Facebook abandons broken drilling equipment under Oregon coast seafloor | Hacker News Reader

Facebook abandons broken drilling equipment under Oregon coast seafloor

oregonlive.com

67 pointsxoxoy18 comments

This appears to be a case of no harm, no foul.

There is no environmental damage and no danger to the residents.

The residents that didn't want to see a small construction project, the size of a residential lot, will now have to put up with it for another year.

outline link: https://outline.com/DWN7nS

This is extra-disappointing because Oregon has previously successfully gotten Facebook to cooperate when planning its large infrastructure projects. The Prineville facility was designed with local environmental and labor concerns in mind, but this coastal venture looks disastrous.

I don't understand what the actual issue is. The chance of environmental damage seems very low. And probably less than if they put heavy machines onto the beach and coastal zone.

the chance of environmental damage isn't low, it is zero. The drill site is tiny and the neighbors simply don't like the noise.

Would you like the noise?

It seems like everything is already safely disposed of, deep underground.

Okay so fb has 180 days to remove the equipment. What's the problem?

They won’t

No, seriously, just go set a reminder to catch up on this story in 6 months. Let’s come discuss this again then.

They might come to an agreement with regulators to leave the equipment there, however it seems like you're implying that facebook intends to act in blatent contempt of the governments order. That is difficult to imagine. Have they ever done that to the usa gov in the past? (not on a hurr durr media thinks facebook is evil kind of way, but in an actual, here is an order and we intend to ignore it)

That's actually the case? Did anyone else here read the article? "Facebook has no plans to retrieve the equipment."

When i read it, i thought it meant - original fb plan: fb leave the equipment in place. Gov didn't like that, so gave them 180 days to either remove it or get approval to leave it there. Now ball is in fb's court on how to respond to government order.

To me though this sounds less like - gov wants fb to remove and more like gov wants fb to fill out appropriate paperwork

Where exactly are these 6500 gallons of drilling fluid and how would they have been retrieved if the project was succesfull?

They are not boring a tunnel... So is there just a quite thin pipe in the ground? is it filled with the fluid? Or is there some storage for the fluid?

The drilling fluid(mud) is both inside the drill pipe and in the annulus between the pipe and the rock.

After the drilling is complete, cement grout is pumped into the annular space, replacing the mud. then the mud in the pipe will be replaced with sea water. Then they will pull the fiber optic cable through the pipe.

Drill pipe comes in various sizes, probably about 4-8 inch diameter for this job.

Is it normal to drill a 1km hole under the Beach and out to sea to land a trans-ocean cable? I was under the impression you merely digg it into the Beach for 1-2m?

They are commonly drilled out quite a distance with HDD, as the landing point may not be actually at the beach, etc.

I have some pictures here of submarine cable landing stations in Hawaii, including the Hawaiki CLS under construction with some HDD being done. https://photos.app.goo.gl/H2Y7K112wcAoSjtN2

Just like Zuckerburgs trouncing on the rights of native Hawaiians, Facebook has shown a deep, callous disregard to the rights, needs, and concerns of everyone else.

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