NO OIL RELIEF 'TIL AUGUST

So far nothing has worked to stop the flow of oil. If everything goes right they may be able to get relief wells drilled into a six inch pipe more than a mile beneath the surface by August.

This leak has been pouring from the ocean floor for about a month now and August is three months away. I'm not a mathematician but that tells me that we've only seen 25% of the total oil that's going to be released into the Gulf.

The Gulf is dead if that's the case, along with the entire Gulf coast and who knows how much of the American economy. The larger question is how much will this impact the Atlantic, the East Coast of the U.S., Europe and the world. The oil will get into the Gulf Stream and it will be carried across the Atlantic, to Europe and Africa and North up the coasts of Central and South America. If it effects the Gulf Stream flow massive changes in weather will occur around the globe, not to mention damage to sea life and our food chain.

This is a problem of Biblical proportions; quite literally.

Pray, pray, pray!

"For weeks, it was a disaster in abstraction, a threat floating somewhere out there.

Not anymore. In the last week, the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico has revealed itself to an angry and desperate public, smearing tourist beaches, washing onto the shorelines of sleepy coastal communities and oozing into marshy bays that fishermen have worked for generations. It has even announced its arrival on the Louisiana coast with a fittingly ugly symbol: brown pelicans, the state bird, dyed with crude.

More than a month has passed since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew up, spewing immeasurable quantities of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and frustrating all efforts to contain it. The billowing plume of undersea oil and water has thwarted the industry’s well-control efforts and driven government officials to impotent rage."
New York Times

"The last resort for the owner of the blown-out well, and the most trustworthy way to plug the gush of petroleum, relies on the steady but slow toiling of two rigs now drilling what the industry calls "relief wells."

That label suggests the opposite of the two wells' true intent, for they are meant to kill, not relieve, the stricken well that has been leaking oil and natural gas for more than four weeks.

BP PLC, owner of the damaged well, predicts it will take 70 to 90 days — perhaps into August — to stab through more than 3 miles of seawater and earth and puncture the vertical pipe that is channeling a torrent of oil and gas to the surface of the Gulf near the Louisiana coast.

"So how the hell are you going to hit something that's 6 inches wide?" said Bill Abel, founder of Abel Engineering & Well Control Co. and someone who has helped do just that about 30 times.

The short answer: decades of practice combined with increasingly precise technology."
Orlando Sentinel