Noble Globetrotter II Worker Files Lawsuit After Being Left in Path of

The Nobel Globetrotter rig and the dive boat fire is not a good example.

A better one is the comparison between the information that was in the BSEE report on the Deepwater Asguad and the information that was reveled by crewmembers by way of the lawsuit.

While Noble and the BSEE have mutual interests and share the same goals, in contrast the relationship between crewmembers filing the lawsuit and Nobel is adversarial. Likely the lawsuit will result in information being revealed that Nobel and the BSEE had rather remain private.

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True, but dissipate doesn’t mean disappear. A turd in a swimming pool will dissipate also but there’s still crap in the pool…

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Here’s an example of the contrast between the BSEE and the Asgurd lawsuit in the headlines in gcaptain:

U.S. Safety Agency Blames Deepwater Drillship Accident on Decision to Ride

Nothing about company procedures wrt to storm avoidance at all.

This is where the real info is:

Lawsuit Sheds Light on Serious Drillship Incident in Gulf of Mexico During 2020’s Hurricane Zeta

Yep, a whale watcher marine biologist on a tug once said that some of the refined solids don’t biodegrade too well. Not trying to downplay spills, just trying to state that right now millions of gallons a year are naturally oozing into the water. Might as well drill it out right?

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they dissipate because bacteria eats it away so it is actually gone

True to an extent. The lighter hydrocarbons either evaporate or are consumed by bacteria as they descend in the water column, Which is why I never felt real guilty about a purely accidental minor diesel spill. However crude is another matter. The heavier matter from crude that settles on the sea floor does not dissipate due to the lack of oxygen that supports bacteria down there. Crude oil lying on the bottom of the ocean is not something nature has adapted to yet is what one scientist told me, Makes sense. Crude oil remained buried deep in subsea earth until people started punching holes and letting it out less than 100 years ago. Who knows what the long term ramifications are? I certainly don’t. But I think the long term effects may be greater than pumping sewage overboard. At least we know bacteria will eat crap, thrive even. Then the bacteria supplies phytoplankton and other life right up the food chain until some sea life becomes sushi at $100 per meal. Shit does flow uphill after all!

Well, the flaw in that story is that nature has had millions of years to adapt to naturally occurring oil seeps on the ocean floor.

What are the lingering impacts of the millions of barrels of heavy oil released into the shallow waters and beaches of Pacific islands during WW2? Are there any, has it been studied?

Do not know if there have been studies, it would be an interesting to find out. I’ll do some checking but in my experience there isn’t much attention paid to environmental effects from whatever causes outside of “first world” countries until recently. At any rate I personally don’t think it’s a good idea to release crude oil into the oceans by unnatural means of any sort. One, it’s nasty. Two, it’s is a waste of a finite resource.

You won’t get any argument from me about that!

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A ship ( SS NIAGARA) hit a mine and sank in about 550 feet of water during WW II . The water temperature at that depth is well below the pour point of bunker C. The bituminous like contents are slowly being consumed by microbes which is just as well because heavy fuel oil has to be the worst pollutant.

We have a popular fishing/holiday/cruising ( the Gippsland Lakes) inlet from the ocean in Victoria where our Bass Strait oil and gas fields are serviced from.
There has always been oil leaking up from the beach sand in one corner, I assume for millions of years, no build up of pollution.

The same thing here around the coast in the vicinity of Port Taranaki. Its been going on so long that Maori claim it because they had been using it for cooking before the arrival of Europeans.

Just a couple posts away from claiming massive crude oil spill are actually good for the environment but it’s irrelevant. Noble and Shell have an incentive to avoid oil spills because of the resultant reputational and financial losses.

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They also have an incentive to roll the dice financially. Reputational loss? Their splendid work in Alaska makes for a pretty low bar.

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Of course they care about reputational loss, otherwise why hire thousands of clean-up workers wearing bright yellow rain gear to drag around bright orange oil booms? We all know it doesn’t do fuck all as far as getting any significant oil out of the water. It’s for TV.

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