The Obama administration has showed total incompetence over this oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

That have ratcheted up rhetoric and getting knee deep in lawyers, before attending to the job at hand.

From the beginning BP should have been allowed to focus all their energy on the leak.  The administration seem to have no clue what 450 atmospheres at the end of a 26 inch pipe means.  Admittedly the pressure of the ocean is 150 atmospheres, but that still leaves 300 atmospheres at the end of the pipe.

They have no clue as to the cooling effect of rapidly expanding methane and the vital need to exclude water from the collection process.

If they had done their home work, they would have known that no deep water well leak has been shut down without a relief well.

Instead of using the formidable organizational resources  of the American military to carry out clean up at sea and on shore, they have allowed federal agencies and departments to run amok.  Just look at the red tape that has got in the way of building the berms to keep the oil out of the marshes.

Instead of continually grandstanding and bashing BP, President Obama should have been bulldozing the Federal bureaucrats out of the way, and streamlining the federal response.

He is now risking US British relations with his rhetoric.  The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has been highly critical of the presidents response.

The Administration’s hysterical rhetoric is likely to drive BP to bankruptcy, which will leave affected business owners and employees in the gulf region sucking air.  If that happens it will largely be President Obama’s fault.

BP and its survival is very important to the UK economy.  For one reason one in seven BP retirement pounds is invested in BP.  An awful lot of US funds are also invested in BP.

Here is a another article encouraging BP leaving its American corporation behind.

David Cameron the new PM of the UK, seems on track to be as daft as President Obama.

What is required now is a supreme concentration on curtailing and mitigating this disaster, inquiries, hearings and lawyers can wait.

The trans Atlantic spat seems to be hotting up and Obama is getting a bad press in the UK.  This daily Telegraph editorial is on target.  However the reader comments from both sides of the Atlantic give the best insights into this developing rift.

Obama needs to be called out on his personal agenda.

Judging by numerous Net blogs you would be entitled to believe we have a nation whose collective IQ is equivalent to pig dribble.

It seems science has not be taught in our schools for generations.

The fact is that this environment on the ocean floor is more hostile and difficult to work in than outer space.

All humans tend to underestimate risk prior to unforeseen events.

It seems an operator made a mistake back in early March and drilled out a vital seal. A very human error. The rig operators fought against tragedy and lost. You can’t just pull the pipes, the gush would be catastrophic. The weight of a mile of rock above the well makes the pressure enormous. It is apparently 10,000 PSI. That is twice the pressure in a diesel injector that atomizes fuel. However this is not a pin sized hole, but a 26″ pipe with three pipes down the middle.

When the well blew the BOP actually worked and closed all pipes but the drill pipe, was only partially closed. This is probably why BP thought that this would not be a major event at first. What they did not know until after top kill was that the oil was coming up around the pipes, posing a severe risk of total well blow out.

The top kill almost certainly did a lot more damage and opened up passages in the BOP and increased oil spill.

Worry over the fact the well might blow totally, with unimaginable consequences, has prompted the riser cut. This to lower resistance and make total well blow out less likely.

Unfortunately as can be seen from the videos, oil flow has dramatically increased since the riser was cut; a lot more than 20%, that’s for certain.

Unfortunately the riser cut could not be one cleanly, and the riser is slightly bent, stopping the collection device from seating against the BOP. At the moment it looks as if the cap has come off the BOP.

A tight seal is important as leaks will make the jet of water entrain cold water. This will defeat attempts to warm the water up. As the methane gas is released it will cool quickly, just like in a heat exchanger in an air conditioner. This will cause hydrates of methane and ice to form and prevent flow up to the ship. I personally doubt anything further can be done to control this leak on the sea floor, and think far more likely than not the present scheme will fail.

So most likely this horrendous gush of oil will continue until a relief well is placed in the correct spot and bottom kill accomplished. As far as I can find out, no relief well has got to the correct spot until at least the fourth attempt. I think we will be very lucky if bottom kill is accomplished before the memorial weekend. I further believe that no matter how many resources a thrown at this clean up efforts will be largely window dressing until bottom kill is accomplished.

For the record, you can not place silk curtains to do the job. You can not drop heavy objects on it, because in water they are not heavy, because of the Archimedes principle. You can not drop explosives or nuclear devices down a pipe flowing under 10,000 psi. Because of damage done to the BOP during top kill and above all from information learned during the top kill event, placing another BOP on top of the one above the well is no longer an option.

Conspiracy theories are really dumb. Of course BP would like to get this stopped more than anyone.