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Good News Week

Oil stops burning (GNW 9/11/09: 7 Days In 7 Seconds)

The oil leak and fireball at the West Atlas drill rig has been stopped, 10 weeks after it started in the Timor Sea. But government sources say it’ll require some more permanent work before we can settle Sri Lankan refugees there.

The government wasn’t that pleased that the fire was stopped, as it took away the “roasting alive” option for the refugees on the Oceanic Viking.

Firefighters have been working around the clock. Luckily, there was plenty of midnight oil to burn.

Pah. 10 weeks… that’s nothing in geologic terms!

It’s an environmental disaster. Where are we going to get the oil from now?

But it has completely solved the Timor Sea’s peak oil problem.

Sweet light crude oil has been pouring out of the rig since August. It’s nearly time to add the garlic!

Sweet light crude oil has been pouring out of the rig since August, and, now the fire’s out, it’s time to add the mushrooms.

They just couldn’t seem to put out the fire. That fireblanket just wasn’t working.

There was no way to put out the fire. After all, where were they going to get water out there?

They’ve plugged the pipeline with 3 and a half thousand barrels of mud. Things have never been so good for mud-barrel-retailers! / stockists of mud-barrels. / “Mud Barrels R Us”. / “High-Density Mud Barrels R Us”.

The owners of the rig pumped 3400 barrels of high-density mud into the broken pipeline. Which was an absolute boon for the company who’d been sitting on 3400 barrels of high-density mud. / It was a record sale for the high-density mud company.

The pipeline was plugged with 3400 barrels of high-density mud. Unfortunately now they’ve got nothing left to plug the leak in the mud pipeline.

They would have stopped the leak sooner, but it took ages to get all that high-density mud into barrels.

They would have stopped the leak sooner, but it’s not as easy as you’d think to lay your hand on three and a half thousand barrels of high-density mud.

Whenever I have a problem, I just cover it with 3 and a half thousand barrels of mud. Don’t you?

And if mud didn’t work, they were going to try using compost.

They’re continuing to pump mud and brine into the pipeline. Gotta do something with all that mud and brine, huh.

They’re just lucky the oil-riggers didn’t like the cook’s “Mud in Brine Surprise”.

With 10 weeks’ worth of sweet light oil now spilt into the sea, we just need to pour some batter in and we’ll have years’ worth of food for stranded refugees.

On the downside, it’s an environmental disaster. But on the upside, those nachos should be done by now. / their baked potatoes will be ready for SURE.

Spokesmen say that the amount of oil that has leaked out is really a drop in the ocean. A toxic, deadly, pollution-causing drop in the sad, sad ocean.

By Wok and Mat

Warwick Holt and Mat Blackwell are long-time writing partners, who created the mega-award winning web series Bruce, and wrote loads of jokes for TV shows including Good News Week, The Sideshow and The Glass House. Several years of their raw material for those shows is posted right here on this blog.

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