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How Bad Is the Gulf Coast Oil Spill?
Dasher42 writes "Claims are circulating on the Internet that the Coast Guard fears the Deepwater Horizon well has sprung two extra leaks, raising fears that all control over the release of oil at the site will be lost. The oil field, one of the largest ever discovered, could release 50,000 barrels a day into the ocean, with implications for marine life around the globe that are difficult to comprehend. So, considering that losing our oceanic life, with subsequent unraveling of our land-based ecosystems, is a far more possible apocalyptic scenario than a killer asteroid — what do we do about it?" Other readers have sent some interesting pictures of the spill. One set shows the Deepwater Horizon rig as it collapsed into the ocean. Others, from NASA, indicate that the spill's surface area now rivals that of Florida. The US government has indicated that it intends to require BP to foot the bill for the cleanup. And the Governator has just withdrawn support for drilling off the California coast.
Oil is black. Niggers are black. Therefore, if you have a problem with oil being in the ocean, it's because you are racist against niggers and would deny them the human right of swimming in Earth's oceans. You bastard.
I mean, really. Stop listening to the liberal media and learn to THINK FOR YOURSELVES.
The spill's smell now rivals that of New Jersey.
And me, for letting you.
We will be footing the bill, not you. With higher gas prices that is.
Last i heard they were going to drop a giant concrete dome down on top of the hole and pump that out directly.
As for all the oil already floating around... well... sucks to be an animal in the ocean this month.
..lifeforms in the ocean.
The spill has been described as a volcano at the ocean floor. I haven't read anywhere that anybody knows how to cap it. Has our thirst for oil unleashed an apocalypse?
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
We worry about nuclear plants going Chernobyl, but how much do we worry about that chemical refinery 20 miles away? If it had an uncontrolled fire, it could spew toxic chemicals into the air that would be about as disastrous as fallout. It's like worrying about a plane crash when you drive like a maniac.
Yet we still need oil, so we'll keep pumping. Greeks protest and riot when they realize they are going to have to start paying for their entitlement programs, and we complain when we need to pay more for gas. Well, we can't have it both ways. If we want to live 25 miles from where we work, we're going to have to pay for it. If we don't pay for it at the pump, then we'll have to pay for it when a shared resource, like the ocean, is destroyed.
I'm still a supporter of offshore drilling. Ask me again in a year, when this whole episode has concluded (or not), and I may change my mind.
It really seems like an understatement to call this a 'spill', as though it were a limited quantity from an oil freighter or something. It's an underwater gusher. I knew it was a huge disaster when it was reported as such with the addendum of at least 30 days to fix. At least. How would they even fix something like that? Has anything like this been attempted before?
Loose lips lose spit.
Did these people on the rig have on Dharma jumpsuits?
How about Bobby Jindal?
Or is crying for the feds "You're not doing enough!" all he can do?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Oh, we're far from facing the death of the oceans. Even acidification and warming and ocean current changes won't do that.
What the added oil is is another stressor to the system.
Instead we'll see a slow collapse of traditional fisheries, meaning lots of people going poor and hungry, and Red Lobster offering all-you-can-eat Giant Squid and tilapia dinners.
That said, it's good this happened in the Gulf, which is relatively contained. Good for the oceans as a whole, bad for the Gulf sea and shoreline ecosystems.
* * *
One of cool things folks forget about the movie Soylent Green: The green stuff is supposed to be made from krill. Edward G. Robinson's character goes to the euthenasia parlor after reading a Soylent Corporation research study taken from a murdered executive's home. The reason that the Soylent corporation is making the crackers from corpses is an ocean ecosystem collapse. I don't remember if they made the connection, but the movie also invokes the greenhouse effect. In 1973.
Bad!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Anyone know of any research into the long term environmental effects of World War 2 tanker sinkings? They should represent a range of climates and a range of developed to pristine locations. Some with surface oil burning, some not. Surely there is something to be learned from that era of history.
--
Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN
BP is going to pay? I don't think they are going to take it out of BP employee salaries. Let's face it, if BP pays then the costs get passed on to the customers. Whatever BP doesn't pay will get passed tot he US taxpayers.
If BP doesn't pay, then should their business licenses be revoked in all affected states? in the US?
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Every time one of you hippies exaggerates shit like this and "global warming", I do a few burnouts in my 2006 custom Dodge Viper (supercharged v10, over 800 brake horse power).
LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR!!!!
Drill baby drill! I need me some fresh viper juice!
NASA's contribute has been taken by a slash and a dot!
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
So who cares what a Eurotrash socialist on the Left Coast supports or doesn't support? This is California we're talking about -- they can afford to have oil wells, refineries, power plants, factories, etc. mess up someone else's landscape and just buy the goodies they need.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Drill Baby Drill!
Why do we have to go through the slashdotted blog.alexanderhiggins.com to see images hosted at NASA? This is the dumbest thing so far this month.
CG Pin-Ups?
There are two ways of looking at what to do -- proximate and ultimate.
In the proximate sense, one thing to do is volunteer time or supplies if you're in an affected area. I'm in Florida -- in my area, I know right now of Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary ( http://www.seabirdsanctuary.com/uploads/oil.pdf ) and Audubon Florida ( http://audubonoffloridanews.org/ ), which are each asking for volunteers, money, and/or supplies. Other organizations may be looking for help -- help if you can, spread the word even if you can't.
In the ultimate sense, it's hard not to become reactionary to things like this. Clearly there's a need for some serious prevention, and however that comes about, it must. There are boycotts, letter writing campaigns, and the like, and while they may seem awfully pedestrian, the first step in each is something that's been needed for an exquisitely long time -- awareness. People don't tend to realize that the oceans are just downstream from everyone -- for example, just how many people do you think recognize the oil spill that dribbles into the Gulf every year from runoff into the Mississippi watershed? It's once people start to realize what's happening, what's important, and where changes need to happen that movement toward change occurs. Oil being the trigger word that it is these days, it's hard to say whether or not ocean health is foremost in people's minds. Building awareness -- even inland! -- is about getting it there.
I don't know what the key is. Maybe it's kids asking whether the animals they love seeing at the aquarium are going to be lost because of the oil spill. Maybe it's fishermen who lose their livelihoods because their fisheries are either contaminated or outright destroyed. Maybe it's people who worked in tourism and sports industries that previously thrived on healthy beaches and coastal waters. Whatever that key is, some catalysis needs to happen soon, and it needs to start with people simply caring enough to understand and do something, wherever they are, however they can. Too much is at stake.
"What's the use in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?" --Fourth Doctor, "Robot"
When we first saw the images of the rig burning and collapsing is when we should have started our response (if not sooner). Instead we sat around saying "oh, that's too bad". Why didn't we get ships out there immediately with containment booms to hold back the slick? Was it really that outlandish to expect an oil leak to come from this?
Sure, containment booms (like we used for the Exxon Valdez) wouldn't have solved the problem on their own - and likely wouldn't have been able to contain all the oil coming up from 5,000+ feet down - but it would have at least been able to keep a good portion of it from spreading out.
This response has been pathetic, to be kind. Why we thought that the oil companies could honestly handle this on their own is beyond me.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If there is anyway BP is going to actually pay for this disaster then we all are going to lose. BP will not survive this and will just be absorbed by some other multinational. Perhaps even some corporate entity associated with the Bush and Chaney crowd. It was all well and good to bail out the auto industry but we are just delaying the inevitable social collapse caused by our collective stupidity and greed!
Do people really think offshore drilling should be stopped because of this?
Transitions should be made to other forms of power, but my Lord, what else is there to substitute for oil for transportation in the short-mid term? Nothing. We need to get more oil. The WSJ reported that the Department of the Interior knew about failings of shear rams in deepwater conditions (the mechanism that should have shut this well down) since 2004 but didn't do anything about it.
Thanks, Uncle Sam. BP holds blame, the US government holds blame, and Transocean holds blame. But we should increase safety mechanism reliability and oversight without going Greenpeace on this.
Note of credibility: I love LA and am from the Gulf Coast. I grasp what this can do to the local economy and my oyster appetite. I can see rigs from 1/4 mile from my old back yard. Without proper safeguards, this shit happens. But it's unavoidable that we drill. Let's manage risk better.
An NPR interview this morning with a BP executive asked two simple questions:
1. Are you responsible for the leak?
2. Will you pay for the results of the leak?
The response was along the lines of "We will cooperate with cleanup and containment efforts, and will pay any legitimate claims."
I think this will be a long (decades?), dirty fight to hold BP accountable.
We all die, of course. It's the end of the world. This is utterly catastrophic and utterly unprecedented. No such thing could ever happen naturally, At no time in the entire history of the planet has erosion or tectonic activity ever ruptured a large oil reservoir. There are no bacteria that metabolize oil and it does not oxidize or decay naturally in any way, and it kills everything it touches. It will float on the surface of the ocean forever, bringing an end to all life.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
If BP raises their prices, it opens the door for their competitors to under cut them.
The price of oil will be set by the supply and demand of the other producers if BP raises it's price. The the other producers can't meet demand, the price will rise to BP's costs. If the can, then BP will be losing sales and income to them.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
to finally convince people to support alternative energy.
The Gulf of Mexico is huge compared to a sailboat, but tiny compared to the whole ocean. The volume of the ocean is 1.5 x 10^18 tons. Even if a ton of oil contaminates a million tons of water, 50,000 barrels a day would take over half a million years to do the job by my calculations.
It may be a decent sized oil reservoir (it is far from "one of the largest ever" per the article) but it isn't THAT big. Sometime in the next half million years it will stop gushing on its own. Probably before that.
This is a very serious event on the scale of the Gulf, but it is nowhere near as serious as ocean acidification from atmospheric CO2, which affects the entire ocean.
mt
I just got me a row boat and a bucket. Free oil! Woo Hoo!!! The arabs can kiss my oily ass!
1 And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key of the shaft of the bottomless pit; 2 he opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft.
Personally I was reminded of the dwarves digging too deep and unleashing a Balrog upon Middle Earth. Have we learned nothing from Tolkien?
The thing that's been on my mind a lot over the last couple of days is that I've heard numerous accusations over the years that the whole Gulf offshore industry is a health and safety nightmare compared to European (notably North Sea) operations... While we don't know the cause of the explosion yet (and, obviously, North Sea rigs have had explosive accidents) does anyone have any real commentary about Euro vs NA safety, and/or the likelihood of an equivalent type of accident in Europe?
Some of the links have been /. and are unavailable at the moment, any one have mirrored sites?
Of all the things I've lost; I miss my mind the most. - Mark Twain
So a week after the event, it was just garnering enough attention that law-makers decide to do something. And now, 2 weeks after the event, we're talking about possible unimaginable catastrophic future for oceanic life.
Why did everyone sit on their hands the first week? You're telling me NO ONE had a contingency plan in place for such an event to occur?
I wonder if decreasing the entire US coastal fishing industry by half or more for a few years, or a decade, will make people wake up to the consequences of our actions?
An individual tanker isn't all that large, at least in WW2. There is a reason we call modern tankers: super-tankers.
It is like people who think CO2 emissions don't matter because volcanoes do it as well. Indeed they do, but have these people never heard of adding up. This spil comes on top of all the others. On top of the coral reefs already dying, on top of fish stocks already being over fished, on top of the plastic we have been dumping whole sale in to the ocean.
Will this be the straw that killed the camels back? Hard to say, but if fishing is hurt then that means some areas need to pay more for their food then they do now and not everyone can afford that. Plus the replacement food will have to be grown somewhere else.
And down the line, some fish migrate and others are dependent on long food chains. I don't know what grows in place X that is eaten in place Y that has an effect on populations in Z.
This isn't about one tanker sinking with the oil inside. It is about tanker after tanker being emptied in one single spot with no way to end it so far except waiting for one of the biggest oil fields to run out. And that could be REALLY bad because according to the people who want to drill everywhere, oil doesn't run out.
The apocalypse won't come in a flash of thunder, it will the eco-system slowly dying from being over-stressed. Less 2012, more YKK or Testament.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So.....we're about to convert one of the biggest oil fields in the world directly into CO2 without even getting the energy from it?
Burn: Apocalypse
No burn: Apocalypse
Hard to see a way out of this one if the oil is coming out under pressure.
No sig today...
Nuke it. 1 Kiloton nuke inside a bunker buster warhead dropped from a bomber. Problem solved.
But the left is going to use the "crisis" to fuck up as much as possible. The amount of oil coming out daily is roughly the amount that leaks through natural cracks in the ocean floor in the gulf daily. True it's in one spot, and will be bad for a fairly small area. It won't be of global significance, and shouldn't effect production, drilling, exploration, or gas prices, but the liberals will make sure it will. There were 6 safety systems that all had to fail for this to happen, I'm pretty sure that when all the facts come into play, it will be obvious that the accident was deliberate. A similar disaster 40 years ago was used to screw the world, and move oil production from the US to the mid east, we can all see how well that has worked out. Thousands times this amount of oil were dumped out in a much smaller body of water during the first gulf war, and now you would never know it happened.
The science is far from settled, and these whining want-to-live forever types won't let up. Oh, we are burning too much oil, we are going to ruin the earth. Fine, so we just pump it, unburned, straight into the ocean, and that doesn't make them happy either. Well, next time they are munching sushi, they will know we are pumping it straight down their throats. bloody hippies.
[Citation Needed]
I've read estimates of 50 million barrels or so on NPR.
An individual tanker isn't all that large, at least in WW2.
I don't think that matters much for assessing environmental impact. Long term data from a small spill that affects two miles of coastline can still yield info relevant to a large scale spill that affects twenty miles.
--
Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN
You seem to be thinking that the ocean needs to be saturated with oil for it to have an effect. Most of the ocean is already dead, always has been. The whole eco-system depends on a few rich spots to feed it. Why do you think so many sea live hold such epic migrations? Because they like it?
How can a tiny bit of metal possibly kill a human being? Fine, let me stick a needle in your brain, see how long you last. Maybe a long time, maybe not long at all.
Killing the eco-system doesn't have to be whole-sale slaughter. All you have to do is knock over one part of the food-chain. It doens't even have to mean the end of life in the ocean. The wrong algea start to grow out of control, and you have plenty of life, and also death at the same time.
Will this be it? Well we better just bloody hope it isn't because else we are screwed. But the right wingers seem determined to keep trying to screw up until they finally really manage to screw us all.
Gosh, off-shore drilling isn't safe. Irak doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. Banks do need goverment control. Are republicans even capable of saying "we were wrong"?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Hate to break this to everyone but each human you produce will inevitably increases your carbon footprint by 10x. So even if you stop using petroleum, chances are your spawn won't.
Have a good night!
I am a v1ral sig. Plse c0py me and h3lp me spread. Thank y0u?
Just to clarify, the surface oil area is not anywhere near the size of Florida, according to those NASA images and overflight observations.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
He's a corporatist. If you think he is left wing, you really have guzzled the Flavor-Aid.
unfortunate how most anti-nuclear arguments use Chernobyl as an example - we can build them so much safer today. Looks like the oil drilling technology hasn't come as far, while still capable of producing devastating effects for years to come.
Unfortunate how most pro-drilling advocates used the slogan "we can build them much safer today".1 2 3 4, etc etc.
These are the same old arguments businesses constantly give to get around regulation. Call the laws "outdated", "old", and talk about how progress has made them unnecessary.
We saw the same "mining is much safer today" from coal companies skirting regulations. And it's the same line of argument that was used to remove regulations from the financial industry. And it's used pretty much everywhere that "stifling" government regulation stands in the way of "economic progress and freedom".
At 5:00 in this video you can learn how the oil companies lobbied successfully to NOT have to use modern safety backup systems:
"BP didn't want to spend the money for a system- a fail-safe system... used all over the world... except the United States because we give them a free pass. ...it's called the "acoustic switch" system.. it's a relay system that... stops the oil exactly from the source... If BP has to do business in Norway, they have to use the switch. When they do it in the US, they don't have to use it... During the Bush deregulation years, you had the mineral management service that told companies like BP that "gee whiz we have a new policy- it's the closed-door Dick Cheney policy..." that allowed the industry to bypass safe systems like the acoustic switch, and there was no need to spend $500,000 with a company that was making $40 billion dollars. It was a complete bypass of safety."
The U.S.S. Arizona is losing about a quart per day. It's tanks had about 1.5 million gallons when it was bombed at Pearl Harbor. Some of that burned but it's not clear how much.
One thing to remember though, the 1,000 or 5,000 gallons per day estimate that this well is losing is probably as low as is remotely justifiable. BP gains nothing by overestimating the amount of the leakage, they do however gain something by underestimating it.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
This is what's going to happen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirates_of_Dark_Water
Dumb question, why was Halliburton cementing this rig shut in preparation for abandonment by Horizon? Math is not my strong suit, but here goes. Conservative estimates say the untended well is spewing 5,000 barrels of crude oil a day into the gulf. BP estimates it might take 90 days to seal off the leak. That's 450,000 barrels of oil that is just coming up from the ocean floor on its own, no pumping. (This makes sense, as oil is lighter than water and would naturally rise out of the hole.) Crude oil is currently selling for $86.19 a barrel (even higher in the futures market.) That's almost $39 million worth of oil that is, again, just bubbling up on its own. The good lord only knows how much is actually in the oil field, but I'd guess it's probably much, much higher. I don't know much about the intricacies of oil harvesting, but why would they be abandoning this much easily obtainable oil after they've already done the enormously difficult and expensive task of poking a hole in the earth almost a mile below sea level? This just doesn't make sense.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
"what do we do about it?"
Quit whining.
There's nothing "we" can do about it.
The company(s) losing 50,000 barrels a day at $100/barrel are working on it.
When did it become ok to whine?
E
Really? By that logic,
- if you use any electronics, or wear shoes for that matter, you're partially responsible for the sweatshops in China. (I notice you didn't ask if he bought specifically from BP, so I'm not gonna cut you any such slack here either.)
- if you ever used anything cocoa-based, you're partially responsible for child slave labour in Africa. (Turns out even buying "Fair Trade" doesn't mean it can't be from those.)
- if you or any relative ever used opiates (e.g., as painkillers for a cancer), then you're at least partially responsible for funding the taliban in Afghanistan. (There is no opium poppy grown in the USA to the best of my knowledge, you know.)
- if you ever bought bread, whiskey, beer or anything made from grain, really, then you're at least partially responsible for the destruction of agriculture in third world countries and the extinction of several species because of pesticides.
Etc.
I could call you a monster for that, but in reality, it just shows how stupid that kind of argument is.
I know it's hard for you right-wing, corporate- and oil-baron-apologist crowd to comprehend, but really it isn't everyone else who's a hypocrite. It's just your limited brain power, sorry. The rest of us can distinguish between personal guilt and just not having other choices but trying to change society for the better in those aspects. But, don't worry if you can't understand it right away. Some day your children might evolve into something that does. And maybe can walk without getting bruised knuckles. Won't that be nice?
Or in other words, that's gotta be the lamest attempt at a guilt trip attempt ever.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
With more than 150 replies so far, only one poster mentions the Transocean drilling contractor.
Drilling contractors drill wells for oil companies like a house building contractor will build your house.
Mass media almost exclusively talk about BP but the drilling contractor is the real specialist is oil well drilling. So, it is just like the media were mentioning exclusively yourself because the house you had a contractor building blew up and killed people.
Of course the client (BP) might very well have some part of responsibility, especially if they pressured the contractor to cut costs in a way impacting security. I wander how this thing will settle in courts, how the responsibilities will be split.
Anyway, I though that it was good to mention the above in contrast to the over simplistic view usually depicted in mass media.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Obama, and the mainstream Democratic party platform are moderate to slightly right leaning. They have very few positions that could be called "socialist", they are more corporatist.
The Republican party has veered so far right, that it is in serious danger of wrapping the spectrum and becoming far left.
...this one will do that in three days if that crimped riser pipe gives way. And how long are they saying it'll take to fix it? Months?
If all that oil leaks out, eventually it will spread to all the oceans. We get most of our oxygen from the oceans. And that is a large field, but I haven't read any exact figures yet, just some hand waving numbers.
It could really suck, depending on how much is down there.
Drill dumbasses drill!! (oil fail)
That should be reserved for Transocean.
http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Home-1.html
Stock's up today.
“Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he entereth in.” Luke 22:10.
We are living in apocalyptic times.
and consume no oil, you will be paying for this spill decades from now as that will be at least how long it will be before the US has seafood from the Gulf of Mexico, about 40% of total US catch.
...the current flow is reduced by a crimped riser pipe that some reports suggest is deteriorating. After that, estimates are 4.2 million gallons a day out of the hole.
I saw President Obama on TV say that BP will pay for everything. He's so pure -- would he lie to us?
We CAN build both nuclear and drilling and mining systems safer today. Technology and laws, among other things, helps that to happen. It's unfortunate when businesses save a buck today and cost them and everyone else tomorrow. It's also unfortunate when certain industries come to a halt because of preventable disasters and fear, like the nuclear industry, instead of making them better and safer. My original point was more in comparing the two industries - both require safety precautions and both have major impacts in a disaster. But for whatever the reasons there is more public fear with radiation than with oil.
I have to say, we are willing to spend billions in bailing out stupid banks that had a almost fraudulent system, but when it comes not only to saving the world from an apocalyptic disaster and even coming up with a way to not only contain but actually siphon the oil coming out from the ocean which no one has claimed yet, i tend to think enough already, just get er done!
Calm down guys. We will live. It has happened before:
http://www.incidentnews.gov/incident/6250
However, if you own a beachhouse in Florida you might want to sell within the next 24 hours:
http://www.news-press.com/article/20100503/GREEN/100502030/1075/Oil-may-reach-Loop-Current-within-24-hours
Sorry, but not all of the effects are linear. There are long and complex feedback cycles involved, and the only real answer is "You want me to guess? OK. But it's a guess."
If you wan't me to guess I could guess that the oxygen production of the oceans is cut by 2/3 over the next decade, and slowly recovers over the following century. If you want me to defend it I couldn't. (But the oxygen production is already declining, so the only two questionable parts are:
1) cut by 2/3. That number was clearly picked out of a hat.
2) recovery? There's no reason to presume that. This suggestion is merely an acceleration of existing trends.
(That said, "cut by 2/3" is probably fear-mongering. 1/20 might be more reasonable. Or possibly not.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212031417936798.html
It's not certain that this remote valve would have been able to contain the spill, but it is another line of defense that the US does not require. Brazil and Norway require these acoustic switches. They only cost about 500,000 dollars. I'm assuming that is a tiny amount compared to the cost of the platform.
and chain emails don't count..
"Claims are circulating on the Internet..."
There are claims circulating on the Internet for just about everything... so let's see some credible sources, m'kay?
Our cities and infrastructure are designed around the automobile and have no sense of real community or ecological plan. The future must be designed around a society that plans for the ecology of more than the just the needs of cars! Perhaps a crisis like this is necessary to wake up the most industrialized consumptive stupid nation on Earth to the facts of the future.
I grow old and tired of being just a "stupefied-consumer" in the eyes of a corporate crazed system of consumption and waste. Our corporate culture of greed and consumption must change now or we will be considered as a lost generation of essentially greed driven parasitic humans.
Sorry, but not all of the effects are linear.
True, but exponential is not the only other direction things could go. Constant is also an option. I am not claiming this is the case, but if a layer of surface oil seeks a natural thickness then a small reef may get slimed in a similar manner regardless of whether the slick is one mile wide or twenty miles wide - given an expectation that onshore winds and currents will cause the slick to have an easier time expanding laterally. So the effect on a given reef could be constant to linear? Again, I'm not claiming this is so, just questioning that the effect is exponential or some other extreme.
--
Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN
I just want to point out that the "hydrogen economy" touted by W. is a sham. The cheapest way to get hydrogen is by steam forming from fossil fuels. E.g. live steam over coal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
I am angry with Reagan. He destroyed the US, and harmed the world, by killing alternative fuels research in the early 80's.
W. and Cheney are also objects of my anger. As is GM who killed by what accounts was a great electric car in 2000.
And the US Congress for gutting mileage standards.
How stupid are people?
Why are we using 19th century technology in the 21st century?
The upside is ANWAR maybe untouchable now.
This will probably be modded as "redundant".
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
These guys act like they know what they are doing when this is really an experimental activity. And it could have been a software bug for all we know. And it could have been a bug in OPEN SOURCE software, written by smelly hippies who are intent on the world switching to smelly power.
I'm absolutely not a deep sea aquatic etc. engineer, but what exactly is the problem with the diverting?
i.e. my house has gutters and pipes to lead the water that naturally flows down along paths and through those pipes to a destination I want it to - the sewage system below.
So why doesn't the reverse work?
i.e. create a (flexible) tube - probably out of segments, that can be installed one segment at a time by divers or robots, with the first one placed around the well source. It would take a fair bit of materials but with each segment the potential dispersion area gets smaller as you get closer to the surface.. and eventually, it seems to me, you reach the actual surface and you can pipe it away from there to floating storage containers that can then be hauled off to have the crude pumped over to ships/whatever and be of some use.
The idea is too simple to not have been considered by other laymen before, but googling around gives so many generic articles right now that I can't find the obvious reason as to why this is not an option. So your (and others') thoughts are appreciated.
An oil pipeline spill in Alaska a few years ago. A refinery explosion and fire in Texas last year. Now this. Somewhere along the line BP procedures need to be questioned because it appears that something is wrong with they way the conduct their operations.
I realize BP says they will pay for this. But watch the actions of their lawyers closely, and the bank accounts of your congressmen even closer.
Seriously, why don't they bomb (torpedo if they have to) the bedrock where the leak(s), or pipe feeding the leak, is situated. The actual oil reserve itself is no doubt many kilometres below the seabed. If they blow up the seabed will it not self seal (or at least drastically slow) the leak ??
What happens when you cover a Florida-size portion of the Gulf of Mexico with a thin oil layer just as the summer solstices approaches? A method to reduce water evaporation that rivals Bill Gates patented hurricane stopper (http://www.usatoday.com/weather/research/2009-07-15-gates-hurricanes_N.htm)? Maybe. Of course, it will heat up the Gulf, too, acting like a solar collector. That may offset the reduced evaporation and amp-up a mega hurricane, which could wash away the Gulf Coast.
The current oil spill spew out 40 thousand tons of crude.
Ixotic spew 400 thousand tons
The gulf war in 91 did between 750 thousand and 1.5million tons spill (but mostly over inland / burning).
Amoco Cadiz was about 250 thousand tons.
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills
It is not the worst oil spill by any standard and the ocean got off with 10 time as worst. Sure it will polute , sure it sucks, sure we4 want it stopped ASAP, but it ain't the end of the world oce3an by any standard.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Great, just what we need is more dicks in the hot tub.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Sigs? We don't need no steekin Sigs!
Thing I don't get is why every car today is still running on oil based fuels.
30 years ago, the LA times truck that pulled up each week to offload the "Calendar" sections we put in the Sunday papers. On the back, it had a sign which said "this truck is running on clean natural gas". I thought, "cool, no more smog!" If they are already using on LA times trucks, it can't too long before some cars have it too. No more Arab oil embargoes, etc.
In about 2004 or 2005, the Washington area metro converted its entire fleet of buses to natural gas in about a year. I work near a major Metro station and could see the first few buses and was excited. Within a year, it was rare to see an old diesel bus. No more smelly diesel fumes!. If an agency as incompetent as Washington Metro can convert its entire bus fleet in a year, how hard can it be?
We have been able to do this easily for at least 30 years. Apparently to convert a regular gas engine to natural gas requires only a few modifications, to the gas tank (obviousely), fuel lines and injectors. As anyone who has been to a Home Depot or most grocery stores knows, the distribution system is also already in place.
Imagine the marketplace if we had 3 different fuel systems for transporation: Oil, Natural Gas, and Electricity. Then as a bad computer analogy, imagine if Windows, Linux, and OS/X each had about a 33% market share.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Oh I agree, and furthermore, if this accident turns out to be as bad as the worst case, then I'd predict that this is probably the end of BP the company. They're probably looking at bankruptcy, and then being broken up into assets that are purchased by their competitors. In the worst case.
Ultimately, BP is responsible for this as they leased the rig and hired the subcontractors. I'm not going to demonize BP. Right now, the cause is all a matter of speculation until they can get the well capped and do a proper investigation. Accidents happen (and yes, I live in a gulf state not too far from the coast), and the truth is, no one is giving up fossil fuels anytime soon, because there simply isn't a really practical replacement right now. Supplements, yes. Replacements... not so much. I recently read that there are over 1400 wells in the gulf, and none of them have ever had an accident like this. We should probably wait to see what actually happened and why before we decide who to line up against the wall.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
RTFA:
Or is NOAA not credible enough?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
That may be a bit overly dramatic. The spill hasn't even added up to the Exxon Valdez yet, and this particular well will have to flow for a few more months past that to add up to what seeps into the gulf naturally. Now obviously one big leak isn't the same thing as 600 smaller ones, but oil isn't exactly new to the ecosystem either.
Link here
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I was in the US Navy for nine years, five of those at sea. And while you are on a ship, you train for fire-fighting several times a week, with dozens of different scenarios. And in ALL of them, de-watering is one of the most crucial aspects of fire-fighting.
If you don't take out the water you're pumping into the space that's on fire, your ship will sink. So we train, train and train some more on how to use electric pumps, diesel pumps, installed pumps, peri-jet eductors, s-type eductors and just plain mops and buckets.
I've been maintaining that this rig should NOT have gone down. They should have got fire-fighters onboard to establish fire boundaries, and more importantly, flooding boundaries. Bulkheads should have been sealed off, pumps should have been installed and fire-fighting water should have been pumped out.
But Mother of God...looking at those pictures, I don't think anything would have saved it.
The fire appears to involve the entire center of the rig. I was thinking, get someone inside the pontoons to keep them pumped out, but there doesn't look like there was any way to get someone inside them.
Based on what I could see in the pictures, my guess is that the overall superstructure simply melted. The tops of the pontoons probably burned through, losing watertight integrity. Fire would have poured inside, killing any pumps that might have been running, and then the fire-fighting water simply filled them up.
This thing went *BOOM* in a way it's not supposed to go boom.
[End Of Line]
A leaked document by definition has no credibility. Unless and until NOAA releases an official communication, and the spokesperson gets on TV and backs it up (rather than dancing around it as this guy did), the report may as well be written in crayon on the back of a UGA diploma.
As someone who lives in Louisiana, all I can say now is that the whole thing is very scary. We will have to see what happens.
However, what may be of interest to some is something I heard today from a friend who has worked on Transoceana/BP rigs. Apparently, what happened was that they were in the very final stages of finishing the well and the down pipe is filled with sea water for that phase, rather than the more traditional mud. What then happened was that there was a release of gas. This would have been held, or at least slowed by the mud, but just rose up through the seawater at a high rate of speed. When it reached the head, it just vented from the top. Now, as the gas is heavier than air, it sank down. While the drilling floor is a spark free zone, not all of the rig is. One spark from an AC unit, or the like is probably what set it all off, too quickly for anybody to do anything. My buddy also told me that the practices out there can be mighty sloppy and not done by the book. He no longer works in the industry and hope all the companies involved get what they deserve.
Any oil engineers out there want to explain what this story means -- I'm no expert, so I do not fully understand it.
We dug too deep.
What happens if the US totally pisses off British Petroleum and BP says "fuck it, we're outta here. good luck with your gulf of chocolate pudding"?
"So, considering that losing our oceanic life, with subsequent unraveling of our land-based ecosystems, is a far more possible apocalyptic scenario than a killer asteroid — what do we do about it?""
A) you aren't going to be "losing our oceanic life". Locally, temporarily, yes. But this event will pass and things will be back to normal eventually.
B) it is far, far, FAR from the effect of an asteroid impact or any other kind of global apocalyptic scenario. This isn't a global-extinction-level event. Oil wells at sea have spilled this much oil per day before. Much more. Heck, oil wells ON LAND in the USA have spilled several times this much per day. There was an oil well drilled back in the early 20th century that spilled 18000 barrels/day for months in the Great Valley of California. It made lakes of oil. Oil wells and ships at sea have spilled as much as this one is anticipated to spill even if it keeps going at this pace for many weeks. It's sooooo bad mainly because of one solitary reason: it's along the continental U.S.A. where people can see first-hand the effects and scream about it, rather than it happening in some far-flung corner of the world that "nobody" (in the USA) cares about. This is distinctly not the end of the world. Maybe the end of much tourism and fisheries along Gulf Coast for a while, but that -- supremely bad as it is -- isn't the end of the world either. For gods sake try to get some perspective. It's bad. Very bad. Not apocalyptic.
C) oil seeps already occur naturally all around the Gulf, and are found all around the world. The ocean system and its biota are equipped to clean up from this event eventually even if the humans do nothing, and the humans that made the mess are trying their best. Many creatures will die -- many creatures that humans care about and that the ecosystem needs. Others (bacteria mostly) will feast. It will take decades for the ecosystem to fully recover -- but it will recover.
D) it's light, sweet crude in a warm climate. This is much more biodegradable and easier to clean up than heavy oil. It could have been a lot worse.
E) any time you complain about oil spills ask yourself this question: "How much oil have I used this year, how much have I complained about the price, and how much have I done to use less or encourage alternatives?" If the answers are: "plenty", "plenty" and "not much" then you don't understand that accidents like this are part of the cost your, my, and every other user's choices. We asked these companies to push to the ends of the Earth and to technical limits to find more of this stuff. We want them to do it safely, and they try. Everyone is prepared to quickly blame the evil, irresponsible oil companies when a problem like this happens, but they ARE responsible when it comes to safety as they explore, they DO spend enormous amounts of money on safety systems, and they have a HUGE economic incentive not to let an accident like this ever happen. Do you think they want to lose a $300 million rig, millions of dollars a day, billions in cleanup, and human lives? Even if they were heartless they still don't want to lose money like that. Regardless, they do it all because we pay them to and we set the terms. We have voted with our dollars: "Find more." We can and should push for tougher safety standards but accidents WILL happen. Human systems are not infallible.
I figure there are only two possible reasons for a failure this grand, despite all the precautions that companies take. Either this was an unlikely series of technical/engineering failures of multiple safety systems that we will eventually come to scientifically understand and learn from so it doesn't happen again, or somebody somewhere committed a crime by signing off on something that wasn't actually up to engineering specifications. I laugh at the suggestion th
We are. Shame on us.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Most of the oil in the gulf will never be extracted.
Investors are unlikely to invest in any more deepwater drilling, at least in this block. Lawsuit potential. Expense. All make the profitability marginal at best. By the time we get desperate enough to try again, we probably will no longer have the means to do so.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Let not forget which party made this their slogan.
Perhaps, a creative used of google earth, but it doesn't look like this guy drew his lines right. It look like he circled the entire hypoxic zone at the mouth of the Mississippi. How is it that one guy with google earth suddenly is more believable than the experts and those flying over the accident. This is not to minimize the this terrible disaster, but misinformation like this can take on a life of its own.
What would happen if a hurricane went right through this? Good thing this it isn't the season yet, but if it continues and is churned up by a big hurricane, it could make a horrible situation even worse. Then again, maybe it would make it better, dispersing the oil? Any way you look at it this is scary.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I don't know about you but I am just beyond angry about this oil well pumping into the Atlantic Ocean, killing everything in it almost immediately, because I know this is the most catastrophe that has ever befallen the earth. This is armageddon. I'm not smiling when I say this. Oil will continue to flood into the Atlantic Ocean, poisoning the entire world's oceans in one year of having this oil pump into this mile deep oil well that is flowing unchecked, gushing oil at this very second into the Atlantic, and then Pacific Ocean, turning both into an oily puddle--forever! For the rest of our lives, we just killed the ocean. They will never re-cap that oil well, or do anything whatsoever to cap it or decrease its flow into the oceans. It will pump oil into the oceans for years and within one year all the oceans on this earth will be dead! Too late! It's done. Go immediately to the ocean and breath in that fresh air, because soon it will smell like gasoline all over the earth, in a one-micron tall layer of petroleum that will oil every single drop of the ocean. This is the dumbest thing that anyone in all humanity has done. This is the worst thing that will ever happen. Everything in the ocean will die. Think about it.
And if you continued listening to the lecture about collusion, you'd know that in the long run one or more members of a cartel will cheat on the agreement and sell their product at a slightly lower price, hoping to make up the "loss" through volume. Other members catch on ("Hey, we're not selling as much as we thought we would!") and start lowering their price. Eventually prices normalize.
The second part of your post is much more sensible and explains why we _do_ see fluctuations in the oil market.
We CAN build both nuclear and drilling and mining systems safer today. Technology and laws, among other things, helps that to happen. It's unfortunate when businesses save a buck today and cost them and everyone else tomorrow. It's also unfortunate when certain industries come to a halt because of preventable disasters and fear, like the nuclear industry, instead of making them better and safer.
My original point was more in comparing the two industries - both require safety precautions and both have major impacts in a disaster. But for whatever the reasons there is more public fear with radiation than with oil.
I don't know about the oil industry, but given that we have a couple of operating (or at least recently operating) nuclear plants in adjacent New England states, I've followed that industry a bit. So when you say that we, as in Americans, can build better nuclear plants, you're basing this on what? We haven't build a new nuclear plant in well over a decade (and that last one was just one), and haven't designed a new one in about 20 years. Three Mile Island was 30 years ago, Chernobyl 25. There are essentially no living, practicing nuclear power plant engineers in the US with any experience whatsoever. Some of the most recently designed plants (Connecticut Yankee, New Hampshire Seabrook) are maintenance nightmares in present day (hear about the tower collapse in Vermont?). If only half of the stories about Seabrook are true, you wouldn't want to live or work in a building built by the ... ahm ... workers who constructed that plant.
We might as well be starting from square one. So, again, please provide evidence for your assertion that we are better at building nuclear plants. I see nothing to support that assertion, and plenty of evidence to the contrary.
There are two deeper issues with building new nuclear power plants (and I am pro-nuclear, and have been for decades), at least the standard non-breeding designs that require moderators to slow fast neutrons. The first issue is that because of the inherent public safety risk, they require higher standards of construction skill ... but lowest-bidding practices nearly guarantee that the crews aren't going to be the best and brightest. The second is that we are still unable to handle nuclear waste from a technological and social standpoint. Moreover, any plan that includes shipping nuclear waste to some central facility (like the thankfully ill-fated Yucca Mountain plan) presents a serious national security liability as the waste is transported from the source to the storage facility.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A leaked document by definition has no credibility. Unless and until NOAA releases an official communication, and the spokesperson gets on TV and backs it up (rather than dancing around it as this guy did), the report may as well be written in crayon on the back of a UGA diploma.
What color is the sky in your world?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
It's not clear that an acoustic data link to the blowout protector would have helped. The model installed was supposed to close if the connection to the surface was lost. If it didn't close on that, a secondary data link probably wouldn't help.
As for things that go wrong, here's a marlin with its spear caught in a blowout preventer. An underwater ROV with robot arms is brought into position, grabs onto the tail of the marlin, pulls it out, and releases the tail. The marlin then charges forward, and jams itself into the same place. The ROV moves back into position, grabs the dumb fish, pulls it out again, and drags it a short distance away before releasing it. The fish again tries to attack the blowout preventer, but finally gives up.
Has our thirst for oil unleashed an apocalypse?
One of the cute things about the Book of Revelations is that you can ALWAYS read current events into it as the signs and portents of the end times. This has been going on for well over a thousand years.
If you believe in it, shouldn't you also believe in the part that says nobody will know the time in advance?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's not linear (including flat) AND it's not exponential. It's complicated.
There aren't ANY good models for this problem, but the simple one are known not to work.
(OTOH, I'm not expert in this particular field. This is just something blatantly obvious to anyone who reads the popularizations of science, like New Scientist and Scientific American. [Well, it's not blatantly obvious that there aren't any good models, but there aren't. That took a little bit more reading.])
E.g., small spills have large "edge effects" which spread some problems even while mitigating others. These are less significant factors, probably, in larger spills. But, OTOH, since the center of a larger spill has a nearly 100% kill effect, you won't find as large, proportionately, a population of injured animals which *might* be saved. (The area of a circle expands faster than the circumference...not to mention that the center has an actual bit of volume, so you only get a thin film near the edges. P.S.: This is logiced out. I didn't research it, but I'd be real surprised if it weren't true.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
... a capture device could be places over the "leak", the buoyant oil channeled to a surface collector and pumped out.
I hear they're working on it. Big concrete dome or box to be sunk over the blown well. Don't recall how many tons and how big, but it's HEAVY and BIG. Once it's in place it collects the oil before it gets a chance to get around the opening and the oil's buoyancy keeps it in the pipe - entraining a small amount of seawater (and perhaps insufficiently cautious sea life) to be separated later. As long as they remove the oil as fast as it comes out of the bore hole they should get essentially all of it.
The trap is already built but it takes time to get it to the site, position it, and sink it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Turns out it was an Act of God!
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
A classic photo of the oil rig burning or a view from outer space may become known as the "End-of-oil Fire". People in Pensacola are taking their cameras to the beach and photographing what it looked like "before the oil got there" for youtube and posterity. This is the trigger for the renewable energy future. 'bout time.
Looks like Muzzi-land didn't like that particular oil-well. Muzzi see Muzzi do. Sure they can't blow-up gas in NYC, even in a Toyoda gastank. But dammwell they can blow-up oil in the Gulf. Who wants betting on the "undocumented" workers on that exploding well ? Eh ?? Boom ... Muzzi see Muzzi do.
Everyone knows that fire can't cause steel structures to collapse! It was clearly a government inside job.
Why was that oil rig even capable of collapsing into the ocean? Are these things constructed that cheaply? I'd expect these things to be filled with containment measures for when something does go wrong and if something goes wrong mechanisms should kick in to prevent a disaster like this.
But ah, yes. BP wanted to cut some corners for even more profit and so decided to bribe the U.S. government into relaxing the rules about security, safety and environmental protection.
So, sinking one loaded oil tanker dumped about as much oil into the ocean as this is expected to dump per month.
148 oil tankers were sunk during WW2. There was no ecological collapse as a result.
I have to ask you, how many millimeters of oil in your drinking water is acceptable for you to drink?
How many millimeters of crude oil would you like in your fried salt-water fish?
How many millimeters are required to affect cancer rates?
"Other readers have sent some interesting pictures of the spill. One set shows the Deepwater Horizon rig as it collapsed into the ocean. Others, from NASA, indicate that the spill's surface area now rivals that of Florida." Or didn't you read the article before commenting?
TPJ - Founder, The Amazon Basin
The benefit of this system is, of course, that oil companies aren't exposed to devastating liability; instead, the liability is spread across he entire oil industry. This is also the problem: no individual oil company has an adequate economic incentive to avoid risky behavior
Sounds just like the banks...
Is there a -1:moron moderation?
Its funny how the very people who are pollutting the world with oil, cars and useless waste, will now have to live, see and smell in their own filth. Maybe all those lazy fat lardass americans who drive everywhere because they are too fucking lazy might think about changing their greedy selfish ways.
Not sure where you got those facts, but it looks to me like they own a 65% interest in the well. While it could be argued that a "working interest" doesn't imply ownership, it pretty much says 'owns' to me. Mitsui owns 10% and Anadarko the remaining 25%.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/30850121/Deepwater-Horizon
RIG Deepwater Horizon rig owner
BP 65% working interest (operator)
APC 25% working interest (operator)
Mitsui 10% working interest (operator)
CAM Manufacturer of blowout preventer (BOP)
HAL Provided cementing services to the rig
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN3011545120100430
"Transocean Ltd (RIGN.S) (RIG.N) - The Zug, Switzerland-based company owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon Rig. The rig went into service in 2001 and was drilling the Macondo prospect about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana.
BP Plc (BP.L) (BP.N) - BP hired Transocean's rig at a rate of about $500,000 per day to drill the well. BP is the project's operator and has a 65 percent working interest in the well.
Anadarko Petroleum Corp (APC.N) - The Houston company owns a 25 percent nonoperating interest in the well."
http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Deepwater-Horizon-56C17.html?LayoutID=17
It was built by Hyundai Heavy Industries Shipyard, Ulsan, South Korea in 2001.
In a few million years when the cockroach archaeologists are poking around, they are going to have a hell of a time figuring out what actually killed us off.
using an Amkus or Hurst Jaws type of tool from whats left of the riser. I'm not an engineer obviously but I wonder if this has been tried. I heard something attempted like this on the news however it turned out to be false. I realize the tools mentioned are not designed to work in such an environment but the principle is the same.
So, sinking one loaded oil tanker dumped about as much oil into the ocean as this is expected to dump per month.
148 oil tankers were sunk during WW2.
Your logic assumes that all of the oil tankers sunk in WWII were fully loaded. This is not true. The oil tankers that were sunk were in various states between being fully loaded and completely empty.
sinking one loaded oil tanker dumped about as much oil into the ocean
Another bad logic assumption. Most oil tankers had their cargo burnt when torpedoed. A number sank but remained intact - not releasing oil. As the steel has corroded over the last 60 years they have begun to leak the oil, which is a problem. Case in point: the USS Mississinewa lay on the ocean floor for 57 years before being discovered, and was found to have 2 million gallons of recoverable oil still onboard. Only a smaller number of tankers would have released oil when under attack, not had this oil ignite and burn, and go on to be released into the ocean.
The claim that every WWII oil tanker was fully loaded at the time of being sunk, and upon being sunk immediately released all of that oil into the ocean, is clearly invalid.
* BP is as capable as any of its peer companies, and its operations standards, personnel and other related factors are as good an anyone else. When it comes to industry activities such as drilling operations offshore and in deep water there is a huge amount of industry collaboration. Everyone knows that they are all facing the same challenges and risks and that sharing knowledge, information and learnings is vital for the whole industry. BP's response to this terrible accident has been textbook perfect so far and shows how capable the company really is.
* They have already suspended existing operations on another well and relocated one of their semi-submersible rigs [the Transocean Development Driller III] to start operations on the first relief well and they are going to be moving a dynamic drillship [the Transocean Discoverer Enterprise] currently at Thunderhorse to start the second relief well very shortly.
The rig that capsized was in the final operation of the drilling phase of the well. The well was cased and they were not tripping out as I speculated in my last post, but had finished the last trip and were circulating the riser [that is the pipe system from the BOP stack on the ocean floor to the rig on the ocean surface] to seawater in preparation to disconnect the rig and move it off the well.
It is typical in a drilled and cased well to leave the wellbore filled with drilling mud and slightly overbalanced [the density of the drilling mud gives a bottom hole pressure that is slightly higher than the pressure of the formations], and I would guess that was the case here. However, seawater is typically slightly less dense than drilling mud so as roughly 5000 feet of riser was displaced from drill mud to seawater in preparation to disconnect the rig, the hydrostatic head of that portion of the column may have decreased enough to cause an underbalance
Regardless, something else had to have gone wrong, as the well was cased but would not have been perforated, so all the formations should have been isolated from the wellbore. That suggests something failed downhole [perhaps a liner lap?] to allow the formation fluid into the wellbore.
Finally, I went back and had a look at some of the video of the rig burning before it sank. There is one flame shooting straight up, at times higher than the derrick, which is probably the fluids flowing through the inside of the drill string section that would have been in the hole for the circulating operation. If you look carefully it's clear there is a second flame shooting out sideways underneath the helideck [in fact the later video shows it burned through the helideck before the rig capsized]. This flame is probably coming from the diverter, which means that the annulus [the space between the well casing and the drill pipe] was also flowing...and that implies that neither the pipe rams nor the shear rams were closed on the BOPs.
The failure of the BOPs is a real mystery. There's normally at least 3 locations on a rig from where the BOPs can be activated: the rig floor, the BOP control room [which is deliberately located well away from the rig floor], and usually somewhere in the living quarters...so it looking more likely that somehow gas entered the wellbore that was supposed to be isolated from all formations, and as it rose toward surface, expanded and rapidly displaced the drilling mud, taking the crew by surprise.
In most accidents it's a series of events or failures that leads to the final result, rarely is it just one thing. And this instance is starting to look that way also. First perhaps an underbalanced wellbore from the riser displacement, then some sort of failure of the casing/liner system downhole, and finally the failure of the BOPs to actuate. The rig that capsized is reported to be on its side more than 1000 feet away from the wellhead so there is no chance it damaged it. It's possible there's something in the BOPs that is preventing them from closing...either a drill collar or perhaps eve
The first question that came to mind in all of this is why, the valve (tap) didn't work to cut of suppply.
Why is it stuck? Why can't 8 robots close it? Because it was only put in to 'relieve fears' about what happens when the rig goes down, and it was not maintained. Any engineer knows that a valve would need greasing and checking on a yearly basis (or less). I mean cars need a yearly service, so why not oil rigs?
I guess it shows the urgent need to test cut-off valves BEFORE a disaster happens. It seems to me that BP and possibly other companies care more about saving a bit of money and maintaining operations, than testing critical safety measures.
WHEN ARE WE GOING TO LOOK AFTER THE ENVIROMENT MORE THAN PROFITS? HOW OFTEN SHOULD A VALVE GET TESTED?
Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Then again, orbital bombardment probably won't penetrate a mile of water. Better to strap the nuke to a robotic submarine.
In answer to all of these, you probably meant mg per litre, not millimeter...
Assuming we drank out of the Gulf here (we don't, we have the Mississippi River for that), and that the next three years worth of this little problem were crowded into 1000 km^3 (it won't be) of the water supply we use, then the total contamination levels would be rather less then 0.001 mg/L oil in the water.
Now, one must remember that the EPA doesn't actually control for crude oil in the water supply. But of the chemicals they do control for, about four non-radioactive ones have safe limits lower than 0.001 mg/L. And, since the EPA controls for those four chemicals, if any of them (one of the four might be present in crude oil. Maybe. It's a byproduct of refining oil and I don't know whether it's waste from the process or something created in the process) are present at that level, the local water treatment plant will reduce the level below the legal limit before it's put into the drinking water system.
In other words, this is a non-issue in the USA. It could conceivably be an issue elsewhere, if you can find a place where people drink salt water without purifying it first, I concede. Good luck with that.
All that aside, as I said, I'm from the gulf coast. It is going to royally suck down here unless this is dealt with promptly. But it's not going to be the end of life as we know it in the oceans, or much of anywhere else.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I'm still wondering who or what Muzzi is. Is it a misspelling of the Jewish nickname "Mutti"? Is it an eccentric Italian ice-cream maker? Is it short for Motoguzzi?
Seriously; no more new business allowed for British Petroleum in the US. They had a an oil spill in Alaska because they ignored maintenance that lead to pipe corrosion; had a massive refinery explosion in Texas with fatalities, and in this case, they glibly assumed this very failure would never occcur (which was rubber-stamped by ineffective Bush-era 'regulators' in the Minerals office). In every case: profits before common sense. You have to be an incredibly craven entity to make ExxonMobil look moral in comparison.
It wasn't just cost. Chernobyl was used to produce nuclear weapons. This requires specific reactor designs to do efficiently, and those designs are inherently unstable. Three Mile Island is another example. In short, government regulation doesn't help you when it is government requiring the stupidity in the first place.
Of course, bad emergency shutoffs didn't help either. Chernobyl had hilariously badly designed control rods and TMI had a misprint in their shutdown procedure.
We have been drilling in bodies of water for over 100 years, such gross negligence for the environmental safety and the well being of the oil rig workers is criminal. Someone at BP and Transocean made a calculated risk believing that the cost of such safety system was less important than the cost of their employees and the environment. This is a disgraceful accident as it could have been easily prevented with technology we had thirty years ago, as a once supporter of offshore drilling I have realized companies and governments will always put the bottom line first and the cost of life second.
Math
The BOP wouldn't operate when they sent a submarine down to close it manually. A remote control switch wouldn't have done jack squat.
A spill is when the liquid or material comes out of a container: milk spills out of a glass or bottle where the quantity is known.
Here the container is the earth and in human scale the quantity can only be guessed at. This is not a spill it is an oil gush or flow. The term is more accurate in describing the magnitude of the disaster.
Satellite Monitoring.
Yours In Astrakhan,
Kilgore T.
as long as it stays out of the Atlantic. Then it's ONLY going to kill everything living in the Gulf. If this thing gets big enough and ends up in the Atlantic, Europe & the Arctic will be in for a nasty surprise.
What most amazes me is that there did not seem to be any plan or equipment for dealing with a leak like this. Surely it must have been part of the possible scenarios considered when drilling is considered. Surely governments EVERYWHERE must require oil companies to submit a detailed plan and list of equipment available to seal a leak promptly if it develops under any circumstances. I know I have thought many times what would happen if the line breaks due to an accident. If I have as a casual observer having nothing to do with the field, surely the people involved in these explorations have thought about it too. I hope BP goes under for the cost of fixing this. All oil companies need to realize that having a plan before a disaster hits is more important to their survival than the cost of developing such a plan and maintaining the equipment that you hope you will never have to use. The only way for them to learn is for BP to go under, just like its drilling rig. I fervently hope they will, though I won't count on it really happening or its competitors learning from the experience.
It's funny. We've reached peak oil in july 2008 already, so now there is going to be an ever bigger frenzy of getting the more difficult oil. And as the well dry up ever more quickly, in the frenzy of drilling more wells safety will be the greatest victim for the sake of cutting costs of ever more expensive to extract oil. We are buying only a few years extension to our oil addiction, but in making sure we get the last bit of it we also destroy not only the environment, but the future livelihood of millions of people. We are willingly sacrificing the long term for the sake of a very short term benefit. For the sake of not chaning our way of life one little bit, we ensure that the total change in our way of life will be all the more drastic as we destroy our other means to sustain it. Well, as McCain would say: "Drill baby Drill", or "Drill drill drill". What could go wrong with that plan?
We would actually buy a lot more years of our current way of life by adopting a less energy voracious lifestyle. Technology can only ever increase energy efficiency incrementally, and any gains made by technology would be offset by people's habits IMMEDIATELY. If you're spending 20$ a week on fuel and suddenly your car only requires 15$ a week, you're going to use it more and get right back to the 20$ a week. The same thing goes for making more energy available by increasing production... the end effect is maintaining or reducing the price of energy which leads to making it scarcer faster. Any technological improvement is wiped out as soon as it is implemented. Any production gain is wiped out as soon as it is generated. However, if you limit your outings, walk more, reduce your speed on the road, choose to live close to where you work instead of using all kind of flawed logic to justify buying a home in the suburbs 2 hours drive from work, an countless other changes then you could reduce in a very short time your fuel consumption by a very large fraction of what it is. Behaviour change is the only way out. And somehow some fraction of society believes that ANY change in our current way of life is a betrayal to what we are. Well, news flash, our current way of life is not the one we always had, and people didn't want to let go of the old ways either (and sometimes their ways were better than the new ones we adopted). The way of life is ALWAYS changing. The thing is, refusing to make any concession now, only means we will have to make much bigger ones later, and ones that will hurt much more.
Reducing carbon footprint is not just a way to do good to our environment (and avoid potentially catastrophic consequences of that), it is also ensuring that we will have enough energy to avoid economic catastrophies as well. Ecology and Economy (real economy, not the perpetual growth delusion that current conventional economists are high on) are not opposed ideas. They are actually very much in agreement. Long term economic
...at this very moment, Michael Bay sits planning how he'll outdo that explosion.
Yeah, I'm serious. BP's efforts to stop the blowout all seem to focus on preserving the integrity of the well for future production.
Why no send down some some sort of shaped charges to collapse the bore hole into the deposit.
How about a mini-nuke?
Seriously, that's gotta work...
So if a manufacturer of food products starts inadvertently poisoning its customers, we are only allowed to complain about it if we don't eat? How can anyone refute logic like that?
An accident is not assured. I don't want to seem like a troll, however this seems to convenient. There is happenstance. However I find it way to coincidental that just as Obama announces that he wants to allow new off shore drilling we have a major accident. There hasn't been a problem for decades. I know militant environmentalists aren't above doing something like that. After all, they drill in some of the most sensitive environmental areas in the world and there hasn't been a problem. I learned this from testimony from the last administration, from representatives in Louisiana about their sensitive areas. I know people who worked down there after the Hurricane and they said even spilling Diesel for a generator is a big deal.
This is not directed to you... I just want to state it for others reading - Oil is natural by definition. Man didn't make it. Some people seem to forget that.
Enjoy (if you've got the patience to read through 22 pages of comments!)
A couple of highlights -
First radio interview from someone on the rig:
http://www.marklevinshow.com/Article...422&spid=32364
Second - OSHA's website has some of the best diagrams:
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/oilandgas/well_completion/well_completion.html
Third - the specs from this platform/ship:
http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Deepwater-Horizon-56C17.html?LayoutID=17 -- check out "Thrusters: 8 x Kamewa rated 7375 hp each, fixed propeller, full 360 deg azimuth"
JGG
Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096754/
Why not drop a napalm barrage acrosss the slick and light it on fire and call it a day.
A permanent "Sea of Fire" sounds like a great place to hide the "Staff of Truth" guarded by the "Dragons of Eternity".
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Why not deploy oil-soaking sponge weilding roombas with GPS to constantly mop it up, bring it back to a tanker, wring it out, repeat.
Hell they could use the crappy crude as fuel while they are at it...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
here's another perspective.
i have not verified any of the details (which is why i'm posting a link to the article here). and while i'm skeptical given the free-energy theme of the web site on which it resides, i'm capable of imagining some of the details of the article might be true.
Mother of all gushers could kill Earth's oceans
http://pesn.com/2010/05/02/9501643_Mother_of_all_gushers_could_kill_Earths_oceans/
I suspect you're the kind of personality that that likes to feel smug about your vastly superior understanding of the world and talk down to others.
That's all I really wanted to say, but as long as I'm typin' I want you to know that the government won't save you. You love to make fun of other people's plans, but the government is also a complicated system of plans carried out by individuals. It would be nice if we would look after one another out of love and mutual respect for each other, rather than trying force compassion with unfeeling systems and laws. I know I'm dreaming.
Thanks, that is a very good point. The earth will survive, will we?
The earth survived whatever killed the dinosaurs, but it really sucked for the dinosaurs. If we die, the planet will go on, but that is little consolation to anyone who doesn't REALLY like cockroaches.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
China actually uses much more coal than us, and they consume much more than us as well.
Would a small targeted nuke exploding 5000 feet down stop the leak
seriously wouldnt it destroy the well and stop the flow and possibly burn some of the oil off.
Will Obama be the first president to use a Nuke to save the environment
I'd predict that this is probably the end of BP the company.
Really. How sweet. You're aware they make 60 billion usd profit/year.
I predict a slap on the wrist and to be told not to be so naughty in the future.
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Ya can't make an omelet without breakin' a few eggs!
YeHaw! Bang Bang! YeHaw!
Seriously though, I find all the letters to the editor mentality here a bit repugnant when I don't think I would be out of line to say that 99%+ of the people here use oil. Likely a LARGE portion of that use on average per capita more oil than the rest of the world. I would even go so far to say that MANY of the people posting right now, indignant about the spill, have actually burned some of the oil, BP took out of that well personally.
That would include myself. I try to have as little impact as possible, however even I have driven about 60,000km in the last 8 years or so, and that doesn't include jet travel, public transportation, or even electrical power put into the system from sources using oil as fuel.
Anyway it is a terrible tragedy, however it is like a fat man being indignant about the fate of minimum wage employees of McDonald's, while chomping down as many BigMacs as will fit in his face. Perhaps the fat man as little choice? Perhaps he is addicted to it, or is poor and that is all he can afford, or perhaps the regulation on food, or perhaps labor is at cause. However bottom line he is still consuming it in great quantities while screaming about the problem. It is somewhat crazy if you think about it. (BTW a car analogy is too easy here)
Yeah we can liquify coal, we have a 250 year supply at current consumption rates
Yeah but consumption rates won't stay at the current levels. As oil supplies deplete, coal usage will increase, and at 3% growth, the coal supply is only 70 years using your figures.
Also. The 250 year supply is almost certainly the total reserve figure. Unfortunately, like oil, coal will rapidly become uneconomic after the peak production rate is reached. Somewhere around half way through the reserves. Which means that there's only about 35 years worth of cheap/easy coal at 3% growth.
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Hint to mod : flamebait is what you give as a mod when the post is calling for a anger response , trying to bait people. I was just pointing out, rightfully, that this is not the end of the world as the summary was hinting. So overated, redundant, maybe. But flamebait ? You gotta stop smoking unknown substance...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
So I guess we're all pretty much fucked, now, yes? Maybe drilling for something that FLOATS under the ocean which contains all the life which is churning out about 70% (estimates vary) of the OXYGEN we breathe was maybe, a pretty stupid fucking idea? Oh, and when you see what is going to happen as a result of this, I think you'll agree I haven't used the word FUCK too many times in this post, actually, I haven't used it nearly enough. This is not a disaster. A disaster sucks, you hold some concerts, and everyone eventually is pretty much okay. This could be, well... anyone know any other good planets we can all move to? Ones where we haven't completely fucked up the environment yet? Consider this, fellow Terrans... If you're living in a spaceship, and some god-damned fucking moron blows a hole in the side, what do you do?
I can't imagine why prices would go up. There's now plenty of oil, and it's free. Just go down to the Gulf Coast with a bucket...
I see it more that of course we are responsible for those things because our choices and money pay for them. So we are responsible for trying to fix the problems in those systems.
We would be anyway because I tend to believe we all have a duty to, for example, try to stop or at least diminish slavery.
Either way, it's not about feeling guilty or about blame, it's about either (a) taking responsibility for the negative externalities that we incentivize by our actions, or (b) believing we can be a better world than we are right now and working to make that happen.
Either way, we don't get out of it by saying we have no choice since we can't eliminate all the externalities. Because we do have choice, and that choice lets us cut back on those externalities. (As by using renewable fuels, using products from companies that actively work to prevent slave labor use in their product chains, socially conscious investing, personal philanthropy, and community service).
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Cue all the lefty slashtards who somehow feel vindicated by this ...
Instead, why don't we learn from this mistake, use the knowledge to improve safety and reliability of offshore drilling, and continue drilling, but just more safely and reliably? 'Cause that would be logical and wouldn't fit a lefty agenda, that's why.
If BP does raise its prices, it will take some oil out of the market and allow the others to raise their prices as well. So, in a market with so few suppliers, and a limited but tight production stream, we will all pay a little more. BP will be more punished than the other petroleum companies, though.