I've been in Oil and Gas Production (all upstream) and Exploration for over 30 years. My salary is a little bigger than God's, which is okay because I'm more useful than he is. I'm a better cook than God is too, but lets get back on subject here. Booming School. Not only is Oil Spill Booming a large industry in the USA, teaching Oil Spill Booming is a large industry in the USA. Most of BP's production and pipeline employees in the USA have attended at least one booming school. Many have attended two or three. Most oil and gas production employees in the USA have attended booming school. Some of us have attended really good, really extensive, week or two-week booming schools. BP's production employees have attended the best booming schools. I know this. I've seen them there.

BP's drilling folks have mostly not attended booming school. They're sometimes sent to booming school, but they fuck off in the bar and their bosses sign off on that being okay. Because for Drilling Hands, booming is for pussies. This is a generalization. Not all drilling hands think that, but most of them do and I guarantee BP's drilling executives think that booming is for pussies -- and that's if they think about booming at all or even know what it is. That's not so shocking. In the major oil companies, there are likely a few drilling executives that don't even know what drilling is. I'm not kidding. There's good BP drilling people who would, in private, back me up on that.

Fucking Nomenclature

Since this is your first day of DKos Booming school, you HAVE to fight lets go over some important definitions and oilfield grammar. Rope is not rope. It is fucking rope. All of it. Every yard of rope is fucking rope. Every section of boom is fucking boom. An anchor block is not an anchor block. It is a fucking anchor block. You get the idea. Later, when you're accustomed to all of this, you can substitute "goddamed", "motherfucking", "piece-of-shit-c*nt" (never understood that one myself) or "cocksucking" for fucking. But for now, it's all fucking.

Fucking Boom

Generally, boom is long and bright bright orange or yellow. It is not bright bright orange or yellow so you can see it, dear fledgling boomer, but so Governors, Senators, Presidents and The Media can see it. It has a round floaty part that floats, and a flat "skirt" that sinks. A RULE: the floaty part never floats high enough and the skirt never rides low enough. Some oil will ALWAYS go over the boom and some will ALWAYS go under it. Our task is to MINIMIZE both! We do that by fucking proper fucking booming. Here. This picture teaches you almost 100% of what you'll learn in DKos Booming School, about fucking proper fucking booming:

I lost my one copy of Photoshop, had to learn Gimp, and so the quality is sorta piece-of-shit-c*nt, but you get the idea. It's fucking obvious. Boom is not meant to contain or catch oil. Boom is meant to divert oil. Boom must always be at an angle to the prevailing wind-wave action or surface current. Boom, at this angle, must always be layered in a fucking overlapped sort-of way with another string of boom. Boom must always divert oil to a catch basin or other container, from where it can be REMOVED FROM THE FUCKING AREA. Looks kinda involved, doesn't it? It is. But if fucking proper fucking booming is done properly, you can remove most, by far most of the oil from a shoreline and you can do it day after day, week after week, month after month. You can prevent most, by far most of the shoreline from ever being touched by more than a few transient molecules of oil. Done fucking properly, a week after the oil stops coming ashore, no one, man nor beast, can ever tell there has been oil anywhere near that shoreline.

In practice, there's a reason the best booming schools last weeks. Different types of shoreline, different shapes, require different configurations. Your numerous anchor points (for this spill those would be 1-yard cement blocks with tie-off buoys) need to be chosen so the boom-tenders (you) can adjust the ropes, slanting the booms this way and that to account for changes in wind and current. Booms are tended 24/7, by the way. BUT... just having learned what you've learned here today, DKos Boomer, you know enough of the CONCEPT to figure it out. You get it. You could go out there and watch how the ping-pong balls (your test-oil) glide along the boom. You could see where they miss the catch basins and you could adjust and re-configure and you could perform fucking proper fucking booming. By the third day of actual booming, no one on this planet would be better than you. So if you understand it, and all these production employees understand it (we're talking tens of thousands of people here), then why is most or all of the booming along the Gulf... being done wrong?

Great Fucking Question, DKos Boomer!

The booming is being run by a company that concentrates on drilling and booming is for pussies. Production employees were not invited because they would just cause trouble. This is a drilling operation so just fuck off.

There's not enough boom, rope nor anchor on this planet to properly boom the Northern Gulf of Mexico. There should be! It's not that much an expense! Really! It's not! They said they were ready! Having enough materials to perform fucking proper fucking booming, IS part of being ready! THEY'RE NOT READY! ARE THEY?

Governors, Senators, Presidents and most of all the Piece-Of-Shit-C*nt Media don't know what fucking proper fucking booming LOOKS LIKE! So you can just lay a single line of neon-glo-orange boom out parallel to the shore, for miles, with anchor points every quarter-mile to where a good part of it washes up onto the shore like a huge, dead, orange nightcrawler... and they won't know the difference! Where it manages to stay off the bank, a little two-foot chop you would let your kids frolic in will send all the oil either over or under it! ALL THE OIL! ON THE SHORE! IN THE REEDS! ON THE BEACH! IN THE NESTS! OIL! So what! It's not gonna make CNN send a single correspondent to booming school, is it?

Now the Coast Guard? They know booming. They know what fucking proper fucking booming looks like. Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad Allen should be fired. Today. Now. This minute. Before he can give another press conference echoing what BP said not five minutes before him. Then he should be fucking court-martialed and fucking sent to prison before BP can give him a goddamned fucking job. He's a shameless piece of shit. And so is President Obama if he can't see that. People who know me and how I've supported our President through thick and thin, know how hard it was for me to write that. I'm literally on the verge of tears, right this second. But I won't erase it. There it is.

HERE it is.

I couldn't find any pics of fucking proper fucking booming from along the Gulf, because there aren't any.

Oh, and by the way, BP!

There are days if not weeks worth of video of each of those 3 leaks. Yet you show us 10 seconds of the smallest one, the one you plugged, your only success.

Now you're going to try a Junk Shot and/or a Top Kill. You say you know either of these could make the leaks worse, possibly much worse. Well, show us the goddam leaks before and after. We have a right to know if you made it worse and we're tired of taking your word for anything.

Just try to maintain that it's YOUR footage and you don't have to show us.

Just try that. In front of Congress.

It's OUR seafloor! Not Yours! Our footage! Not Yours!

UPDATE: All media contacts, please consult actual booming experts. There are about a hundred. If you can't find one in time for your show tonight, you're a fucking bad journalist. Now, finding one that's not afraid of BP? That might be a challenge, but you're fucking up to it.

(please help me with my tags -- I suck at meta -- fuck! I suck at diaries!)