Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

[flintlock]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

A nice healthy sludge bath does one good! I expect the Gulf coast will become a Mecca for the sick and diseased to come and soak in the waters.

[GRG55]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

i eat tar balls for breakfast. oil is good for wildlife. the exxon valdez spill was nothing. the wildlife enjoyed the oil & tar balls as much as i did...


[ATTACH=CONFIG]3297[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3298[/ATTACH]



couple of dark rocks...



etc, etc...

What happens when there's an oil spill in a marine environment puts all the yabbering about "dirty oil" from the Canadian oil sands in a different context, now doesn't it?

Like virtually every heavy industrial activity we humans undertake, exploring for petroleum and extracting oil cannot be done without some negative impacts - there's no free lunch. However there is no way in hell that any amount of oil sands activity is going to result in the level of environmental impact that a single offshore incident such as the Valdez and Deepwater Horizon have had in terms of the area polluted, the wildlife lost, the ongoing effects on fisheries and other non-petroleum related economic activities, and people's lives including the families of the 11 workers that died on Horizon.

In light of Deepwater Horizon I wonder if any of the "activist" BP and Shell shareholders have rethought their position about where their companies should be directing their capital?

BP Shareholders Protest Canadian Oil Sands Project

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc shareholders put a resolution to the annual meeting on April 15 for a review of the risks of the company’s Canadian oil sands project, following a similar protest against competitor Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

A coalition of investors requested the review in a resolution to BP’s annual meeting, FairPensions, the campaign’s coordinator, said in a statement today. The risks include increased carbon costs and reputational damage from environmental damage, according to London-based FairPensions, which represents unions, charities and faith groups...



BP and Shell face new shareholder revolt over tar sands

Ecologist
26th February, 2010
Investors want oil giants to answer questions on their involvement in the environmentally damaging extraction of oil from tar sands

...Institutional investors including The Co-operative Asset Management and Rathbone Greenbank have co-signed a ‘special resolution,’ which would force the two companies to fully disclose and justify their involvement in Canadian tar sands...

[Rajiv]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

I would counter that with - Another Wake-Up Call for the World’s Biggest Oil Junkie - America Still Doesn’t Get It

By Chris Nelder, GetRealList
May 4, 2010

OK, America, it’s time to get real about energy.

The explosion and destruction of the Horizon deepwater rig and the subsequent oil spill disaster are only the latest in a series of wake-up calls you’ve received. Are you listening now?

Your first warning came in 1956, with the publication of M. King Hubbert’s model of US oil production, which correctly predicted its peak in 1970. When Hubbert updated his model on camera in 1976, he also nailed the peak of worldwide conventional oil production in 2005.

Since then, production has remained flat at roughly 74 million barrels per day (mbpd), despite prices gyrating wildly from $40 to $147 to $33 and back to $86 today. High prices did not deliver more oil to market.

Very simply, the cheap and easy oil is gone. What’s left is smaller, harder to find, of lesser quality, and in much more challenging places–under a mile of water and another five miles of rock, for example. It’s expensive, risky, and yes, dangerous.

American domestic oil production peaked in October, 1970 at just over 10 mbpd. It has been in a steadily declining trend ever since, and now stands at 5.5 mpbd.

Over 30 percent of domestic production is from offshore drilling, of which about three-quarters comes from the Gulf of Mexico. Deepwater oil production has only become possible in recent years with the development of cutting-edge technology. We do it not because it’s without risk, but because we need the oil–badly. Only offshore is it still possible to find a field in North America that can deliver over 100,000 bpd. Just two of the Gulf fields, Thunder Horse and Atlantis, produce a combined 350,000 bpd.


Source: Energy Information Administration, Petroleum Navigator. Source data.

By comparison, the remaining onshore resources in North America are now decidedly marginal. The days of gusher strikes onshore in the U.S. are long gone. About 1.2 mbpd, or over 20 percent of domestic production, comes from thousands of small “stripper wells” producing under 15 (yes, 15) barrels per day. Low-quality resources like tar sands and shale oil are vast but expensive, and so difficult to scale that they can’t reverse the long-term decline.

The U.S now imports 9.4 mbpd of crude. At $85 a barrel, that’s an $800 million-a-day hole in our pocket, or $292 billion a year. And our import dependency is only getting worse.

An oil export crisis has been developing for years, as oil producers consume more of their own output and Asia outbids the West for declining global exports.

Even so, as the world’s most dependent oil junkie, our demand for oil has held firm. The decline in U.S. oil demand from 21 mpbd in 2007 to 18.6 mbpd today was almost entirely due to lost industrial demand; gasoline demand remained virtually flat throughout the entire oil price spike and recession.

For every finger pointed at an oil company, three point back at us.

Like the whaling ships of the late 1800s that would sail to the ends of the earth in search of whale oil, deepwater drilling is proof that we are willing to pay enormous sums and go to extraordinary lengths and depths to get oil. We have chosen to accept the risks of environmental damage, the horror of oil wars, and the deaths of rig workers in exchange for a continuing supply of cheap, convenient fuel.

We built an entire economy and topography of civilization on the premise of endless, cheap fuel, and profited handsomely from the ever-increasing bounty of the Age of Oil. But having reached the point where it can no longer be increased, and the risks have grown intolerable, we whine and accuse and complain like teenagers, claim we were victimized, and act as though our demand for oil were an unfortunate accident we had no part in.
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[Spartacus]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

refusal to account for peak oil: Another result of the "science" of economics?

Like the derivatives bomb & the debt disaster & the previous bubble, the dot-com, the economists were in the thick of things, OBSTRUCTING reasonable voices.

Similarly in the peak oil debate, the economist's "scientific result" that "oil will never run out" and "money can create copper and oil", economical voodoo-cargo-cult-BS "science" is OBSTRUCTING reasonable debate and action.

[we_are_toast]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

A 5000 foot candle!

So much for the dome of silence;

4:41 p.m. | Updated Officials for BP on Saturday encountered a significant setback in their efforts to attach a containment dome over a leaking well on the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico, forcing them to move the dome aside while they find another method to cap the crude oil flowing into the Gulf since April 20.

Officials discovered that gas hydrates, ice-like crystals lighter than water, had built up inside the 100-ton metal container. The hydrates tried to make the dome buoyant, and they also plugged up the top of the dome, preventing it from being effective.

“I wouldn’t say it has failed yet,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, said at a news conference in Robert, La., “what we attempted to do last night hasn’t worked.”

As a consequence, they had to lift the dome off the well and placed it on the seabed.

BP officials said they had anticipated a problem with hydration — but not this soon in the operation. Since last week they had been cautioning that this type of procedure had never before been attempted at 5,000 feet below the surface.

The news on Saturday came as BP has struggled to find any method to stem the majority of the oil, leaking at least 5,000 gallons barrels — roughly 210,000 gallons — per day.

For now, they have put the dome 650 feet to the side of the leaking well, “while we evaluate options,” Mr. Suttles said.

The containment dome was supposed to be the largest-scale method to cap the majority of the oil flow so far. Other efforts continued on Saturday, as BP said that the drilling a relief well, which would be able to collect the oil at one source of the leak, had reached 9,000 feet.

Crews were prevented by weather to do a controlled burn of some of the oil, as they had done successfully on Friday, but they were still able to lay protective boom, said Rear Adm. Mary Landry of the Coast Guard.

[GRG55]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

A 5000 foot candle!

So much for the dome of silence;

Once again it shows the technical difficulties in this environment. Gas hydrates are a well known phenomena, but trying to model the exact circumstances under which they will occur is extremely difficult. The two most common ways of dealing with gas hydrates are with heat, which would seem problematic in this circumstance, or the use of alcohol injection [usually methanol] which might be an option here.

[metalman]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

refusal to account for peak oil: Another result of the "science" of economics?

Like the derivatives bomb & the debt disaster & the previous bubble, the dot-com, the economists were in the thick of things, OBSTRUCTING reasonable voices.

Similarly in the peak oil debate, the economist's "scientific result" that "oil will never run out" and "money can create copper and oil", economical voodoo-cargo-cult-BS "science" is OBSTRUCTING reasonable debate and action.

who needs science? this is amerika...



http://fakescience.tumblr.com/

[GRG55]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

who needs science? this is amerika...



http://fakescience.tumblr.com/

It's worked for decades in Nigeria. No reason not to think it won't work here too...

[Rajiv]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

It's worked for decades in Nigeria. No reason not to think it won't work here too...

Finally ended after the pipeline blast - 260 killed in oil pipeline blast after fuel thefts

260 killed in oil pipeline blast after fuel thefts

By Kayode Ogunbunmi in Lagos and Mike Pflanz
Published: 12:01AM GMT 27 Dec 2006


Rescue workers remove a body from the scene of a gas pipeline explosion near Lagos where 269 people died

A petrol pipeline which had been cracked open by thieves looting fuel exploded yesterday in Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos, killing more than 260 people.

Charred bodies burnt beyond recognition littered the blast site as overwhelmed emergency services struggled to contain the fire and ferry the wounded to hospital.

The flames were still raging last night and the intense heat was hampering firefighters' efforts, witnesses said.

"The number of dead is confirmed at 269. We have retrieved all the bodies," said Abiodun Orebiyi, the secretary-general of the Nigerian Red Cross.

Another 160 people were taken to two hospitals in Lagos suffering from burns, another Red Cross official added. Many others who were injured could die because they refused to seek treatment for fear they would be arrested at the hospital.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

I would counter that with - Another Wake-Up Call for the World’s Biggest Oil Junkie - America Still Doesn’t Get It

For the life of me, I still do not see how even the eco-frauds could seriously consider electric cars without the building of hydro-electric dams and the construction of atomic power plants. Similarly, windmills and solar panels are no way to de-salinate water in California. Nor are windmills and solar panels a way to solve the problem of passing the peak in the world's production of oil.

Regardless of what one may think of drilling, we do need all of the fossil fuels we can get our hands on, including under-sea oil. My issue is with those (righteous idiots) who would condemn the drillers for solving a problem that has to be solved, regardless. And letting Iran solve the problem of oil dependency for the West is not a solution that I would want to pursue.

This kind of parallels my thinking on Stalin, doesn't it? In other words, what would Stalin do to "righteous idiots" who would keep the world in want, in slavery, and in misery, rather than solve the problem of oil dependency in the West?

We know what has to be done now: we need to drill, to dam, and to develop atomic power. We can not allow defeatists and ecologists and righteous fools to get in the way of a real and practical solution to our energy dependency.

And yes, I do discuss this issue with kids in the classroom, and I hope other teachers do as well.

[GRG55]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

...I certainly wouldn't disagree with your observation that it's better to avoid the problems in the first place. But at the moment the focus is rightly on killing the well and, until that occurs, doing everything possible to mitigate the effects of the flow. We can be quite certain that every BOP expert in the world [including those from other oil companies] is working to figure out a way to close them, and BP won't stop trying any time soon. The reason that BP is going to drill two relief wells is that any failure of the first relief well, no matter how unlikely, is intolerable in this situation...so a redundant relief well will be underway about one week behind the first one.

In due course there will be an investigation and that's when we will find out if there was some deviation from procedures, or if the procedures themselves contain any previously unrecognized systemic shortcomings.

One of the better pieces on this topic [in the mainstream media] that I have read recently. Lisa Margonelli writing in The Atlantic [highlights mine]:

No Easy Villains May Mean No Easy Oil

May 10 2010, 6:10 PM ET

...If you follow the tower block analogy, it's clear that while we may want a simple explanation for the Deepwater Horizon accident that allows us to go back to business as usual with a few modifications, what we're going to get is a long, detailed, thoroughly modern flow chart about the limits of technology, humans, geology, and regulation. As people who like simple narratives, the public and policy makers will be tempted to try to find one locus for blame -- whether it's BP or BOP's (blow out protectors) -- but that may prevent us from figuring out the deeper system of problems that lead to this accident. And we may determine that business as usual doesn't work for offshore drilling -- which leaves us unable to count on the 40 percent of domestic oil production we were expecting to get from the offshore industry in the next ten years. Rereading what's been written about offshore oil drilling over the last few years, it's obvious it was thought to be the methadone for our overseas oil addiction. Now what?

I have one quibble with the article. Earlier I posted that the sequence of priority on an offshore rig is always 1. the people 2. the well 3. the rig. Margonelli states that driving off the rig is the "third line of defense" against a blowout. Ulnlike the first two "lines of defense" she describes, driving off the rig won't prevent a blowout. It is a deliberate decision to forget about the well in order to save the people.

[Rajiv]

Gulf spill reportedly 70,000 barrels a day

Gulf spill reportedly 70,000 barrels a day

The owner of the drilling rig that burned and sank in the Gulf of Mexico wants a federal court in Houston to limit its liability for the massive oil spill to just $26.8 million, a small portion of the projected damage claims.

Transocean, which owns the Deepwater Horizon rig, said its insurer "demanded that the company file the petition in order to keep intact the insurance coverage on the rest of its fleet of 139 offshore drilling rigs," The Washington Post writes. As plaintiffs' lawyers see it, Transocean, the world's largest offshore drilling contractor, is "trying to consolidate the more than 100 lawsuits in a Houston court because Houston juries would be the most sympathetic to the oil industry." One lawyer said they would try to consolidate the lawsuits in New Orleans or Washington — presumably because juries would be more sympathetic to the plaintiffs.

See The Houston Chronicle for more comments from the lawyers.

BP says that since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20 and sank two days later it has spent $450 million on the cleanup and efforts to cap the underwater gusher. The company expects to try again to cap the blowout in the next few days.

Here's some of the underwater video BP has released (after being pressured by the government and media outlets):


Today the federal Minerals Management Service said five oil and gas production platforms in the gulf have been shut voluntarily because of the spreading spill. Together they produce 2,300 barrels of oil a day, or 0.14% of Gulf oil production, and 1.2 million cubic feet of gas per day, about 0.02% of gas output in the Gulf.

Update at 7:31 p.m. ET: NPR says it has obtained "sophisticated scientific analysis of seafloor video" showing that the oil gushing from the ruptured pipes is "closer to 70,000 barrels a day," more than 10 times the Coast Guard's earlier estimate of 5,000 barrels. That works out to 2,940,000 gallons of oil a day. (A barrel contains 42 gallons.)

If confirmed by the Coast Guard it would mean the spill long ago eclipsed the 11 million gallons the Exxon Valdez tanker spilled in Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989.

Today is the 24th day since the blowout, so that would work out to more than 70 million gallons of crude oil that have poured into the Gulf — 70,560,000 to be exact.

[Rajiv]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

Oil arrives in loop current

Last Updated: May 20, 2010- Scientists say the oil slick has reached the powerful loop current, posing a broader environmental risk.



Tar Blobs

Could it get any worse?

Maybe so now that the outer edge of the crude leak has reached the loop current.

The current is a faster moving stream of water that has the ability to take the oil slick to Florida and beyond according to government scientists.

The current is a faster moving stream of water that has the ability to take the oil slick to Florida and beyond according to government scientists.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Wednesday that a small portion of the leak has entered the loop -- so now the potential is there for the current to circulate around the Gulf and then bend around Florida and the Atlantic coast.

With this knowledge, an even bigger environmental threat looms as the Florida Keys and tourist beaches could see oil wash up. U.S. officials are now talking to Cuba about their emergency response to potential oil seeping up on the island's northern coast.

Meteorologists in Florida are saying it will be at least another seven days before oil reaches waters west of the Keys.




But that hasn't been the case for the Louisiana wetlands. The ecologically rich area is now being coated by a thick line of oil, which Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal saw himself when he took a boat tour of the wetlands yesterday. He swept a fishnet through the water, and it was filled with thick ooze.

Prior to Wednesday, a thin sheen of oil had been reported covering the top of the water and vegetation throughout the state's coastal marshes. The delta is famously known to house rare birds, mammals and a wide variety of marine life.

Billy Nungesser, president of coastal Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, was quoted as saying the oil “has laid down a blanket in the marsh that will destroy every living thing there.”

Meanwhile, the US Coast Guard says that the tar balls that were found in the Florida Keys' beaches are not connected to the oil spill. After the blobs were sent for testing, results showed that it didn't match the same type.

The amount of oil that has been flowing from the well varies from 5,000 to over 25,000 barrels a day. BP is hoping that they will be able to shut down the well by Sunday. They're planning on shooting a mixture known as drilling mud into the leak. Like previous attempts though, this has never been done at the current depth so many question marks remain.

The operation could take up to several weeks for completion. This all began on April 20th when BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded killing 11 workers and later sinking.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

Oil arrives in loop current

The U.S. Coast Guard says that tar balls washing-up onto the Florida Keys do NOT match the oil from the BP oil gusher.

The tar does NOT match. The tar is from oil leaking up from the sea floor in another part of the Gulf of Mexico.

This underscores what I have been saying all along: "OIL AND TAR BALLS ARE A NATURAL PART OF THE MARINE ENVIRONMENT". Bacteria feed off of petroleum, and dissolve the petroleum naturally. Waves and oxygen in the atmosphere dissolve the petroleum, so there is no long-term damage to the marine environment.

If the marine environment was as vulnerable and fragile as Greenpeace would have the public believe, marine life would have died-out on this planet billions of years ago.

[aaron]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

"OIL AND TAR BALLS ARE A NATURAL PART OF THE MARINE ENVIRONMENT".
s ago.

Steve, the first thing I thought of when I heard about the tarball was NOT that it was a natural part of the environment, but there are other (or have been other) unreported leaks in the gulf. What would have happened had BPs platform not exploded? Would they have been as forthcoming about the leak? It is not hard to imagine that other leaks/problems have happened that we do not even know about. Hell, there could be a "small" 1000 barrel leak that has been ongoing.

I think we should invest heavily in off-shore drilling next to Victoria. We can let BP handle it.