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Gulf Gusher Worst Case Scenario
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a listing of several scientific and economic guides for estimating the volume of flow of the leak in the Gulf of Mexico erupting at a rate of somewhere around 1 million barrels per day. A new video released shows the largest hole spewing oil and natural gas from an aperture 5 feet in diameter at a rate of approximately 4 barrels per second. The oil coming up through 5,000 feet of pressurized salt water acts like a fractionating column. What you see on the surface is just around 20% of what is actually underneath the approximate 9,000 square miles of slick on the surface. The natural gas doesn't bubble to the top but gets suspended in the water, depleting the oxygen from the water. BP would not have been celebrating with execs on the rig just prior to the explosion if it had not been capable producing at least 500,000 barrels per day — under control. If the rock gave way due to the out-of-control gushing (or due to a nuke being detonated to contain the leak), it could become a Yellowstone Caldera type event, except from below a mile of sea, with a 1/4-mile opening, with up to 150,000 psi of oil and natural gas behind it, from a reserve nearly as large as the Gulf of Mexico containing trillions of barrels of oil. That would be an Earth extinction event."
We're all going to die!
According to my meticulous, scientific and unbiassed calculations, my estimate of the number of gallons of oil spewing from the ground in the gulf is: too many.
Wasn't this the movie that killed John Cusak's career?
I'll wait for the movie. Thank you.
This is a stolen sig.
More's the pity.
"Extinction" is a very high bar to clear, except for losers like panda bears that are large enough to shoot and barely capable of reproducing without assistance.
However, "Ecological and social shifts leading to grinding, nigh-unendurable; but nowhere near fatal enough to kill you quickly and be done with it" is very much more common and plausible.
Unless we start fucking around with self-replicating strangelets, or largish black holes, or other really exotic stuff, "extinction" is not a serious risk. Even nukes would require some real doing. Unfortunately, though, pushing yourself into "and the living shall envy the dead" territory is typically easier than killing yourself off. Even fairly modest ecological disruption could do the bottom billion or so in(and one can hardly expect that they'll go quietly), and make things pretty unpleasant for the remainder.
We started at 5,000 barrels a day, then 20, 50 and 100,000 barrels a day. Yesterday I saw a figure quoted at 200,000, today I saw 210,000
But 1 million barrels a day? That's almost three full days ahead of schedule for the media. Didn't Slashdot get the memo?
Also whoever greenlighted this article needs to get fired for releasing such a panic-y and fear inducing article to the front page.
moox. for a new generation.
4 BPS*24 hrs/day*60min/hr*60sec/min = 345 600 barrels per day, not 1 million.b
Hey, so do I, and I call bullshit fearmongering on the Yellowstone-like caldera unless someone else chimes in.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
is there any other way to stress the outright critical nature of this disaster? scrubbing seagulls and dancing around in congressional hearings isnt working. We need to pick up the pace, or we risk an entire gulf coast with an ecosystem that resembles a wal-mart parking lot. Shrimp and seafood will become a rather distant memory for the states.
Good people go to bed earlier.
From the cited web page:
Paul Noel, 52, works as Software Engineer (as Contractor) for the US Army at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. He has a vast experience base including education across a wide area of technical skills and sciences. He supplies technical expertise in all areas required for new products development associated with the US Army office he works in. He supplies extensive expertise in understanding the Oil and Gas industry as well.
Born in Lynnwood Washington, he came to Huntsville Alabama, when his father moved to be part of NASA's effort to put men on the moon. Neal Armstrong may have gotten the ride, but his father's computers did the driving.
Paul is also a founding member of the New Energy Congress.
So..this guy has no training on physics, geology, chemestry. He __says__ he supplies extensive expertise in oil indusry, but how exactly? Software engineering?
I'm sorry, but I'm not going to get too freaked out by what this man says. If I can get some supporting information from a geologist I'll then worry.
So, how come Laissez-Faire, don't-tell-corporations-how-to-run-themselves, deregulation didn't stop this from happening? It doesn't make any sense! I mean BP is an oil company. Can you guys help me blame this on Big Government?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Did this ever get green lit?
Put your hands up, and step slowly away from the crack pipe....
...from a reserve nearly as large as the Gulf of Mexico containing trillions of barrels of oil
hmmm..I thought we passed peak oil? Yes, this leak/accident is absolutely horrendous and should be prevented from happening in future at all costs.
But which is it...has it already peaked, or 'trillions of barrels' left?
what i like is how the linked article quotes the bible,
Revelation 8:8: "The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze [appearance of the burning rig and slick], was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed."
neat.
...and what are his credentials? It says he's a SW engineer with expereince across many technical areas, but I still dont' see how that makes him an expert on estimating flow volumes, etc. He doens't provide sources or backup anything he says. It comes off more as fear-mongering than anything else, especially seeing as he even quotes bible verses.
There aren't 'trillions' of barrels under this particular well. It's not like collapsing this well would cause all the other wells to collapse too. And as far as I know, the likelihood of this deposit collapsing is very, very low; unmeasurably low.
So far, oil isn't even washing up on beaches in any appreciable way. A huge portion of the area is an oxygen-depleted, polluted 'dead zone' anyway because of the Mississippi. Last I checked, only -two- birds had been collected for cleaning. Only about 4% of the gulf is blocked-off from fishing, and the larger fisheries aren't even expecting much damage, they're taking a 'wait and see' stance.
Still, (as of yet) clean beaches and untainted food seem to scare consumers away from vacations and shrimp, not because there's a risk, but because most consumers are total alarmist bozos, just like most career-environmentalists.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
use Volkswagen beetles, not LOCs.
Sweet informative mod.
I think that the second half of this post says that that the oil leak is bad, or could cause the end of the world, or something. However, it's such a gusher of spastic sentence fragments that I can't quite be certain.
Someone should drop a containment dome over this guy's keyboard until he's learned to organize his thoughts.
This article is not 'reporting' and should not be presented as 'news', not even news for nerds, stuff that matters.
There are some very interesting details, things that might perhaps be facts, but after presenting a string of them they are always followed with utterly unsubstantiated wild ass guesses that claim to be absolute facts and firmly grounded in expert opinion etc etc. While the Wild Ass Guesses may actually be true, they aren't facts, and presenting them as facts makes it impossible to believe any of the other information presented. At the end of the article all of this much vaunted expertise that the guesses are based on turns out to be this guy is some random programmer with a pond in his back yard.
This topic definitely needs some real reporting, but this sort hysterical speculation (includes quoting Revelations and speculating on this being an "Earth Extinction" event under the general premise of "they said this couldn't happen but it did so this other thing that also can't happen is obviously worth speculating about now") is downright irresponsible. Even if the premise that the news is massively underreporting the size of the spill is true, this is not the way to correct it.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
Maybe the environmentalists are aliens with lifespans of thousands of years?
The article seems to be inaccurate in at least one respect, and one comment calls the author on it: It's not a 5-foot diameter pipe. Various sources say it's either 12-inch or 21-inch, but not five feet. One source says the largest riser pipe made is 21-inches in diameter.
[place clever signature here]
If we keep dumping it into the ocean, we'll run out...
(My sense of "this is a disgusting natural disaster that we need to take seriously and solve now" lost its battle with my sense of "I can be a smartass and make a joke". Sorry...)
This phrase strikes me as absolute and unnecessary FUD. The message is that if BP tries Russia's "mini-nuke" solution, which worked 5 out of 6 times tried, disregarding the fact that I don't believe it is currently even being considered, that we may all very well DIE. The oil spill is bad enough, let's not give a voice to "anonymous Chicken Littles".
Seriously, it must be great stuff.
"it could become a Yellowstone Caldera type event, except from below a mile of sea, with a 1/4-mile opening, with up to 150,000 psi of oil and natural gas behind it, from a reserve nearly as large as the Gulf of Mexico containing trillions of barrels of oil. That would be an Earth extinction event."
Hard geopressure for that reservoir would be under 20,000 psi (~1 psi per foot of depth)
Caldera collapses are much more energetic than anything you can imagine even with what you're smoking. Try 100,000 times Mt St Helens.
Crude is measured in 42 gallon barrels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_per_day
supports the estimates closer to 1 million barrels per day erupting from this hole BP popped in the ocean floor that contains trillions of barrels of oil and natural gas.
Anyone who starts an article out with a misstatement like that is immediately deemd not credible. If there were "trillions" of bbls of oil at that well (or even in the gulf of Mexico) we would never need to import a drop again and in fact would be the largest holder of oil in the world. S. Arabia has 270 billion bbl proven reserves.
if we take the author of this tripe and put him on the bottom of the ocean then let him continue to blow the hot air out of his ass as he's doing here.
Seriously ... the whole gulf of mexico is going to explode into an oil gusher?
And people are believing it?
Seriously, when the hell did everyone turn off their freaking common sense?
The freaking math doesn't even add up in this story. Its claiming a million gallons a day gushing, but at 4 barrels per second, you don't get to a million in one day. You don't even get to the 500k that BP would be so happy about, you get 345.6k/day. So you need a good 6BPS from everything else to start hitting a million gallons a day. Not the case. Of course he contridicts himself in his own article with at one point saying 500k and at another saying 1m.
He refers to chemicals added to the well head the speed up the fracturing process ... to bad BP isn't pumping those chemicals into the head anymore so thats just complete bullshit.
He compares the oil slick to his back yard pond ... except it doesn't work that way. The oil spreads out rapidly to cover as much surface area as it can, thats what happens when you have a lighter liquid on top of a heavier liquid, it spreads out to get as close to the top as it possibly can. It doesn't stay in one little column. Thats why buoys can be left on the surface to contain it, cause its ON THE SURFACE ONLY.
So the current hole is spewing at 70k psi he claims ( I won't argue it, I'm too lazy to look for facts, just like him ) but when the entire thing 'releases' in his extinction event, its going to jump to 150k psi ... Someone doesn't understand hydrolics very well. The pressure doesn't get greater when you apply it to a larger area, it gets lower as the same force is spread out over a larger area. You have to increase the energy in the system to actually get more out, all you can do otherwise is exchange speed for pressure and vice versa
A hell of a lot less than the oil would of, fractions of whats contained in the oil. He has no concept of how much energy is contained in oil and how efficient of a storage mechanism that it is.
I could go on, but whats the point. This is a retarded story written by an idiot rambling about stuff he doesn't know anything about. Is it an environmental disaster? Yes. Is the gulf coast going to suffer for a while and have a large loss of life? Certainly. Will I notice anything more than a higher gas price at the pump? No. Will it recover? Yes, in a few short years at most. Its bad that this happened, its bad that its still spewing oil, but any moron who buys into this article needs to lock themselves in a bomb shelter and wait for 2012 to kill as all cause thats just as logical and likely to happen.
Finally, I'm really lazy I admit, but can someone tell me if theres a way to ignore timothy and kdawson stories? Since they obviously are going to keep letting idiots qualify as editors I'd hope that CmdrTaco has given us an opt out method at least.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Given the time wasting charade / shell game BP is playing with solutions: A Box, A hat, Now a sippy straw.
And the variability and increasing magnitude of the different numbers they provided. Let alone news surface photos that seem to be polarized not to show oil sheen. Or any admission of the massive undersea spread of oil and gas. (oil blobs are found in subsurface samples far from the surface slick). (In fact their continuous sub-sea dispersant release is designed to do exactly that)
I would tend to believe misinformed internet nutjob numbers (with some linear adjustment) vs corporate PR swindled digits.
Environmentalists with credentials like the author of that idiotic article. I actually had someone tell me he was an environmentalist when I asked what he did. And when I asked what sciences he studied in university, turned out he is a history major. How could that possibly help? Just reading something other scientists have published does not make you a scientist!
Too many obnoxious people describe themselves to be environmentalists because that's the cool thing to do now. When you read a claim made by someone, see what their credentials are. David Suzuki and David Attenborough for example are proper environmentalists. The guy who couldn't beat Bush in an election however, quoting JC, is not.
PS: Even though my two examples' name were David, not all actual environmentalists are named that.
Obviously, one can't easily plug the hole. Now don't tell me that there on earth is NO device that would just connect to the broken pipe and let the oil flow somewhere where we want to see it? Yes, I mean a pipe.
I know that the connection needs a bit of engineering and luck, but for me it still seems several times easier than stopping the flow.
Okay, 150,000PSI is 10,444 atmospheres of pressure. Granite has an ultimate compressive strength of around 2775 atmospheres. In other words, at 10K atmospheres, granite would be flowing like water. There's no possible way the oil is coming out at that pressure. And if it was, it sure as heck would be flowing faster than 4 bbl/s. This guy is tossing out some serious BS numbers.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
In the worst case, US always can let that happen (or even force it) and declare their independence from foreign energy sources. Why chase the elluding nuclear fussion technology if will have almost free and almost limitless amount of oil filling all the gulf?
Some here are using this as an excuse to push for new government regulation and claim that Laissez-Faire economics does not work. I believe increased government regulation and protection has actually contributed to the problem of excessive risks being taken by many, including BP. Failure is no longer feared because of government bailouts. Remove the bailouts, and fear of failure will keep risks better controlled.
As far as this specific failure, this kind of highly unlikely failure is what insurance was invented for. Government regulations didn't stop this from happening. The government can only regulate and control that which it foresees. This usually means it adds regulations *after* something bad happens. Thus governments tend to be reactive.
At any rate, existing law covers this type of situation just fine. The harmed governments, industries, companies, and individuals will sue and win large settlements from BP and its insurers. Losses due to payments and increased insurance costs will hit the share price, punishing the owners (shareholders) of BP for what has happened. None of this requires new regulation. In fact, any new regulation will result in punishment being distributed beyond BP to others who were not responsible. This will likely lead to increased prices at the pump, which will then mean you and I are the ones being punished. Is this the fairness you propose?
Could a mountain of solid CO2 be lowered onto the wellhead? Solid CO2 is quite a bit denser than water, so it should sink and stay down. Could a big enough block of CO2 lower the temp of the wellhead enough to freeze the oil, thereby stopping the leak, at least until the CO2 melts? If it could last a day, would that be enough time to get another block of CO2 ready, and another the next day, and so on, until the relief well is ready?
Any other way to freeze it shut?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
After all, he is a software guy. MatLab in the wrong hands can virtually destroy the world.
Barrels, gallons...metrics schmetrics. All I know is that's one large milkshake!
If you eat lobsters and crab from the gulf, you deserve what you get, even without the spill :)
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
... but I think he's right on one point: It's probably dumping out a lot more than 5,000 barrels a day. I'll wait until this gets peer reviewed before I start choosing a number between 5000, 200k, 500k, or 1M barrels a day.
Texas, Schmexas. I live in Alaska, which if cut in half, would make Texas the third largest state in the country :D
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
1 million Bbl per day is a pretty absurd number. A single well producing 500k bbl per day would be pretty absurd. If there's a trillion bbl of oil down there then how come we import from the Middle East?
Wherever this article got its numbers from they are pure fantasy.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
He's the "Founder and CEO of PES Network, Inc. and the New Energy Congress"
An alternative energy technology focal point - Perendev Motors, new-fangled high-efficiency spark plugs, dubious claims, and pseudo-science.
http://www.pureenergysystems.com/about/personnel/SterlingDAllan/
"What do you know about ELE?"
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Wait. There's that much oil there? I thought the environmentalists said we needed to find other power sources because we were going to run out of oil soon.
Oh boy.
Considering the exponentially increasing demand for oil, this was a drop in the bucket.
We can drill until we're blue in the face and we'll never find enough oil to keep prices where they are at now.
There are over 7 billion people in the World who want to live like us Americans. We, all 300 million of us, use roughly 25% of the World's oil.
So, tell me how those numbers can work?
Personally, even if there was enough oil to keep up I wouldn't want it - I'm tired of having to deal with smog 3 months out of the year.
Clean energy to keep my eyes from burning and coughing up flem during the Summers. I want to enjoy summer again!
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Expect $20 a gallon gasoline in the not too distant future.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
...about how many nuke plants we could have had in operation by now had it not been for the anti-nuke activists.
It could have been the case that offshore drilling wouldn't even have been required.
We could have been well on the way to electric transportation infrastructure.
But, we'll never know now.
Thanks anti-nuke wackos.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
As far as I can tell, this idea that somehow this could become a supervolcano and an extinction event seems completely unsupported by the AC's post...
So please, could I have one cite from a scientist even possibly suggesting that? What was said by the software engineer in the examiner blog isn't supported by anything other than his assertion... and only really by his metaphor of calling it a volcano of oil.
I call this talking out of his ass unless more can be presented.
Anyone seen my low uid? last seen 10 years ago while panning the #@$# out of Taco's 'web based discussion system'
We only have enough oil for 10-20 years more.
Call me cynical, but I've been hearing that for the last 30 years.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Umm...85million * 365 = ~31billion/year. I think you missed a few zeroes here or there. One trillion barrels should last for about 32 years.
General fail: proof by hyperbole. LOOK AT THIS HUGE OIL SLICK HOW CAN YOU SAY IT'S 5000 BARRELS A DAY THAT'S CRAZY! is not a persuasive argument.
Specific fail: Pipe is not 5 feet in diameter.
here's a photo of the pipe with a wrench for scale -- BP says the wrench is a foot long. So accounting for perspective, the pipe is a bit more than a foot in diameter. (BP says the outer diameter of the riser pipe was 21" diameter when installed, but it's gotten a bit squished since then.)
Video shows the pipe about half full of oil, so the cross-sectional area of the flow is 1/2 * pi * (7 inches)^2 = 0.05 meters^2.
By following the motion of the blobs and plumes of oil, the flow speed seems to be about 1 meter/second. Flow rate = velocity * area = 0.04 m^3/s, or 0.4 barrels/second.
This is 27,000 barrels per day -- about 5 times BP's estimates, but an order of magnitude less than the article claims.
The most amazing thing about the Jersey Devil is how it appears fierce, and then utterly vanishes once they playoffs start.
--saint
Assuming the following:
Cost to drill well and get oil to coastal refinery: $1 Bn
Daily cost to run the well and pump oil to refinery: $150 K
Average value of oil over repayment period: $85 / barrel
Prevailing Interest Rate (opportunity cost of using the cash to drill and run the well): 10% -- this roughly BP's return-on-assets for 2010
Years to repay: 3
We can figure that the well would have to produce around 16K to 17K barrels per day to pay for itself at the end of 3 years of operation.
These numbers are still rough, but it gets us in the ballpark. 5 years takes you to 13K barrels per day. 2 years is about 20K barrels per day.
If you assume that the well could expel 2x to 3x per day than a controlled well, you get a range of 26k to 60k barrels per day being spewed into the gulf.
That's 1.8M US gallons of oil per day.
Someone else needs to take over from here. How many gallons of water does a gallon of oil pollute in this scenario? 100 gallons of water plluted per gallon of oil?
That means 180M gallons of water polluted per day. Or 18B gallons of water polluted by the end of 100 days when we expect the oil to stop flowing due to the new well being drilled.
If that is polluting the water to a depth of 100 feet and there are 7.5 gallons of water per cubic foot, you get almost 1 square mile of water polluted to a depth of 100 feet. But we already know that the slick is over 10,000 square miles on the surface. Either the depth of the pollution is far less than 100 feet or the gallons of oil being spewed is far greater than 10's of 1000's of gallons per day and is well into the 100's of thousands of gallons per day range.
In any case TFA's reasoning about the tar suspended in the water seems to be bourne out by the fact that there are many areas where the surface slick has not reached the shore but there are tall balls washing up on it.
I would guess that TFA is generally correct and that what we are facing is, in fact, a "volcano" of oil.
The population is greatly decreased,
and now the odds are greatly increased,
that I may someday get a chance
to kiss your lips.
I thank the Lord each day,
for the Apocalypse.
Folks are mostly disfigured or dead,
but sugar I won't let it go to my head
My Mammas face has dripped down into the dirt,
but I'm still chasing chittlins, whiskey and skirt.
current state, durability, immunity, strength of homo sapiens sapiens bodies are not able to cope up with going fully medieval in lifestyle, leave aside going neolithic or caveman. in many respects, including but not limited to herd immunity.
and yea, that would be an extinction level event, if we were forced back to middle ages.
Read radical news here
What I have been wondering about lately is how long we will have sufficient oil to meet our needs. I have seen estimates for current world wide oil consumption at 88 million barrels a day. It is harder to figure out world reserves. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves) shows 1.2 trillion barrels from the top seventeen oil reserves. That is 37 years. At our current rate of progress, I think it is fair to assume our daily usage is headed upwards. I don't know what our current daily production capacity is capable of. I assume that is not much more than 88 million barrels a day or there wouldn't be so much talk about peak-oil. If we are at peak-oil, then it appears that in the very near future we will not be able to produce 88 million barrels a day anymore. Thus, we will start running into problems due to lack of sufficient oil. If oil production falls to say 60 million barrels a day, then 1.2 trillion barrels lasts 54 years. So oil will be around a little longer, but not in sufficient quantities. I realize there is more oil to be found in the deep oceans, but this oil will be hard to get. Is the human race totally screwed in the next 30 to 50 years do to lack of oil? Or am I missing something big here? I used to assume that as oil started to run low that its price would go up, perhaps dramatically. However, the last time gas hit $160 a barrel the economy crashed and consumed less oil, and oil fell to $30. It is therefore possible to imagine that oil prices will not actually increase as oil runs out, because the economy will be ruined. Another example of this is helium. I hear we are running out of helium. Helium is necessary for science and research and yet, it is still cheap enough to be used to fill birthday balloons. Will we run out of helium, while all the while the price is dirt cheap?
BP in one of its early environmental impact statements filed with the U.S. government gave something like 600,000 barrels a day as a worse case before the well was drilled.
So, relax everyone. It is only able to dump 600,000 barrels of oil a day according to BP.
Living in Chile
If that well was capable of 1Mbpd BP would have been holding more than a party for a safety record - they would have been giving thanks to their chosen deity for a cast iron miracle.
NO single well ever produces that volume of oil, ever. We are talking about 10,000 bpd if BP were really lucky.
What the hell is this article doing being pushed to the front page? Its pretty obvious that most people haven't got the faintest clue about oil exploration if this isn't just laughed at as an onion article.
Stand back! I'm going to try Science!!!
We're going to be calculating flow for a well, guessing a few variables, which I'll explain are guesses. This math is from Production Optimization Using Nodal Analysis by H Dale Beggs, c. 1991.
Assumptions
The well is a saturated reservoir - This means there is no gas cap and that oil is saturated with oil, providing additional lift. I feel that initial reservoir conditions, this is a safe assumption.
The well has been continuously accessing new reservoir without reaching a fault or boundary - This is a very unlikely assumption, but makes my math a lot easier, as it assumes a steady-state flow. The well probably reached a boundary and saw an associated decrease in flow of almost 1/2 in the first week, which decreased again at the next boundary, etc.
Flow is in a bubble flow state - Again, this is a safe assumption in a newly tapped saturated reservoir.
Variables
d - pipe diameter, which I'm going to say is 3" pipe (2.441" ID) which is an ID of 0.0620014 m
mu- viscosity, which I'm guessing is 0.05 kg/m-sec, and this is a wild-ass guess, but in the dense oil range.
rho - density, which I'm guessing is 1000 kg/m^3, which is again, a wild-ass guess, but in the dense oil range.
Pres - the reservoir pressure. Again, we throw out a number, say... 18,000 psi. This is proprietary knowledge like the last two data points and is also a wild-ass scientific guess. If you have a better number, please plug it in and redo the math.Actually if anyone can supply *any* of these numbers, please do so.
Pout - the pressure at the end of the pipe. 5000 ft of water is about 2884 psi of back pressure.
delta_P - the pressure drop between reservoir and fluid release from the pipe. Based on the above, 15, 116 psi, which is 104, 221 kPa.
V - velocity of flow (m/s)
f - dimensionless friction, and this is where I'm really going to cheat. I'm calling f = 0.004 based on 3-inch new steel based on a table lookup
L - pipe length, approximately 13,000 ft is 3962.4 meters
Equations
delta_p = (f rho V^2 L)/(2 gc d)
Actual Work
104,221 kPa = 104,221 N/m^2 = (f rho V^2 L)/(2 gc d)
104,221 N/m^2 = ((0.004) (1000)(V^2)(3962.4))/((2) (1) (0.0620014))
104,221 = 127,816 V^2
V^2 = 0.8154 m^2/s^2
V = 0.903 m/s
with an diameter of 0.0620014 m, the area is 0.049m^2, and the flow is 0.044 m^3 per second.
This is 0.276751674 bbl/s, and there are 86,400 seconds per day.
This is approximately 23,907bbl/day of oil.
So there is a quick, back of the envelope guess of the immediate flow from the reservoir, based on many guesses. Concerns about the environment are left as an exercise to the reader.
The article claims that the pipe diameter of the leaking pipe is five feet. I have trouble believing this. I haven't been able to find a good source for the actual pipe diameter, however. Anyone know a reliable source for this information?
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Does anyone know if BP, or anyone else, is paying the government for the oil that they have extracted from the ground?
I'm sure the lease for the rig includes a $.0x/barrel-extracted. I don't see that the fact it's not going to BP's use should matter. "they" have caused oil to be extracted: it's lost to future extractors... pay up. (in addition to the cleanup costs.)
He may be a software engineer, but I'm retired from the oil business. Where did he get that the pipes are 5 feet in diameter? What a moron. Drill pipe diameters are around 8 inches MAX outside diameter, many much smaller than that. I don't know where his "trained eye" comes from, but it isn't from drilling. Yes, this field might produce as much as 500,000 barrels per day, if SCORES of wells are drilled. This is an exploration well, to boot. You drill enough of a hole to see what's there, cap it, and let the production rigs come in later.
A fractionating column? Give me a break. He's comparing the high pressure and cold water at 5000 feet deep to a hot distillation device?
Oh wait, this is Slashdot. Never mind. Put on your tinfoil hats and return to what you were doing.
Computer guy comes up with his own number. NPR just said a quarter million a day.
When the losses impact the general public (not just willingly participating investors and customers who voluntarily chose to take the risks of being an investor or customer of the corporate entity), the general public still bears the damage costs if the company goes BK due to causing damages well in excess of its true assets.
It would seem to make sense to require companies to post bonds and/or dependable insurance and/or maintain sufficient assets to cover the damage they can cause to the general public in worst case disasters. Of course, this is impractical in some cases (for example, the worst possible scenario for multiple simultaneous nuclear power plant disasters, while HIGHLY unlikely, could cause an enormous amount of long term damage -- well beyond what a single company who owned all the failed power plants can have the assets to cover). In some cases, this leads to government mandated "risk pools", sometimes funded by mandatory industry "contributions", with liability caps for individual companies.
However, it's important to note that individuals, not just corporations, rarely are able to fulfill their obligations to compensate victims for "worst case damages" arising from their actions. Therefore, one should be very careful before complaining about "corporate responsibility" in such cases.
Consider that a "really bad case" auto accident can result in damages in the range of (present value) tens of millions of USD. Consider, for example, an accident where the "not at fault" car had two young and highly skilled and compensated parents in the front seat and seventeen year old twins (both very smart and with bright futures having just completed their second year at Harvard with stellar performance) in the back seat. In the accident, all four individuals suffer substantial permanent but non-fatal brain damage and are all rendered quadriplegic. All four require 7x24 care for the rest of their lives and lost the ability to ever perform work for meaningful compensation. The damages include:
So, I think fairly conservatively, we have $25M+$50M+$20M = $95M in damages.
/.er's, ask yourselves: Do you have assets or insurance to compensate for the damages you caused in such a case? I would wager that over 95% of those reading this have to answer "NO".
/.ers who even think of such things (whi
Knowing that it's conceivable that anyone could cause such an accident (even a pedestrian inadvertently crossing a street against a red light could cause the driver of our unfortunate family's car to swerve and lose control resulting in this accident -- so even people who only walk to mass transit could be liable for this case), fellow
Indeed, I'll bet the vast majority of
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
The fearmongering about the amount of oil that is spilling is getting seriously stupid.
I read it on the internet so it has to be true, dammit! :)
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Damn it. I should not post while distracted.
Now excuse me while I go work out these computations for the next Mars Lander program...
1 trillion barrels of oil is about 3 months of world consumption at current rates.
Wow, I had no idea the world was going to run out of oil in 3 months, given that the total estimate of proven and future oil reserves is less than 1 trillion barrels.
1 trillion barrels of oil would last 11,764 days, or 32 years at a consumption rate of 85 million barrels of oil per day.
10 trillion barrels and there is no energy crisis, we're set for a couple hundred years.
Large numbers are hard to comprehend without a reference point.
Indeed. Or arithmetic either. Where the hell do you come up with 90 days? Assuming you just forgot three zeros, you get 11 days, not 90. How did you manage that? I try going backwards, but I just hit a brick wall - 85 million times 90 (3 months) is 7.65 billion, where did your math come from?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Maybe you meant 1 billion in 3 months. At that rate it would take about 30 years to hit 1 trillion barrels.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
I'm getting confused with all those barrels, feet, miles and psis. How much is all that in Burmese units?
If you fucking hate us so much, stop eating our McDonalds, stop wearing our Levi's, stop watching our MTV (shit, we don't even watch it anymore), and while you're at it, you can stop using the global communication networks we've paid for. Summary: you hate us because you want to be us. You will stop hating us when you wake up and realize you are already us, and that the extravagant American lifestyle you envy does not exist anywhere except on your TVs.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Actually we knew the levees could break, and what would happen if they did. People just discounted the likelihood of such a hurricane hit, as they often do with bad things (i.e. not wearing seatbelts because you don't think you'll get in a car accident, etc). I still have pint glasses from the Bulldog in New Orleans with "Tourist Information" written on them. One of the bits of information is, "If the levees break, everyone will die. Nobody seems very concerned about this."
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
I've been to the shipyards myself (it's about the only exciting thing in all of Mississippi in route to Florida by car) and sailed between oil rigs - hell, I damn near hit about 10 of them off the coast of Texas at night. Traveling in a straight line from Galveston to Corpus Christi you're bound to run into a few. They're supposed to have sirens and lights but sometimes those break. It by no means makes me an expert on them, except that I know there's an awful lot of them in the Gulf.
moox. for a new generation.
The oil isn't mainly leaking from the drill hole, it's leaking from a pipe; that's why the flow rate is considerably lower than what the platform would have yielded. And the drill hole is not 5 ft in diameter anyway.
Furthermore, we're not talking about a thin layer of rock, we're talking about 3 miles of rock (under 1 mile of water). That's not going to just collapse because there's a small hole in it.
Yes, the oil spill is bad, and, yes, it will kill many animals. BP was careless and should be held responsible. And people should be prudent while stopping it. But it isn't the end of the world.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
4 * 60 * 60 * 24 = 345 600 bbs per day about 1/3 of a millioin, but still a very big number.
Was this taken from the maximum estimates of the flow rate or ??
I think that PB should be taxed on our oil that is being squandered.
Nate
But wait! What about peak oil? I thought the earth was running out of oil? Once the last few drops of this puny "gusher" have bubbled out, the world will shudder and all the SUVs will coast to a stop.
As this disaster shows, oil is getting hard to reach. BP wasn't drilling there for the fun of it. They would have much preffered a simple oil rig on land, but those resources are running out. There is more oil, but it is getting harder and harder to reach while at the same time demand keeps going up. This means that unless something changes, supply and demand could cross.
It is also reasonable to presume that the oil reserves are limited, we know the method by which it was created is not infinite or renawable (not at the rate we consume it anyway), so going with current estimates we can predict roughly when we will start running out, NOT because all oil will be gone, but because what remains will be so costly to get that it is no longer affordable. Only after oil has become far to expensive to extract will it ever possibly run out. Simply put, when it costs the same as gold to extract, we can't be running petrol cars anymore.
But to keep it simple for the press, peak oil == running out.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As a Earth Science major and having worked in the Geo-sciences arena for 20 years, I can say this article is so far off base, I can't believe it was elevated to being posted on Slashdot. There is no way possible for a Yellowstone type eruption. That is just straight up bullshit. Sure there is a significant amount of pressure, but not of volcanic proportions. This article should be redacted from the Slashdot site!
Heh. Where's a boy and his flying snake when you need them?
1. Upper management tells middle management to follow the rules ...but also sets goals that can't be met unless middle management breaks said rules
2.
3. When shit happens, blame middle management for not following the rules
4. In fact, sue the fuck out of the middle management yourself for defaming the company and costing the owners revenue
Hold on to your hat, the article itself is worse. There is not one single completely true statement that I was able to find, fixing the grammar of the summary is the least of the editor's problems on this one.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
The problem with undergraduate degrees, you are not required to add to the pool of human knowledge. PhDs are trained to do research. In fact, they must do original research and defend it in order to get the degree. It is then scholarly work for the rest of their career and they are judged by that work. It is a whole different ballgame. Anybody can read a book and declare they are an expert. There is no such thing as expertise by association.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1251337&cid=28164237
Seek therapy.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
Seriously?
I mean are you really going to rush breathlessly to the defense of a breathless guy with only a tenuous connection to the science and engineering involved in this disaster? One who can't even spell/fact check his own friggin' tag-line? When he's name-dropping? About friggin' astronauts? That his dad supposedly got to the moon?
Or did I miss the legendary but forgotten Apollo astronaut, "NEAL" Armstrong somewhere in all the ridiculous hype around NEIL Alden Armstrong?
Dude, you need to turn in your nerd card.
Steve -- If you have to call it a system, you don't know what it is.
Force BP to make an offer to it's competitors - if they can fix it before BP - they can have exclusive rights to the well and BP will still be held responsible for the cleanup effort.
The research on Asphalt Volcanoes is so timely. So much so, that the wikipedia article referred in parent was created on the April 30th this year. Barely two weeks ago. Maybe a bit too timely, I am afraid.
But to leave uncanny coincidence aside, there is a crucial bit of the information missing in the wikipedia article: how does nature's own Asphalt volcano compare with the human's one?
Q: What's purple and works from home? A: A non-Abelian group. (It doesn't commute.)
... beard, sandles and feels more comfortable hanging around with other guys. Cleary the bible writers got confused between carpenter and programmer - easy done.
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
Give the guy a break. Mispelling, all caps, bad punctuation, is all common among nerds. It should be seen as certification, not discrediting. Some of the most brilliant people are awful spellers. They were to busy imaging ways to invent the next wigget to worry about how to spell widget.
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
Would it'd be funny if it were gushing 1000's of barrels of monkeys per day?
Until we ran out of bananas...
~yes, we have no bananas~
So the cut-in-half response should have come from someone from South Carolina?
Texas - that wonderful state allowed, at a whim, to divide itself by five and suddenly become a senate powerhouse.
It's not a sinister plot by the Evil Liberal Conspiracy, nor is it the result of some sinister plot by oil & coal companies. The simple truth is that nuclear plants are not economically viable without an enormous amount of financial assistance from the government. If oil & coal prices go up enough, eventually nuclear power plants will become economically viable, but right now they're not.
...does this estimate factor in the large amount of dispersants used? Not all the oil that spewed out of the oil volcano ended up in the slick we see on the surface.
Just to update this post. The Miami Herald reports the pipe in 21 inches in diameter.
Why isn't some tycoon plugging it and putting a pipe in it?
Ooh, snap! That's cold!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
So before you go jumping all over this story and dismissing things, do some digging. You just might find out that he is actually far ahead of the curve. He knows as much as most industry experts. The difference? He's not afraid to talk.
Willingness to talk about a subject is usually inversely proportional to the true depth of knowledge on that subject.
licet differant, aequabitur
My schooling including graduate work was in the biological sciences. My career is in renewable energy. The college traning has been helpful; but not having a college degree in one's area of professional interest does not disqualify one from being able to learn and become very knowledgeable in a field. The experts in the oil industry are not talking. They are cowards.
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
You had the gall to claim he is a expert because of what his father did. It is like debating a child. Your mental skills are not intact. Get some help.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
Hmmm. What specifically do you base that conclusion on?
licet differant, aequabitur
If you honestly think Paul is briliant, the proof is in the pudding; he needs to publish in credible peer reviewed publications. That is how it works, that is how the world can separate the brilliant from the crackpots. Otherwise, you and all your buddies at NEC are blowing smoke.
I refuse to continue to have this conversation. Anybody that produces drivel such as the following needs to check into a psych hospital.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1251337&cid=28164237
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
Publishing in peer review papers is the realm of mainstream science and has its place. It also takes a long time. When were talking about a population and world at risk, someone needs to to be brave and venture forth with some observations and information, willing to take flack.
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
An expert in fluid mechanics from Purdue, Steve Wereley: "I spent a couple of hours this afternoon analyzing the video, and the number I get is 70,000 barrels a day coming out of that pipe," said a Purdue University mechanical engineering professor, who used video footage and a particle velocity analysis to come up with that 70,000 barrel per day amount. That is around 3,000,000 gallons per day. Still less than the quoted original article, but closer to a linear, not exponential difference. I stand by my previous comment.
So yeah, there's no definitive paper trail indicating that this was a deliberate choice, or on which of the three corporations involved the bulk of the responsibility should lie. But there's quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that corners were cut leading to the disaster, even if it's not clear who had the responsibility for cutting those corners.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
P.S. I'm a strong proponent of nuclear power - particularly if we develop processes based on the thorium cycle - and I think it can be done safely. I just am skeptical whether it can be done safely in the USA.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
I've added the following to the story:
Errata 5/16/2010:
We originally reported that the main hole was 5 feet in diameter, spewing an estimated 4 barrels per second, with a possible total approaching 1 million barrels/day. The pipe is actually 21 inches in diameter; and the high end estimated total leakage is in the range of 3.4 barrels/day (Ref.). We deeply regret the error.
And I've added this from Paul Noel:
May 15 Update and Correction
Take a look at the May 15 story in the New York Times: Scientists Find Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/us/16oil.html
This represents the oil per my prediction including the distillation that I told you was happening with the tar balls. The stunning implication is that I was wrong in quantity and the leak may in fact be much larger than I said. My curiosity has to do with the motion of these mats. Will they sink or will they warm up and float up somewhere? Big surprises and not fun ones could be in store. I sort of suspect they will hang around and wander for a while and then rise to the surface. (Only a suspicion-- Lets hope it doesn't happen!) Round and round they go, where they stop nobody knows.
Just one mat the size described represents over 240,000 barrels per day over the entire spill duration and the article implies more than one of these! We are absolutely safe to say I am totally confirmed on oil volumes and then some. The article suggests 4 or 5 such mats. If this is so the gush could easily have exceeded 1 million barrels of oil per day.
I can safely say now that if there was any doubt of what I was saying about the leak there should be no doubt now.
On a side note: I just learned from Alabama sources that the situation is far worse than is being portrayed. No facts to describe this except that qualitative analysis.
Sterling the riser is in fact and I was wrong on the size it is a 21 inch riser. Sorry to all but none the less it is massive. Even if the pressure were 20,000 PSI shouldn't that about be Sci-Fi to most people. You don't want to stand in the way of that for sure. I suspect based on the mat sizes that my pressure statements are correct.
The facts are that BP has just kicked out into the ocean a spill that is much more than equal to Exxon Valdez every day for 18 days now. It could be 3 times that every day.
I will say it now and without any reservation: The heads of BP, Haliburton and Transocean should be arrested and tried under the Common Law for crimes against humanity and against nature itself. On conviction they should be executed for their crimes as a monument to corporate management that you should never consider to do such evil deeds again. What has happened here is beyond war crimes. It is absolutely evil what they have done. Silence and no action on this licenses more disasters to come.
BP testimony before Congress states that their worst case was 60,000 Barrels per day. That estimate is at least 7 times too low to account for the now observed facts. I am assuming only one such mat exists for this estimate. I can only guess based on this that my estimates could be low by a very wide margin. I am definitely not high at all.
My apologies for any errors that may have allowed distraction, but this situation is vastly out of hand.
I think if you realize that one mat described is about 1.7 cubic miles in size, and the well keeps on blowing and easily could do this for years, you get a hint of the size of the oil deposit under the Gulf of Mexico. At this rate the Deposit could deliver in 1 year something in the order of 35 cubic miles of oil. It could blow for a decade or more if it is not stopped. It isn't anywhere near out. I just hope they get it corked up shortly. That relief well they are drilling could blowout too!
I told you there was a "dragon" down there! [Symbolism] I have warned people that he has only nipped us. [Symbolism]
This is by no me
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
And we know more now about who got the most greedy.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire