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Methane-Trapping Ice May Have Triggered Gulf Spill
sciencehabit writes with an excerpt from Science that begins: "Methane-trapping ice of the kind that has frustrated the first attempt to contain oil gushing offshore of Louisiana may have been a root cause of the blowout that started the spill in the first place, according to [UC Berkeley] professor Robert Bea, who has extensive access to BP p.l.c. documents on the incident. If methane hydrates are eventually implicated, the US oil and gas industry would have to tread even more lightly as it pushes farther and farther offshore in search of energy."
Yeah, so I'm trolling, wanna fight about it? But in all seriousness, this is why I'm against sudden rapid expansions of industry into sensitive environmental areas.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
Since these methane hydrates contain a significant amount of methane (i.e. natural gas), in the years since it was discovered that there are large deposits of them, they've periodically been touted as something we should actively drill for, as e.g. in this 1997 PopSci article.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"would have to tread even more lightly as it pushes farther and farther offshore in search of energy"
Is there a correlation between the amount of methane hydrates and the distance from shore?
Better known as 318230.
I wonder how they've avoided the problems up around Alaska or other places where it's actually cold enough for there to be ice - much less methane trapping ice.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Don't cha just gotta wonder with ocean floor earthquakes why we havn't have more natural oil spills in the ocean?
but if the risk of offshore drilling is so great why do we continue to do it? if it costs more to make alternative fuels, where is the breaking point where a disaster is more or less expensive? why are we still allowed to continue drilling offshore when known unknown conditions exist which have not been fully counter measured?
Good people go to bed earlier.
This is why government needs to step in and make industry take actions which affect the bottom line adversely but are in the public interest. Will the industry suffer and lose profits from added safety regulation and oversight? Of course. But those profits are unfairly being funded by the damage and suffering resulting from this kind of reckless corperate activity.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1639434&cid=32078300
Whether or not the answer is any good is another matter entirely - I wouldn't know.
This one has more detail, and is actually really-well written. Really, an AP story with some investigative journalism. Kudos, guy, you're making your co-workers look bad. :)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Could we please stop calling it the "Gulf" spill? Oil spills are conventionally named after the company responsible. That would be BP, or Transocean (the company that leased the rig to BP). Additionally, it's not really a "spill," but for lack of a clearly better word (gucher perhaps?), I am willing to accept that. Calling it the "Gulf" spill doesn't put enough responsibility on those who should be bearing it.
That they are treading on thin ice?
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
"started the spill in the first place" Make no mistake about it, the root cause was our nations dependance on oil. More precisely BP drilling for oil to quench the thirst.
Look shiny object, now that it has been summed up in some irrelevant detail, we can all go back to not caring.
Spill, baby, spill?
It's related to the decline in pirates.
But there are more pirates active now than at any other time in history and the rate of piracy is on the rise. Or is this a localised phenomenon you are talking about? Or is this just typical religious denial of facts? Damn FSM fundies!
For myself a LoTR analogy suggested itself. As with the Mines of Moria, "they dug too deep!"
Clathrates require enormous pressures and very cold temperatures to remain stable. Warm them up to room temperature... and let's just say your gas tank won't be remaining whole very long.
Read up on the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. The whole world was so warm, there was basically no ice anywhere on the surface (maybe some at extreme depths), and the Arctic Ocean was warm enough for alligators. One theory for why temperatures spiked so high has to do with a runaway positive feedback loop, where rising temperatures cause clathrates to melt out, which causes more heating.
So no, not just a drop in the bucket.
Cheers,
... if 1) we didn't massively subsidize the use of fossil fuels, and 2) the price of various forms of environmental devastation wasn't treated as an externality. Consider that the continental shelf is the property of the US government, and we have been and continue to lease the mineral rights to BP, et al, for way below market rates. And that we provide massive security services to various oil companies in the form of huge military commitments in the Middle East. And we provide an enormous interstate highway system, the cost of which is only partly offset by user fees such as tolls and gas taxes.
Also, consider that fossil fuel extractors and consumers are essentially paying nothing for the privilege of dumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the atmosphere, even though everyone is paying the cost in the form of climate disturbances, poor air quality, etc. And that when these major spills happen, the companies involved generally get off without paying significant damages (note that after years of litigation, Exxon ended up paying a tiny fraction of the total estimated damages from the Exxon Valdez spill - local fishing and tourism industries were left holding the bag).
Greener alternatives such as wind and solar could compete, if the true costs of fossil fuels were paid at the pump. But they're not.
To me, the underlying cause is that some disconnected individuals in a power hierarchy are taking irresponsible risks playing Russian Roulette with our environment.
Details on this and against it can be easily researched. If one takes a more distant perspective, it may become more clear - or not - who cares at the moment?
The California seafloor leaks are much larger. I don't think they know exactly how much, but this source quotes "8-80 Exxon Valdez spills", I would guess they mean annually. That's somewhere between 86.4 and 864 million gallons.
They're talking about the total volume of oil residue contained in the down-stream sediments in the seabed, deposited over an unknown period of time. And it seems like they're talking equivalent pre-biodegraded volume, but I'm not sure.
The statement about the rate of seepage was slightly further down:
There is an oil spill everyday at Coal Oil Point (COP), the natural seeps off Santa Barbara, where 20-25 tons of oil have leaked from the seafloor each day for the last several hundred thousand years.
25 tons/day * 7.3 bbl/ton * 42 gal/bbl = 7665 gallons/day.
That's tiny compared to this spill at 200,000 gal/day.
The enemies of Democracy are
The good news is that there will be a charity concert in New Orleans, so BP won't have to pay so much money to their victims.
If it ends up like Vladez oil spill BP won't have to pay anything. More than 20 years later the fish have not recovered and the fishermen have not been compensated. Heck, oil still persists, is still found. Large corporations laugh while going to the bank to make another deposit while the people pay.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
...nothing else even comes close to the energy density of oil.
Want to try again? Oil is definitely not at the top of the heap on energy density. I agree completely with you regarding it's importance and versatility and ubiquity but it's not the most energy dense substance out there.
To Crystal Meth while drilling!
There was a time when peak oil was an economic argument, but now it is firmly a doom-and-gloom, we're-killing-the-earth argument.
The use of fossil fuels is both an economic and an environmental issue. Just because more people are concerned about pollution that doesn't negate peak oil. Well, environmental issues become economic ones too. More than 20 years later the fish still have not recovered, nor have the fishermen been compensated, from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. Fishermen in Alabama and LA are already feeling the economic effects of the Gulf spill.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
But as I recall it was the liberal bias of all those GreenPeace types that killed it. So, it looks like liberal bias fucked us before and is coming back for seconds!
Except that ignores reality. Not even China, France, India, or Russia finds nuclear power profitable. Nuclear power appeals to state planners not businesses.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I expect you to be a big boy and find your own citation.
And what if there are none? Say for instance someone pulls something out of their ass, how will someone else find a citation supporting it? No, the one who makes a statement has the responsibility to back it up.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There have been suggestions that if this leak had happened in the Arctic, it could have an environmental impact for centuries, quite apart from being a lot more difficult to fix. I was wondering how the environmental impact compares with nuclear accidents. As a child, I remember reading of the Windscale leak poisoning pastures with radioactive iodine, so that a month's milk was thrown away. The Deepwater Horizon leak has already closed down shrimping and other fisheries for an extended period, with no end in sight.
Chernobyl, as I recall, has turned into a kind of wildlife refuge (disappointing legions of Farside fans with an absence of 3-eyed deer and size-legged wolves)
It was an act of god!
Let's see if the insurance companies can get their money back
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Sadly, BP should hope that things work out for it the way things worked out for ExxonMobile after the catastrophe of the Exxon Valdez.
Exxon had a drunk for a captain who crashed a poorly designed oil tanker causing one of the worst environmental disasters in history. The region's environment still has not recovered two decades later. But ExxonMobile sure has! ExxonMobile is the most profitable company in the world. From 2005-2009 the annual profit for ExxonMobile averaged $36 Billion!
The US Supreme Court was also generous enough a few years ago to reduce the punitive damages award against ExxonMobile for the Valdez from an original jury amount of $5 Billion down to $500 Million (about five days worth of profits).
from the Transpiration Security Agency posits that a North Korean sub with 21, otherwise homeless Saudi and Egypt nationals, attached the BP rig and sunk it.
Where is the smoking gun?
BP disperately needs an "Act of God" to mitigate the dead families claims and counter-suits of malphesense.
The Govenor of Louisiana, the gubernors of the Department of Interior and the Chief "burp" Executive on watch at the time "Bush-Baby" will have to answer about the Ca$h that BP payed them to grant, EXECPTIONS. ;)
OH BOY! This is the story that keep on giving!
That was no answer, at least for debating or otherwise trying to get someone to change what they believe. Fine if you don't want to persuade others you're right but if so then why speak at all?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
For Pete's sake, the guy was saying we should stop oil production to force people to use non-existent renewable energy.
Ever hear of geothermal? Solar? Wind? They all exist. And if they were given as much in subsidies as coal, nuclear power, and petroleum they would be producing a lot more energy.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's a storage medium. TANSTAAFL.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You are being disingenuous: there is a continuum between option 4 and options 2&3. And it is clear that we have to aim at some point on this continuum right now. That means raising the energy prices in a gradual and predictable manner starting now (heck -- we should have started 10-30 years ago, but wtf), re-investing every penny raised this way into cleaner energy sources.
Oh, and the price raise should be noticeable enough that it motivates us to spend less energy. If it doesn't change (a bit) our ways of life, then it ain't no good -- we are living unsustainably after all.
But meh.
Earth farts, gigantic brown sludge results.
I wonder if they've tried pumping some Imodium down...
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
By weight or volume?
It's by volume, in units of standard cubic feet [1] of produced gas per barrel [2] of oil produced (i.e. after the gas has escaped).
[1] "standard" meaning "at standard temperature and pressure"
[2] 1 barrel = 42 US gallons
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
You can if the contractor guarantees the work. How else can you rely on work done by someone installing new windows (or whatever)? After all, they are contracting and YOU contracted them to install the windows, so any guarantee has to come from you...
PS I think the reason you're so for this is that you're under the misapprehension that BP is a british company. But the CEO is USian and the branch that did the drilling is completely US.
Somewhere in the Gulf on Aircraft Carrier La Forshe: This is Richard Viagra for ZNN. Having failed to squelsh the errent oil leak on the bottom of the Gulf with the 100,000-ton brick, crack scientists at BP have come up with a plan to use a giant nuclear depth-charge to close off the leak. As one BP scientist put it [que tape] "... we gonna blow the shit out of diss fucker." This is Richard Viagra reporting for ZNN from the Aircraft Carrier La Forshe somewhere in the Gulf.
Seems to me that bleeding a small amount of oxygen into the oil spill cap and burning it like a torch in the collected oil would warm the contents up enough to allow them to flow to the surface. Oxygen tanks could be lowered pretty easily and the robots can be used to switch them out as they empty.
does the methane on the Discovery Horizon seabed floor need just the heated water from the engines on the ships above
to heat up and send it up the delivery pipes to the awaiting tankers at the surface? Will the methane hydrates expand
enough at 300 meters depth to be sent through an ocean floor pipeline?
Disaster is a great opportunity.
Since the energy represented in the methane hydrates is variously estimated at several hundreds to several THOUSANDS
of times the total energy needed - How can it be delivered?
Further drilling will undoubtedly reveal more hydrate.
http://www.killerinourmidst.com/methane%20and%20MHs2.html
at Woods Hole:
http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html
and
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/005785.html
The Japanese are big time into gas hydrate extraction. They have an excellent gas distribution network (everything that is not nuclear is powered by natural gas) and have huge hydrate resources off their coasts (both Pacific and Japan Sea sides). If they are successful in developing the extraction technology, they expect to be free from natural gas imports by 2015, which would boost their economy. As you may or may not know, the Japanese import all of their natural gas and oil from foreign sources. They will also license the technology to the Koreans and Chinese, who also have large hydrate resources off their coasts.
The Japanese are pursuing deep geothermal technology as well.
BTW, the Japanese have also developed more efficient methods of producing "syngas" (motor fuel) from natural gas. They built several pilot production plants in Iran in the late 90's. Iran has considerable natural gas resources, but so much much oil. Also, Japan and Iran have close commercial relationships with each other. So, if they start getting their natural gas from the hydrates, they will probably convert some of it into syngas for use as motor fuel. The Japanese pay more for their oil and natural gas because they have to pay in U.S. dollars rather than Yen (although this could change in the future).
That neither BP nor any other drilling outfit has the expertise or quality control to do this kind of a job right. They keep whining about how "hard" it is to do this kind of work. Maybe they should get into something easy like ditch-digging.
I imagine how that kind of attitude would go over well with my management. "It's just too hard" to be oncall for a week out of every three. And I fuck up badly enough that the entire company is in jeopardy, and it's "just too hard" for me to clean it up.
"I'm sorry, mr. Toad. I guess you should try something easier, like flipping burgers!"
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
So what are you tree huggers crying about? The oil is now more easily accessable after it's pouring out from under the sea bed.
When you drill a bore into anything, you are responsible for whatever comes out. This includes oil, aliens, or even the Dark One.
BP is working on the Seven seals right now, and will probably end up tainted by the Dark One. But maybe someone will come along later and cleanse the taint, or maybe just put in a relief well.
*Apologies to Robert Jordan*
Great! I'll start with you first and then pick three other people.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
How exactly do they get the oil out of the water? This type of incident has only happened twice in my lifetime and I was a bit young during the last one...for some reason I can only imagine a ship that intakes the oil while simultaneously cleaning the water, as if that were possible! How does it work, if at all?! I know, dumb, right?
See "The Jennifer Morgue" for details.
None of these are energy *sources*. They all take oil to manufacture...
I should know better than to argue with an AC but that's the most retarded argument I've heard in some time. Hydrogen is what powers the Sun and it in no way shape or form requires oil to be a source of energy. Without hydrogen, oil as we know it (along with everything else) doesn't exist. Oil is at it's root a product of photosynthesis which does not require any oil or other man-made product.
BP & their "partners" sure were quick on the finger-pointing blame-evasion dance, weren't they? Maybe drilling for something hazardous and poisonous which floats, (mostly) and is sticky, etc. etc. in WATER is a stupid idea. I guess we'll continue to allow it though, because we can put a man on the moon but we can't figure out how to get a person from a to b without fossil fuels. GAURSH!
That is such a ridiculous amount of BS.
1) The BOP design they used was suspected of failure at great depths due to hydrostatic pressures, in a Fed report from a few years ago.
2) There exists a super-BOP that would work but has not been used here because it is more expensive, so don't give me the "safety first" BS.
3) Other countries such as Norway and Brazil have procedures in place to test the BOP once installed. This would have found out that the BOP would fail but delays the detach by a day or two because the pipe sections need to be replaced. Care to guess if BP has done the BOP test ?
a Capitalist system is an unstable social construct that tends to slide into Corporativism.
Only if the rules for granting corporate charters are not observed. Corporate charters, which grant limited liability, were only granted when it served the common or public good. That is why the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and the British East India Company in 1600 were granted their corporate charters. They were both shipping companies and it was understood that international trade was positive, however shipping was a risky business. Ships, their cargo, crews, passengers, and the ships themselves were frequently lost due to bad weather or pirates. Without limited liability people did not want to risk everything they owned, including their homes, by investing in shipping. Those charters can be revoked though.
Thomas Jefferson warned about the Corporate Aristocracy, saying "I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of their country." Corporations no longer have to challenge our government, instead they buy the politicians who make the laws and the bureaucrats who enforce them. With a smaller, limited, government they wouldn't be able to do so.
I postulate that, given the way Politics (the rule setters), Power and Money interact, it is impossible to have a situation where the Players do not influence the Rules and furthermore, the bigger the player the more influence they have in setting the Rules.
That's true because of the size of government and it's regulations grows. Corporations use regulations, and often take part in writing those regulations, to limit their competition. For instance lawn care businesses like TruGreen lobby local governments to regulate lawn care businesses going so far as to require licenses. Hell, some places even regulate yard sales.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Um... no. No they would not.
Yes they would. Simple economics says that as the cost of something goes up people look for cheaper sources or reduces the amount needed. That has been proven throughout history, even if not by choice. And as today's conventional energy gets more expensive people will move to other sources.
Geothermal, while prevalent in some parts of the world, is not that big of a resource here. And most of the places where geothermal is available are national parks. Could you imagine the uproar if you tried to build a power plant at Yellowstone?
The only reason it is not big here, in the US, is because little has been done to develop it. And it is even used in New York City. I myself have proposed geothermal in Yellowstone, but you're right so called environmentalists even oppose offshore and onshore wind farms. "Not in my backyard!" Of course I'd want a Yellowstone geothermal power plant to be blended into the landscape and I'd love both solar panels and a wind turbine on my property.
Solar is nowhere near efficient enough to power the country. It can be a nice boost, hardly economic, and government subsidies are not enough to help. For starters, government subsidies exist
Wow! Solar power got $62 million for R&D. That's dwarfed by coal's $3.302 Billion in 2007 alone or Nuclear Power's $145 Billion over the years. "My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'" Wars are even started over oil.
There are also several tax breaks you can receive for "greening" your home, but it will never be enough to make it cost effective
Tell all those who build off the grid that it's not effective. Solar hot water has a payback period as short as 5 to 6 years, and the equipment lasts a lot longer. The payback for PV panels is much harder but estimates have been as low as 7 years and panels come with 20, 25, even 30 year warranties. Even pro-rated replacing equipment is cost competitive. Individually owned PVs aren't the only way to go solar either. The same publication you provide a link to your article, Science Daily, also has this article, Solar Power in Ontario Could Produce Almost as Much Power as All U.S. Nuclear Reactors, Studies Find. On large scales concentrated solar power may be more effective. Another article it has, Fossil-Fuel Subsidies Hurting Global Environment, Security, Study Finds.
Oh, and does he consider the subsidies conventional energy gets too in the study? Does he factor in the billions of dollars coal and nuclear power get? The only mention I see about them is where "he favors more state and federal funding for research and development." Personally I don't think government should be subsiding most of what it does, whether energy or farms or ...
Of course, as the Kennedys showed us, some people don't like the way they look. You remember Ted Kennedy, right? That big green liberal that BLOCKED wind power because it might disrupt the view from some of his mansions?
I don't know how many tymes I commented, but I didn't find any, I posted about how Kennedy or that NIMBY environmentalists opposed wind farm o
Should there be a Law?