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Coming in with new information. there s a short list of things out from a congressional report just last week and they re startling. it s more than run it, break it and fixรง it. these people had every reason to be terrified on that rig. it was danger, disrepair and chaos almost like a third world flowing death trap that was out there. here s the short list. very early signs, very early signs there was going to be a blowup and the process and the entire thing was going to sink. halliburton knew it, transocean knew it and kept their employees on there anyway. line that were supposed to trigger emergency shutdowns had been failing for weeks. no razor, no reports at all. repeated regular gas kicks. it s where a bubble comes up the wrong side of the casing string and you know what that is? it s a red flag that this picture that you re looking at is getting ready to happen. the damage, useless untested blowout preventer, they knew it had problems. it had hydraulic leaks and had ....
Across, that s the way you drill in alaska. is he correct? no. this is new for alaska. this has been done elsewhere throughout the world. this one is a little bit more extreme. what i think he might have been referring to is the artificial islands in the very near shore, bofort sea that are constructed basically because they re cheaper to build than putting a rig out there and letting ice form, et cetera. so there are ways to do this and ways not to do it. the thing i worry about, though, is, you know, the plan was laid and put in place years ago. it was not accommodated and adapted do to what we have learned from deepwater horizon, despite how well engineered it may be. there is reference in the new york times article this morning that there can be gas kicks, they be formed slower, harder to detect. we don t know if they re going to make the same mistakes they made on the deepwater horizon, if they re going to make those in the liberty project, as well. ....
Richard wolfe, msnbc, and author of ren gait. thanks. let s turn now to rick steiner, who joins us again from anchorage. rick, good evening. hi, keith. how are you? more discouraged than usual on this. this new, untested drilling method, frequent gas kicks, puts extra pressure on pipes, extra pressure on well casings. does that sound like a kind of drilling that s already happening all over the world? well, yeah. the extended reach drilling has gone on in various places throughout the world. there s no question about that. but just because there hasn t been a catastrophic blowout from one of these ultra extended reachwells doesn t mean that one cannot occur. i mean, look back three or four months on the deepwater horizon, and all the deep water drilling in the gulf of mexico, and until then until deepwater horizon ....
There. so there are ways to do this and there are ways not to do it. the thing i worry about is, you know, the plan was laid and put in place years ago. it was not accommodated and adapted due to what we learned from deepwater horizon. there are concerns, as referenced in the new york times this morning, there can be gas kicks. they can flow slower and be harder to detect. we don t know if the they re going to make the same mistakes they made on the deepwater horizon. if they re going to make those in the liberty project as well. is this a risk worth taking right now? shouldn t we wait another season, take a really good hard look at what the blowout preventer is? what is their plan for dealing with a blowout? are they going to drill a simultaneous relief well like senator loutenberg s bill would require? ....
The moratorium. that a rally against that moratorium in humana, louisiana governor jindal calling it a rare instance of common sense from a federal official. bp s risky plans for drilling in alaska not even subject to that moratorium because of the fake island the company has built, a little more than a mound of gravel, even though it is three miles off the coast in the arctic ocean. as we first reported here monday, bp planning to drill two miles down, then six to eight miles sideways to reach what is believed to be a reservoir of oil under federal waters. the new york times reporting that federal regulators allowed bp to write their own environmental review for the project, said to be highly irregular, even for the minerals management service. horizontal drilling, the paper reporting, riskier, a., because it is new and untested, b., because gas kicks, and c., because it requires more powerful machinery, putting extra pressure on pipes and well ....