Cut, Cap and Balance

The Pledge
I pledge to urge my Senators and Member of the House of Representatives to oppose any debt limit increase unless all three of the following conditions have been met:

1. Cut - Substantial cuts in spending that will reduce the deficit next year and thereafter.
2. Cap - Enforceable spending caps that will put federal spending on a path to a balanced budget.
3. Balance - Congressional passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- but only if it includes both a spending limitation and a super-majority for raising taxes, in addition to balancing revenues and expenses.

Well, it sounds good.

Unfortunately, it is not an acceptable basis for negotiating the raising of the debt ceiling.  I mean, just imagine going to Visa or MasterCard and telling them you wanted them to raise your credit limit and that you would "cut, cap and balance" your budget in return.  I'm not sure which would hurt more; the deafening sound of them slamming their phone down or the peals of laughter you heard just before that happened.

How about we eliminate the deficit?  What happened to zero-based budgeting?  No, I do not mean zero-sum budgeting.  Zero-sum is how we-the-people deal with an increase in our expenses when we don't have a commensurate increase in our income.  I'm talking about zero-based budgeting for every aspect of government.  I'm talking about our elected representatives actually doing some work and making the hard choices on a regular basis.  No more 'budget' votes that only reference the amount of the increase.  No more calling an increase less than projected a budget 'cut'.

The Deficit Is Worse Than We Think

Once again I must credit the following to someone much smarter than myself. Therefore, I would like to acknowledge the author, Lawrence Lindsey, and The Wall Street Journal where the column was originally published. All I did was cut and paste.

The Deficit Is Worse Than We Think

Normal interest rates would raise debt-service costs by $4.9 trillion over 10 years, dwarfing the savings from any currently contemplated budget deal.

By LAWRENCE B. LINDSEY

Washington is struggling to make a deal that will couple an increase in the debt ceiling with a long-term reduction in spending. There is no reason for the players to make their task seem even more Herculean than it already is. But we should be prepared for upward revisions in official deficit projections in the years ahead—even if a deal is struck. There are at least three major reasons for concern.

First, a normalization of interest rates would upend any budgetary deal if and when one should occur. At present, the average cost of Treasury borrowing is 2.5%. The average over the last two decades was 5.7%. Should we ramp up to the higher number, annual interest expenses would be roughly $420 billion higher in 2014 and $700 billion higher in 2020.

The 10-year rise in interest expense would be $4.9 trillion higher under "normalized" rates than under the current cost of borrowing. Compare that to the $2 trillion estimate of what the current talks about long-term deficit reduction may produce, and it becomes obvious that the gains from the current deficit-reduction efforts could be wiped out by normalization in the bond market.

To some extent this is a controllable risk. The Federal Reserve could act aggressively by purchasing even more bonds, or targeting rates further out on the yield curve, to slow any rise in the cost of Treasury borrowing. Of course, this carries its own set of risks, not the least among them an adverse reaction by our lenders. Suffice it to say, though, that given all that is at stake, Fed interest-rate policy will increasingly have to factor in the effects of any rate hike on the fiscal position of the Treasury.

The second reason for concern is that official growth forecasts are much higher than what the academic consensus believes we should expect after a financial crisis. That consensus holds that economies tend to return to trend growth of about 2.5%, without ever recapturing what was lost in the downturn.

But the president's budget of February 2011 projects economic growth of 4% in 2012, 4.5% in 2013, and 4.2% in 2014. That budget also estimates that the 10-year budget cost of missing the growth estimate by just one point for one year is $750 billion. So, if we just grow at trend those three years, we will miss the president's forecast by a cumulative 5.2 percentage points and—using the numbers provided in his budget—incur additional debt of $4 trillion. That is the equivalent of all of the 10-year savings in Congressman Paul Ryan's budget, passed by the House in April, or in the Bowles-Simpson budget plan.

Third, it is increasingly clear that the long-run cost estimates of ObamaCare were well short of the mark because of the incentive that employers will have under that plan to end private coverage and put employees on the public system. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has already issued 1,400 waivers from the act's regulations for employers as large as McDonald's to stop them from dumping their employees' coverage.

But a recent McKinsey survey, for example, found that 30% of employers with plans will likely take advantage of the system, with half of the more knowledgeable ones planning to do so. If this survey proves correct, the extra bill for taxpayers would be roughly $74 billion in 2014 rising to $85 billion in 2019, thanks to the subsidies provided to individuals and families purchasing coverage in the government's insurance exchanges.

Underestimating the long-term budget situation is an old game in Washington. But never have the numbers been this large.

There is no way to raise taxes enough to cover these problems. The tax-the-rich proposals of the Obama administration raise about $700 billion, less than a fifth of the budgetary consequences of the excess economic growth projected in their forecast. The whole $700 billion collected over 10 years would not even cover the difference in interest costs in any one year at the end of the decade between current rates and the average cost of Treasury borrowing over the last 20 years.

Only serious long-term spending reduction in the entitlement area can begin to address the nation's deficit and debt problems. It should no longer be credible for our elected officials to hide the need for entitlement reforms behind rosy economic and budgetary assumptions. And while we should all hope for a deal that cuts spending and raises the debt ceiling to avoid a possible default, bondholders should be under no illusions.

Under current government policies and economic projections, they should be far more concerned about a return of their principal in 10 years than about any short-term delay in a coupon payment in August.

Mr. Lindsey, a former Federal Reserve governor and assistant to President George W. Bush for economic policy, is president and CEO of the Lindsey Group.

No more Mr. Nice Guy...

".. this is war!"  (Mark Levin on his radio broadcast, Monday, June 27, 2001)

Mark is right.  To hell with all the 'play nice' rhetoric.  We - the conservative voters - need to pull the stops out and crush the opposition.  That pretty much covers the definition of war.

There are enough conservative Representatives in the House to keep the debt ceiling where it is.  It is time to play hardball - no compromises.  I live on a specific amount of income with which I am 'forced' to pay off my debts (mortgage, credit cards, car payment) first .. even before I get to go shopping for groceries.  It is time for the federal government to learn the meaning of the word budget.

from Econterms:  budget:  A budget is a description of a financial plan. It is a list of estimates of revenues to and expenditures by an agent for a stated period of time. Normally a budget describes a period in the future not the past.

Since we cannot pass a balanced budget amendment in time, the option of 'cutting up the credit card' will have to do.  It is time the government lived within its means.

The (sad) truth is…

Budgets do not come from the White House, they come from Congress.  The party that has controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democrat Party.  That means they controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011.  In that first year they had to contend with George Bush who, somewhat belatedly, got tough on spending increases and which caused them to compromise on spending.  However, for FY 2009 Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely by passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office.  Once that had happened they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.  Where was Barack Obama during this time?  Why he was a member of that very Congress, the one that passed all of these spending bills and, as President, he signed the massive omnibus bill to complete FY 2009.  Let's remember what the deficits looked like for the past 10 years:

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets.  That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending.  After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes (then Senator) Barack Obama, who voted for those budgets.  If Obama inherited anything in the way of a deficit, he inherited it from himself.  In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is “I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then, since becoming President, I voted to expand that deficit four-fold.”

One perspective on the Deepwater Horizon

I want to start off by acknowledging The Oil Drum and TOD reader dougr who wrote the following ‘comment’ which I have taken whole and posted below.  I have made no changes to dougr’s original text other than to connect a couple links and replace a linefeed or two with carriage returns.

While I am not an engineer and am not in any way associated with the oil industry (other than as a consumer), I come from a family of engineers (some of whom are directly associated with the oil industry) and I have worked with engineers for enough of my professional life to recognize dougr‘s comment as concise, intelligent and very well thought out.

Basically, it scares the hell out of me.  I am reposting it because it is important.

dougr on June 13, 2010 - 3:17am

Editors' note for first-time visitors: What follows is a comment from a The Oil Drum reader. To read what The Oil Drum staff members are saying about the Deepwater Horizon Spill, please visit the front page. (Were the US government and BP more forthcoming with information and details, the situation would not be giving rise to so much speculation about what is actually going on in the Gulf. This should be run more like Mission Control at NASA than an exclusive country club function--it is a public matter--transparency, now!) OK let's get real about the GOM oil flow. There doesn't really seem to be much info on TOD that furthers more complete understanding of what's really happening in the GOM. As you have probably seen and maybe feel yourselves, there are several things that do not appear to make sense regarding the actions of attack against the well. Don't feel bad, there is much that doesn't make sense even to professionals unless you take into account some important variables that we are not being told about. There seems to me to be a reluctance to face what cannot be termed anything less than grim circumstances in my opinion. There certainly is a reluctance to inform us regular people and all we have really gotten is a few dots here and there... First of all...set aside all your thoughts of plugging the well and stopping it from blowing out oil using any method from the top down. Plugs, big valves to just shut it off, pinching the pipe closed, installing a new bop or lmrp, shooting any epoxy in it, top kills with mud etc etc etc....forget that, it won't be happening..it's done and over. In fact actually opening up the well at the subsea source and allowing it to gush more is not only exactly what has happened, it was probably necessary, or so they think anyway. So you have to ask WHY? Why make it worse?...there really can only be one answer and that answer does not bode well for all of us. It's really an inescapable conclusion at this point, unless you want to believe that every Oil and Gas professional involved suddenly just forgot everything they know or woke up one morning and drank a few big cups of stupid and got assigned to directing the response to this catastrophe. Nothing makes sense unless you take this into account, but after you do...you will see the "sense" behind what has happened and what is happening. That conclusion is this: The well bore structure is compromised "Down hole". That is something which is a "Worst nightmare" conclusion to reach. While many have been saying this for some time as with any complex disaster of this proportion many have "said" a lot of things with no real sound reasons or evidence for jumping to such conclusions, well this time it appears that they may have jumped into the right place... TOP KILL - FAILS: This was probably our best and only chance to kill this well from the top down. This "kill mud" is a tried and true method of killing wells and usually has a very good chance of success. The depth of this well presented some logistical challenges, but it really should not of presented any functional obstructions. The pumping capacity was there and it would have worked, should have worked, but it didn't. It didn't work, but it did create evidence of what is really happening. First of all the method used in this particular top kill made no sense, did not follow the standard operating procedure used to kill many other wells and in fact for the most part was completely contrary to the procedure which would have given it any real chance of working. When a well is "Killed" using this method heavy drill fluid "Mud" is pumped at high volume and pressure into a leaking well. The leaks are "behind" the point of access where the mud is fired in, in this case the "choke and Kill lines" which are at the very bottom of the BOP (Blow Out Preventer) The heavy fluid gathers in the "behind" portion of the leaking well assembly, while some will leak out, it very quickly overtakes the flow of oil and only the heavier mud will leak out. Once that "solid" flow of mud is established at the leak "behind" the well, the mud pumps increase pressure and begin to overtake the pressure of the oil deposit. The mud is established in a solid column that is driven downward by the now stronger pumps. The heavy mud will create a solid column that is so heavy that the oil deposit can no longer push it up, shut off the pumps...the well is killed...it can no longer flow. Usually this will happen fairly quickly, in fact for it to work at all...it must happen quickly. There is no "trickle some mud in" because that is not how a top kill works. The flowing oil will just flush out the trickle and a solid column will never be established. Yet what we were told was "It will take days to know whether it worked"...."Top kill might take 48 hours to complete"...the only way it could take days is if BP intended to do some "test fires" to test integrity of the entire system. The actual "kill" can only take hours by nature because it must happen fairly rapidly. It also increases strain on the "behind" portion and in this instance we all know that what remained was fragile at best. Early that afternoon we saw a massive flow burst out of the riser "plume" area. This was the first test fire of high pressure mud injection. Later on same day we saw a greatly increased flow out of the kink leaks, this was mostly mud at that time as the kill mud is tanish color due to the high amount of Barite which is added to it to weight it and Barite is a white powder. We later learned the pumping was shut down at midnight, we weren't told about that until almost 16 hours later, but by then...I'm sure BP had learned the worst. The mud they were pumping in was not only leaking out the "behind" leaks...it was leaking out of someplace forward...and since they were not even near being able to pump mud into the deposit itself, because the well would be dead long before...and the oil was still coming up, there could only be one conclusion...the wells casings were ruptured and it was leaking "down hole" They tried the "Junk shot"...the "bridging materials" which also failed and likely made things worse in regards to the ruptured well casings. "Despite successfully pumping a total of over 30,000 barrels of heavy mud, in three attempts at rates of up to 80 barrels a minute, and deploying a wide range of different bridging materials, the operation did not overcome the flow from the well." http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=2012968&contentId=7062487 80 Barrels per minute is over 200,000 gallons per hour, over 115,000 barrels per day...did we seen an increase over and above what was already leaking out of 115k bpd?....we did not...it would have been a massive increase in order of multiples and this did not happen. "The whole purpose is to get the kill mud down,” said Wells. “We'll have 50,000 barrels of mud on hand to kill this well. It's far more than necessary, but we always like to have backup." Try finding THAT quote around...it's been scrubbed...here's a cached copy of a quote... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WDj-HORTmIoJ:www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/deepwaterhorizon/7006870.html+%E2%809CThe+whole+purpose+is+to+get+the+kill+mud+down,%E2%80%9D+said+Wells.+%E2%80%9CWe'll+have+50,000+barrels+of+mud+on+hand+to+kill+this+well.+It's+far+more+than+necessary,+but+we+always+like+to+have+backup.%E2%80%9D&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us "The "top kill" effort, launched Wednesday afternoon by industry and government engineers, had pumped enough drilling fluid to block oil and gas spewing from the well, Allen said. The pressure from the well was very low, he said, but persisting." "Allen said one ship that was pumping fluid into the well had run out of the fluid, or "mud," and that a second ship was on the way. He said he was encouraged by the progress." http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20100527/ARTICLES/100529348 Later we found out that Allen had no idea what was really going on and had been "Unavailable all day" http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/05/27/interview_with_coas... So what we had was BP running out of 50,000 barrels of mud in a very short period of time. An amount far and above what they deemed necessary to kill the well. Shutting down pumping 16 hours before telling anyone, including the president. We were never really given a clear reason why "Top Kill" failed, just that it couldn't overcome the well. There is only one article anywhere that says anything else about it at this time of writing...and it's a relatively obscure article from the wall street journal "online" citing an unnamed source. "WASHINGTON—BP PLC has concluded that its "top-kill" attempt last week to seal its broken well in the Gulf of Mexico may have failed due to a malfunctioning disk inside the well about 1,000 feet below the ocean floor. The disk, part of the subsea safety infrastructure, may have ruptured during the surge of oil and gas up the well on April 20 that led to the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, BP officials said. The rig sank two days later, triggering a leak that has since become the worst in U.S. history. The broken disk may have prevented the heavy drilling mud injected into the well last week from getting far enough down the well to overcome the pressure from the escaping oil and gas, people familiar with BP's findings said. They said much of the drilling mud may also have escaped from the well into the rock formation outside the wellbore. As a result, BP wasn't able to get sufficient pressure to keep the oil and gas at bay. If they had been able to build up sufficient pressure, the company had hoped to pump in cement and seal off the well. The effort was deemed a failure on Saturday. BP started the top-kill effort Wednesday afternoon, shooting heavy drilling fluids into the broken valve known as a blowout preventer. The mud was driven by a 30,000 horsepower pump installed on a ship at the surface. But it was clear from the start that a lot of the "kill mud" was leaking out instead of going down into the well." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870487560457528013357716426... There are some inconsistencies with this article. There are no "Disks" or "Subsea safety structure" 1,000 feet below the sea floor, all that is there is well bore. There is nothing that can allow the mud or oil to "escape" into the rock formation outside the well bore except the well, because it is the only thing there. All the actions and few tid bits of information all lead to one inescapable conclusion. The well pipes below the sea floor are broken and leaking. Now you have some real data of how BP's actions are evidence of that, as well as some murky statement from "BP officials" confirming the same. I took some time to go into a bit of detail concerning the failure of Top Kill because this was a significant event. To those of us outside the real inside loop, yet still fairly knowledgeable, it was a major confirmation of what many feared. That the system below the sea floor has serious failures of varying magnitude in the complicated chain, and it is breaking down and it will continue to. What does this mean? It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot...the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?...the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle?...it doesn't leak so bad, you close the nozzle?...it leaks real bad, same dynamics. It is why they sawed the riser off...or tried to anyway...but they clipped it off, to relieve pressure on the leaks "down hole". I'm sure there was a bit of panic time after they crimp/pinched off the large riser pipe and the Diamond wire saw got stuck and failed...because that crimp diverted pressure and flow to the rupture down below. Contrary to what most of us would think as logical to stop the oil mess, actually opening up the gushing well and making it gush more became direction BP took after confirming that there was a leak. In fact if you note their actions, that should become clear. They have shifted from stopping or restricting the gusher to opening it up and catching it. This only makes sense if they want to relieve pressure at the leak hidden down below the seabed.....and that sort of leak is one of the most dangerous and potentially damaging kind of leak there could be. It is also inaccessible which compounds our problems. There is no way to stop that leak from above, all they can do is relieve the pressure on it and the only way to do that right now is to open up the nozzle above and gush more oil into the gulf and hopefully catch it, which they have done, they just neglected to tell us why, gee thanks. A down hole leak is dangerous and damaging for several reasons. There will be erosion throughout the entire beat up, beat on and beat down remainder of the "system" including that inaccessible leak. The same erosion I spoke about in the first post is still present and has never stopped, cannot be stopped, is impossible to stop and will always be present in and acting on anything that is left which has crude oil "Product" rushing through it. There are abrasives still present, swirling flow will create hot spots of wear and this erosion is relentless and will always be present until eventually it wears away enough material to break it's way out. It will slowly eat the bop away especially at the now pinched off riser head and it will flow more and more. Perhaps BP can outrun or keep up with that out flow with various suckage methods for a period of time, but eventually the well will win that race, just how long that race will be?...no one really knows....However now?...there are other problems that a down hole leak will and must produce that will compound this already bad situation. This down hole leak will undermine the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area. It also weakens the only thing holding up the massive Blow Out Preventer's immense bulk of 450 tons. In fact?...we are beginning to the results of the well's total integrity beginning to fail due to the undermining being caused by the leaking well bore. The first layer of the sea floor in the gulf is mostly lose material of sand and silt. It doesn't hold up anything and isn't meant to, what holds the entire subsea system of the Bop in place is the well itself. The very large steel connectors of the initial well head "spud" stabbed in to the sea floor. The Bop literally sits on top of the pipe and never touches the sea bed, it wouldn't do anything in way of support if it did. After several tens of feet the seabed does begin to support the well connection laterally (side to side) you couldn't put a 450 ton piece of machinery on top of a 100' tall pipe "in the air" and subject it to the side loads caused by the ocean currents and expect it not to bend over...unless that pipe was very much larger than the machine itself, which you all can see it is not. The well's piping in comparison is actually very much smaller than the Blow Out Preventer and strong as it may be, it relies on some support from the seabed to function and not literally fall over...and it is now showing signs of doing just that....falling over. If you have been watching the live feed cams you may have noticed that some of the ROVs are using an inclinometer...and inclinometer is an instrument that measures "Incline" or tilt. The BOP is not supposed to be tilting...and after the riser clip off operation it has begun to... This is not the only problem that occurs due to erosion of the outer area of the well casings. The way a well casing assembly functions it that it is an assembly of different sized "tubes" that decrease in size as they go down. These tubes have a connection to each other that is not unlike a click or snap together locking action. After a certain length is assembled they are cemented around the ouside to the earth that the more rough drill hole is bored through in the well making process. A very well put together and simply explained process of "How to drill a deep water oil well" is available here: http://www.treesfullofmoney.com/?p=1610 The well bore casings rely on the support that is created by the cementing phase of well construction. Just like if you have many hands holding a pipe up you could put some weight on the top and the many hands could hold the pipe and the weight on top easily...but if there were no hands gripping and holding the pipe?...all the weight must be held up by the pipe alone. The series of connections between the sections of casings are not designed to hold up the immense weight of the BOP without all the "hands" that the cementing provides and they will eventually buckle and fail when stressed beyond their design limits. These are clear and present dangers to the battered subsea safety structure (bop and lmrp) which is the only loose cork on this well we have left. The immediate (first 1,000 feet) of well structure that remains is now also undoubtedly compromised. However.....as bad as that is?...it is far from the only possible problems with this very problematic well. There were ongoing troubles with the entire process during the drilling of this well. There were also many comprises made by BP IMO which may have resulted in an overall weakened structure of the entire well system all the way to the bottom plug which is over 12,000 feet deep. Problems with the cementing procedure which was done by Haliburton and was deemed as “was against our best practices.” by a Haliburton employee on April 1st weeks before the well blew out. There is much more and I won't go into detail right now concerning the lower end of the well and the troubles encountered during the whole creation of this well and earlier "Well control" situations that were revieled in various internal BP e-mails. I will add several links to those documents and quotes from them below and for now, address the issues concerning the upper portion of the well and the region of the sea floor. What is likely to happen now? Well...none of what is likely to happen is good, in fact...it's about as bad as it gets. I am convinced the erosion and compromising of the entire system is accelerating and attacking more key structural areas of the well, the blow out preventer and surrounding strata holding it all up and together. This is evidenced by the tilt of the blow out preventer and the erosion which has exposed the well head connection. What eventually will happen is that the blow out preventer will literally tip over if they do not run supports to it as the currents push on it. I suspect they will run those supports as cables tied to anchors very soon, if they don't, they are inviting disaster that much sooner. Eventually even that will be futile as the well casings cannot support the weight of the massive system above with out the cement bond to the earth and that bond is being eroded away. When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP will collapse the well. If and when you begin to see oil and gas coming up around the well area from under the BOP? or the area around the well head connection and casing sinking more and more rapidly? ...it won't be too long after that the entire system fails. BP must be aware of this, they are mapping the sea floor sonically and that is not a mere exercise. Our Gov't must be well aware too, they just are not telling us. All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit...after that, it goes into the realm of "the worst things you can think of" The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out...as I said...all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn't any "cap dome" or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?....is the only real chance we have left to stop it all. It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo. We are not even 2 months into it, barely half way by even optimistic estimates. The damage done by the leaked oil now is virtually immeasurable already and it will not get better, it can only get worse. No matter how much they can collect, there will still be thousands and thousands of gallons leaking out every minute, every hour of every day. We have 2 months left before the relief wells are even near in position and set up to take a kill shot and that is being optimistic as I said. Over the next 2 months the mechanical situation also cannot improve, it can only get worse, getting better is an impossibility. While they may make some gains on collecting the leaked oil, the structural situation cannot heal itself. It will continue to erode and flow out more oil and eventually the inevitable collapse which cannot be stopped will happen. It is only a simple matter of who can "get there first"...us or the well. We can only hope the race against that eventuality is one we can win, but my assessment I am sad to say is that we will not. The system will collapse or fail substantially before we reach the finish line ahead of the well and the worst is yet to come. Sorry to bring you that news, I know it is grim, but that is the way I see it....I sincerely hope I am wrong. We need to prepare for the possibility of this blow out sending more oil into the gulf per week then what we already have now, because that is what a collapse of the system will cause. All the collection efforts that have captured oil will be erased in short order. The magnitude of this disaster will increase exponentially by the time we can do anything to halt it and our odds of actually even being able to halt it will go down. The magnitude and impact of this disaster will eclipse anything we have known in our life times if the worst or even near worst happens... We are seeing the puny forces of man vs the awesome forces of nature. We are going to need some luck and a lot of effort to win... and if nature decides we ought to lose, we will.... Reference materials: On April 1, a job log written by a Halliburton employee, Marvin Volek, warns that BP’s use of cement “was against our best practices.” An April 18 internal Halliburton memorandum indicates that Halliburton again warned BP about its practices, this time saying that a “severe” gas flow problem would occur if the casings were not centered more carefully. Around that same time, a BP document shows, company officials chose a type of casing with a greater risk of collapsing. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06rig.html?pagewanted=1&sq=at_issue... Mark Hafle, the BP drilling engineer who wrote plans for well casings and cement seals on the Deepwater Horizon's well, testified that the well had lost thousands of barrels of mud at the bottom. But he said models run onshore showed alterations to the cement program would resolve the issues, and when asked if a cement failure allowed the well to "flow" gas and oil, he wouldn't capitulate. Hafle said he made several changes to casing designs in the last few days before the well blew, including the addition of the two casing liners that weren't part of the original well design because of problems where the earthen sides of the well were "ballooning." He also worked with Halliburton engineers to design a plan for sealing the well casings with cement. http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/hearings_bp_ce... graphic of fail http://media.nola.com/news_impact/other/oil-cause-050710.pdf Casing joint http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/files/OGL00001.gif Casing http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/files/OGL00003.gif Kill may take until Christmas http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-02/bp-gulf-of-mexico-oil-leak-... BP Used Riskier Method to Seal Well Before Blast http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/us/27rig.html BP memo test results http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20100512/Internal.BP.Email.Reg... Investigation results The information from BP identifies several new warning signs of problems. According to BP there were three flow indicators from the well before the explosion. http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100525/Memo.BP.Internal.Inve... BP, what we know http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100512/BP-What.We.Know.pdf What could have happened: Before or during the cement job, an influx of hydrocarbon enters the wellbore. Influx is circulated during cement job to wellhead and BOP. 9-7/8” casing hanger packoff set and positively tested to 6500 psi. After 16.5 hours waiting on cement, a negative test performed on wellbore below BOP. (~ 1400 psi differential pressure on 9-7/8” casing hanger packoff and ~ 2350 psi on double valve float collar) Packoff leaks allowing hydrocarbon to enter wellbore below BOP. 1400 psi shut in pressure observed on drill pipe (no flow or pressure observed on kill line) Hydrocarbon below BOP is unknowingly circulated to surface while finishing displacing the riser. As hydrocarbon rises to surface, gas break out of solution further reduces hydrostatic pressure in well. Well begin to flow, BOPs and Emergency Disconnect System (EDS) activated but failed. Packoff continues to leak allowing further influx from bottom. Confidential http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100512/BP-What.Could.Have.Ha... T/A daily log 4-20 http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100512/TRO-Daily.Drilling.Re... Cement plug 12,150 ft SCMT logging tool SCMT (Slim Cement Mapping Tool) Schlumberger Partial CBL done. http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100530/BP-HZN-CEC018441.pdf Schlum CBL tools http://www.slb.com/~/media/Files/production/product_sheets/well_integrit... Major concerns, well control, bop test. http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100530/BP-HZN-CEC018375.pdf Energy & commerce links to docs. http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=articl... well head on sea floor http://nca-group.com/bilder//Trolla/A.%20GVI%20of%20Trolla%20prior%20to%20WHP002%20(2).jpg Well head on deck of ship http://nca-group.com/bilder//Trolla/DSC_0189.JPG BP's youtube propoganda page, a lot of rarely seen vids here....FWIW http://www.youtube.com/user/DeepwaterHorizonJIC http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1097505/pg1

I used to cover the energy business (oil, gas and alternative) here in Texas, and the few experts in the oil field -- including geologists, chemists, etc. -- able or willing to even speak of this BP event told me early on that it is likely the entire reserve will bleed out. Unfortunately none of them could say with any certainty just how much oil is in the reserve in question because, for one thing, the oil industry and secrecy have always been synonymous. According to BP data from about five years ago, there are four separate reservoirs containing a total of 2.5 billion barrels (barrels not gallons). One of the reservoirs has 1.5 billion barrels. I saw an earlier post here quoting an Anadarko Petroleum report which set the total amount at 2.3 billion barrels. One New York Times article put it at 2 billion barrels. If the BP data correctly or honestly identified four separate reservoirs then a bleed-out might gush less than 2 to 2.5 billion barrels unless the walls -- as it were -- fracture or partially collapse. I am hearing the same dark rumors which suggest fracturing and a complete bleed-out are already underway. Rumors also suggest a massive collapse of the Gulf floor itself is in the making. They are just rumors but it is time for geologists or related experts to end their deafening silence and speak to these possibilities. All oilmen lie about everything. The stories one hears about the extent to which they will protect themselves are all understatements. BP employees are already taking The Fifth before grand juries, and attorneys are laying a path for company executives to make a run for it.

the Independent Conservative Republicans of Texas

Quite frankly, I want you to know that I believe this to be a good move.

I am one of the Republicans who felt ignored and mistreated by the local Republican organization and later went on to work and vote for Ross Perot in 1992.  I have considered myself both an independent and a conservative ever since.  The birth of the Tea Party movement just proves to me that there are many thousands of voters out there who, like me, have come to believe our elected representatives no longer bother to listen to or represent the folks who elected them.

I commend you for your initiative.  I must say, however, I have heard many elected representatives say one thing and do another.  I will be watching.  I expect the same is true of many other Texas voters.  Good luck and Godspeed.

The above is the comment I left on the Independent Conservative Republicans of Texas website.  Apparently, a majority of the Texas State legislators – the Republican / conservative ones – decided to declare which side of their bread the butter is on.

Our Contract with Texas

We give our word to stand for conservative principles
and to put people before party.
We give our word to be fiscally accountable,
limit the size of government,
and fight for free market principles.
We give our word to protect our borders
and to support a strong military.
We give our word to protect life, support strong family values,
and uphold the Judeo-Christian beliefs our nation was founded upon.
We give our word to defend the Constitution
and protect the sovereign rights of Texas.

I see this as a good thing.  I want my legislators to know that I am watching and doing more than just voting for the “party lineup.”

a violent response?

While violence is never funny, I have to say that I am bemused by the media’s overhyped coverage of the ‘violent’ response to the passage in the House of H.R. 3490, the Patient  Protection and Affordable Care Act.

As a quick example, the Huffington Post apparently believes it is okay to portray Sunday's protesters as racist.  As we well know, the best way to diminish a group is to tar it with the actions of an individual.  However, while Representative Cleaver said someone spit on him (as far as I know, nobody actually filmed this and Rep. Cleaver himself was unable to identify the offender to the police) and both Representative Lewis and Senator Frank were offended by slurs shouted at them not a single act of physical violence occurred and there were no arrests.

Now, if it had been the left protesting capitalism…

Pittsburgh, September 24th, 2009 .. “A police report said at least 19 shops and banks, including many fast food restaurants, bagel shops and diners near the university, had their glass windows or doors smashed in.

Sixty-six people were arrested following the clashes on Thursday -- 24 during the disturbances in the afternoon and 42 overnight, police said.”

In fact, that was the results of the first day of protest and involved approximately 1000 protesters.  Contrast that with the “Tea Party” protesters outside the Capitol Building.  What was that saying?  Sticks and stones…

As I understand it, there was even less violence on Sunday than there was after the 2004 ALCS Red Sox win.  Go figure.