Rising Tide Recaps

I'll add more as they come, but here's a couple from Nola.com:

'Treme' creator David Simon says New Orleans may have something to learn from Baltimore. Congratulations all you "young journalists" out there. (Also: slightly different wording on the Mobile version of the article). I also missed the first half of Simon's speech (desperately in need of caffeine), so I was trying to reconstruct exactly what he said from others and it was about 50/50 'nice points'/'Simon is a douchebag'.

Gambit article on Rising Tide.

NOLA Femmes recap.

First Draft's Liveblogging here.

angels and people's photos from the conference.

American Zombie: "The Ebb and Flow"

Jeffrey: Standing

Maitri's favorite photo

Huck Upchuck: Busy Day

Cliff: 7 Years in Blogger Land and I'm still here.

B2L2: We Have A Winnah

Liveblogging: Re-Capping the Well

Panel:
Alex Woodward - Mod.
Anne Rolfes
Drake Toulouse
Bob Marshall
David Hammer
Len Bahr

Intro. - Alex Woodward.

Overview of blowout - Hammerman.

Schedule here (w/bio's of presenters)

UPDATE 1- Excellent, technically accurate overview given by Hammerman. I've thoroughly enjoyed his USCG/BOEMRE Board of Inquiry Updates.

UPDATE 2- If we never hear "Top Kill" and "Junk Shot", it'll be a good thing. Unfortunately, that ain't gonna happen.

Ken Feinberg, the "Special Master". He's special alright.



Anne Rolfes now talking about refinery accident rates. 10 accidents a week. She also starts mixing the oil industry and refinery industry, which I don't generally agree with. I tend to think of Upstream (Exploration and Production) and Downstream (Refining) as separate industries and, interestingly enough, one happens to have a much lower accident rate. According to the (somewhat dated) Normal Accidents, the Chemical/Refining industry has the lowest fatality rate of any heavy-industrial sector. My opinion. Take it for what you will.

Bummer (BOEMRE) joke is excellent.

Now Hammer is going through the MMS Sex Parties Scandal. He says that the biggest issue going forward is the lack of qualified personnel at regulators.

UPDATE- Now Hammer and Rolfes are disagreeing about accidents. Hammer seems to be making a distinction between Process Safety and Personal Safety accidents.

Len Bahr now speaking...

UPDATE

Bahr now talking about Bob Bea and his background working for Shell Offshore on fixed leg platforms.

Bob Marshall talking now about the extent of Louisiana's desire to push drilling in order to reap the royalties, employment, etc. "...and we accept this [risk]." 'The oil industry didn't rape the state,' "it was consensual sex."

Distilling it down further...

UPDATE: Drilling down further?

Alright, bonus points to the first panelist to make a reference to The Oil Drum. OK, that's just my desire I guess...

Drake Tolouse now describing blogging about the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF). Here's his blog: Disenfranchised Citizen. Give it some love.

UPDATE: GCCF: for profit or nonprofit? (BP gets unspent $ back).

Personal note: Cold room. Glad I'm wearing a jacket. Linen is the best for NOLA: loose and breathable for heat, and you get to wear a jacket when you walk into an over-air-conditioned room.

Lots of panelists now ripping of Feinberg (justifiably), but Hammer makes the issue that we do need to root for Feinberg in the end. If Feinberg fails, it's left to the lawyers and courtrooms where MAYBE, SOMEDAY, SOME of those who sue MIGHT get treble damages (and even then to be paid out over installments over time). Rolfes says that BP is trying to turn victims against each other, no acknowledgment of health claims vs. 9/11.

UPDATE: Len Bahr's blog. "Katrina gave us Bobby Jindal," (knecapped relatively moderate, successful Blanco) {did the Moratorium get Vitter re-elected - Me}, how can we ask for $100 Billion for coastal restoration (which we badly need) after our past actions?

"Why do they live there?" - Talking about NY Residents evacuating from coastal, low-lying areas (Bob Marshall). Related.

(TP headline) "A Win for the Coast" = 'Waterloo was a win for France' (LA Coastal Restoration $ gets classified as discretionary spending, with 1 Louisiana legislator voting against that modest [$1 million] appropriation.

Discussion about API and its lobbying role. Hammer makes the note that API makes engineering specifications (API RP's) that carry legal authority that are referenced in Code of Federal Regulations (CFR's). Note that Transocean probably didn't follow API RP's in their maintenance of the failed BOP (there is some vagueness in the API RP that gives TO some wiggle room, but my personal opinion is TO violated API RP's, and hence the CFR's).

Marshall: Pipeline companies in Louisiana gets Eminent Domain power (LA is most restrictive state in nation when it comes to Eminent Domain Laws), but Louisiana can't get that authority for coastal restoration projects. (NOTE: See issue Campanella talked about earlier with Bayou Bienvenue ). BIG ISSUE!

Hammer relays story from flying offshore with (Doc?) Laborde "You know, we never realized what we were doing back then." Related (H/T Cade Roux).

Bob Marshall: We're in the driver's seat. Oil reservoirs can't be moved. Thunderhorse has 1 well that produced ~7% of domestic production at one point. The oil industry (my note- as long as prices stay high) aren't going to up and move. The "Resource Curse".

Rolfes- 'We have such a small budget and the reaction to the little amount of work LA Bucket Brigade does, but then the Oil Industry acts like we're the bane of the state.' [see recent issue of TELC law ]

? Time:

Can it happen again? Hammer: if BOEMRE doesn't hire qualified inspectors/petroleum engineers/ etc., yes.

? to LA Bucket Brigade on Statistical Compiling of Accident Reports: Rolfes- We just re-compiled industry reports with industry terms (LTI's, etc.). Hammer makes note that there were VIP's were having a party on the Deepwater Horizon to celebrate no LTI's in a long period of time.

LUNCH!!!

NOTE: I tried to note my personal opinions as they popped in my head from the commenters' statements. I hope there aren't too many typos and too scatterbrained and all (for a live product). If you've got a complaint, let me know.

Rising Tide 6

Hope I see y'all today. #RT6 Blog here.

Historical Gulf of Mexico Production Data

I like this image a lot. Found it here. The data is based off 2003 MMS well data, so it's pretty far out of date on the deepwater fields, but it illustrates how deepwater production is the lynchpin of US offshore oil production (the lion's share of the ~1.6-1.8 Million Barrels a day we produce offshore). The chart is organized based off the maximum historical production rate (B/D) by leaseblock. Note that the shallow fields have history back as far as the 1940's, while there are plenty of blocks now (2011) in production that aren't even show on the map. If the map were updated with today's information, it would look even more lopsided.

The Moratorium 8

Here's the names of the 8 drilling rigs that have left the Gulf since the Moratorium was put in place. To note:

* 1 was already scheduled to depart for another area
* 3 were new, 5 were more than 24 years old, and some were more than 30 years old. 20 years is generally a good lifetime for a rig; 30 is sometimes done if prices are favorable and there's been good maintenance and 10-year overhauls. The new rigs will hurt (the 3 that left were among the best in their respective fleets), but the others were so long in the tooth, you'd almost say good riddance. Diamond had a lot of legacy drillships left over from New Orleans-based OEDECO that probably shouldn't be operating in the second decade of the 21st Century. They'll eventually be replaced by newbuilds very soon. There's a MODU building boom going on in Korea, thanks mostly to generous government subsidies and financing for customers.

Note that there have been some rigs that have come TO the Gulf since the Moratorium, although almost all are jackups leaving shallow-water Mexico to drill a series of promising shallow water gas fields on the US side.

BP, meanwhile, still hasn't gotten a SINGLE drill permit since the moratorium. Most other operators now have all their drillships back in operation, but BP's only drilling is being done where they are a minority operator. Either the BOEMRE is deliberately shoving aside anything with BP written on it (unlikely) or it's yet another indicator that BP lags behind in technical competency. BP desperately wants to avoid "gross negligence" charges (and the quadrupled fines that go along) and this (in my opinion) is yet another nail in that coffin.

The worrying about "Economic Survival" seems to be past, but the Moratorium may yet teach us some interesting things about drillship construction and BP's operating practices.

Unions win a battle with Verizon

Recently, 45,000 unionized electrical workers went on strike against Verizon. The two main points of contention were healthcare costs and pay fairness for the same work. On the first issue, Verizon wanted to force the workers to pay hundreds more per month for the healthcare package (shifting the burden from mostly Verizon to mostly worker). The second issue was that linemen in the landline-side of the business would be forced to take an even higher hike than the cellphone-side of the business. The union argued 'equal pay for equal work' (both sets of linemen do about the same thing, just one unit happens to be more profitable now). Here's an overview article that explains more.

I takes some real balls to go on strike when unemployment is ~10%, but it looks like the union came out on top.

Here's one incident that caught my attention throughout the whole flap: Verizon accused the strikers of conducting acts of sabotage. They even offered a $50,000 reward for proof. Now, charges of sabotage are not uncommon and it's not unheard of for the occasional striker to go off the reservation, but so far, I can't find one time Verizon paid out on their reward and I think I know why.

The striking workers were electrical workers. Guys that deal with high voltage and sensitive electronics. There was also an enormous number that walked out all at once. You can't just take any dopehead off the street and send them to work. They'll electrocute themselves, take down your network, and then you'll need a new network (and a new worker). It looks, though, like that's exactly what Verizon did: Verizon uses inexperienced worker to fill in. Note that the NRC used to explicitly ban any manufacturer of nuclear powerplant equipment from providing equipment to plants built by "scab" workers.

What's really interesting is there's lots of videos out there of the replacement workers screwing things up (with IBEW guys snickering in the background):

Verizon (replacement) workers blow transformer while striker hassles them

One more related note: Has anyone found Obama's comfortable shoes?

Given some recent events, maybe these guys are just helping him out by going on their own search for his comfy shoes.

Link Dump - 20 August 2011

Crime:

✭

"But I wore my juice"

People tend to overestimate their own intelligence. Funny story at the beginning of the article.

Great article on Wired about Stuxnet

There are other articles out there that are better on one aspect of it, but this is by far the best overview of the spread and damage done by the Stuxnet worm.

✭

Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed | Threat Level | Wired.com

Gives some great perspective on how the Wikileaks Afghan War Logs got leaked. Also, nice to read the unedited logs to get the whole perspective (although it takes some skipping around).

✭

Anthrax killer still unknown?

FBI mucks up the case yet again.

More here

✭

Lee Zurik is lazy

So sez Aaron Bennet

Miami Scandal - Original Yahoo Sports column

Original article. Well worth a read. Great investigative journalism.

Church child protection chief caught with 4,000 child porn pictures - mirror.co.uk

Mubarak in hospital bed, but still on trial

In Mussolini's Italy, people surrendered their civil rights 'so they train could run on time'

Economics:

✭

How does Germany keep youth unemployment down?

Answer: get some practical experience. In the US for engineers, the Senior Project is looked at very closely by employers.

✭

China vs. Korea: Battle of the Shipbuilders

China seeks to displace Korea as the king of the shipbuilders. Korea will start concentrating on higher-value ships (LNG tankers, for example) as China's government pumps money into the shipbuilding industry to build capacity.

✭

Illegal Immigrants from Mexico drop to a trickle?

Note the article focuses only on Mexican immigrants (not other Latin American countries). Economic progress and less corruption keeps Mexico's best and brightest home.

✭

Sandeep Gautam's answer to Managerial track or Technical track - how should students make this career choice? - Quora

Discussion of choosing between technical track and managerial track positions. I don't necessarily agree with everything that's presented in the article, but the comments at the end are also good.

✭

Small measures to reign in executive pay prove worth

✭

The Price of Life

✭

Broken Lotteries | Wired Science | Wired.com

Downgrade saves US taxpayer $10 Billion dollars

✭

As Newsrooms Shrink, PR fills the gap

Shocking article. Also mentions the USCG/MMS hearings in New Orleans.

Energy

✭

Natural Nuclear Reactors hold the key to nuclear waste storage?

Also check out the 'Chats with nuclear dad' on the Georneys blog. A PhD candidate in geology interviews her nuclear engineer dad on Fukushima and other nuclear topics.

✭

10 most dangerous moments in ISS/Shuttle history

Lots of the early missions are still classified (NRO/NSA satellite launches, mostly) and there were some incidents that were never widely known.

✭

Young Men and Fire

The Practical Pyromaniac, reviewed by Adam Savage

✭

Retrain Shuttle workers to inspect Offshore?

Not as crazy an idea as it soundsh

✭

Oil Industry Executives Pay themselves well, fire their subordinates and don't even try to make more oil

Note that many major oil companies have negative reserve replacement ratios and don't even have a plan to reverse that trend; they'd rather live high on the hog on booked reserves. If you look at oil patch history, on the long run, it's cheaper to find and book barrels today rather than wait until tomorrow....

✭

Squirrels changing trees: Republican edition

MMS tuns to BOEMRE. Now it's BOEM, OESS, and ONRR.

Too Much Safety Could Make Drivers Less Safe | Autopia | Wired.com

If I ever become dictator, everyone will drive stickshifts. It will stop distracted driving, lower energy consumption (and hence oil prices), and be safer.

Bomb found on Natural Gas Pipeline

Chesapeake Padding Reserves?

The truth about the "Obama/Soros/Petrobras deal"

From the Houston Chronicle, with hilarious appeal to 'stop sending us those crazy emails'

War:

A Littoral Mess

A history of the Littoral Combat Ship

Khadafi as the lynchpin of Middle Eastern Secret Polices?

✭

Soldier's view of having to shoot on your own country's civilians

Syrian soldier's view on being ordered to shoot at his neighbors.

✭

Pakistan let China see crashed US "stealth" copter

Information Dissemination: China Exporting Submarines For Pakistans Nuclear Triad

Politics:

Freshman Republicans hate pork... Except for their own district

✭

For lesson in shared sacrifice, send Congress to boot camp - CNN.com

Lt. General Russel Honoré thinks Congress should be sent to boot camp: "Put them in tents with no air conditioning, have Army drill sergeants teach them teamwork and physical sacrifice. When they recognize their responsibility to the people of America, they can return to D.C."

Obama's Book Club - The Daily Beast

List of books read by Obama over the past ~2 years.

No laws, no welfare, no building codes, no minimum wage, and lots of guns

Book Review: The Gun by CJ Chivers

Two histories have recently come out about the AK-47. Larry Kahaner's book and CJ Chivers' book. I read this LGM Review and decided on the later.

Chivers' book is more a history of automatic weapons in general and then focusing in on why the AK-47 was so successful. There is a large section in there about the M-16's early teething problems that will make your blood boil (the blame for which he places squarely on Colt's greed and the DoD's incompetence). There have been approximately 100 million units of AK-family weapons produced; the M-1 Carbine, the most produced weapon of WWII only had 6 million units built. The AK is "so easy a child can use it... and they do".

Chivers is a good writer. He's won a few Pulitzers while working for the NY Times in Afghanistan, Iraq and Georgia during the South Ossetian War. He served as a Marine in the first Gulf War. He knows weapons inside and out. I love his explanation of how an engineer must juggle compromises to reach his design. He's a fantastic researcher (the notes section is extensive and has a few funny little stories). One of my favorite stories comes from the Civil War. There were several draft riots in New York. During one, a mob marched down the street to burn down the New York Times. Now, you normally think of the NY Times as a Democratic Party paper and incredibly 'anti-gun,' but in the Civil War, the NY Times was ardently Republican and the editor in chief personally manned the hand-crank of one of three Gatling guns. The editor was not about to let HIS paper get ransacked. He had the 1st story covered in wet newspaper and stared down the protesters over the barrel of a gun. The mob took one look at that editor and decided to burn down another abolitionist newspaper (the New York Tribune) instead.

One of the coolest things about the book is the binding. For about $10 on Amazon, you get a nicely bound hardback. The pages are nice and thick and have a good texture to it. The coolest part is the cover. It has a set of grains to it and when you pick the book up just the right way, it feels like the foregrip of an AK.

My biggest gripe about the book was the photographs. Only about half of them follow the book, while the rest seem like a random allotment from a stockphoto site. I know that Chivers could have done better. He has an awesome blog with all sorts of great photos he's taken in war zones. Check out this post on Rebel Graffiti of Muamar Qadafi.

Looters vs. NOPD: a table

Looters	NOPD
Looted Wal-Mart	Looted Wal-Mart
“Sniper fire” (really a Relief Valve)	Long range, deadly fire
“Raping Babies”	Raping children
Body count: Looters shot 1 cop in the head (survived)	Body Count: Still counting (1 conviction so far, probably a few more soon, maybe a lot more)
Rapes: 2 confirmed sexual assaults in Superdome, others elsewhere	Rapes: Equipped and ready to go

Next time a storm runs this way, here's a humble suggestion for the governor's office: issue additional orders to shoot NOPD on sight.

UPDATE- NOPD vs. TUPD gunbattle. Nobody hit, despite both officers being "expert" firearm-wielders.*

Another thing NOPD loves doing along with criminals: stealing guns:


*- The article was a little unclear as to whether it was just NOPD firing or the NOPD and TUPD exchanging rounds.

Deepwater Horizon Investigation Updates

There's been a multitude of investigations into the Deepwater Horizon / Macondo Blowout and I figure I'd summarize where we're at.

There's broad agreement between all the reports on the facts (with a few minor exceptions), but each one puts different emphasis on which actions were most important.

Transocean's Report came out not too long ago. Watch this video; it's excellent.

I liked most of Transocean's report. There were only a few howlers in there. Transocean endorses the maintenance as good practice (I'm personally not so sure; scheduled maintenance is perfect for turbines {things with well defined MTBF's}, but not great for something with weird failure modes like a BOP). They also say that the AMF/"Dead Man" fired successfully within an hour of the initial blowout (doubtful, but not impossible, according to the Det Norske Veritas report), but the blind shear rams failed to seal. The DNV report said the shear rams were closed days later by ROV intervention, which TO says 'closed the rams further.' Both agree the off-center drillstring was to blame for the failure to seal. The other big howler in TO's report is the treatment of fast rescue craft.

Transocean praises the Fast Rescue Craft from the Bankston (used to pluck multiple casualties from the water), but TO never mentions that the Horizon was never fitted with a FRC mostly to save space and money. The regulations allowed them to get away with this because they designated one of their large, slow, unwieldy lifeboats as their rescue craft, despite the fact that they are incapable of performing an injured swimmer pickup. There are some drawbacks of FRC's, but for a vessel the size of the Horizon, in my opinion as an engineer, the omission constitutes a design blunder. Had the Damon Bankston not been on the scene, there would be more than 11 dead.

USCG/BOEMRE almost finished, but won't meet deadline

The National Academy of Engineering has a draft report out, but the final report is still being worked on.

The Chemical Safety Board has another investigation they're working on. Note that they've gotten very, very little cooperation from anyone offshore, because nobody wants the CSB to have purview over offshore. The CSB is a funny little organization. They've got no enforcement powers, their reports are generally not (directly) admissible as evidence in courts, but they're packed with some really brilliant PHD's and do wonderful reconstructions of events:

CSB Video of Texas City.

I love engineering disaster books. Love 'em. I picked up the book the CSB head put together about Texas City and was so disgusted with BP's management I couldn't finish it, that's how in-depth it was.

More notes:

✭ WHOI Examines the Plumes

✭ BP's Company Man excused from testifying for "medical reasons"

But medical records kept under seal....

All of these investigations reaching slightly different conclusions is a GOOD thing. It means we'll actually learn something and the 11 lives weren't lost for nothing.

Jury Duty - Impressions

A couple weeks ago, I had the honor (?) to serve Orleans Parish criminal Jury Duty.

A few quick notes:
* I had many people warn me about how disorganized and chaotic the system was, but I have to say, on the whole, it was fairly well organized. Parking was no problem. One gripe: it seemed like the jurors had to arrive earlier than the judges, who would trickle in hours after the jurors.
* I brought plenty to read and needed it all. I was very surprised at the prevalance of E-readers/Nooks/Kindles/etc. Far more people were using them than I thought.
* A constant complaint during the Voire Dire was NOPD. Juror after juror would say, "I'm sick and tired of picking up the paper and seeing some officer under indictment for murder, rape, etc." I appreciate that it's actually fairly difficult to 'prove beyond a reasonable doubt' that someone is guilty. Case after case, for better or for worse, depends on the testimony of a single officer and the conviction rate will rise and fall based off NOPD's reputation first and foremost. Check out this report from The Lens for an idea of what people look at NOPD as.
* There was an extremely large contingent (>1/3 of the jury pool) that openly advocated, at a minimum, marijuana legalization. The Voire Dire for drug cases was far more involved that it should have been. The prosecutions spent way too much time trying to pick out anyone who may have thought about smoking a joint one time. On the flip side, defense attorneys spent their time trying to get the jury most likely to result in an acquittal / were most uncomfortable with the thought of judging someone else. I personally feel that the jury should be closer to a representation of society and then take your chances and present your case from there. If society is skeptical of drug busts, than the average jury should reflect that.
* Fortunately, the entire time, I was only picked for 1 jury and that guy pled guilty at the start of the trial. One group of my fellow jurors had to sit through the trial of an NOPD officer who eventually pled guilty to raping his step-daughter. From what I heard after the trial finished, that was a seriously messed up case.

For all of its flaws, it's hard to think of a better system than trial by jury. It's not perfect, but it's the best we can do for now.

Further reading: New Orleans juries aren't voting 'guilty' too often, analysis shows

City Hall gets liquored up

Tales of the Cocktail, a photo by Noladishu on Flickr.

For Tales of the Cocktail.

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones, the TV show is done for the season. To fill the time (an get into some fiction, for a change), I've picked up the books. I've finished Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings and started A Storm of Swords.

The books are pretty good. I've never read about a character I've wanted to hate more than the little impudent whelp Joffrey. (MINOR SPOILER, Highlight to read: Joffrey takes a crossbow to a crowd of people begging for bread.)

To get more of your fix of Game of Thrones, check out First Draft's awesome commentary. Wired: Call the Banners goes through a bit of the strategy of the characters (by the Danger Room blog guys). Be warned: the Wired article has a few spoilers.

And now, here's Joffrey getting bitch slapped to close:

Tulane Engineering Updates

 
"Tulane Breeds a New Kind of Engineer" (Apologies in advance for ABC26's horrible ads; turn down the volume at first)

*************************

I found this Interview with Tulane Science and Engineering Dean Altiero. Some snippets:

There are task forces in place looking into several potential programs, including Computer Science, Geological Engineering, and Human Factors Engineering. Of these, the plan for Computer Science is the most developed at this point.
...
[on the return of the computer science major] The longer term plan is for a full undergraduate major within five years.


*************************

Tulane Civil Engineering grad pilots the final shuttle. Doug Hurley went to Tulane on a NROTC scholarship and eventually became an astronaut, along with his wife.

*************************
UPDATE:
Tulane vows to bring on-campus football back. Dickson said he and the university refuses to strap itself with a mountain of debt to build facilities.