Gulf Oil Spill Nearing Loop Current

An anonymous reader writes "Per The Weather Channel's tropical expert Dr. Richard Knabb, 'based on satellite images, model simulations, and on-site research vessel reports, I think it is reasonable to conclude that the oil slick at the surface is very near or partially in the Loop Current. The Loop Current is responsible in the first place for extending that stream of oil off to the southeast in satellite imagery. With its proximity to the northern edge of the Loop Current it may be only a matter of weeks or even days before the ocean surface oil is transported toward the Florida Keys and southeast Florida.'" Other experts are a little more cautious: "We know the oil has not entered the Loop Current," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said at a news conference Monday afternoon. "A leading edge sheen is getting close to it, but it has not entered the Loop Current. The larger volume of oil is several miles from the Loop Current."

Comments

Nuke it.

[epiphani]

I'm no geologist or really much of a scientist at all, but I recall the nuke thread and didn't really get to ask the question: why is nuking this oil well a bad idea? Everyones' initial response was "nuke it? haha, that's preposterous!" but I didn't really see an explanation of why its not a viable option?

Assuming it worked at stopping the continuing spill, what would be the negative effects? Assuming it didn't, what would be the negative effects of trying?

Re:Nuke it.

[moosesocks]

They're already in the process of plugging the well permanently. Unless I'm interpreting this plan incorrectly, this will also create two new wellheads (although I'm not sure that they will be usable as production wells).

In any event, the currently leaking well was for exploration purposes only.

We also want to prevent something like this from happening.

Re:Nuke it.

[Goaway]

but I didn't really see an explanation of why its not a viable option?

1. I doubt anyone has nukes designed to function at several kilometers underwater. One would have to be constructed first.

2. You don't just set the nuke off near the hole and hope for the best. You drill a hole into the ground, insert the nuke, and seal the hole, and then explode it to collapse the drill hole. Thus, you need to drill this hole.

Both of these take a lot of time, and there are many, many detail which may not be feasible.

Re:Nuke it.

[!coward]

To the GP: holy crap! Thanks for the link, mate, had no idea such a thing existed -- I would've probably sided with the idiotic geologists who thought the whole thing would extinguish in a few days. Since 1971 and counting? Talk about the mother of all fires!

To the Parent: What I believe the GP was trying to imply is that should they somehow manage to ignite the crude in the well, either directly should the energy from, say, a nuclear explosion go off its projected dispersion path and make the entire well's mass critical, or by collapsing the well entirely (no ignition here, necessarily, but the sheer fact all of the well's contents would be released instantly would probably prove a sufficiently catastrophic event for all parties concerned and the world at large), or some other cave structure in its vicinity (or underneath it) or, probably even worse, cracking the crust's bed beneath it, which might result in the whole thing going BOOM (a steady stream of lava acting as an inexaustible supply of ignition energy to a really big deposit of flammable/high-energy-density material...), well, to say that such a thing shouldn't be taken lightly would be such an understatement it pretty much goes without saying.

What I'd really like to know, and everybody who could supply that answer isn't interested in giving it, is the likelyhood of these events (stuff like the BP's well crude spill, that is). I've read so many conflicting things that I'm left wondering if this was a one-off all-things-that-could-go-wrong-went-wrong or a relatively high recurring risk that these companies willingly take because they stand to gain too much from it for as long as things go according to plan.

As for the gas crater -- pretty sure if the thing was easy to fix and/or commercially exploit (you're probably thinking along the lines of geothermal plants or something to that effect), it would've been done by now, the bleeding thing has been burning for 39 years straight and counting.

Re:Nuke it.

[Xonstantine]

Again, I'm skeptical that one nuke in the Gulf is going to be enough to start killing everyone. It could, theoretically, contaminate stuff there in the Gulf.

It won't necessarily kill "everyone". What it will do is introduce radioactivity into the food chain which would take years to disperse. There are a lot of people that depend on food from the Gulf of Mexico for their livelihood, and I am not just talking about Americans here. Want to tell the fisherman in Haiti that sorry, you can't feed your family for 4 years because we just torched off a nuke?

But I don't know that it would be any worse in the long run than letting everything get contaminated with oil.

It would be a lot worse. Oil is relatively separable from water. If you neutron activate 23Na to 24Na in salt dissolved in the water, it's still in solution. But now it's highly radioactive, and it will disperse in the currents much faster and farther than a droplet of oil would have.

But, in theory, you'd have very little radiation. If you did it right. Of course... If we'd done it right, we wouldn't have the current problem either.

No, you will have a metric shitload of radiation. On the order of millions of tons. if it's done right, most of that radioactive debris would be contained under a seabed dome. If it's done wrong (ie, the fireball breaks through the floor), you'll have a massive amount of that injected into the ocean with calamitous effects.

I like nukes as much as the next guy, but this is a bad idea. By the time you bore the hole deep enough to drop the nuke in, you could probably have fixed the issue with conventional means.

Re:Nuke it.

[bill_mcgonigle]

you sound informed on this topic, so perhaps you know:

The physics are well know, we've detonated MANY bombs underground on our own soil. We know how far down it needs to be and how it will effect the surrounding rock.

The physics under a mile of water are completely different than underground. Why would any of the nukes in our existing stockpile be able to take 5000' of pressure? A Trident can launch at 800 feet max, IIRC.

And why would a nuke be superior to a MOAB? Just size?

A plus?

[Cornwallis]

Look at the bright side. Now the satellite imagery of the loop current will be much easier to read with the oil tracer.

bologna

[nadaou]

Other experts are a little more cautious: "We know the oil has not entered the Loop Current," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said at a news conference Monday afternoon. "A leading edge sheen is getting close to it, but it has not entered the Loop Current. The larger volume of oil is several miles from the Loop Current."

I think you got a word wrong there. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry is not an other expert in this area at all. Any other [scientific] expert would never make such an absolutist statement, and a few miles is within a hour or two's drift (*spread is not necessarily the same rate as the water currents) so by the time her statement hit the papers it would already be false. And who knows what the hell's going on subsurface where the satellites don't see?

"Dispersal" of a slick into a cloud of droplets does not mean the cloud-plume itself has or will dispersed.

And why has the US gov't not put its foot down and demanded that the invited but then uninvited (by BP the day before they thought the dome would work) Wood's Hole team be allowed to measure the flow rate with the instruments that BP claimed did not exist? [NY Times 16 May] Even if there's nothing much we can do with that number now, by having better data about the size of the spill and measuring the effects over the coming months and years we can better understand and plan future responses. I see what BP has to lose by that number being properly established, but why aren't they being forced to establish it anyway?

Re:bologna

[the eric conspiracy]

I see what BP has to lose by that number being properly established, but why aren't they being forced to establish it anyway?

Maybe because they would have to remove the siphon they have running and stop collecting oil? Just let it spill out into the ocean while the scientists futz around with their equipment?

Re:bologna

[nadaou]

Maybe because they would have to remove the siphon they have running and stop collecting oil? Just let it spill out into the ocean while the scientists futz around with their equipment?

besides the post facto aspect of your argument (they've had weeks) and the fact that you could sum the volumes of the siphoned and measured split, standard acoustic flow rate monitors clamp around the tube and can be placed well upstream of the siphon tube.

I am not sure of the exact tech they plan(ned) to use, only that it's the same as they use to measure outflow from Black Smokers at the mid-ocean ridge. And I can assure you that they are just as adept wih their ROVs as the oil guys are with theirs. The science guys operate in a lot deeper water than this and have much less bottom time to work with so futzing around is not a fair comment.

How old are they?

[Two99Point80]

There's a lot of discussion about this over at dailykos - apparently tarballs take a while to form, as opposed to the brownish goo seen on the "60 Minutes" piece. So if they're actually tarballs they're not from this release of oil. They're being analyzed.

Re:Good. Now it will leave the Gulf and move out

[CarpetShark]

From what Wikipedia says, this may not be BP's fault. Halliburton (the company famous for Iraq oil controversies including lying to the US administration) were cementing the well just a day before (by their own accounts). Transocean own the rig (renting it to BP) and their chief executive explained the cause of the incident saying, "there was a sudden, catastrophic failure of the cement, the casing or both."

Yeah...

[yoshi_mon]

Was there any ever real doubt that a spill of this magnitude was not going to reach the loop?

Here in Fla we get to deal with all sorts of fun naturally occurring things. And I don't really begrudge those things much like those people who live inland in tornado ally don't really begrudge mother nature for those things.

But this...gah. And then on top of it I have to watch the super rich play the blame game? Fuck you. Seriously, fuck YOU.

Minimal Impact?

[sking]

According to NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, who was interviewed on last night's McNeil Lehrer News Hour, the oil entering the Loop will have minimal environmental impact in other parts of the Gulf. She opines that "By the time the oil is in the loop current, it's likely to be very, very diluted. And, so, it's not likely to have a very significant impact. It sounds scarier than it is."

Re:Minimal Impact?

[quatin]

But did she mention that some genius in DC figured it would be a good idea to let BP dump millions of gallons of soap into the water to sink the oil? The oil on the surface is but a percentage of the real oil pools. Mixing soap with the oil causes it to move lower in the sea column. The underwater oil columns are more dangerous in that they will wash onto coral and suffocate them from the bottom.

Is she diluting BPs "5,000 barrels" per day or outside experts "100,000 barrels a day" estimate?

Re:Good. Now it will leave the Gulf and move out

[roman_mir]

Oh, BP is responsible for SO MUCH MORE than that. That company used to be known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, it drilled in Iran for decades before they got rid of the Shah. In 1951, when Iran finally had a democratically elected government, which decided to follow the wishes of the people and to nationalize the Oil fields and then provide APOC with a contract, which it hated, APOC went crying to UK and US politicians, and then the Democratically Elected Government of Iran was removed through a coup and APOC was once again free to do as it pleased, it got almost the contract that it wanted, it was less though, because there was just too much pressure from the people of Iran, who I think hated the guts of APOC.

APOC renamed to BP at that time probably as a way to whitewash its image, you know: Accenture (formerly known as Anderson Consulting) did the same after Enron.

BP is a very old and I would say evil entity, what I mean is that the processes in the company are such that from the outside the results of its work look evil.