I don't think a lot of people are aware of the big picture on this spill.
They are sitting there thinking, "Isn't it just terrible what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico with that oil spill." They are seeing oil soaked pelicans, dead fish and hearing how the shrimpers and crabbers are out of business... They are right it is horrible!
Now if you look at what our "American Idol" News Media isn't saying...
They are too busy trying to turn it into politics... As usual....
5,000' under water in the Gulf of Mexico there is a blown out oil well....
Getting a man down there is probably more difficult than sending a man to the moon, so all work is being done with ROVs operated by 3 man crews on the surface. Operating these ROVs is similar to flying a helicopter. They weigh 8,800 lbs. and have a 220 horse power motor and can carry a payload up to 900 lbs.
The pipe they cut off is 21" in diameter and 1" thick with a smaller drill casing pipe inside. Those bolts on the flange are 3 7/8" diameter and the nuts weigh 60 lbs. they are torqued to thousands of ft lbs. The failed blow out preventer weighs 450 tons. The oil in the reservoir below is at 9,000 psi and with the pressure of the sea water at that depth counteracting the pressure and restrictions in the wellhead is about 3,500 psi at the wellhead. If they were to shut off the flow at the top of the wellhead it would probably blow out again as the casing is compromised.
What they are doing is attempting to catch as much of the leaking oil they can using a riser similar to a chimney where the oil and gas being lighter than water will rise.
The hope for shutting off the flow lies in a bottom kill operation using relief wells that are going to intersect deep underground with the well where the casing is 7" in diameter. Drillers are saying thet having the relief done by August as stated in the media is a 20% chance, with a 90% chance for 1 year, and a 99% chance for 2 years.
National Center for Atmospheric Research ran a 6 model computer simulation for the spread of oil on ocean currents with just 2 months of leaking. The picture below shows about what should happen by August 20th just 4 months after the leak started....
The oil slick once it reaches between the tip of Florida and Cuba accelerates rapidly riding on the gulf stream covering 100 miles a day or 3,000 miles in a month...