DoE Posts Raw Data From Oil Spill, Coast Guard Asks For Tech Help

coondoggie writes "The US Department of Energy this week opened an online portal where the public can get all the technical details it can stomach about the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. The DoE site offers online access to schematics, pressure tests, diagnostic results and other data about the malfunctioning blowout preventer and other problems in the ongoing mess. This comes alongside news that the US Coast Guard has issued a call for better specialized technology to help it respond to the ever-widening spill. The Coast Guard is looking for all manner of technology, such as advanced wireless sensors to help it track the movement and amount of oil in the Gulf, or devices that could help to contain and control the underwater leak." Reader freddled points out a story at the Guardian that illustrates how the location of an oil leak is frequently the primary factor in its perceived importance.

Comments

Speaking of the BP gulf spill

[sconeu]

Has anyone seen the new "Visit Florida" ads?

They discuss the fact that potential tourists are worried about the Gulf spill, and then say something like ...

"Florida has 835 miles of coastline. Northeast Florida has 221 miles of crystal clean beaches..."

In other words, "Come to Florida! Only 3/4 of our coast is covered in oil!!!"

Re:Speaking of the BP gulf spill

[maotx]

The problem with Florida isn't BP, but more likely ships illegally dumping.

"We've done a number of tarballs from Florida, Key West, Miami and so forth, none of which so far have matched the Deepwater Horizon," Gronlund said. "The tarballs that have been found on the beach in Florida are fuel oil."

Re:Speaking of the BP gulf spill

[Knara]

Not all coastline is beach environment, numbnuts.

Re:Speaking of the BP gulf spill

[protektor]

Only a 1/4 is oil free....at the moment. I thought I read or heard somewhere that they were worried about the oil slicks/spill getting caught in some water flow thing and coming around the coast of Florida and up the Eastern Sea Board, not to mention every other country and island near there. So it may only be a limited amount of time that the beaches are clean and able to be enjoyed before most of Florida and parts of the Eastern Sea Board are a complete mess, let alone all of the Gulf of Mexico areas. Time will tell for sure.

A Reader?

[malakai]

How does a reader point something out when there's 1 comment on this article and it's not that "Reader"?

Speaking of the oil spill...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know what the amount of pressure was from the leak when BP's 3 failsafe's failed? 20k+ psi. The NOAA has that info; at least they did yesterday.
Crude is extracted at +/-1,500 psi, so they were drilling deep enough to hit magma pockets (I forget the proper nomenclature for those types of pockets).
Only Russia has successfully drilled that deep...but they weren't dumb enough to try that kind of depth under the pressure and weight of the freakin' ocean.
20,000+ psi will destroy anything man can make to "plug" the leak. Is our only option nuking it?
If so, even if they do angle drill and drop a nuke, what if it cracks the strata further?

IMHO this will help to shuttle in that BS carbon tax. The longer the leak remains, the more damage, the more "reason" for the aforementioned tax. ...But, of course, this is conspiracy stuff. :)

Re:Speaking of the oil spill...

[psbrogna]

20 kpsi is not that big a deal. Equipment happens to be manufactured right here on Earth with ratings in that ball park (c.f. http://www.highpressure.com/valves_fittings.asp?ID=10&ptype=v&section=2). Your allegation about 20 kpsi destroying anything man can make is an inaccurate and overly-dramatic one.

Re:Speaking of the oil spill...

[gedw99]

True about valves being designed for 20 K psi being available.

However there are all the other aspects of the architecture of the systems down there that have to deal with 20 K psi. So many other bits of hardware have to be able to handle these pressures too.
Together they make for a very risky architecture because when something goes wrong we are at natures mercy.

Lets take an look at this another way. When we design an aeroplane we design in a Safety Factor. That means that everything is over designed to whatever the "Safety Factor" requires.
The engineering safety factor is determined by the consequences of a failure. For an aeroplane we design for a safety factor 1.5 . So everything structural is designed over by 1.5 times because if the wing fails it will likely kill 300 people.
See the Nasa article about it as it shows that safety factors are commutative for all the hardware combined.
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/waynehalesblog/posts/post_1229459081779.html

For an oil well we should probably have a much much safety factor than just 1. So at 20 K SI, the equipment should be designed to handle at least a safety factor of 2, and so hence be designed for a 40 K psi.

Frustratingly because the damages claimable is limited to 75 million USD; and there is a self monitoring policy that wont design the hardware properly.
For aeroplane makers, there is no statutory limit on the damages, and they are heavily monitored throughout the lifecyle of manufacturer and usage.

As we are seeing the consequences of a failure of the oil well are likely to ultimately kill more than 300 people when you factor in the laws of cause and effect.
But humans that see it immediately; when an aeroplane crashes the laws of cause and effect are right in our faces, but when an oil well leaks if is less apparent to us immediately.

Its a shame that the industry has been allowed to get away with this. Energy policy is screwed up. We want oil, and so we let them get away with low safety because we dont want to scare away investment.
How crazy can it get ...

Because it might not work

[Overzeetop]

Because it isn't going through rock, it's going through mud. If you think it's hard to stop a gusher from a 2' diameter pipe, imagine how hard it would be to stop a 40,000 BBL/dy, methane propelled ooze from a 500 foot radius area with no containment.

One thing we can do right now...

[UnknownSoldier]

...is let the president know of our support for Clean Energy:

http://my.barackobama.com/CleanEnergy-auto

Re:One thing we can do right now...

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how completely ambiguous this page is. It would be substantially more effective to vote in favor of a one child policy. At least that has a transparent metric for success.

Ethanol and traditional photo-voltaics are as dirty, if not dirtier than oil respectively because of inefficiency and heavy metals.

I am in support of clean energy if we are talking about building some gigantic nuclear power plants next to major population centers to decrease transmission inefficiencies.

Unfortunately, as the BO website stands, I would not be in support of a carbon tax while also giving subsidies to turn natural gas and corn into ethanol that is then mixed with gasoline for some reason.

Re:One thing we can do right now...

[Jawnn]

I like the picture of all the eyesore windmills standing above the tree - because that's what it would take, everywhere, in order to adopt wind power as our primary generation method.

You say that like it's a bad thing. "Eyesore"? Come down here to the Gulf and have a look, pal.

Re:Why is nobody talking about blowing it up?

[sexconker]

Pick one:

The RUSSIANS did that sort of thing. The RUSSIANS. RUSSIANS.

There's a one-in-a-billion chance it could make things SLIGHTLY WORSE by making the oil come up at SEVERAL spots in the area instead of the one shitstream we hope to maybe have under better control in a few months.

If we blew it up, we couldn't reuse that well.

Rubber duckies

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubber duckies with GPS tracking built-in. Wherever the oil is going, the ducks will go too.

Re:Rubber duckies

[oldspewey]

Not unless you build special duckies that are suspended at 50m, 100m, 150m, 200m, etc. all the way down to 1500m below the surface. This spill is manifesting itself in 3 dimensions.

More exposure of Africa is good

[e2d2]

Any chance to expose the pillaging of Africa is a good thing IMHO. Such a tragedy, does anyone care? Not many where I live. Now I know that not everyone can account for what happens on the other side of the world, but I mention the Niger Delta, the DRC, the current state of Somalia and their civil war, Sudan, Egypt's relationship with Israel, anything from Africa.. and watch the eyes glaze over. I usually just take it as a chance to tell someone, an opportunity. If we ever want to be a truly global community then we need to know what is going on in that community. Heads in the sand cause future conflict.

Re:More exposure of Africa is good

[e2d2]

JFC, how am I offtopic _this_ time? The summary posted an article about the Niger Delta.

Re:Why is nobody talking about blowing it up?

[zill]

The RUSSIANS did that sort of thing. The RUSSIANS. RUSSIANS.

Yes the Russian successfully performed the procedure on land. This is underwater at 5000 feet.

As for the explosives, I offer you this car analogy:

After the mechanic ruptured my gas tank while performing a routine checkup, he blurted out the excuse "there's a lot of pavement out there so don't worry about it" and offered to install a nitrous system instead. Do I really want that nitrous system?

Forget Bruce Willis

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's call Chuck Norris, he'll roundhouse-kick the oil back into its hole.

Re:Thank dog for the groaniad

[Andy Dodd]

The good thing about this is that it's less likely BP will be able to shirk their compensation committments or drag out the legal proceedings for eternity without massive public outrage like Exxon did.

Prince William Sound is apparently a beautiful, natural pristine area, but Exxon was lucky - it was not highly populated and not many people visited there so they could get away with dragging out the compensation lawsuits for decades.

The GOM is a whole different story.

Re:Thank dog for the groaniad

[psbrogna]

Hey, a little courtesy please? I happen to be Bongo-Bongoian and don't appreciate being trivialized.

wrap a plastic bag around the preventer

[mark_osmd]

I'm still wondering why can't they make a mile long plastic tube (tough nylon mesh fabric coated with oil proof material) that's wider than the BOP at the bottom end. Lower it down from a tanker to the BOP, use the robots to wrap it around the bottom of the BOP so it's encased and then the oil will be contained and it could be pumped out at the surface. Oil is less dense than water so it should rise up the tube to the tanker. You don't even have to care about a poor seal at the bottom where the end is wrapped around the casement pipe since there's no pressure difference involved (unlike the other attempts so far where they jam things right in the pipe. Also since the oil is moving out in the open in the tube there's no freezing problems.

Re:Why is nobody talking about blowing it up?

[Guppy]

The RUSSIANS did that sort of thing. The RUSSIANS. RUSSIANS.

I'd like to bring up that a physicist is heading up the government's working group on the spill. If the approach has technical merit, I'm sure that Dr. Chu will be able to evaluate it. You know, based on the physics of the problem, rather than repeating the word "Russians" a couple of times.

Re:Why is nobody talking about blowing it up?

[yurtinus]

Please explain your car analogy. I've put a lot of effort into analyzing it against what I know, and I clearly must be missing something.

Re:Thank dog for the groaniad

[dangitman]

This demonstrates, again, how it's really the freakishly skewed perceptions of people playing politics that drive "environmentalism" as it is currently practiced, and it doesn't have much of anything to do with the real environment.

Actually, the people who are serious about environmentalism do care when it happens in Nigeria or other "off the radar" places. They actually expend a lot of energy trying to draw people's attention to these areas.

What you are seeing has nothing to do with environmentalism, but with the mass media, which naturally reports on things that are sensational, easy, and nearby.

My suspicion is that if this were a story about environmentalists trying to expose an environmental disaster in Nigeria, you'd be lambasting them for focusing on such a trivial issue that's not relevant to you.