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Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Below the Gulf's Surface
An anonymous reader sends in a NY Times article about the spread of oil from the BP gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. Quoting:
"Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide, and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given. ... The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes. Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. ... [Scientists on the Pelican mission] suspect the heavy use of chemical dispersants, which BP has injected into the stream of oil emerging from the well, may have broken the oil up into droplets too small to rise rapidly. ... Dr. Joye said the findings about declining oxygen levels were especially worrisome, since oxygen is so slow to move from the surface of the ocean to the bottom. She suspects that oil-eating bacteria are consuming the oxygen at a feverish clip as they work to break down the plumes."
As reported by the WSJ
Bear in mind that several years ago, BP merged with another company and kept the BP name. That company? Amoco. AMerican Oil COmpany.
you americans are fucked, hahah. thats what you get with your evil oil companies.
Actually, it's what Americans get when they let a British oil company deploy a Swiss drilling platform with German companies responsible for safety. Massive US lobbying efforts by BP also contributed to the lack of regulation, all in the name of international fairness and free trade.
And historically, Europe's record on oil spills is far worse than that of the US. Of course, being obedient little nationalists, Europeans love to find fault with the US while their own governments are screwing them.
Hopefully, as a result of this disaster, the US will severely limit the ability of foreign companies to lobby in the US, and hopefully it will kick out European oil companies with their poor safety records once and for all.
That video of the leaking pipe shows stuff coming out of it at a rate of about two pipe diameters per second, if you just watch how fast the moving stuff moves. Some simple math puts that flow rate, for the 20 inch diameter pipe that it's said to be, at 80,000 bbl/day.
The math: the pipe area is ~2 sq ft, the flow rate is ~3 ft/second, the volume per second is 6 cu ft, which is about 45 gallons or one barrel per second. That's ~80k bbl/day.
If my math is wrong, please show me how it's wrong. It's the same math that the univ professors are using.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
There is no "extreme left" in the United States. Liberal in the US is the equivalent of centrist to slightly conservative in Europe.
I work as a Petroleum Engineer. The thing about flow in oil and gas wells is that the natural gas has a density that varies with pressure. When the pressure decreases as the fluid flows up the pipe, it increases in velocity and the volume that the gas takes up increases. When the fluid exits the pipe there is going to be a large pressure drop and will give the appearance of a much larger flow rate with small droplets of oil. The flow of hte fluid out of the pipe in the video is not one continuous phase of oil. Gas to Oil ratios in producing wells commonly range from 500 scf/ BOPD through 50,000 scf / BOPD.