The Irony of Mud

The LA Times reported:

Drilling fluid has blocked oil and gas, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says. Engineers plan to begin pumping in cement and then will seal the well.

BP pumped untold amounts of drilling mud into the blowout preventer in the top kill operation. Thad Allen said one ship ran out of mud and a second ship was on the way. The system isn't closed. What do they pump in the meantime?

The accident happened in part because BP pulled the mud from the well in the cementing operation. BP wanted to reuse drilling fluids.

The U.S. government released its official estimate of the spill rate, 19,000 barrels a day or roughly 800,000 gallons of oil. The projections came 5 weeks after the Deepwater Horizon blowout. BP's internal data suggested 14,000 barrels a day. The public wasn't informed by government or BP officials, which stuck to the 5,000 barrels a day projection.

Should the cement seal be successful, a monstrous cleanup and investigations await. Obama's Oil Catastrophe Commission has a muddy co-chair. William Reilly is a board member for ConocoPhillips, which has a joint venture with BP on the massive Tiber field in the Gulf of Mexico. The mud stain widens.

Update: BP pauses top kill effort. Obama failed to respond to the supertanker suggestion in today's press conference. Dylan Ratigan interviewed two men about this idea.