The pig in the pipe doesn't squeal

[FluffyMcDeath]

And, in fact it is designed not to squeal and this way it saves the guys who own the pipeline big bucks.
Unfortunately it means that pipelines are more dangerous than they should be.

 

[Kesa]

Scary stuff

This reminds me of the Three Gorges Dam in China. I read a few years ago that the contractors who were responsible for concreting were taking shortcuts and that quality inspectors were taking bribes from the contractors. The contractors were using less than the minimum amount of material and keeping the surplus for themselves leaving questions about the structural strength of the dam and it's almost impossible to perform quality checks now as it would be too expensive and time consuming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam#Structural_integrity

 

[Robert]

Deja Vu.

Mike's favourite journalist too.

 

[redrumloa]

But of course! Obama is just a puppet for robber barons such as Warren Buffet. No pipeline and Warren buffet makes even more money as the oil is transported by rail across Canada to be exported to China.

Warren Buffet made sure Berkshire Hathaway stock is only available to the wealthy by never performing a reverse split. One share of Berkshire Hathaway stock today will cost you $117,800.

 

[metalman]

And, in fact it is designed not to squeal and this way it saves the guys who own the pipeline big bucks.
Unfortunately it means that pipelines are more dangerous than they should be.

The programmers are idiots, and never actually ran a pig in the "real world"

The Pig measures the eddy current across each pad, which correspond to the flux lines in the metal pipe which then correlates to metal thickness of the pipe at the pad. There is a test calibration preformed before and after the Pig is ran.

the pig is ran through the pipeline looking for anomalies in the eddy current measurement

However, in practice not all eddy current anomalies are the result of pitting and corrosion. If a section of pipe is magnetized, it will distort the magnetic field producing a anomaly reading, i.e. a false reading of metal thickness. If the pipe has a cathodic protection current applied, it will also produce magnetic anomalies.

Welding magnetizes the pipe in the welded section, producing false anomalies in the eddy current measurement

 

[Glaucus]

Deja Vu.

Mike's favourite journalist too.

Indeed. Btw, am I the only one who thinks that a ruptured oil line is something oil companies have a huge interest in protecting against?

 

[redrumloa]

Btw, am I the only one who thinks that a ruptured oil line is something oil companies have a huge interest in protecting against?

Exactly.

 

[Dammy]

The programmers are idiots, and never actually ran a pig in the "real world"

They should have contracted out to some Indian house, less issues with idiots foaming at the mouth.

 

[metalman]

They should have contracted out to some Indian house, less issues with idiots foaming at the mouth.

idiots eco-nuts

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Indeed. Btw, am I the only one who thinks that a ruptured oil line is something oil companies have a huge interest in protecting against?

Why? How much oil do you lose? Not so much, certainly less cost than doing all the mandated maintenance. If it was found to be failing you would have had to dig it up and fix it. If you wait until it fails you still have to dig it up and fix it but you get to make money off of investing the money you saved in the mean time.

The only other cost you have is PR and court because you will never actually pay out any damages. Court and political bribes are always cheaper than doing the proper maintenance and support up front - at least in North America. In smaller countries they just fund rebels to overthrow troublesome governments. Europe is about the only place the oil companies can't get away with murder.

Remember that all maintenance and emergency preparedness costs money that can get better returns elsewhere. BP failed to have any of the emergency equipment and crews on hand when the Deepwater Horizon blew out. They also failed to have any safety equipment or crews on hand when the Exxon Valdez started leaking - despite the fact that such arrangements were condition for the oil projects and despite the fact that BP claimed that they were there.

Cutting corners is what these guys do - there is no money in safety.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

The programmers are idiots, and never actually ran a pig in the "real world"

The evidence you have for this statement is that you have intimate knowledge of the flaw the programmers say they fixed but were ordered to un-fix and sign non-disclosure agreements when they did it?

 

[Fade]

Fluffy sez:

"The only other cost you have is PR and court because you will never actually pay out any damages. Bla bla, bla, Fluffy Spin, bla, bla, more Fluffy Spin, bla, bla. Europe is about the only place the oil companies can't get away with murder."
--------------------------
Highly doubtful Fluffy, but what's not in doubt is Europe is about the only place where somebody is getting away with Highway Robbery!

Checked the price per gallon there lately? It's bumping $ 9.00 per gallon. With my big boat hauler that gets about 8 MPG when towing, a trip to Guntersville AL (about 50 miles each way) = about 12.5 gallons, would cost me $112.50 just to get me there and back.

If I fill up the Bass boat (about 22 gallons) that gets about 4.5 to 5 MPG, and use it up over the weekend, that would be another $198.00. A total of $310.50 for the weekend, just to go fishing if I was in the UK.

And no, I don't think high speed rail would cure my problem.

 

[Glaucus]

Cutting corners is what these guys do - there is no money in safety.

Sure, but at the same time BP paid big for it's mistake. The cost of a spill typically greatly outweighs the cost of maintenance repairs due to much longer stoppage of service and much more work required to clean up. And the PR costs are huge too, especially when there is so much at stake in terms of oil exploration in North America right now. They're looking for oil all over the place, not to mention the building of massive oil pipelines across Canada, and a major spill right about now would work against that.

Heck I could argue that this story itself is part of a left wing conspiracy to damage the efforts of building more pipelines for Alberta oil. Not saying it is, but I AM pretty certain you never entertained the idea.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Sure, but at the same time BP paid big for it's mistake.

Really? What did they pay? They are still in court arguing about how much TransOcean will pay in and how much Halliburton will pay and BP has an agreement to put aside $20billion into a fund which will be paid out to anyone that can go up against BP and get their claim through court and past however many appeals it takes until the claimant dies (as with the Exxon Valdez where lawyers are still running out the clock on those "settlements" yet to be paid more than 20 years later) and once all the claimants have been paid or have gone away the fund reverts back to BP. I'm sure the investments from that fund will be more than enough to employ lawyers for a few decades.

The cost of a spill typically greatly outweighs the cost of maintenance repairs due to much longer stoppage of service and much more work required to clean up. And the PR costs are huge too, especially when there is so much at stake in terms of oil exploration in North America right now.

The PR cost was tiny and a lot of it can be rolled into their ongoing PR budget. The cleanup is always merely cosmetic and having one blowout with an extended shut down is much cheaper than the repeated shutdowns and expenses of the mandated maintenance. The problem is the disparity between what the government thinks is reasonable risk and what the oil companies think is reasonable risk and the oil companies will always chose to run much closer to failure than the regulators would want them to. Having a high safety margin to get a zero rate of failures is far beyond what the oil companies want to pay. The drill hundreds or thousands of wells a year and run thousands of miles of pipeline. Every corner cut adds up - and as to damages, they really don't pay them that often - they can usually get out of that for the most part. BP had another record profit year - they aren't hurting.

Heck I could argue that this story itself is part of a left wing conspiracy to damage the efforts of building more pipelines for Alberta oil. Not saying it is, but I AM pretty certain you never entertained the idea.

You could argue that the record of the industry itself is a left wing conspiracy to damage the chances of the industry getting a pipeline.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but if you can get three quarters of a pound worth of cure out of a quarter ounce then the market dictates. (and if you can weasel out of most of the cure, all the better - and further, CEO's last 5 to 10 years generally. Get in, make money, cut corners, hope nothing goes wrong before you leave.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Fluffy sez:

"The only other cost you have is PR and court because you will never actually pay out any damages. Bla bla, bla, Fluffy Spin, bla, bla, more Fluffy Spin, bla, bla. Europe is about the only place the oil companies can't get away with murder."
--------------------------
Highly doubtful Fluffy, but what's not in doubt is Europe is about the only place where somebody is getting away with Highway Robbery!

And it's the governments collecting taxes rather than the oil companies collecting profits (not that they don't make money, of course).

If I fill up the Bass boat (about 22 gallons) that gets about 4.5 to 5 MPG, and use it up over the weekend, that would be another $198.00. A total of $310.50 for the weekend, just to go fishing if I was in the UK.

Be cheaper then just to buy the fish, no?

But why are you boasting about how crappy your gas mileage is?

 

[Dammy]

Be cheaper then just to buy the fish, no?

But Fluffy, think of all the taxes he is paying for the thrill of being able to go out and fish. Without people going out to fish, most state fish/wildlife agencies will be out of business as they depend on licenses fees to operate under. Or would you just be happier if the government pays us directly with the taxes already with held and bypass the need for working for private industry? Either you are going to support fish/wildlife agencies by promoting people going fishing and hunting, or ban it all and just add more to state budgets that are going broke trying to support the Progressive Utopia of complete state control over all?

 

[Dammy]

BTW, paid $4.04 @ gallon yesterday and they say it's going up another $0.60 by Memorial Day (US). It's going to hit $7 sometime late this year or early 2013 depending on when the Obama war on Iran starts and the Muslim Brotherhood attacks the remaining Gulf States.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

But Fluffy, think of all the taxes he is paying for the thrill of being able to go out and fish.

That's fine enough but what's with all the gas. I used to just strap the canoe to the Civic and even at $9/gallon a 100 mile round trip would cost about 60 bucks. Campsite over night $10. The biggest expense was always the beer.

 

[Dammy]

That's fine enough but what's with all the gas. I used to just strap the canoe to the Civic and even at $9/gallon a 100 mile round trip would cost about 60 bucks. Campsite over night $10. The biggest expense was always the beer.

You would be saving money in FL parks, no booze allowed in most of the parks camp sites. Bass fishing in a river from a canoe would suck, IMO. Might be OK if it's a small lake that has a cleared shoreline.

 

[Glaucus]

The best camping trip ever was when our grade 9 class went on an extended canoe camping trip at Lake of the Woods in Ontario. Great fun, just make sure not to get lost in that lake as it's full of little islands and after a while they all start to look the same... I guess that's why they invented GPS.

The next best camping trip was on the Sunshine Coast, not too far from where Fluffy lives. Of course we got there too late and all the camp sites were full so we camped behind this giant boulder we found next to the road. We ended up renting a boat to go fishing. Turns out I get sea sick easily. And for some reason the marine biologist with us refused to let us photograph the rare endangered species that we caught.