Talk:Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Request to rename article to BP oil spill of 2010

Google test

• "deepwater horizon oil spill": 8,050,000 results
• "bp oil spill": 37,600,000 results

--Sonjaaa (talk) 02:04, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

• "gulf of mexico oil spill": 36,400,000 results - Steve3849 03:08, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

We've discussed this, at great length, previously. BP oil spill disambiguates two of many BP oil spills, as would the designator "of 2010". As we all know, the rig was leased by BP, owned by Transocean, and named Deepwater Horizon. Brevity works. So do redirects. Perhaps more redirects are needed. What others would you suggest?

I have no dogs in this fight (20,300,000 results)/ dogs in this game (63,400,000 results). But, why not ... Play this fun name game at home!

• "BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill": # 6 Google hit for this article, with 3,390,000 results. http://www.google.com/search?q=BP+Deepwater+Horizon+oil+spill
• "Deepwater Horizon oil spill": #3 hit Google for the article by that name, with 5,150,000 results. http://www.google.com/search?q=Deepwater+Horizon+oil+spill
• "BP oil spill": #25 Google hit for this article, with 24,500,000 results. http://www.google.com/search?q=BP+oil+spill
• "BP oil spill of 2010": #9 Google result, with 37,400,000 results. http://www.google.com/search?q=BP+oil+spill+of+2010
• "oil spill": just for fun. This will certainly be the oil spill that defines the class. http://www.google.com/search?q=oil+spill

BTW, a Wikipedia search for "BP oil spill of 2010" links right here as the first result: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=BP+oil+spill+of+2010 -- a redirect might be in order, that is, at least until the next one of 2010, God forbid. Paulscrawl (talk) 04:12, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I created this redirect, as it is an obvious possible search term. Renaming is contentious, but by all means add redirects when you think of something people might often type in. Wnt (talk) 06:22, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

The title of the article should definitely include "BP" at the beginning. It's a logical designator of both property ownership, as well as ownership as it relates to causitive factors involved in this disaster. Unfortunately, combating BP PR & Marketing Department is beyond my capabilities. --Vancedecker (talk) 22:38, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Everyone in the WORLD in media and government is referring to this event as the BP Oil Spill and that is how it will forever be known. It is absolutely ridiculous that British Petroleum's public relations apparatus has hijacked this article in the hope of burying BP's culpability by creating some obscure name to this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.248.180.183 (talk) 20:03, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

This has been discussed above, here. There was no consensus to move. I think if you'll read that you'll find the article's name was not hijacked by BP's PR staff as much as by common sense. TastyCakes (talk) 20:40, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Common sense? You have got to be joking. You might as well all this the "Shell Oil Gulf Coast Spill." 98.248.180.183 (talk) 21:02, 1 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.248.180.183 (talk) 21:00, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

No I'm not joking. Wikipedia names things according to what makes sense logically and what naming conventions in the past have been. Logically, calling it the "BP Oil Spill" fails since it is not BPs spill alone (see Transocean, Anadarko etc), and it is not their only spill. Naming convention wise, all other spill articles are named after the rig or vessel that spilled them (Ixtoc I oil spill, Exxon Valdez oil spill etc) and that doesn't apply just to oil spills (see Piper Alpha, conspicuously not called "Occidental Petroleum Disaster").

On a wider note, please note that Wikipedia aims to present a neutral point of view. By naming it the "BP oil disaster", we would be implicitly suggesting that it is "BP's spill", that they are entirely responsible for it and for the cleanup required. While many people, including yourself, may think that, it is quite obviously an opinion rather than a fact and thus inappropriate for Wikipedia, regardless of its "popularity" in other media. TastyCakes (talk) 22:34, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Just my two cents - I'm against the move. Consider "Exxon Valdeez" or "Ixtoc I oil spill". Convention usually has the name of vessel involved in the article title. Maybe "BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill"? But that might be too long. NickCT (talk) 21:12, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Your argument is fallacious because the Valdez spill was not called the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company Valdez Spill, it was called the Exxon Valdez Spill because Exxon was the responsible party, just like BP is the responsible party in this case. At a minimum it should be called the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. 98.248.180.183 (talk) 22:37, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Exxon Valdez was the vessel name. TastyCakes (talk) 22:42, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I recommend "BP Oil Spill" because that is how this event is being referred to in the media and officially by governments and that is likely how it will be forever remembered. Deepwater Horizon? Not so much. 98.248.180.183 (talk) 22:31, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Re "forever remembered" - If that's true, how come all the other oil spills are remembered by the name of the vessel? NickCT (talk) 14:11, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

It's about ease of finding the article; that's the issue. Not to mention that most oil platform oil spills are named after the operating company (such as the well known Unocal Santa Barbara Oil Spill of 1969). At a minimum this article should be called the BP Deepwater Oil Spill so it can be found easier (most people are searching for BP Oil Spill not Deepwater Horizon).98.248.180.183 (talk) 23:08, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Well I disagree with your premise - I think naming an article so that it can be found easily is a case of the tail wagging the dog. If the article is appropriately named, if it follows established conventions being easy to find will fall out of that. Now, that said, a search on google for "BP Oil Spill" links to this article as the second result, after the "BP" wikipedia article. If you're just searching "BP oil spill" or any reasonable variant on Wikipedia, you also get put through redirect pages that bring you here. So I'm sorry, but I don't think the "ease of search" argument holds any water here. TastyCakes (talk) 00:30, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I concur with BP being added to the name, and here is why: what gives a reference body of work most viability is accessibility. As this disaster unfolds, I am finding it more difficult to avoid the word "BP" in most every news story, one day to the next. So I am not sure why the voting for the name change was officially "closed" on this talk page. I never got to vote myself. My recommendation for the name has already been suggested more than once by other users, but I also vote for "BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill". No need to capitalize "oil" or "spill", however. MichaelWestbrook (talk) 23:40, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I concur -- this article will be renamed BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.98.248.180.183 (talk) 01:47, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

It has been explained several times why any title including the segment of "BP Deepwater Horizon" is misleading. Although BP leased the rig, it is not the owner of the rig. Beagel (talk) 04:12, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Preceding "Deepwater Horizon" with "BP" should not deter any reader from the real subject, which is the title's last words, "oil spill". This oil spill is becoming the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history, is it not? So I find it going a bit overboard to cling to neutrality, for the sake of "Neutral Point of View"'s merit alone. I mean, what is so neutral here, in this case, regarding this oil spill? Why, for example, when I go to the United States EPA website http://www.epa.gov/, and there in big bold letters reads "EPA Responds to the BP Oil Spill along the Gulf Coast", immediately under that heading this first link http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/, there is not only no mention of "Deepwater Horizon", but in both "BP" precedes "spill", or "Oil Spill", respectively? I think I have an idea why: because this article's subject has evolved from the rig tragedy (rig owned by Transocean) to the oil spill disaster. Who owns the spill disaster? Now there lies the rub. To add insight into what I am driving at, I tried an experiment: I went to each of these websites: 1. US EPA Home Page, 2. Transocean Home Page, and 3. BP Global Home Page. On each of these pages can be found contact information to reach "Joint Information Center" (A Unified Command established to manage response operations to the April 20, 2010 "Deepwater Horizon" incident.) So I phoned every contact number available under every menu option on all three home pages, from simply "media inquiry" (if I was a member of media, for example) to a contact number called "U.S. Coast Guard Joint Information Center". I spoke with a real person who answered each and every call, and asked them all one question first, before continuing any further conversation: "Are you employed by BP?" Every agent gave the affirmative reply, "Yes." So it seems reasonable to me now, not in April 2010, nor even necessarily in May 2010, but now, June of 2010, that BP owns this oil spill. I look forward to any feedback to the point I just tried to make. I realize my attempt may lack elegance. MichaelWestbrook (talk) 05:42, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

As has been said before, there are many reasons not to rename the article to include "BP". But the basic reason is this: yes BP is a major player in all of this. But no, they don't "own" this spill, there are plenty of other groups and companies that are "stakeholders" in this - the people of the gulf coast, the federal and state governments, the other companies involved (Transocean, Anadarko, Mitsui, Halliburton etc). Calling it the BP oil spill involves a judgment call that is not Wikipedia's job to make. It is not a neutral view of the whole thing, it is very obviously us saying "ok, now we blame BP entirely, everything is their fault and everything is their responsibility and we're going to stick its name on here accordingly". If you want to start a new "vote" regarding a name change, go ahead but I guarantee you you'll be wasting your time. There is no angle you can spin it that doesn't have adding "BP" being a non-neutral change. TastyCakes (talk) 13:13, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

TastyCakes are you working for BP? I can't imagine why you are so vehemently defending BP. In almost every case, when an Airliner goes down, the incidents are referred to as XXX Airline Flight 123, not Leaseholder Company Flight 123. BP was operating and controlling the rig when it exploded and they have assumed all responsibility for the oil spill. Everyone in the future will refer to this as the BP Oil Spill and that's what the article should be named. 98.248.180.183 (talk) 19:58, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

No I don't and never have. And, obviously, airplane crashes are completely different from oil spills and so have different naming conventions on Wikipedia. It is starting to seem that your only concern is to slant the article to show BP in a worse light. Please understand that while it's completely natural to be angry at BP, that anger cannot dictate the Wikipedia article (at least not if the article is to be any good). TastyCakes (talk) 20:17, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Updated (June 7th) google ranks showing this article:

• BP oil spill: #1
• Deepwater Horizon oil spill: #1
• BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill: #1
• BP oil spill of 2010: #8 (which imo nobody'll search it by)
• Oil spill: surpassed Exxon Valdez as first Wikipedia sub-page

That was since Paulscrawl's post 4 days ago. Feel free to create as many redirects as you can think of. - Skullers (talk) 05:16, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I guess we are going vogue between remaining gently neutral and stating facts. BP is the cause of this massive disaster. Turning a blind eye is kind of grotesque. Maviozan (talk) 06:19, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that was poetry. I couldn't have said it better myself. Me, I always ramble on for paragraphs and tell my life story just to try and state the obvious. You stated the obvious in three succinct sentences. Bravo. Anyone for a re-vote? Who is in charge here, anyway? MichaelWestbrook (talk) 06:59, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Poetic perhaps, but inaccurate, or at least one sided. BP is responsible for the spill, they are not the cause of it, or at least not the sole cause. Saying they are is misleading and biased, and above all oversimplistic. The truth is the "cause" is not yet known, at least not publicly. If the mistake was caused by a top level mistake by BP's company man, you might be closer to the truth. But if it was caused by any of the little mundane things that are likely culprits, the immediate "cause" is likely to be a Transocean mistake, a Halliburton mistake, or a government inspector mistake for failing to identify a serious issue. Or, more likely, a "perfect storm" of mistakes from numerous parties. Nothing has changed here, the current name is still the best option in my opinion, including BP in it would be a mistake. TastyCakes (talk) 16:08, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Stating that someone is responsible for (not)doing something is not being one sided while not stating anything indeed is. However i agree to wait untill the spill is taken care of properly before conveniently discussing the article to be renamed as the topic does not require haste but reason.Maviozan (talk) 07:07, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

There are several considerations, if findability is a criteria:

1. organic search results, in terms of Google Pagerank: how high does this search phrase rank in a Google search? Top two or three, or lower?
2. organic search results, in terms of Google hits: how many hits for this search phrase in a Google search? A couple hundred thousand, or a few million?
3. Wikipedia search results, considering redirects.

See my examples above to experiment yourself. IMHO, redirects cover the bases. Google loves Wikipedia -- authoritative links in the article make this article extremely relevant and findable. See Pagerank and redirect at will. Relax. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 07:58, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I strongly agree with calling it "BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill." This also is the same title given the official US government investigation on the incident, so why shouldn't this story be in sync. Myk60640 (talk) 13:33, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Because there is nothing to say a government provides a neutral definition of something, especially something as charged as this spill. Wikipedia seeks to remain neutral above all else. The American government has no such ambitions, especially not towards BP. Their naming choices are tarred with politics and self interest and are thus irrelevant. TastyCakes (talk) 16:19, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I strongly feel that it's time for another vote. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since our last vote, and it's gotten oilier and oilier...Gandydancer (talk) 14:29, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

To avoid a common misunderstanding, Wikipedia is not about voting. Before starting any new vote it would be useful if everybody will be familiar with WP:VOTE. Beagel (talk) 15:06, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Beagel - something I didn't know and a good read too. Would "Opinion Poll" be a good way to go? Gandydancer (talk) 18:24, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Contrary to above, not "Everyone in the WORLD in media and government is referring to this event as the BP Oil Spill". See e.g., Reuters, Guardian ("Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill"), New York Times ("Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill"), LA Times ("Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill/Disaster"). To refer to it as the BP oil spill would be taking a position on where the fault lies, and so I disagree with renaming. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.151.147.111 (talk) 03:58, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

BP, in the person of their CEO in various TV ads, says they are shouldering the responsibility for dealing with the aftermath. But as you indicate, the name of the article is fine the way it is. There is a redirect already from BP oil spill. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:26, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

For the record, the Guardian does refer to it as the ("BP oil spill") on the environment main page and they also list ("BP") as the first tag/category on the main page for the spill. The Guardian started out referring to it as Deepwater Horizon spill but has since switched (see for instance newest article headline: ("North Sea oil rigs will face tougher environmental scrutiny after BP spill"). --emptytalk (talk) 00:57, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

To be fair they seem to be using more than one term, even currently, with the "BP" variant occasionally appearing when space is at a premium. The first link you mention currently contains one (menu) reference to "BP oil spill" (and currently two other references to "Gull oil spill"). If you follow that menu item, you get to their main page on the subject which uses "Deepwater Horizon oil spill" as the defining term, in the title and even in the breadcrumb menu. The recent article you mention indeed uses "BP spill" in the headline but also "Deepwater Horizon disaster" in the subheading. Searching that page for defining words preceding "spill" currently gives "Deepwater horizon oil spill" (5 times), "Gulf oil spill" (2 times), "BP spill" (2 times), "Gulf spill" (2 times), "BP oil spill" (0 times). Searching their main news page similarly gives "Gulf oil spill" (once) and no others. Searching their front page similarly gives "Gulf oil spill" (once) and no others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.27.169.18 (talk) 13:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you're right that they're using several names (as do many other newspapers btw). But the commentator to which I responded held up the Guardian as an example of a newspaper NOT "referring to this event as the BP Oil Spill". I merely wanted to point out that this is incorrect - the Guardian does refer to it as BP oil spill. As you point out, they also use other names in addition. --emptytalk (talk) 17:15, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

As of june 7th this article surpassed Exxon Valdez as first sub-page for Oil spill and is #1 Google result for BP oil spill, with description pretty clear on what this refers to. One of the main objections to following convention is that omission of "BP" buries this article to search engines. Other than that, one could propose any number of possible combinations with or without "BP", and i cannot imagine there being consensus to officially rename to one. Redirects ftw. As for how it's called in the media and government, they need to save space in their headlines, since including "Deepwater Horizon" in every sentence would look clumsy. This is the title of a Wikipedia article. - Skullers (talk) 03:50, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

So now it is clear that BP has been manipulating Google search results. IMO this means that previous concerns about whether BP is manipulating this article have to be taken more seriously! Perhaps a new opinion poll on renaming the article to BP oil spill is called for, as the last one was very narrowly rejected (by one or two votes).--emptytalk (talk) 20:55, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

It is a very long way indeed from buying sponsored links for search phrases to "manipulating Google search results." Former has no relevance at all to what are in fact the most common organic search phrases, most common phrases used by reliable sources, nor Wikipedia article name. Paulscrawl (talk) 03:47, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I will repeat my comment made just three days ago in this same section: "To avoid a common misunderstanding, Wikipedia is not about voting. Before starting any new vote it would be useful if everybody will be familiar with WP:VOTE." The basic idea of the referred page is: "Wikipedia decisions are not made by popular vote, but rather through discussions by reasonable people working towards consensus. Polling is only meant to facilitate discussion, and should be used with care." So, voting in Wikipedia is not presidential elections where you count votes again and again, but rather discussion.Beagel (talk) 21:12, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I had already read your comment above, as well as all other comments in this section. It doesn't seem like consensus is developing through discussion at this point. Since I'm not very familiar with procedures (yet), I appreciate your point, but I want to stress that this is also why I didn't set up a poll but simply put out a suggestion! The more important point IMO was that we now know that BP is manipulating Google search results and that they thus pursue an aggressive online PR strategy. If you have any suggestions concerning what could be done about this with regards to this article and the discussions about naming this article I would be happy to hear them.--emptytalk (talk) 21:37, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Thankyou Beagel, so have we reached a true consensus? That is what I am confused about. I arrived on the editing scene only as June 2010 was beginning, so did I miss the boat, so to speak? In case a true consensus is still viable, consider this from WP:Article titles:

Neutrality and article titles

Conflicts often arise over whether an article title complies with Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy. Resolving such debates depends on whether the article title is a common name (taken from reliable sources) or a descriptive title (created by Wikipedia editors).

Non-neutral but common names

When a subject or topic has a common name (as evidenced through usage in a significant proportion of English-language reliable sources), Wikipedia should follow the sources and use that name as our article title. Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words that Wikipedia normally avoids (Examples include Boston massacre and Tea Pot Dome scandal). In such cases, the commonality of the name overrides our desire to avoid passing judgment (see bold italics below). This is acceptable because the non-neutrality and judgment is that of the sources, and not that of Wikipedia editors. True neutrality means we do not impose our opinions over that of the sources, even when our opinion is that the name used by the sources is judgmental.

It seems to me that by avoiding "BP" in the article title, we discredit the facts and reliable sources, deferring instead to our opinion that the name used by the sources is judgmental. My suggestion for this article title is "BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill", which was suggested previously by others as well. MichaelWestbrook (talk) 21:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this contribution. I agree with you. Many arguments against including BP in the title are indeed concerned with whether or not BP is the (sole/main) responsible party and not with how the sources label the incident. In addition, using the name "BP Oil Spill" or "Bp Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill" would be neutral in the sense that it uses "oil spill" rather than "disaster" or something similar. --emptytalk (talk) 22:03, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Michael makes a very good point of Wikipedia article-naming policy: we should be no more "neutral" than reliable sources (not merely common usage), while keeping in mind other article-naming considerations (recognizable, easy to find, precise, concise, consistent). I have no objections to adding "BP" to article name, as BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill nicely balances the several relevant criteria in a nutshell: "Article titles should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources." WP:TITLE -- Paulscrawl (talk) 03:47, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Agree to rename as 'BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill' - Good idea. Just put a 'BP' in front of the article's current name; it's fast, simple, and honest. While whatchlisting the article, I've stayed out of this 'till now, but MichaelWestbrook's idea strikes me as a fine compromise in this debate and moves me to comment. Would like this adopted by acclamation asap. Jusdafax 04:20, 9 June 2010 (UTC) (Note: I see it was mentioned previously in this section, and I don't buy the arguments against it.)

I fully agree that a common name should be used; however, there is no one and only common name used for referring to this oil spill. Even if you look at the suggestions to add BP in the title, there are different names suggested (and they all may qualify as common names). WP:TITLE also says "used by a significant majority of reliable English language sources. So you need to have a significant majority and only RS count.

Concerning having phrase "BP Deepwater Horizon" in the title it was explained a number of times, why this phrase is incorrect to use. You could use "BP" (e.g. 2010 BP oil spill) in the title or you could use "Deepwater Horizon" (e.g. Deepwater Horizon oil spill) in the title, but you can't use both together. "BP Deepwater Horizon" was not the name of the rig nor the rig was owned by BP as the phrase "BP Deepwater Horizon" suggests. Beagel (talk) 04:32, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I've read and contributed to these discussions and have changed my mind. To say that a proposed name is "incorrect" or that one of five-stated article naming criteria (recognizable, easy to find, precise, concise, consistent) is uniquely absolute is to misread the guideline (not God-given law): "When there is no obvious common name for the topic, as used by a significant majority of reliable English language sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best." We can't escape reasoning together: citing absolutes won't do at all. You also state "you can't use both" -- that is not true: BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill -- yes you can; I just did. It suggests nothing not suggested by reliable sources. But there are more important considerations: the other several article-naming criteria. I once argued that the name of the rig alone was the pattern for oil spill articles; now I've come to see the virtues of including together with the name of the rig the name most often referred by reliable sources in this context, as it most elegantly addresses the several competing article-naming criteria at once: it more precisely disambiguates than "...of 2010" while also being more recognizable, concise easy to find, and consistent with the general pattern, albeit not the exact phrase, of reliable sources. It works on many scores. On balance, I think it the best compromise for a question that of its nature allows for no absolutes. Paulscrawl (talk) 05:07, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I thank you for your candid insights and willingness to evolve in your thinking towards an honest compromise, and salute you. (And yes, while there are other companies involved in this matter, BP is by far the biggest player, and in my view those two letters belong in the title. Jusdafax 06:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

_Some_ of the media include BP in the name some of the time... How much? I don't see it. To me it looks that "Gulf of Mexico spill" [1][2][3][4][5] (along those lines) is more common. I'd put my money on something like that since they really do need to save space in their headlines. Should we have a snowball fight over which is best, pick the "official" media sources title? Or whether BBC should count or not? The examples used on WP:TITLE, Boston Massacre and Teapot Dome scandal happened in 1770 and 1923 respectably, and by no means do we have a title agreed on by "the sources" as the event unfolds. By Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(events), you'd call it Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010, that is if you ignored the other 60 oil spills. - Skullers (talk) 06:27, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Beagel, at the risk of sounding contentious, which is not my M.O. by any means, please consider phrases like "It has been explained several times" and "it was explained a number of times" could possibly make a newcomer feel less inclined to participate in progressive discussion of improving an article. I say this because sometimes bold communication from an established user carries subtle intimidating overtones. That being said, I believe in some cases, not all, that repeated "explanations" are warranted. However, regarding the point you made just now concerning the phrase "BP Deepwater Horizon", may I be so bold as to say you are not explaining fact, but rather your opinion (though perhaps congruent with others), and here is why: This article's subject is not about a rig. It is about an oil spill. The rig, however, has a meaningful descriptive name that will forever be associated with this ongoing event, because the rig explosion incident, the cause, which lead to the effect, the oil spill, will by all observations determine the fate of future Subsea oil drilling practices (keep in mind it was a "blowout" that caused the explosion, so there are many levels at play here). So it behooves us to abandon absolutes, as Paulscrawl said above, because a place like Wikipedia is most viable when less pedantic, and more utilitarian. I ask you, on June 9, 2010, a common sense question: A layman goes to learn about this oil spill on their computer, and will type in a keyword (at least one) in an internet search engine. What are the odds of BP being the first thing that comes to their mind? Furthermore, once they see "BP Deepwater Horizon", what are the odds he/she will be confused or mislead about the incident? I say we forge ahead as pioneers, rather than puppets, on the information superhighway. MichaelWestbrook (talk) 06:18, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Let me re-state then, from june 7th, 2010:) For a layman using a search engine either including BP [6][7] or not is irrelevant now, this page is the result, and the description makes it clear what this is referring to:

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, also called the BP Oil Spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill or the Macondo blowout, is a massive ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico ...

This is also the next google result for oil spill, surpassing Exxon Valdez. On the other hand including "Gulf" does not produce the result. It's not the "BP".

Re: [..]will by all observations determine the fate of future Subsea oil drilling practices[..], Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. And i do strongly recommend reading the points stated above. - Skullers (talk) 07:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Skullers, with all due respect, you missed the point I was trying to make. It was a philosophical point, one purposely made to refute the touting of semantic precision which can lead to pedantry. I assure you, I have read the entire discussion, including all archives of past discussions, and continue to do so (the first thing I do is click "View history" to catch up on every single recent contribution) before participating. I am somewhat OCD. So of all people, I especially value the fact that Wikipedia is not a crystal ball when writing the article itself. Am I to conclude then that we cannot think outside the box in discussion for improvement of the article? Again, absolutes. I will now kindly bow out of this argument. I feel misunderstood. And that is ok. :D MichaelWestbrook (talk) 08:02, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to have made you feel misunderstood, i really were looking only for the concrete reasons for a rename that are the most in this discussion. Should really listen and pay attention before rushing with a responce. Was in the process of rewording to change the tone somewhat, that it focuses on those points only. I really hope you can ignore that and keep contribute, as the point i missed is more valuable than the arguement over the title itself. - Skullers (talk) 08:43, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Heck, I don't even understand why everybody's calling it a spill, when it's clearly a leak, or an out-of-control gusher. Spills go down, not up. Wikipedia's naming conventions in don't actually follow common sense when calling it a "spill," but they do follow the illogical direction of the media quite nicely.--~TPW 14:29, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Relief well questions

I have wondered about the relief wells and have a few questions:

• Why do they need to intersect the drill pipe at such a deep level?

• Won't finding the drill pipe be like finding a needle in a hay stack?

• How will they have any better luck at withstanding the force of the shooting oil and gas to pump anything into the pipe than they did above ground level?

• It seems that even when they did successfully drill a relief well into the leaking Ixtoc well, it went on leaking for three months...any thoughts/info on that?

Appearing on the NBC "Today" show, in regards to the relief well, Dr. Michio Kaku said:

"You would have to win the lottery to get on the first try an exact, an exact meeting at the bottom of the well in order to pump cement to shut it off," Kaku told NBC's Matt Lauer Wednesday.

"If the attempt fails, the drill will be reversed, the hole will be filled with cement and they will try again."

"You have to do this over and over again until you get it just right," Kaku said. "It takes many tries. So August is optimistic."

"So this could be spewing oil for months. Could it last for a year?" asked Lauer.

"It could last for years, plural. Okay? If everything fails and all these different kinds of relief wells don't work, it could be spewing stuff into the Gulf until we have dead zones, entire dead zones in the Gulf. For years," Kaku said. Gandydancer (talk) 17:09, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Well here are what I think some of the answers are to some of the questions:

1. I don't know how deep they want to intercept, but I think the main reason has to do with getting a column of drilling mud deep enough that when the wells intercept, they have enough hydrostatic pressure to kill the well. The pressure in the higher parts of the wellbore is much greater than you would find in formations at a similar depth, even highly over-pressurized zones, because it's coming from much deeper down and has a free path to the surface. There's a limit to how heavy you can make your mud, so the lower you can inject it the better (that is, the lower you inject it the greater the hydrostatic pressure exerted by the mud column).

2. Finding the existing wellbore will not be like finding a needle in a haystack because they have the exact path drilled: the coordinates of the wellbore in three dimensional space are known and, in theory, can be given to a drilling rig and they just drill into that. In practice, the accuracy of the measurements aren't perfect so it is possible for the relief well to miss.

3. They will be much better able to deal with the pressure than through the existing well. Rigs drill into over-pressured formations all the time, they just need to be using heavy enough drilling mud that its hydrostatic pressure holds the oil and gas in the formation. That is what the "top kill" was trying to do, pump in enough drilling mud to stop the flow. Top kill didn't work because all the mud got blown out by the stream of oil and gas (as mentioned in point 1, the hydrostatic pressure of the mud column wasn't enough to overcome the well bore pressure because it came from so much lower). In the recovery well, however, there will be a whole column of drilling mud all the way to the surface, the pressure at the bottom of that column will be greater (in all likelihood much greater) than the pressure of the formation(s) where the oil and gas is coming from. When they break through, the column of mud will likely rush into the existing well, probably killing it almost immediately.

4. Sorry, don't know anything about Ixtoc relief wells.

As far as Kaku goes, I think he is being overly pessimistic, but it is true that a good intercept is not a sure thing and several attempts may be needed. They are drilling two relief wells with this in mind. Even if they have terrible luck, however, I don't think "years" is a very likely time frame. He seems to be implying that if the well misses they abandon the whole thing and start again. In reality, they would almost certainly "kick off" the existing relief wellbore further up and try again (as in multilateral wells). I'm not really sure why they're talking to Kaku anyway. Surely they should be talking to someone actually involved in the oil industry, preferably someone that has actually been involved in relief wells, rather than a string theorist? I'm quite sure they wouldn't have such gloomy predictions. Still, probably an improvement over Stephen Baldwin, who I saw giving an interview about the spill to CNN the other day. TastyCakes (talk) 18:06, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you TastyCakes for these very useful clarifications about the "relief well" effort. I had visualized this as a pressure reduction intercept, which would involve production, not as a purely mud and cement delivery system; your understanding of how this process will work greatly alleviates my concern. I do have one request for clarification. You indicate that "The pressure in the higher parts of the wellbore is much greater than you would find in formations at a similar depth, even highly over-pressurized zones, because it's coming from much deeper down and has a free path to the surface." From this I infer that you believe that the amount of any over pressures in the production zone at the bottom of the well are known to be within the range that the relief well mud column can withstand, and there is no risk of blowback of that mud column. You also imply that the gas pressures and volumes being experienced at this well originate in the production zone, and are *known* not to originate in dissociation of methane hydrates along the well's pipe string, and transmitted to the well head through casing space and / or well pipe that has lost integrity.

Can you confirm that these are known knowns, and not BP engineering assumptions based on experience with other wells? Because I have not been satisfied so far that this well is not "special" in its methane pressures and volumes, to a degree that may invalidate prior art and experience. Jim Pivonka (talk) 05:01, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

They'll have a pretty good idea of the pressure from when they drilled through the formation the first time (if anything it'll be lower since it will have depleted for several months by then). They could just use the same weight of mud that they did the first time (drilling the well had no problems, it was after some or all of the mud was pumped out that the accident occurred, at least that's my understanding). In practice, I would suspect them to go with a much higher mud weight in the relief well just to be sure. Some of the reasons they would drill with lighter mud, such as avoiding drilling fluid invasion, are removed when the only objective is to stop an out of control well. TastyCakes (talk) 16:09, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

A quick thanks to Tasty before the discussion goes on. You would make a fine teacher - of course, maybe you are... Gandydancer (talk) 12:45, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Well thanks, but I should make clear that I'm not an expert on relief wells. I could be making some glaring misstatements in there. TastyCakes (talk) 16:09, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Another question: how often has this bottom kill been done in similar wells? Of course you may get a different answer depending on your definition of "similar". One person who says they have 30 years experience in the industry stated "A “bottom kill” is vastly easier and is what the relief wells are about. Unfortunately for that to work the relief well must intersect an 8 ¾” diameter well bore 3 miles underground in the dark. It has been and can be done, but the deep intersection is necessary so that the enormous bottomhole reservoir pressure can be offset with heavy drilling fluid." with link found via http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8448336 which was found via google for related terms Notice his words after "it has been and can be done" don't say how many times it's been done at this depth and with geologic/reservoir arrangements "similar" to this one, and I noticed he immediately continued with the word "but".. Articles and references would be extremely useful and timely on the question of "how often with a similar" one it's been done via bottom kill before and, "what are the odds of success?" Much of the media act as if, and report as if, the probability of success is at or very close to 100%. I'll try to find other more precise sources and would appreciate help from others, to add to this entry re these questions. Harel (talk) 02:23, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure on the number, but here is an article describing the history of relief wells and the technology associated with them. They are necessary from time to time and the methods are getting more and more advanced/effective. I doubt there has ever been a relief well drilled in water this deep, but I don't see why that would change anything for the people drilling it. At the bottom of the first part of that article you'll see a relief well was used in the North Sea in 1989. TastyCakes (talk) 16:25, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Bottom kill

Can someone update this with information about bottom kill, and perhaps make an article on that? 76.66.193.224 (talk) 06:52, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Agree a separate article about bottom kill would be good; however information on likelihood of success, challenges etc, for this particular spill's bottom kill operation, should go into this present article.Harel (talk) 02:23, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

There is a very small article on relief well, maybe that could be expanded instead of having a separate bottom kill article? TastyCakes (talk) 16:26, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Whoever was playing the google game up at the top, please stop. True it is fun to post google results, but it distracts form the main point of the discussion which is that there is a crisis going on and the people should be informed. And stop spending all your time on wikipedia and google. Get a life... or better yet go help skim oil off the top of the water in new orleans or do something to help..... this includes you Al Gore. Peace out wikifreaks!!!! 9:39 pm 8 June 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zapwilder (talk • contribs) 01:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

www.2010gulfoilspill.com as a reliable source

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

www.2010gulfoilspill.com is not a reliable source --Labattblueboy (talk) 02:37, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

---

User:Starphi has been inserting www.2010gulfoilspill.com as a reference in the infobox. IMO, the site does not meet the requirements of a reliable source nor does the address corespond to the text. It was ref. # 1. I have removed it once again until its status as an RS is confirmed. Please have a review and let me know if you agree/disagree.--Labattblueboy (talk) 17:26, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you on 2010gulfoilspill.com. However, facebook.com is a RS for counts of its users who like the "Boycott BP" page, a fact which you deleted today. Thundermaker (talk) 18:02, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I disagree vis-a-vis the facebook ref. It's certainly original research and I haven't seen mention of facebook group mentioned anywhere else. The reliable sources noticeboard has rather consistently found facebook to not be a reliable source, unless it's supported by a more traditional source (see:Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_33#Philip_Markoff_BLP for example0. If you want start a discussion at the noticeboard (Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard) I'd be happy to participate.--Labattblueboy (talk) 18:23, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure, I think in this case it might qualify as a RS (confirming the number of members in one of its groups). However, that doesn't mean we should include it. I cringe every time I see something like this. What does a Facebook group really mean? There are pretzels with more followers than this BP boycott. It sounds like a big number: but it's meaningless, just some people clicking on something that catches their eye. I think the Facebook group should be left out and more meaningful demonstrations of anger used (ie demonstrations at gas stations, BP headquarters, govt etc). TastyCakes (talk) 18:28, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

All information placed on 2010Gulfoilspill.com is reliable and is obtained from reliable sources just like the information that major newpapers and websites gather. Being the editor, I have spent much time and effort on this story and feel it is worthy of it's place on the page of note. Perhaps someone has a problem with it being the #1 reference. If that is the reason for all this silliness, I will gladly accept a lower number so that I won't be first and get too many hits (200 per day).

The reason I chose this source for reference to begin with: (Operator - Transocean under lease for BP) was because the initial reference was for certain "not" a reliable source neither did the previous reference have anything to do with the article in question.

Not only is my article of reference accurate and factual, it is of public knowledge and currently linked to a very reliable website and it is also a fact that the CEO's for the companies of Transocean and BP were sworn under oath in a U.S. senate hearing confirming that Swiss-based Transocean did "indeed" lease the drilling platform called the Deepwater Horizon to BP.

All my sources are linked to major news articles that indeed make my reference to "2010Gulfoilspill.com" a reliable and accurate source that certainly does correspond to the text it references at Deepwater Horizon oil spill and therefore should be validated.--User:Starphi (talk) 15:26, 3 June 2010

Ah I see... Well I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I'm not sure the site would qualify as a reliable source. If I understand correctly, it's a self published blog, which usually don't qualify. I'm sorry, it looks like you've done a great job on the site, but as a source of information for the article, someone is probably going to come and change it. TastyCakes (talk) 21:55, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

It is as a reliable source as they come. The site is based on the same concept that Wikipedia is based on but with only one topic. If you take a good look at the site, one would notice that it is basically a group of news snippets of factual and verified news reports that are referenced through various news articles via links.It doesn't get any more reliable than that. The very same manner that major news sites obtain or retrieve their information from various outside sources is the same way that I obtain and retrieve mine. There is basically no difference.

Food for thought: If I were to copy or link an article from Wikipedia, would it not be considered a reliable source? --User:Starphi (talk) 12:48, 5 June 2010 (EDT)

no, it would not. is it not obvious that that is self-referencing? on the broader point here the .com suffix gives me pause.Toyokuni3 (talk) 17:18, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree, it wouldn't. Wikipedia is mainly interested in secondary sources. That is, they generally don't want information from "primary sources", those directly involved with the subject, and they don't want information from "tertiary sources", compilations of secondary reporting on the subjects. Well let me qualify, tertiary sources are acceptable if they're "reliably published" (which I don't think yours qualifies as), but even then there is a roundabout aspect to using them that seems unnecessary and out of place. Your site, and Wikipedia itself, is such a tertiary source. The information you put in may very well be perfect for Wikipedia, but we should cite the original articles, not your compilation page. TastyCakes (talk) 17:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

With literally scores of articles to choose from to support most any factoid one cares to cite with a reference, why not give preference to well-established mainstream media sources, esp. those with a demonstrated track record for preserving stable article URLs? I'm sure your time is valuable: why lose work over a changed URL? NY Times is an obvious choice, but also note the incomparable and incessant daily updates on virtually every aspect of this story from New Orleans' newspaper of record, the Times-Picayune -- http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/ -- which has preserved its Hurricane Katrina article URLs (via redirects) for some five years this August. Maybe that's partly why they won a Pulitzer for their coverage. Consider the very real possibility that when a link dies because a story moves to some archive URL, that the summarizing sentence in the WP article may likely be cut as non-referenced material. Agree with Labattblueboy & TastyCakes, et al- we can do better than this tertiary aggregator of secondary sources, however reputable the sponsoring state agency (http://www.2010oilspill.com/) or anonymous blogger (http://www.2010gulfoilspill.com/). Paulscrawl (talk) 17:32, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

3 times is enough already -- work it out here, first. Reverting third attempt to link 2010gulfoilspill.com as first (unneeded) reference in Infobox. Article establishes & cites that fact in both Intro & Deepwater Horizon sections. This is beginning to look like a persistent spam attempt. Paulscrawl (talk) 18:27, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Totally anonymous blogger, with no about us on site, hardly qualifies as a reliable source. End of spam story.  : http://www.whois.net/whois/2010gulfoilspill.com.com Paulscrawl (talk) 18:42, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, if that's the case, then why don't we just scrap all the rest of these overly monotonous and repetitive articles and references that deal with this story.

An aggregator of secondary sources? So what!? Besides, that is exactly what all these so-called major news sites are ... aggregators. Do some of you really think that these "big players" all have reporters and investigators walking on the beaches and swimming in the oil to get their news? I hardly doubt it! They are merely aggregators who rely on AP content and feeds from other so-called reliable references.

No need for any of you to be too concern though. 2010GulfOilSpill.com is quickly becoming a reliable source in it's own right and soon will be a major reference blog for interested readers to use while following this newsworthy story. The domain name alone has a substantial market value as we have turned down several very good offers to purchase it. Too bad none of you didn't think of it first! ... GOOD BYE!! ... --User:Starphi (talk) 17:00, 5 June 2010 (EDT) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.23.113.19 (talk)

I'm sorry, impressive as your site is it is still a self published blog that has just amalgamated a bunch of news stories. It fails as an appropriate Wikipedia source because of those main reasons, and now apparently a third: self promotion. Best of luck to you and the site. TastyCakes (talk) 21:12, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Time for an Admin warning of some sort. From User page: "Starphi is an assumed named used by freelance writer and website editor Ron Dwight. His most recent editorial work for Wikipedia is on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of April, 2010 also known as the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill that discusses the recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, situated off the coast of Louisiana in the U.S.." Starphi's most recent edit of this section of this article's Discussion page, just reverted by Starphi, boasts of profitable offers for domain name he admitted to registering. Confession of guilt deserves acknowledgment so we don't waste further time on this. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Starphi-- Paulscrawl (talk) 00:50, 6 June 2010(UTC)

 Done Thanks, for the revert of foolish post by Starphi, Wwoods, but I was on it! Encourage Admin escalation, but meanwhile I added uw-coi (conflict of interest) template to Talk & User page of Starphi & Talk page of 99.23.113.19, with following message:

You are a self-admitted 3-time self-promoter of your own Web site, unanimously deemed to be not a reliable source: http://www.2010gulfoilspill.com

1. From User page: "Starphi is an assumed named used by freelance writer and website editor Ron Dwight. His most recent editorial work for Wikipedia is on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of April, 2010 also known as the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill that discusses the recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, situated off the coast of Louisiana in the U.S.." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Starphi as of 2010-06-05.
2. From your signed edit (self-deleted) History of Deepwater Horizon oil spill Discussion page section "www.2010gulfoilspill.com as a reliable source": "No need for any of you to be too concern though. 2010GulfOilSpill.com is quickly becoming a reliable source in it's own right and soon will be a major reference blog for interested readers to use while following this newsworthy story. The domain name alone has a substantial market value as we have turned down several very good offers to purchase it. Too bad none of you didn't think of it first! ... GOOD BYE!! ... --User:Starphi (talk) 17:00, 5 June 2010 (EDT) }}" from edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill&oldid=366253946

Per article Discussion page and article History, you have now linked three times to your page, despite unanimous pleas to stop. Do not attempt so again, as you have a clear and very well documented conflict of interest. Good bye! -- Paulscrawl (talk) 04:00, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Suggestions/Questions on stopping the leak

Feasible solution to stop the BP oil gusher

there is what America is waiting of: Solution to stop oil gusher --Inventor 02:21, 4 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Inventor (talk • contribs)

I dont know who is editing this wiki page, all i can see, is that BP is using one of my methods now and that it has been removed from the wiki, well great super fantastic, are we not allowed to write here anymore, because you editor are so all knowing???... Apparently you didnt knew all, and BP had read my Emails. Good job wiki guys, what a laugh.

Your suggestion was archived, as all sections on this page are after 2 days of inactivity. It also doesn't seem to bear much resemblance to what BP is currently doing. Regardless, you seem to misunderstand the purpose of this page. It is not to provide judgment on solutions but to describe the event, and it's certainly not for gloating about your somewhat dubious claims of having solved the problem by telling BP what to do. TastyCakes (talk) 20:52, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Is anyone asking the question: Could BP be dragging their feet on capping the well because they quickly reaslized public sentiment would prevent them from harvesting any of the oil under the gulf ever. Whereas, if they use a relief well as the only "solution" to the leak, they will have solved their problem of capping it while also giving them a new working well, maybe even 2! Amazing. Why is nobody discussing this very real possibility? BP execs can easily run the numbers of the cost of cleanup versus the potential revenue of oil produced from the relief wells. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.179.208.91 (talk) 15:34, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

BP has spent about a billion dollars so far on cleanup efforts. Their stock has lost about a third of its value, about $73 billion in lost market cap. They cannot "run the numbers" on a cleanup because nobody knows how much it will cost, although estimates are getting increasingly extreme. It is absurd to suggest they aren't doing everything they can to end the spill. TastyCakes (talk) 16:15, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Split proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Conclusion was to split the explosion section into a new article named Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion.--Labattblueboy (talk) 02:25, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

---

Size of this article is over the standard size limits and therefore it would be better to split some information into separate articles. As a first step, I propose to create Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion article based on 'Explosion and fire' and 'Casualties and rescue efforts' subsections. These sections have been quite stable and rapid changes are not expected.

• Support Yes, let's! I have slow Internet and any change I make takes a LOOONG time to show up. Not that I'm complaining. It's not expensive and usually plenty fast.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:06, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

• In principal Support I would leave the background section in this article and split off Explosion and fire, Casualties and rescue efforts, Pre-spill precautions, Discovery of oil spill and the requisite investigation material. I think the explosion could be summarize into a single paragraph. I'd be happy to help do so, if the support exists to go forward. The names Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion and Deepwater Horizon explosion are both OK by me. --Labattblueboy (talk) 21:54, 3 June 2010 (UTC)]]

• Support - I think splitting it into the explosion and the spill probably makes sense. A limited description of the other "half" should remain in the two new articles though... TastyCakes (talk) 23:14, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

• Support -- with summary templates linking back to main articles on:

rig article

&

oil spill article

Paulscrawl (talk) 03:33, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, sure. For the edit history, also {{Splitfrom}} and {{Split-to}} templates should be added to talk pages. Beagel (talk) 04:15, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

What about the Discussion history? Can that be salvaged w/o too much work? Paulscrawl (talk) 08:24, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

• Support. Too long. An infobox would be great--DAI (Δ) 13:49, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I oppose splitting the fire and explosion from the so called "spill" section of this WP article. (Spill refers to a release from a confinement vessel of some kind, not to flow from a well; it's far too late I guess to correct that useage.) My objection to separation of information on the fire and explosion from information on efforts to close off effluent flow from the well is that the two are most likely, based on published information, intimately related. Specifically, efforts to shut down flow from the well and the initial fire and explosion are being in large part determined by high flows of methane from the well. Discussion:

The well was in the process of being shut down when the fire and explosion occurred. The shutdown has been reported to have been necessitated by failure of the natural gas processing and flaring system aboard the production platform; that problem may have originated in flows of methane from the well significantly in excess of the design capacity of the systems in place to handle these gasses. The presence of large (unusually large?) volumes of methane in the flow from the well has complicated every aspect of efforts to control, and even understand the blowout. This includes estimates of the volume (of what? Oil, or oil & gas) flowing from the well, efforts to cap the well (methane hydrates in the cap(s)). The character of the effluent flow from the well will most lkely be an essential element in investigating and understanding both the initial fire and explosion and the efforts to close off the well; that relationship will be pervasive in investigations of the overall incidents and will continue to tie them together in intimate relationship.

A more logical division of the article would be between the problems with the well and production platform and problems of mitigation and cleanup of materials released from the well. I would encourage and support division of the article into two parts, with one focusing on the effects of the release of these materials, and efforts to mitigate those effects; the other on the failure of the production system (well, production platform, & safety & recovery systems) which resulted in the blowout and problems in shutting it down. I am Jim Pivonka, registration info lost or not currently locatable, and am signing or attempting to sign this post. 66.232.220.229 (talk)! —Preceding undated comment added 14:46, 4 June 2010 (UTC).

Comment: Maybe I'm misunderstanding your position, but "problems with the well and production platform" and "mitigation and cleanup of materials released from the well" sound like verbose ways of saying "Rig explosion" and "Oil spill" (which, incidentally, does not by definition come from a tanker). TastyCakes (talk) 16:10, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Comment: @ TastyCakes: Correct. You are misunderstanding my position. The well and production platform issues do not equate to the explosion on the rig, but include that and all actions subsequent to that which address the platform and well, and efforts to shut off the flow of oil from the well. The mitigation and cleanup of materials from the well excludes actions addressing the shut down of the flow from the well itself, and is a part of a larger set of problems resulting from the release of crude petroleum and gas from the well, as described earlier in my note. What I would seek to avoid is dividing the production system problems into two pieces, and lumping actions to shut down the flow from the well in with information addressing cleanup, mitigation, and the effects and consequences of the flow. I specifically do not believe that shutting off the flow is a part of "mitigation"; instead it is a part of the production system failure. Thanks for helping me to clarify this. Jim Pivonka (talk) 04:33, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

• I have started a draft for the new article at User:Labattblueboy/sandbox. Please review and edit at your will.--Labattblueboy (talk) 20:18, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Nice work, Labattblueboy. Now if I may be so bold, before I support or oppose, am I to assume since "Deepwater Horizon" was the rig, and now would have its own "incident" article, that this current oil spill would not necessarily warrant the proper adjective "Deepwater Horizon" in the title? And if my assumption is correct, which proper adjective would best define the oil spill, the subject of this article under discussion? Feedback from anyone is appreciated. MichaelWestbrook (talk) 21:07, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

My opinion would that, for posterity, the the spill article name should remain of the same name. The family of documents thus far includes, Deepwater Horizon, Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Timeline of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and if the proposal is adopted, Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion. I suspect that the number of articles is going to increase with time and the name "Deepwater Horizon" is the unifying factor.--Labattblueboy (talk) 13:13, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

• Against - Currently, the investigation into what the cause of this is is likely to change the Deepwater Horizon explosion details at some point. Also, I believe it is important to keep the perspective that this rig is at the root of the problem here. Currently the details are not all known, or at least, not all compiled. For the sake of remembering those 11 who lost their lives when this rig went down and also to keep the perspective of the complexity of the tragedy I recomend that this NOT be split until such time as the details are static on both counts and a solid decision can be made as to where to make a split. 75.48.213.162 (talk) 06:23, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Objection noted: The intent is to directly cross-link both pages so that a reader can access both, quickly, as if merely page 1 & 2. Also, the explosion will remain, as a summary, in the original article. Although you feel a single page would better retain the perspective, consider that a huge page, instead, deters people from adding current details and also deters readers from checking latest details, due to slow edit/display of a huge page. This split is based on WP:Consensus, acknowledging your concerns, so if you feel other changes should be made to the 2 pages to compensate for separation, feel free to suggest changes, here or in future topics below. Please don't think your concerns have been ignored. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:31, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

• Implementation - Now that the split has been made and there are tags to the Deepwater Horizon main article as well as the one on the explosion and fire I will be stripping down some of the redundant background from the oil spill article, because right now it takes way too long to get to the meat, and too long to load the article. I agree with the previous commenter that some of the causes will have to remain in the spill article, but should be addressed under the investigations and policy changes subsections. Let's be careful to make sure that the explosion article doesn't lose anything, and if anything, it could have some deleted material restored for the benefit of those more interested in that aspect of the tragedy.Popsup (talk) 16:57, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Emphasizing barrier islands and peninsulas

Tar balls were found at the Pensacola Beach community on Santa Rosa Island, similar to barrier islands reporting tar balls in Mississippi and Alabama.

It is important to note, for tourism events in the article, how barrier islands (and peninsulas) protect many of the coastlines of major cities along the Gulf Coast. These barrier islands have northern shores that are likely to remain clean for tourism, swimming, and perhaps fishing, in waters coming from inland rivers and bays (fresh+salt), rather than from Gulf waters on the southern shorelines of those barrier islands. As each town reports oil, check WP maps city-data.com maps (such as Destin, Florida: http://www.city-data.com/city/Destin-Florida.html) to see their particular islands & peninsulas (people have not completed Wikipedia maps for Florida cities). I have amended the article to state the barrier islands affected, and included a map of Santa Rosa Island, Florida (right) to illustrate the extreme protection provided by such an immense barrier island. Note "Pensacola Beach" is NOT Pensacola's "beach" but rather, a separate community (on the island) connected by a 2-bridge link, north via Gulf Breeze, to Pensacola (on the mainland). The oil will have a very difficult time getting past the barrier islands, so that is why the emphasis. Because WP is a wikilinked encyclopedia, we can spot errors in news stories (where they think it's Pensacola's beach). Note that further down the Florida peninsula, the bay waters of Tampa Bay are protected by the thin peninsula of St. Petersburg, FL. Hence, it is a combination of barrier islands AND peninsulas (both) that protect the inner tourist areas for beach games, boating, swimming and probably fishing. It is likely that some cleanup workers, during off hours, might even swim or fish near areas they are cleaning, at this stage. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:02, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

• On 6-7 June 2010, some oil sheen was observed passing the barrier islands, and entering Mobile Bay (Alabama) & Perdido Pass (Florida), due to days of strong winds from the south, and no 6-foot barrier-booms claimed as former promises by U.S. Coast Guard officials. Because the nearby rivers empty out into the Gulf, those areas could be expected to partially push the oil back out to sea, when south winds are not as strong. Numerous tarballs and oil splotches have appeared on some outer Alabama & Florida beaches; however, mainland Mississippi (MS) beaches have not been hit, only Petit Bois Island and other MS barrier islands. Similar winds might affect Florida beaches further to the east, pushing some oil sheen partially around those barrier islands, if floating booms are not there to be anchored for closing the bays. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:06, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

OIL NOW SEEN LEAKING FROM SEABED DIRECTLY, CAPSTONE FAILURE

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/06/07/senator-nelson-says-bp-well-integrity-may-be-blown/

Needs to be added in. Reported live on MSNBC. Merrill Stubing (talk) 21:43, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, BUT THERE'S NO NEED TO SHOUT HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:55, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, where and how should this be added? Merrill Stubing (talk) 22:17, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

So far we have only Sen. Nelson speaking of "reports of" - a little too early to see what will become of this. However, BTW, I did note that several people posting at the live stream at Common Dreams insisted that they saw oil gushing from the sea floor for several moments. I thought perhaps they had seen spurts of dispersant. Time will tell... Gandydancer (talk) 15:48, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

• I wonder if there are other "gas leaks" which kick up mud from the sea floor, and perhaps gas leaks seal themselves off when thicker debris collects inside those leaks, or perhaps, the methane hydrate crystals form as self-sealing "pockets of frozen air" inside the leaks, as happened with the large, inverted-funnel containment dome. A lot of this talk of so-called "oil leaking" is actually gas and drilling mud leaking, IMHO. More sourced text about that would help balance the article text. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:18, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

lead

I'm not sure what's happened over hte past few days but the lead looks dramatically different. I restored a portion of it from a previous edit by Cgingold but it's still drastically shorted than it was a couple days ago. I'm OK with that, if that's the general intention, I just didn't see any edit remarks or mention here of such changes. Thoughts? --Labattblueboy (talk) 22:40, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I think the lead should still link Macondo Prospect and at least mention that BP had a 65% working interest and is/was the operator. Personally, I would also add the names of the other joint venture partners (Anadarko and Mitsui) and mention the well belonged to Transocean. TastyCakes (talk) 22:12, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

The join venture breakdown isn't mentioned anywhere in the article. It should have mention in there, somewhere, before going in the lead. IMO, its not needed in the lead but I'm not terribly firm in that opinion.--Labattblueboy (talk) 22:40, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

The breakdown is maybe not necessary, but I think saying it's a joint venture with BP as the operator is a bare minimum for the intro, and giving the other partners somewhere in the article is an absolute must. Right now reading this article you'd have no idea that BP wasn't the only one on the hook here. TastyCakes (talk) 22:49, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

FYI, the extensive changes to the Intro were made in a series of edits yesterday (Sunday) by User:Popsup. Cgingold (talk) 22:58, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

What would be your preference, leave as is, or return to the pre-Sunday status. I can't say that I am particularly satisfied with its current state but not quite sure what to do about it. --Labattblueboy (talk) 02:26, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't care but every time I've tried to insert that it was a joint venture with BP as the operator it has been reverted. TastyCakes (talk) 13:10, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Consequences section

What on earth happened to the Consequences section?!? It's completely out of control. 11 sub sections is far to many.--Labattblueboy (talk) 22:42, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah - there are some sub-sections that are wrongly placed in that section and should be moved to more appropriate locations. Cgingold (talk) 23:01, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. But ... Search for "new" in last 200 edit summaries shows no clues: people are apparently adding sections with edit of entire page to avoid such summary, perhaps. But what is inconsequential? This is very important; please excuse the length: I can't let this pass.

Plan ahead for split of Consequences section to Economic effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill, among other sub-articles, & related articles on other effects, social, political, by region, by state or city, etc., a la the very many branches of the Hurricane Katrina article. See that article for Aftermath section, as well as search for Wikipedia for Hurricane Katrina effects: [8]

In the meantime ... what are the fewest categories that might contain all relevant and well-sourced Consequences? Let's aim for 5, plus or minus seven

1. Ecology
2. Fisheries
3. Tourism
4. Other economic effects
5. Public Relations, reaction & opinion
6. Effect on offshore drilling policy

Public relations, Public reaction & Public opinion were well discussed above, with good input, suggested consolidation into one section, & no objections, with every single edit well commented. Move at will -- I suggest immed. after Discovery of oil spill section as one possibility -- but please do not summary edit or delete any of those sections without further discussion -- such PR efforts and their reception and measurement by polls are a vital part of this story and are highly consequential of this oil spill and, no doubt, future ones.

Many other sub-section additions to Consequences section have no such history at all of edit summaries, and absolutely no discussion. Some have only one or two sentences, and may easily be moved.

Without ditching valuable content, let's plan ahead for eventual split of Economic effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Political effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill by region, Effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Louisiana, Effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Mississippi, Effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Alabama, Efects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Florida, Social effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and others, as they become necessary. And they will.

Consequences (as of 2010-06-07):

1. Ecological effects -- obvious consequence; keep
2. Impact on fisheries -- obvious consequence; keep
3. Effect on tourism -- obvious consequence; keep
4. Sick workers -- two sentences, not widely corroborated & not needed as separate section; weave into Short term efforts section
5. Impact on BP -- Consolidate in Other economic effects section
6. Insurance -- two sentences, not widely corroborated & not needed as separate section; Consolidate in Other economic effects section
7. Other economic impacts -- holder sub-section
8. Litigation -- questionable placement. Consolidate in Other economic effects section
9. Public relations -- discussed
10. Public reaction -- discussed -- may fold into sub-section of Public relations
    1. Public opinion -- discussed -- may fold into sub-section of Public reaction
11. U.S. and Canadian offshore drilling policy --may well be summed up and linked to appropriate article, as well as doing the same with Atlantis Oil Field safety practices in following section

Paulscrawl (talk) 03:14, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

No objection to merger and consolidation of Public Relations, reaction & opinion. I think fisheries and tourism should be merged. Tourism doesn't have much of anything currently whereas the other financial economic effects (litigation, market capitalization, etc are well cited and far larger). In short tourism doesn't merit its own section at this time. So mine would be;

1. Ecology
2. Fisheries and tourism
3. Other economic effects
4. Public Relations, reaction & opinion
5. Effect on offshore drilling policy

--Labattblueboy (talk) 03:42, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Well done. Let's make it so! Paulscrawl (talk) 03:53, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I've started the merge work but I have found the litigation section a difficult one to merge into economics. I will take a run at merging Public Relations, reaction & opinion tomorrow.--Labattblueboy (talk) 04:47, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Just a reminder to capitalize "Public" but not "relations". Great work! MichaelWestbrook (talk) 05:21, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

• I just moved the Public relations & Public reaction sections out of "Consequences". In no way should these two sections be merged - they deal with very distinct issues. However, they could probably be grouped under a single umbrella if someone can think of an appropriate heading. The Litigation section also deals with a very distinct subject and should not simply be merged into Economic impacts. Cgingold (talk) 14:27, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

• Excellent move, Cgingold! Also agree with the heading edit. I see no need for a single umbrella, and placement of these sections at the end of the article is appropriate. MichaelWestbrook (talk) 15:55, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

• As someone who edited the Hurricane Katrina article quite a lot, I can give some advice: don't split it into a plethora of Effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill in χ articles. After the proverbial storm of interest passes, having that many articles becomes unmanageable, and with the exception of a few, most of them will be neglected for a long time. Maybe a general effects article would be all right, but individual regions is overkill IMO. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 18:40, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for your contributions to that fine article on Hurricane Katrina. I was a bit busy at the time attempting to evacuate wife (easy) and cats (somewhat difficult) from New Orleans or I would have helped, but I relied on it daily for months. We can learn a lot from your editing experience on such a very complex, evolving disaster with manifold long-term effects. I made the analogy to this article because it is especially apt and worthy of careful consideration as we structure this article with bones to grow on and levees that won't break. I like the current structure of the main article on Hurricane Katrina, with separate sections for Impact by region and Aftermath (our Consequences), with many of their subsections linking to subsidiary detail articles. Granted, some such detail articles may not be strictly necessary (particularly, the regional ones, as you noted), but tell that to those intimately affected. Maintainability of the main article is not the only, or even the main, criterion: special interests have special considerations of notability that fall well within Wikipedia guidelines. I don't see any way to fairly control such branch articles other than to plan ahead for them, using your experience and that of the article you worked on, by structuring the main article to accommodate such easily foreseeable detail articles, so that they may be easily summarized, categorized, and linked to and from the appropriate section of the summary article. Many different constituencies (regional, as well as those with special interests and editorial contributions to make re: legislation, regulation, rig safety, ecology, fishing, tourism, media, culture, etc.) will naturally and quite legitimately come to different evaluations than the editors and self-designated maintainers of this summary article on what supporting "details," notable by a critical mass of reliable sources, are themselves article-worthy.

Let a million flowers bloom, with cultivation.

For instance, the passing of the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act is certainly a noteworthy and long-lasting legislative effect of the hurricane, not at all noted in the main article, and that is only one "relatively tiny" example in a "very big ocean" of effects such a disaster as this oil spill will likely lead to: witness the Category of the hurricane's Category 5 effects -- [[9]]. The PETS Act is not in the main article, but in the Political effects sub article, a maintenance issue, perhaps, or is it a difference of opinion as to importance to main article? Regardless, it now has its place in Wikipedia and the Category of the effects of the hurricane and inter-article links keep it findable, and as maintainable as desired. With that example in mind, let us structure this article as a holding tank for the inevitable branch articles, to be summarized in main article when the page weight of accumulated details and citations of a section make it prudent to summarize after branching off detail article. As I wrote somewhere else, this article will likely be the basis of an encyclopedia in itself: I would hate to see good and important details and citations -- not to mention dedicated editors -- lost in a premature concern for maintainability or summary style of the main article on the oil spill.

Planning article structure carefully can prevent such losses of facts, citations, and editorial contributions with no loss of maintainability. Paulscrawl (talk) 20:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Without getting into a detailed debate on the structure of the Katrina article (this is the wrong talk page for that), the main issue is that there is an exponential decline in the number of eyeballs interested in editing the articles as time goes by, and Katrina was an event with enough effects to fill a small library of pure prose. We ran straight-on into article size issues, so we had to decide to provide only a broad overview of the main themes surrounding the storm, following the existing guidelines for tropical cyclone articles (History->Impact->Aftermath->Records). As relevant as the PETS Act is, it does not rise to the same level of importance as 80% of NOLA flooding, for example.

That said, the main issue is maintaining citations; most AP wire stories expire after a given amount of time, and this article has several expired or expiring links already. We get around that using WebCite; I recommend you use it too. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 21:04, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I was not at all debating the Katrina article structure, I was making an apropos argument by way of analogy to this article's structure, and likely future course, and this page is indeed the place for that discussion. (Since you bring it up, many owners of the 600,000 pets killed or left without shelter would disagree with your assessment of the relative significance of the PETS Act; thus, such sub-articles most definitely have their place). The predictable decrease in persons interested in editing sub-articles of limited scope relative to a subject's summary article is no argument against their creation, when the perceived need presents itself. The alternative is to lose details and citations -- and dedicated editors, a far more valuable commodity.

Agreed as to citations: tools help, but so does good judgment. If experience is a guide, New York Times and Times-Picayune citations can be counted on for years; AP URLs are not at all robust. We can all be more discerning in choosing amongst the many possible sources for a given citation. Paulscrawl (talk) 21:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

"Debate" was probably the wrong word to use, true. However, we ran into the opposite problem: there were too many articles for the number of people that were updating them, and we had to deal with quite valid (and quite uncomfortable) criticism from editors who asked why we were "ignoring" them, when we simply didn't have to manpower to deal with everything at the same time. It's just something I was noting that I'd do differently if I had the chance to do it again...

Agreed as to the tools; hence the external links checker that is used at WP:FAC would be useful, as it uses the reviewers' collective experience of which links die and which links will become problematic in the future (e.g. requiring registration to view). Sometimes a citation is only available from one place, and that is where WebCite comes in. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 22:27, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Greatly appreciate the pointers to those awesome tools. Blown away by interactive editing capabilities of Webchecklinks; amazing. Looking forward to checking out WebCite soon. Actively looking for lossless two-way street between Zotero export of citations to Wikipedia refs (functional, but a bit lame at present for formatting choices) & well-formatted Wikipedia refs to Zotero. Pointers such as those are greatly appreciated. Thanks! Paulscrawl (talk) 23:50, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Schlumberger quote

At one point mid last week, the rumoured SLB employee quote "SLB gets out to the Deepwater Horizon to run the CBL, and they find the well still kicking heavily, which it should not be that late in the operation. [etc]" was removed from the article and all article splits. I did not see any discussion about the reason for the removal go by in the talk page (although I might have missed it) -- it just turned up quietly missing. Has this quote been positively verified or confirmed inaccurate? Given the BP employee non-disclosure statements, it strikes me as relevant. - Tenebris —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.254.157.126 (talk) 00:29, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Dispersant Use Meeting report

Since I cannot add this link (edits disabled), could someone add this link for the Dispersant Use Meeting Panel Report: [10] at the end of the dispersant section. 69.239.104.44 (talk) 04:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Mention of Macondo Prospect and Mississippi Canyon Block 252

There should be a mention of Deepwater Horizon's alternate/official name: the Macondo Prospect in Mississippi Canyon Block 252. This facilitates web searches.

Also, here is a link to a detailed (and hard to find) schematic of the well casing: [[11]]. 69.239.104.44 (talk) 04:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

We can't take Haywood as an authority

BP CEO Tony Hayward said he estimated the amount captured to be "the majority, probably the vast majority of the oil." No way: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill&action=historysubmit&diff=366736988&oldid=366733998

Get 3rd party sourcing or change that wording. He is not an authority on much of anything at the moment, is not a reliable source on anything but his or BP's opinion, and that wording standing makes it sound like they've declared it under control. They can say that, but we can't report it as anything but their 'opinion' —Preceding unsigned comment added by Merrill Stubing (talk • contribs) 06:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

All ya had to do was change the wording slightly (as I just did). Cgingold (talk) 09:35, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

This is not a fact–this is an opinion of BP's CEO and as such, it is relevant notwithstanding if it is true or not. Beagel (talk) 16:23, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Context (and Background) ???

Despite the great deal of information here, I couldn't find answers (either in text or in schematic drawings) to my specific seemingly simple questions:

How does this water depth compare with other wells? -- I'm looking for something like a histogram graph of wells by water depth (The graph could be "Gulf" wells or "US" wells or "worldwide" wells or ... Hopefully counts would distinguish abandoned, exploratory, and producing wells. If data is sufficient, comparable graphs at different times would be nice.)

What's this bore hole casing like? -- How deep does the casing pipe of this well go? - How many layers does the casing pipe of this well have? - How are segments of casing pipe of this well joined? - How are such long casings inserted? - How strong is the casing compared to various possible events (gas explosion, abrupt clamp-off, "top kill", etc., etc.)? - What events would exceed the capacity of the existing cement and so loosen the casing?

What kinds of material does the well pass through? -- I'm looking for a pictorial or graphic of what' at each depth: mud, unconsolidated, impermeable rock, porous, salt, etc.

What's the target oil formation like? -- When was it first discovered? - When was it first mapped in detail? - What is the estimated area for wells that would tap into it? - How many different oil companies could tap this formation? - What is the total estimated hydrocarbon content of the formation? - What is the estimated content of oil vs. gas? - When did the first exploratory well tap this formation? - When did the first producing well tap it?

68.163.203.189 (talk) 20:35, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Good technical questions, though not necessarily simple to answer from reliable secondary sources. Some questions are perhaps answerable today, with a little digging, and some, no doubt, may be answered only in investigations, as some answers to these questions may well be considered proprietary trade secrets at present. However, this article is about the oil spill itself. Try checking the articles covering the drilling operations of the rig Deepwater Horizon and the oil field Macondo Prospect for pointers and references that might help you answer such questions today. Feel free to register and contribute your findings to the appropriate articles Paulscrawl (talk) 21:19, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Same anonymous reader again: Unfortunately neither the Deepwater Horizon nor Macondo Prospect (nor Casing (Borehole)) articles were enlightening. I expected a histogram of oil well depths could be constructed immediately from public MMS data, and will be very disappointed if this is not true. My generic (not proprietary) questions about oil well casing technology are unfortunately not addressed at all by the article on Casing (Borehole), which seems to say the only common casing technology is each segment smaller in diameter than the one before it, which clearly can't be true for deep wells like this. (Also, that article doesn't contain even one schematic drawing.) While I understand that very accurate and detailed information (ex: exact depths where unconsolidated material was found) may be proprietary, even just a bit of generic information (ex: approximately the last X-thousand feet are through a "salt dome") would be very helpful, and I don't believe information at that level is proprietary. (Or does Wikipedia have an informal policy of not saying anything at all unless the _exact_ facts can be provided?) Yes, my main questions about the Macondo Prospect field (whether or not it's exclusive to BP and whether or not any part of it is already "producing") would be better addressed in the Macondo Prospect article ...but they're not! 68.163.203.189 (talk) 05:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Lead-in picture, oil slick from space or pelicans

The oil slick as seen from space by NASA's Terra satellite on May 24, 2010.

In change 366656971, User:Merrill Stubing swapped the main picture in the infobox from the image to the right to a picture of oil-slicked pelicans. While the damage to the ecosystem is an important part of this spill, I think the image from NASA better captures the essence of the problem and gives a better impression of what the issue is. I would make the change myself, but editing is locked from anon. If anyone agrees, a swap would be appreciated. 131.107.0.73 (talk) 21:53, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

The pelican picture is better at conveying the simple idea of what is happening. A photo of the gushing oil underwater, if one was available in HD would be best. Merrill Stubing (talk) 21:57, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

It is a good picture, but I'm not sure if it is the picture that should be in the lead section. When I first saw it, the photo seemed out of place. I'd be in favor of putting the Terra shot back, although I wonder if there are any newer MODIS pictures available. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 22:33, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

The NASA photo should be brought back. It is unique to this spill, whereas the pelican photo looks like something that could have come from other oil spills. The pelican photo would be good for the ecological section, as Paulscrawl wrote. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 04:43, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

• Not for the infobox, but maybe for the expansion predictions section: [12] Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 22:41, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

The article is entitled, 'Deepwater Horizon oil spill', so the infobox photo should be of the actual event. The image of the oil-slicked pelicans is a good photo, but that shows the aftermath. It should certainly be included somewhere, but not as the infobox/lead image. WTF? (talk) 02:30, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone know what filters were applied to the pelican photo to make it look like it could have been painted instead of photographed? Its source [13] looks unrealistic compared to another similar photo [14] that doesn't look like it has been enhanced/painted. It kind of looks like illustrations of animals in biology textbooks it is that doctored. 118.208.34.247 (talk) 03:32, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

They do look rather sickly and could certainly use better doctoring. But it appears authentic to me. In any case, they should go back where they came from, in Ecological effects section. Paulscrawl (talk) 03:54, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed; switch the images. The satellite image should be the lead image. I assume that the images were switched so that the pelicans would have more of an impact on the reader, but I feel that the satellite one is actually stronger. There aren't many other events that can create an image like that. Gary King (talk) 05:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Seems like a case of flash and tungsten lighting... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:21, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed on using the Terra image. It shows the size of the problem rather than just one impact area. 96.239.206.182 (talk) 09:56, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

 Done TastyCakes (talk) 15:30, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Ixtoc I oil spill

So has the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill surpassed the Ixtoc I oil spill yet? Abductive (reasoning) 06:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

What will happen when a hurricane hits the oil spill?

Will the oil be sucked up from the water & spread over the local regions? Will the storm surges drive the oil over all the costal areas in the storms' paths? Will the heavy oil kill the hurricane? Will the Oil/water mix be warm enough to superchare the hurricane? 71.205.100.129 (talk) 09:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC) Mike Michalski

The oil will not stop or slow a hurricane: most form further away than the current spill region, so storms would have momentum coming toward the oil.

• An oil flood depends on each hurricane's path (several are predicted for 2010), where the counter-clockwise rotation of the storm pushes eastern surface oil toward shore, but pushes western surface oil away from shore.
• A hurricane mainly affects the top 500 feet (150 m) of the Gulf waters, and mixing from the bottom will involve new research.
• The storm surge will swell all around a hurricane, but the eastern side is higher than the western, due to added winds.
• A Gulf hurricane towards Florida would push surface oil into Florida (or Alabama), but away from Louisiana.
• A Gulf hurricane towards Texas would push surface oil into Louisiana/Mississippi, but away from southern Texas/Mexico.
• Channel bays flood very deeply, so Mobile Bay had waves reaching 22 feet (6.7 m) during Hurricane Katrina (but all Mississippi coastal towns flooded over 92% within hours, reaching 32 ft (9.8 m) on 29 Aug 2005).

A smaller hurricane pushes less surface water, as affecting a smaller area. The complexity of all those issues, would make the text more appropriate for the subarticles, as in "Effects of Deepwater Horizon oil spill by region". -Wikid77 (talk) 11:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Aside from being speculation, most of what you mentioned is actually wrong; Henri passed over the Ixtoc I spill in 1979 and the effect of the storm's winds over the slick were minimal, as the storms move too quickly to affect the direction of oil flow. Slow-moving tropical cyclones cause cold upwelling from deeper water layers, which tends to weaken them. No paths can be possibly predicted this far in advance; they depend on the region of formation of a tropical disturbance and the prevailing weather pattern at that point. All we have are climatological guesses that say that we could have hurricanes in the Gulf, but we could also have a ton of Cape Verde-type hurricanes bashing Bermuda for all we know. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 11:26, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Revenue from collected oil to set uo wildlife fund

BP said yesterday that their share of the revenue from the collected oil will be used to set up a wildlife fund [[15]]. They say that 'The remaining 35% of the net revenue will be paid to the co-owners of the leasehold interest.' (that is after taxes). Do we know who the co-owners are? 78.151.254.18 (talk) 10:37, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

The co-owners are detailed in the section "Deepwater Horizon drilling platform". Cgingold (talk) 14:20, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

BP buys search terms like "oil spill" on google, yahoo

http://search.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/06/08/1421205 85.77.161.155 (talk) 11:08, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

It's already in the article... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 11:10, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Specifically, it's in the section on "BP's public relations". Cgingold (talk) 14:24, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Are all those Citation Templates to blame...

...for the unbelievably long time it takes to load the article??

This likely connection was just pointed out in an edit summary by User:SlimVirgin. I rarely use a template when I create a citation, so I hadn't given it any thought - but it does make sense. If this is in fact what is responsible for the appallingly long load time, then I think we need to give serious consideration to converting all of the templates back to standard inline citation format. Cgingold (talk) 14:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

The references section currently accounts for 277K of the generated HTML, out of a total of 459K. That's 60% and over 1K per reference. So yes there is a cost. But the other info in citation templates is valuable. Thundermaker (talk) 15:00, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree, without templates there would be chaos! Also, the article loads ok on my computer... TastyCakes (talk) 15:32, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

The citation templates only cause the article to load slowly when you are editing and saving the article. This means that for most readers, the article does not load slowly. Gary King (talk) 16:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Don't all templates get parsed at page render time? Are citation templates an exception? Paulscrawl (talk) 17:40, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Pages are cached. After submitting an edit, you essentially recreate that cache since you are redirected back to the page. Therefore, templates should only slow down the page rendering time for the person who edits the page. Gary King (talk) 17:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

• There are better ways to render a leaner, faster page: split & summarize. References are absolutely key to making lasting contributions and citation templates serve several useful functions well worth their marginal cost: 1) friendliness, 2) uniformity, 3) maintainability, and 4) re-usability of captured metadata.

1. Editors new and old, but esp. new editors, can certainly use the help of citation templates Wikipedia_talk:Referencing_for_beginners_with_citation_templates. I'm not so new but I use cite news and cite web templates all the time for consistency and (usually ;) getting it right the first time. I am a recent convert to the user-friendly Wikipedia:RefToolbar 2.0, which adds these templates to my edit box for super ease of use. Inline ref style creates instant headaches for new editors and are very often re-formatted, if not deleted, by subsequent editors, a waste of time and brainpower all around. Refs are a bar of entry to Wikipedia -- let's lower the bar for humans and raise it for computers.
2. A well-formatted and complete reference has a longer lifetime, in my experience: nothing could be more discouraging to a new or less experienced editor than to see a series of their edits deleted for improper or missing reference. This is quite a common experience. Formatting inline references is indeed "chaotic" with no consensus on style possible in a multinational, multi-disciplinary world -- let citation templates and related tools' defaults and overrides help automate a tedious job that computers do best.
3. I also think the metadata, or tagged fields, preserved by use of cite templates can be very usefully extracted by other tools helpful in maintaining references -- the awesome Webchecklinks tool, for example, uses tagged fields to help identify, search, and replace broken or missing links and other reference data, which sure beats the alternative of free-form Googling -- or simply deleting both cite and referring sentence.
4. A soon-to-be announced tool to intelligently export such field-tagged Wikipedia reference metadata to the corresponding fields in Zotero's citation manager will leverage such well-formatted Wikipedia references many fold, allowing conversion to any of hundreds of standard scholarly citation formats. No such tool can possibly be designed for mapping freeform reference text to discrete fields.

Finally, I seriously doubt if replacing a few hundred citation templates with a few hundred inline citations would trim the load speed noticeably. This is an empirical question, easily tested in two sandbox articles, with a cleared cache, one with, say, 300 citation templates and one with the same realistic number of inline refs. Judicious splitting of article can do more, at far less cost to editors' contributions, reference display, maintenance, and re-use. Paulscrawl (talk) 17:40, 9 June 2010 (UTC)