mess, while other beachgoers inspected the clumps with fascination, some taking pictures.

Health officials said that people should stay away from the mess but that swallowing a little oil-tainted water or getting slimed by a tar ball is no reason for alarm.

On Saturday morning at a public beach in Gulf Shores, a long line of brown globs marked the high water line from overnight at the public beach.

Finally, somehow, real thought worked its way into a news story, if ever so slightly:

"This is disgusting," said Macon Srygley, of McCalla, Ala. "I hate it for BP, but this has to be a lesson for anyone drilling in the ocean. We've got all this technology, but are we not smart enough to realize we can end ourselves with it?"

Right on. We aren't, and we will.

BP's tally of dead birds thus far

As of a couple of days ago, this is the official count of how many birds BP has killed in the last month and a half:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported 522 dead birds — at least 38 of them oiled — along the Gulf coast states, and more than 80 oiled birds have been rescued. It's not clear exactly how many of the deaths can be attributed to the spill.

I'm going to go ahead and say all of them, plus many more that will never be found.

Of course, that figure is buried in the bottom of a BP oil hole article, cause no one cares about that stuff nearly as much.

Again, I will say that nothing anyone got from that fucking hole in the bottom of the ocean was ever worth the life of one bird, fish, dolphin, turtle or anything else they have killed and have yet to kill through their bottomless greed and utter lack of regard for whatever "safety" can be assured aboard something as destructive and ruinous as a petroleum extraction platform.

I wish people would stop worshipping perceived "rights" of capital in this country and just go ahead and fucking burn down everything BP and its rapacious managers own.

BP is in the process of expanding its oil pollution to Florida

Any day now, Florida will be able to bask in the glory of BP's free oil program. And I thought we were dealing with capitalists here.

The giant Gulf of Mexico oil slick was Wednesday closing in on the pristine Florida coast, as deep sea robotic submarines hit a new snag in BP's latest bid to contain the spill.

Forecasters said it was virtually certain Florida's panhandle, a major draw for tourists from around the world, would be hit by the spill this week.

The latest official projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show the slick to be about seven miles (11 kilometers) off the state's shores, a Florida official told AFP.

"Within the next 72 hours it should affect our coast," said the official with Florida's Environmental Protection Agency, asking not to be named.

Florida would be the fourth state hit by the oil since an April 20 explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon rig, 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers. The BP-operated rig sank two days later.

What a bunch of lucky people those Floridians are. FREE OIL. And here I am, paying for it like a sucker.

BP's oil spreads to Alabama and Mississippi

Of course, it will only get worse. There is lots and lots more where that came from, seeing as the hole will probably be spewing oil and gas for at least two more months. Nice.

And if it took that long for oil to reach those places, think of how much is behind it and for how long it will keep washing up, long, long after the hole is plugged or runs out.

Rust-colored oil washed ashore on barrier islands off Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday, while more patches of crude offshore appeared to be moving toward those states' coasts, authorities reported.

Researchers scrambled to clean up tar balls and puddles of oil from the beaches of Alabama's Dauphin Island, while a strip of oil about two miles long and three feet wide stretched along Petit Bois Island, about five miles away off Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour's office reported.

It marked the first time oil has hit Mississippi's shores since the largest oil spill in U.S. history erupted in late April. And while tar balls associated with the Gulf spill had hit Dauphin Island, about 35 miles south of Mobile, in early May, residents said that Tuesday was the first time they had seen oil hitting the beach.

Only part of the island's beaches have been lined with protective booms, with much of those barriers lined up near a protected wildlife area on the west end of the island.

These places are fucked. And BP doesn't care any more than it is legally compelled to.

BP facing civil fines of $86 million a day

Yes, shit fucking yes, PLEASE let this happen:

A clause buried deep in the U.S. Clean Water Act may expose BP and others to civil fines that aren't limited to any finite cap -- unlike a $75 million limit on compensation for economic damages. The Act allows the government to seek civil penalties in court for every drop of oil that spills into U.S. navigable waters, including the area of BP's leaking well.

As a result, the U.S. government could seek to fine BP or others up to $4,300 for every barrel leaked into the U.S. Gulf, according to legal experts and official documents.

It is truly the least these fucking people deserve. They are a bunch of liars, a horde of greedy plunderers who would gladly ruin the entire planet (save for their gated communities) if not kept in check by the ribbons of regulation currently now upon them.

That's oil for you. That's capitalism for you. You need to have assholes like this in every sector of industry, finance and government to give you cheap everything. But no one wants to face that. They want to blame BP and guiltlessly drive to Walmart. And we have them. We have assholes in spades. What a bunch of pieces of shit we are. We all just go on with our lives, letting these people fuck us and everything around us.

BP allowing Louisiana marshes to die

Murder? Perhaps. At least manslaughter. But they don't care. I wish someone in the government had the willpower to go ahead with dissolving this company and imprisoning, or at least indicting, everyone at BP (and Halliburton) responsible for this.

BP simply does not care. They have virtually unlimited money, but are refusing to spend. They're trying to make a big deal out of the fact that they've spent a billion dollars. They've got a lot more left, and every "analyst" seems to think the company will survive just fine, which is fucking sick.

Impending increase in oil flow from BP's hole in the ocean floor

BP's newest sure-to-fail attempt to stop the oil from blowing out of that broken pipe a mile under the Gulf of Mexico will bring a 20% increase in the amount of oil flowing from it:

Even as the White House sought to demonstrate that it was taking a more direct hand in trying to solve the problem, senior officials acknowledged that the new technique BP will use to try to cap the leak — severing the riser pipe and placing a containment dome over the cut riser — could temporarily result in as much as 20 percent more oil flowing into the water during the three days to a week before the new device could be in place.

Nice. If we've got, on the low end, one million gallons of oil pouring out per day, we will now have one million and two hundred thousand. If we have four million, on the higher end, we will now have four million and eight hundred thousand. Until August, when they manage to finish drilling their new well.

Showing that BP's gusher in the ocean floor was just short of deliberate

Did they intend for the rig to explode and the hole to spew oil? Of course not. That means they lose money. But they did consistently ignore safety-related warnings that would necessitate them shutting down their operation, however shortly, in order to address the obvious problems indicating an impending explosion. They knew this was a potential, increasingly likely scenario, and they did nothing but keep drilling and pulling out oil:

The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of “well control.” And as far back as 11 months ago, it was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer.

On June 22, for example, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure.

“This would certainly be a worst-case scenario,” Mark E. Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. “However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur.”

The company went ahead with the casing, but only after getting special permission from BP colleagues because it violated the company’s safety policies and design standards. The internal reports do not explain why the company allowed for an exception. BP documents released last week to The Times revealed that company officials knew the casing was the riskier of two options...

In April of this year, BP engineers concluded that the casing was “unlikely to be a successful cement job,” according to a document, referring to how the casing would be sealed to prevent gases from escaping up the well.

The document also says that the plan for casing the well is “unable to fulfill M.M.S. regulations,” referring to the Minerals Management Service...

On Tuesday Congress released a memorandum with preliminary findings from BP’s internal investigation, which indicated that there were warning signs immediately before the explosion on April 20, including equipment readings suggesting that gas was bubbling into the well, a potential sign of an impending blowout.

A parade of witnesses at hearings last week told about bad decisions and cut corners in the days and hours before the explosion of the rig, but BP’s internal documents provide a clearer picture of when company and federal officials saw problems emerging.

In addition to focusing on the casing, investigators are also focusing on the blowout preventer, a fail-safe device that was supposed to slice through a drill pipe in a last-ditch effort to close off the well when the disaster struck. The blowout preventer did not work, which is one of the reasons oil has continued to spill into the gulf, though the reason it failed remains unclear...

The documents show that in March, after problems on the rig that included drilling mud falling into the formation, sudden gas releases known as “kicks” and a pipe falling into the well, BP officials informed federal regulators that they were struggling with a loss of “well control.”

On at least three occasions, BP records indicate, the blowout preventer was leaking fluid, which the manufacturer of the device has said limits its ability to operate properly.

“The most important thing at a time like this is to stop everything and get the operation under control,” said Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas, Austin, offering his assessment about the documents...

Bob Sherrill, an expert on blowout preventers and the owner of Blackwater Subsea, an engineering consulting firm, said the conditions on the rig in February and March and the language used by the operator referring to a loss of well control “sounds like they were facing a blowout scenario.”

This is an open-and-shut case of capitalist negligence. We're gonna need a lot of ropes for this one. I would pay dearly to watch these motherfuckers hung in their suits. Maybe we can dip them in oil, set them on fire, and then hang them with steel cables, as ropes would burn off very quickly. Wait, no, that's good, stick with the ropes. We will dip them in oil, set them on fire, hang them with ropes, let them hang for a second until the rope burns off, just to add agony, then watch them writhe on the ground until they die.

BP's hole in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico is still gushing

Watch their oilvision to witness it. Around three million gallons a day, despite BP and the government's ass-covering lies. Today must be day 40, I believe. 120,000 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Eclipsed the Exxon Valdez spill, previously the worst in US history, in four days.

It's not so bad though:

BP CEO Tony Hayward told Britain's The Guardian newspaper that the spill was small in proportion to the Gulf.

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume," Hayward said.

WHY HASN'T SOMEONE TRIED TO PLUG THE HOLE WITH THIS PIECE OF SHIT YET?

Filthy fucking BP trying to get its lawsuits dismissed with a judge they bought

The oil industry bought this judge a long time ago. Our legal system allows for BP to have the more than 100 lawsuits already filed against them adjudicated by one judge, one of their picking. Guess who they picked. Would not be at all surprised if they were allowed to have their way.

Helping BP

If you've got any thoughts on how they could do things a little differently (and who doesn't), here's how you can offer contributions, courtesy of the BP website:

Do you have ideas to help us?:
+1 281 366 5511

It only takes a minute, and there's a real person on the other end. Sure, what you say probably won't reach the top, but you can help build an atmosphere of incredibly low morale within the company among low-level employees and managers, which would eventually reach the top.

Fucking corporate lies

You have 20,000 people working the cleanup? GET MORE. NOW. FUCK YOUR PROFITS, FUCK YOUR INVESTORS, FUCK YOUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS. FIX IT MOTHERFUCKER. I hope the piece of shit gets an ulcer that eats through his ribcage.

"I probably should apologize to folks that we haven't been giving more data on that," Suttles said when asked why it took so long for BP to announce it had suspended the top kill. "It was nothing more than we are so focused on the operation itself."

YOU SHOULD ALSO PROBABLY FUCKING KILL YOURSELF AND ALL PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR RUNNING THE COMPANY.

Where are suicide bombers when you need them? People wasting their time trying to blow up a truck in Times Square. Get a real fucking target.

BP's hole in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico is now blowing muddy oil

Congratulations. You're doing a fine job.

Don't forget to check BP's disastervision for the latest on their struggle to address a problem for which there are really no short-range solutions, as no one bothered to think that far ahead (there was too much money to be made too quickly to wait on the technology to address a "what if" situation). And that is 100% their fucking fault.

New plans for offshore oil drilling

Ok. So there's quite a bit to say about this. Here is a brief summation of what the president has handed down:

The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.

Concerns abound from virtually every conceivable method of analysis - environmental, political, social, financial. Mine are chiefly about the environmental impact of this and people's perceived right to do as they wish with land simply because they can, but I am not going to go into that. Instead, I will offer a bit of unsolicited advice on how to achieve one of the goals that this new petroleum extraction is supposed to secure.

Mr. Obama said several times during his presidential campaign that he supported expanded offshore drilling. He noted in his State of the Union address in January that weaning the country from imported oil would require “tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.”

Mind you, I have no belief in the sustainability of industry, nor do I wish for it to be so, but if one were of that mindset (and all capitalists are), there is a crucial first step that they must take and push for:

Get off the oil industry's dick.