Gulf oil disaster

[Dana]

Betcha that within 5 years nobody will be talking about it and the damage will be nowhere near as bad as they are saying it will.

In much the same way that nobody's talkin' about Chernobyl, I s'pose...

Until they actually succeed at putting a cork in it the upper bound of the damage can't be determined- like I said, this party's just gettin' started (and unlike Ixtoc-I it's in-our-face, there's no avoiding it, or the longer term effects.)

But even if they plugged it today (and I sure hope they do, but I'm not holding my breath), it'll still be the largest single-event environmental disaster in US history. I'm glad not to be dependent upon Louisiana fisheries for a living.

But whether the F150 remains the commuter-car of choice in 5 years depends more on Chinese energy policy than the costs of environmental damage mitigation in the Gulf of Mexico. China is currently burning ~1/3 as much oil as the US, but is on track to be using 2/3-3/4 as much by 2020, exceeding US consumption by ~2025. There aren't enough drilling rigs in the world to keep pace with the increase in Asian appetite- US efficiency will be enforced by the market: People driving mopeds & mini-cars short-haul in India & China are willing and better-able to pay a much steeper price per gallon than a 100mile/day suburban commuter in an F150.

[Dunbar Plumbing]

I understand (in a layman way) low yield nukes but how about we test those out near your neighborhood first.
Yes I am concerned about the f'n sea monkeys, more importantly all the other things living around and feeding off of them.
This is no joke to me, I don't want my family to get sick and I also would love my daughter to be able to enjoy our water and beaches much the same as I have for many years.

Low yield nukes.


Do you really think...


Do you really think they haven't tested the capabilities of nuclear devices all these years...the past 50 years??? Do you think a nuclear engineer wouldn't of spoke out on this matter if they knew of a way to stop this? I shouldn't be trading this information around as I'm hearing it from within, someone directly tied to the efforts to resolve this matter and it's fear that no one knows an end to.


You've got the sea turning black and you think that one explosion underwater to attempt to seal off this matter is more dangerous than....a few million gallons of crude oil washing ashore.....



Good luck with your beach front and oil tainted air when it pulls up the east coast. It'll take weeks/months to drill a relief well. You think that accuracy will be without mistake....

[Redwood]

Considering the only "Documented Testing" on this application was coming out of the USSR and was thinly disguised underground nuclear weapons testing do you really want to go there?

My concern is it would be more like hydro-fraking gone out of control and they no longer have a casing to work with but rather a cracked seabed with oil oozing out over a large area until the pressure of the oil deposit equalizes and the flow stops...

[Cookie]

It seems to me they could easily place a tube into the pipe to capture the oil. They should also be able to stop the flow in the same manner a doctor would use a catheter for kidney functions . Placing a tube with a ballon to seal the spill and then either, offload the oil or stop until they can replace with the proper pipe casing.

In medicine, a catheter is a tube that can be inserted into a body cavity, duct, or vessel. Catheters allow drainage, injection of fluids, or access by surgical instruments. The process of inserting a catheter is catheterization. In most uses, a catheter is a thin, flexible tube ("soft" catheter), though in some uses, it is a larger, solid ("hard") catheter. A catheter left inside the body, either temporarily or permanently, may be referred to as an indwelling catheter. A permanently inserted catheter may be referred to as a permcath.

Get a couple of doctors down there, lol.

[Dunbar Plumbing]

Considering the only "Documented Testing" on this application was coming out of the USSR and was thinly disguised underground nuclear weapons testing do you really want to go there?

My concern is it would be more like hydro-fraking gone out of control and they no longer have a casing to work with but rather a cracked seabed with oil oozing out over a large area until the pressure of the oil deposit equalizes and the flow stops...

Was you in contact with someone that actually has inside information about this disaster, like I do? I didn't seek out this fellow, I just ended up working for him and talked at length about the seriousness of this situation and how 5,280 feet down in the water is a huge problem. I was talking to someone who has a brother that's in the top brass of this. They are talking about using a nuclear device to stop it. That's what you don't find on a google search and yes,

that's the extreme measures they are looking at to somehow stop this disaster before it curls around florida and rolls up the east coast.

Well wishers have their place...but the powers that be are extremely worried about NOT stopping this flow, armchair opinions aside.

[Redwood]

Was you in contact with someone that actually has inside information about this disaster, like I do? I didn't seek out this fellow, I just ended up working for him and talked at length about the seriousness of this situation and how 5,280 feet down in the water is a huge problem. I was talking to someone who has a brother that's in the top brass of this. They are talking about using a nuclear device to stop it. That's what you don't find on a google search and yes,

that's the extreme measures they are looking at to somehow stop this disaster before it curls around florida and rolls up the east coast.

Well wishers have their place...but the powers that be are extremely worried about NOT stopping this flow, armchair opinions aside.

I guess we'll just have to see how this all works out...

How is that Tsunami doing....
Did it come in yet?

By the way...
I'm watching a live feed of BP ROVs cutting the riser pipe right now...
BP ROV Riser Cutting Operation

[erhein35]

A human hair can also help this problem because the oil will easily stick to the hair according to some experiments.

[Redwood]

A human hair can also help this problem because the oil will easily stick to the hair according to some experiments.

Yea, so can hay and nukes...

Go to this link to submit your suggestion...

[Dunbar Plumbing]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill


FAIL



"The effort underwater was going on as oil drifted close to the Florida Panhandle's white sand beaches for the first time"

20% increase in flow once the cut is made to open and cap. Relief well is over 2 months away.

[FloridaOrange]

24-72 hour surface oil slick forcast.

http://www.nbc-2.com/Global/story.asp?S=12580643

[Redwood]

An Interesting Discussion of the Nuke Non-Option...
http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6532

Pretty much a fail before the gate was even set up...
For obvious reasons...

[Redwood]

I don't think a lot of people are aware of the big picture on this spill.

They are sitting there thinking, "Isn't it just terrible what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico with that oil spill." They are seeing oil soaked pelicans, dead fish and hearing how the shrimpers and crabbers are out of business... They are right it is horrible!

Now if you look at what our "American Idol" News Media isn't saying...
They are too busy trying to turn it into politics... As usual....

5,000' under water in the Gulf of Mexico there is a blown out oil well....
Getting a man down there is probably more difficult than sending a man to the moon, so all work is being done with ROVs operated by 3 man crews on the surface. Operating these ROVs is similar to flying a helicopter. They weigh 8,800 lbs. and have a 220 horse power motor and can carry a payload up to 900 lbs.

The pipe they cut off is 21" in diameter and 1" thick with a smaller drill casing pipe inside. Those bolts on the flange are 3 7/8" diameter and the nuts weigh 60 lbs. they are torqued to thousands of ft lbs. The failed blow out preventer weighs 450 tons. The oil in the reservoir below is at 9,000 psi and with the pressure of the sea water at that depth counteracting the pressure and restrictions in the wellhead is about 3,500 psi at the wellhead. If they were to shut off the flow at the top of the wellhead it would probably blow out again as the casing is compromised.

What they are doing is attempting to catch as much of the leaking oil they can using a riser similar to a chimney where the oil and gas being lighter than water will rise.

The hope for shutting off the flow lies in a bottom kill operation using relief wells that are going to intersect deep underground with the well where the casing is 7" in diameter. Drillers are saying thet having the relief done by August as stated in the media is a 20% chance, with a 90% chance for 1 year, and a 99% chance for 2 years.

National Center for Atmospheric Research ran a 6 model computer simulation for the spread of oil on ocean currents with just 2 months of leaking. The picture below shows about what should happen by August 20th just 4 months after the leak started....

The oil slick once it reaches between the tip of Florida and Cuba accelerates rapidly riding on the gulf stream covering 100 miles a day or 3,000 miles in a month...

[Joe Six Pack]

Gulf oil for sale today I'm reading. They're going to scoop up oil out of the sea and sell it under "gulf oil from the sea" stickers.
Kinda like chicken of the sea, but now i't s going to be gulf oil from the sea. Cool.

Do they serve that with shrimp?

[Terry]

Greenpeace is not calling for a ban, and with good reason. Many BP stations are independents. They may be buying their oil from local processors.
In the Seattle area, we get most of our oil from Alaska.

The company owns only a handful of the 11,000 stations that bear its brand and is trying to sell the few still on its books. So those who wish to inflict pain on the company are instead putting much of the hurt on the family businesses who actually own the stations.
Just how little does BP gain from its gas stations, besides whatever ancillary marketing benefit it gains from the signs? The gas in its pumps may not be extracted, refined or stored by the company and may just get a spritz of BP additives right before it ends up at the service station. All of this puts a mere handful of coins in the company's pocket per fill-up.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...boycott12.html

Why punish a family owned business that really has no substantial ties to BP?

[Ian Gills]

Can I also add that it's not a British problem either.

Americans own half the shares in British Petroleum.

I think we all know in our heart of hearts that BP is not going to survive this. Americans are just too damn expensive to fix and even a company as big as BP will reach a limit on how much it can pay before it folds.

I still say bring the plumbers in. The bread in the pipe trick did not work, so freeze the sucker just like you might if my main valve broke.

Get y'all on a boat with a couple of beers and it will be fixed in a few hours.

Sure I could do it quicker, cheaper and better as a DIY but that's plumbing for ya.