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Drilling Under the Sea
prof_peabody writes "The IODP (Intergrated Ocean Drilling Program) is about to get rolling in a couple of days. If you live in one of these countries then your tax dollars have contributed to the construction of the giant drillship Chikyu, which was launched a little while back (project timeline). The American contigent website is loaded with info and obligatory acronyms. The first leg of the IODP will investigate how water flows through rock formations beneath the seafloor during an eight-week expedition this summer to the eastern flank of the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the coast of British Columbia. Some of you geeks with beards may remember the DSDP (Deep Sea Drilling Project) or the recently completed ODP (Ocean Drilling Program). The real advance in the new program that will cost well over a billion dollars is the IODP riser drill ship that 'will provide a way to drill into continental margins where oil and gas deposits can cause drilling safety concerns and into regions with thick sediment sections, fault zones, and unstable formations.' A good overview of the IODP can be found here, and the necessary references to Megalodon and none other than The Core."
Is it completely necessary to reference The Core? It makes me remember it all over again. My poor, feeble mind will implode if I even try to comprehend the physics behind that film, let alone the acting. Oh god, the acting...
What if there really are big diamonds like in The Core? It would be odd seeing a forklift wheeling out the back room of the jeweler's bearing a single engagement ring.
42
Under the sea
Under the sea
There'll be no accusations
Just friendly crustaceans
Under the sea!
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
It seems like fossil fuels are not the only answer. We can control nuclear energy but we can't make a non-fossil fuel car??? How is this possible? I may not know a lot about this subject but it seems like if we spent 1/10 the amount of money into research of this field as we do into looking for more oil, a non-fossils fuel alternative would have been found.
But check out 'Hack the planet!'
:-)
Possibly the worst (or best?) casting as the pants sniffing dog-loving guy out of road trip as a hacker who hacks the planet.
I am just suprised that they didn't send a virus to the center of the earth to fix everything
A guy has a laser that can cut through rock, in a blast of dust, but without causing huge flames.
When they hit the molten rock, how did they not just fall through it? gravity man, or do they float in molten rock?
aaaah whatever.
Why isn't a robotic drilling submarine used ? It could operate in any depths and the drilling operation wouldn't depend on local weather condition.
To quote my latest blog entry, "three of the top five importers are on the American continents." Poorly worded, in retrospect, since it should say "sources of imported oil" rather than "importers" but it's the data -- which you seem "less than familiar with" -- that is of interest.
No Laughing Allowed!
http://www.jamstec.go.jp/jamstec-e/odinfo/sdsrepor t.html
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If you can't blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.
There is already an infrastructure to deliver oil to the customers. this infrastructure didn't pop up over night, it was developed over 50+ years. spending money in finding new ways to find oil and gas is cheaper then spending money to find a new alternative source of power and deliver it to the customer.
finding a new source of energy and creating the infrastructure to support the use of the energy should be a long term goal. for the short term we should spend money on deep drilling projects like this, government money, one.
my hermione shrine
here Curious, /. keeps putting a space between the r and t in report.. i.e. repor t.html
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
As a canadian i like to watch canadian TV. in the canadian TV they talk a lot about kyoto protocol. Alberta the biggest producer of oil in the country is 100% against kyoto because it will hurt their industry. problem is that a lot of people from the two bigger provinces, ontario and quebec, want to support kyto. if kyto pass federal government will make oil in canada not as competive as oil from other parts in the world.
:(.
anyways, if you didn't remember, i did, 2002 gas prices were so damn expensive that i couldn't afford to drive to work. i had to ride my bike
opec, Saudi Arabia, that year decided to decrease output of oil and thanks to them i lost 50 pounds.
more data
you should check that out. it says the top oil producer was for 2003 saudia arabia at 9.95 million barrels a day.
i also got a blog and i did some research about some of the reasons why america would want to go to war with iraq [blog]
I think it's great that we do all this drilling and practicing with submarines. After all if we're drilling up even more oil, we'd better get used to the under sea life.
Me being a Dutchman 2, I can honoustly say you're giving 'us' too much credit. Pretty much the only thing the dutch have an unique knowledge of is the battle vs. the sea. Most parts of Holland are about 16 metres under sea level, which can cause a mighty flood (like the one in 1953) if the country is not protected well enough.
The 'stormvloedkering' (dutch name of huge project to protect holland from the water) is still considered to be any incredible piece of technology/engineering even tody, even though it was build in the late 50's.
Tunnels & bridges however are more scrares in the Netherlands and I cannot imagine that we have a big advantage over countries like Norway, Canada and maybe the US that have build huge structures of that kind.
One of the most inspiring phrases from the time Holland struggled with the sea is: 'Luctor et Emergo' (Ik worstel en kom boven / I struggle and emerge)
You confuse fuel with energy source. The problem with alternative fuels is that you need energy to generate the most promising of those, ie hydrogen. So we would need solar, nuclear, wind or whatever power to get us the hydrogen. Fusion is not here yet. Non-fossil fuel is not trivial. Vegetable or other biomass fuels will also generate hydrocarbons. And I agree with you that as long as we keep looking for oil and keep getting it there will be little incentive for the big players (oil companies...) to go into renewable energy sources. So for the time being, unfortunately, we'll keep our dependence upon the middle east. By the way - oil is not only fuel. Plastics and so on are also made from it. That may even be the worst dependence. Imagine a world without plastics. If only for that reason we'll keep using oil for at least a couple of decades.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
The problem with electric cars, if that's what you have in mind, is: batteries. Think of your laptop. You may well, have Moore's Law in full swing for the CPU, but that hasn't applied to batteries too. They're big, they're bulky and they can store only so much juice.
That's the problem. We may control nuclear energy, and we may already build very good electric engines, but _storing_ that energy for the car to use is the weakest link. By far. As energy-per-lbs goes, nothing comes even _near_ chemical stuff that burns. Gasoline packs more joules per kg than any battery. (And gunpowder packs even more, which is why soldiers still use that, instead of railguns with a battery pack.)
However, it's still not all lost. If you have another energy supply, you can make enough stuff that will burn in a car's conventional engine.
E.g., a real no-brainer is using the electricity generated by a nuclear plant to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen can be then burned in a relatively conventional internal combustion engine, taking the oxygen back from the atmosphere and giving water vapour back.
Other ways exist to combine that hydrogen with carbon from coal (of which there are far more reserves than oil), creating synthetic liquid fuel. You don't even need a nuclear plant for that.
(A lot of the panzer warfare in WW2 happened on synthetic fuel. It wasn't that cheap, but it kept the panzers rolling.)
Or in some limited cases you can just replace the fossil fuel use with electricity. E.g., see how we replaced the coal and diesel train engines with electric ones. Electric busses and trams exist already, and could eventually replace the diesel ones if the economics are right. Also, if the investment were justified, one could build a power grid along highways to support at least electric trucks.
Ultimately, though, everything boils down to economics. As long as it's cheaper to bring in oil from the middle east, than to brew local synthetic fuels, people will bring oil from the middle east. As long as it's cheaper to fill up your tank with gas coming from the middle east, than to get an expensive hydrogen powered car and hydrogen, people will continue importing oil from the middle east. And as long as electric cars will continue to be expensive _and_ have a 50 mile range, after which they need several hours to recharge (as opposed to minutes to fill a fuel tank), people will buy conventional cars.
When the economics will be right, however, expect to see someone coming with such replacements. The whole civilization collapsing into anarchy and famine as soon as we pumped the last barrel of oil out, makes a good Hollywood scenario, but ain't gonna happen in RL. More realistically we'll then start producing synthetic fuel in the short run, and pumping billions into R&D for better solutions, and life will go on. It won't be as cheap as it is today, but it ain't gonna be Armageddon either.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The US does do plenty of offshore drilling, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico and, to a lesser extent, off of California. However, most of the oil doesn't go into government stockpiles or the military, but does go into general oil use: mostly gasoline, but also chemicals, heating oil, and plasticis).
Here in Nigeria (!) we are developing deep space mining ships and your money will help us continue our secret space mining program...
Finally, a ship they can use to seek out and disturb R'lyeh...
There's simply not enough space to store the necessary equipment on board, esp. when you consider the need for bentonite coolant circulation etc. Assembling the drill string either through or outside the hull would be an interesting problem, as would the bouyancy/stability control as you dump a few hundred tons of payload overboard.
So a nice idea, but much more economical done from a big surface ship - even when it means waiting on the weather.
Chikyu (should be Chikyuu actually) is Japanese for Earth, as in the planet we live on.
Just in case anyone is curious.
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
Ultimately, though, everything boils down to economics.
Which is why it is important that what people pay for their energy should reflect the real costs of that energy. Pollution should be cleaned up, and the costs should be part of the cost of the fuel. I don't care whether that happens by some government program or by private companies, but the problem now is that everything does boil down to economics, but the consumers don't pay the whole cost of what they consume.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Is that newspeak for "I can't use a dictionary"?
That doesn't seem to be the case. This article on Slate argues that we are unlikely to achieve "energy independence" from the Middle East, and even if we do, OPEC will have plenty of new custom from China and other emerging economies.
Spending money in finding new ways to find oil and gas is cheaper then spending money to find a new alternative source of power and deliver it to the customer.
I think the problem is more of resistance from established industries to adopt new technology because they don't want to lose their source of revenue. Fuel cells have been around for a while, and I can recall some story about a (Japanese?) company coming up with a special tank for safely storing hydrogen for use with hydrogen-powered cars. I think it had something to do with aluminum somehow rendering the hydrogen non-volatile while in storage. I also saw a story on the news ages ago about a Japanese inventor who created an ultrasound washing machine that didn't need detergent, then read a rumor that he was bought out by chemical companies who saw this as a threat to their products. I know this is all conspiracy theory stuff, but it's not impossible.
It doesn't boil down to economics. It boils down to selfishness. By definition, it cannot be more efficient to invest in destroying non-renewable resources than to invest in techniques for harnessing renewable ones. The difference is that people get a 'quick fix' or an 'emergency loan' of sorts from fossil fuels, for which they don't have to pay, since they'll be dead, and it'll be someone else's problem.
So far most of the posts here have been referring to oil. While oil is commonly drilled for, it is not the only reason one would explore the sediment and rock under the seafloor.
most notably, paleoclimate and paleocirculation studies use various proxies found the sediments of the seafloor. The oceans provide a much more continuous record than one can find on land. these proxies can be correlated with other methods and other locations. From these records everything from sea surface temperature to icecap volumes can be modeled.
Of course it is. If you hold the temperature and salinity constant, then the density of seawater increases with the depth due to progressively higher pressures as you go deeper - you can see that quite clearly by playing with this seawater density calculator (try 15 degrees and a salinity of 35, then increase the pressure from 1 to 1000 to 10,000 kPa, and watch what happens to the density).
Greater density means more seawater per unit of volume as you go deeper, which you can do because liquids are, in fact, readily compressible, albeit not as compressible as gases are. Bringing water up from a depth of 10 meters simply isn't deep enough to observe the effect you want to observe. Bring water up from 10,000 meters, say from the bottom of the Marianas trench, and you will indeed observe it expanding quite forcefully when you open its container - if you don't have a container that can withstand the internal pressure of that water trying to expand, it'll go pop as you try to bring it back up.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
It's not impossible, but it's kind of unlikely.
The problem isn't that we can't get other kinds of energy to run a car, it's that the market demand isn't there. It really has nothing to do with the oil industry stopping us from using something different: I could, right now, use 100% vegetable oil-driven "diesel", and so on.
The fact is, getting millions of people to change their desires is the biggest hurdle.
In the meantime, the oil industry tries to keep up with the demand of the populace. If this undersea drilling rig can open up a new frontier, who knows what might be discovered alongside it.
It occurs to me that Shell and the gang all employ many environmental scientists, etc, to research all kinds of good stuff. This might provide one more avenue for research; always a good thing.
Every night, electrical demand goes down, but the plants keep running. That electricty is just wasted. It is a HUGE number of megawatts. Some places will even give you a rate decrease if you buy your juice only at night, yet very few homeowners or businesses take advantage of the fact. One factory I worked at had their new building built with a thermal storage scheme for heating that used pipes embedded in the concrete floors. An antifreeze liquid was circulated while it was heated with the cheaper electric at night, it heated the concrete, which radiated heat evenly up through the floor during the day. This was up in massacussetts with cold winters, and it worked great.
Electrical cars would be cheaper if they were only/mostly recharged at night, and you had a smart meter or a separate meter for the charging. We could also have battery storage in more homes and businesses, like the alternative energy rigs use now, for use during the day. Just by using thisa wasted night time juice we could eliminate the need for a lot of the new plants proposed, and by switchiung to electric cars more, eliminate the need for getting additional petroleum products.
The government could also offer tax breaks to corporations and individuals for running a third shift at night as a standard instead of a normal first shift, just to take advantage of the wasted energy. Combined with the cheaper energy they could get then, it would be quite a deal in a lot of ways. If it was significant enough taxc breaks combined with cheaper utility costs, then a lot of businesses would switch, and it would become commonplace to have the third shift as normal.
And for longer range trips with electric cars, say on the weekends you want to go asomeplace camping whatever, or on vacation, etc, the solution is simple, you have small trailers that attach to the cars that contain a normal fuel tank and a generator. The trailers could be 1/2 normal cargo, 1/2 generator and fuel tank. The range of electrics now is fine for getting to work and back for millions of people, there's just not a lot of electrics to be had. The GM EV1 cars (more 100 miles range not 50) were a hit, the owners loved them, but GM only leased them and is destroying them now, despite thousands of owners begging to purchase them. By all accounts, what I have read and heard people say, they were roomy enough, fast enough, both from a stop and on the highway, could carry enough stuff, and were a no brainer maintenance-wise. They were cheap to run, and night time reduced rate charging would have cut those expenses in half, which were good to begin with. Heck, I live out in the country and an electric car with a 100 mile range would be good enough for our purposes, we only go to town once a week, and 100 miles is more than enough to get there and back, plus some. The battery tech is good enough now, I think that's a strawman argument. It's not a solution for every single application you use a vehicle for, but for millions and millions of people it could be, just with two pieces of legislation passed,mandated cheaper electric bought only at night-not a local electrico option but they are mandated to do so, and the tax breaks for night time business in general to help reduce peak daytime demand loads. And one other piece of legilsation would be very useful to save another untold billions a year in energy costs, no new construction that didn't adhere to R-50 or better insulation standards.
We don't have near as much an energy problem as most people think, we have a problem with how we use what we already have, and how much gets totally wasted. I've worked on superinsulated residential structures and seen the difference-absolutely no comparison with normal construction. Literally drops the homes major heating and cooling bills to like a fifth what they would be normally. And really, solar and wind are here now and work, they just aren't being pushed much. I've used it enough to know it's practical for a lot of people, generally speaking.
There isn't one single magic bullet, but enough solutions exist today to mitigate a lot of our energy needs using what is available NOW, not have to develop vast new infrastructure with totally new devices and processes.
This is just another indicator that oil production is beginning to decline. To keep up with the growing market demand from increased population, developing countries, etc., oil companies are looking into new and dangerous ways to get the remaining oil on earth. For more information, Google "peak oil."
The air-pressure/liquid pressure differential wouldn't have been that great. Please remember that the abode has a moon-pool. It is only the extra pressure as the diver goes down the trench to warn the aliens that counts.
Last thing is that the diver is not using sea-water. I seem to remember it is some kind of perfluoro-carbon. Certainly it has been used for premature-babies with success, but more pertinently for animals to simulate deep dives (to 1000 metres from sea-level and back). The ascent was much faster than normal but there were no signs of decompression sickness. The mouse did die later for other reasons which is why nobody is diving with it now.
See my journal, I write things there
Er...the Earth isn't exactly using them. To imply that the use of petroleum products is somehow 'stealing' from the Earth is silly. I could make an equally specious argument that building solar panels is stealing sunlight from the areas that they cover--not to mention 'depleting Earth's precious supplies of silicon and germanium'.
Apparently, there is still money to be made from additional drilling, even under very challenging conditions. Consequently, the attempt will be made.
I agree that finding alternative sources of energy is worthwhile, but looking for alternative energy sources does not preclude extending the current supply of fossil fuels.
If you'd like to argue on the basis of environmental impact, you've got something to stand on there. If you'd like to argue on the basis of human health impact then you've got some substance there, too. If you'd like to argue that there will be economic displacements if we're unprepared for increasing oil scarcity, that's worth talking about. Arguing that we should stop using fossil fuels now because they're going to run out eventually--er, why?
Incidentally, several of the things the parent post mentions are already being done. Many public transportation vehicles in North America and Europe are using alternate fuels; private fleet vehicles are beginning to adopt them as well. Hybrid cars--which do not eliminate, but do reduce the use of fossil fuels--are being sold to the public now.
Why push an agenda of nationalizing industry? What is gained by that? It makes rather more sense to put in place a public policy framework that rewards the use of alternative fuels (and/or penalizes the use of fossil fuels) and let the market find the optimal solution. I'd rather not drive a car that was designed by the British/U.S./Canadian government, thank you very much.
Further, taxing gasoline heavily has encouraged the purchase of more fuel-efficient vehicles already. Compare and contrast the cars driven in Europe with the SUVs sold in North America. I am also pleased to note that SUV sales in even the United States have taken a hit with the recent sustained higher gasoline prices.
Yes, I know. I shouldn't feed the trolls. I apologize.
~Idarubicin
Did you even RTFA? No. The IODP is not for oil exploration. I'll let you do your own fsking research and figure it out for yourself. As a matter of fact, these research vessels take great precautions to AVOID hydrocarbons because of their lack of blow out prevention devices. Finding oil and gas is a hazard to these vessels. Your post seems interesting enough, but its offtopic and not even remotely related to the scientific research being carried out by IODP.
NMG
BTW, if my back-of-the-envelope scribblings are correct, at 16,000 PSI - the very deep parts of the ocean - water would lose about 5% of its volume due to the pressure.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
IODP does not search for oil - it is collecting scientific data. Don't bother bringing up any conspiracy theories - the oil companies have much better proprietary data in the areas that IODP is drilling than the open-source (i.e. IODP) ocean science community will EVEER have.
IODPs previous ships (or rather, ODP, its predecessor oceandrilling.org ) were not able to drill in areas of the continental margin that might have contained oil deposists. It is actually pretty dangerous - if you hit a gas deposit, the density of the water can be reduced to the point that the ship loses bouyancy and sinks - almost instantly.
As a result of safety concerns related to this, IODP was unable to drill in some very enticing (i.e. data rich) environments. This new vessel will allow them to drill pretty much anywhere, which should greatly increase the available database. IODP research is focussed largely on earth dynamics, paleontology, paleoclimate/climate change, and stratigraphy. Oil is near the bottom of the list - as previously mentioned, the oil companies already have better data. Researchers interested in oil are typically working elsewhere.
90% Professional Slacker
...but the IODP is not about the exploration for hydrocarbons. Its about planetary research. One of the bonuses of this new vessel is that it can better withstand the elements of ACCIDENTALLY drilling into gas reservoirs making it better suited for exploration drilling on ocean slopes. This is definitely NOT about oil and gas. You mods should RTFA before marking up completely off topic comments about US energy consumption and oil as interesting and insightful.
NMG
In case some of you didn't RTFAs, I'd like to point out that these scientific drilling programs have almost nothing to do with finding oil (the marine scientists leave that to the oil companies for the most part). Instead they are about understanding geologic processes that take place on the ocean floor.
On land, you can usually find a natural outcrop or a quarry or a mine to walk up to and examine the history of the Earth's crust in that area. Sometimes you even get hints to what's going on deeper in the mantle. On the seafloor, deep sea drilling is one of the key ways to get at the same kinds of information. What are the different layers in the crust, and how would they look on a seismic profile? Where do the sediments come from? What can they tell us about past climate change? Did higher temperatures or different atmospheric chemistries get recorded in the shells of oceanic micro-critters? How does fluid move through the crust, and how does that affect the hydrothermal vent communities that live on mid-ocean ridges in extreme conditions (300 degrees C, wierd water chemistries)?
Scientific drilling has very very little to do with extracting fossil fuels and a lot to do with figuring out how the Earth works.
Err, as others have stated, the goal of the IODP (and before that, the ODP) isn't to find mineral deposits. It's strictly a research vessel to carry out science.
:-P
Quite a bit of interesting science has been carried out. Last year, Dr. Alan Mix, a professor who worked on the ship, spoke at our school for a seminar. He dealt with paleoclimates. Using the ODP to extract cores from the sea floor, he was able to determine global temperatures from the amount of Oxygen-18 (I believe?) isotopes that were trapped in fossilized diatoms.
In short, RTFA instead of posting knee jerk reactions to an article that contains the word "oil" in it.
Why?
Well, the short answer is because we like to eat.
We already have engines that run on Hydrogen. Ford has been making methane powered vehicles for the past 10-15 years. We've had usable solar power devices for 20-30 years.
The problem isn't that we don't have the technology; the problem is that fossil-fuel energy is simply more economically viable. The problem is that a $40,000 solar array would have to be in service, maintainence free, for 20 to 40 years before the owner would even begin to save money on electric bills. Even if the homeowner saves money on the 20th year and keeps his house another 20 years, he's only effectively earned $20,000 in savings. Contrast this with investing $40,000 in the stock market over the same time frame - the return is in the millions.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Good point, but if liquids were as compressible as a gas, then hydraulics woudn't work so well!
Liquids can be compressed just fine. Simply throw them into a neutron star or black hole.
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