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[music playing] Yeah, so the long-term solution is
to cement off this well.
When they say that, thats literally what they mean.
Theyre going to fill it up with cement
and thatll block the oil from getting out.
The way you do that is you have to have another way
of getting the oil out below the depth
at which youre going to cement it.
And so theyre out there right now
with two new drilling platforms, drilling to try
and intercept the well that already exists and is leaking
into the Gulf down at
about 18,000 feet below the ocean surface.
And that well down there is less than three feet in diameter
and theyre trying to hit it at 18,000 feet depth
and the fact is they can do that.
It gives you a sense
of the amazing technology thats involved in these operations,
the fact that they can do that.
If all goes to plan thatll happen in August,
but you can hit that, will you hit it in August?
Well, I hope we can hit it in August,
you know it could take several months longer
and if theres hurricane season and they have
to move the platforms out, that could set things back.
It remains to be seen.
I suspect that the end result of this is that BP will split
into a couple different companies and one of the majors
in the U.S. or in the Netherlands,
because Shell is a Netherlands company, will buy up part of it.
And theyll do it not because theyre destitute
from paying things back, but as a way of getting
out of paying things back.
Is the industry really going to change?
No, we need it too much and weve grown addicted
to it being cheap, so its not going to change dramatically.
The whole emphasis on,
Oh my gosh when this oil hits the coast its going
to be terrible, well the oil is out there.
Its terrible.
It doesnt have to hit a coast to be terrible.
You know were polluting an ocean base
and killing off fisheries and shellfish stock.
When it comes up on shore and gets on birds and animals
that we find cuter, in some sense, it seems more real.
But, its real everyday.
Its out there shutting down the fishery.
And, you know, millions of southern,
coastal people make their living from that and its going
to be years, if not longer, before that gets back
to its original, or to the state it was in last year.
You cant have a 100% success rate.
You just cant.
You know, one person asked me, We can put people on the moon,
why we cant we fix this?
Well on the way to the moon there were failed missions
and people died.
You just cant have a 100% success rate.
What you can hope to have, however, is an adequate
and quick response to something that does go wrong
and thats really what we didnt have
and thats why were seeing this now and well into month two.