Gulf oil disaster

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...

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...

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?

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/html/businesstechnology/2012094603_bpboycott12.html

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

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.

Ya fight fire with fire, burn it out.

Can't burn the oil that is moving underwater
This is going to make it around Florida, the the gulf stream is going to take it up the coast
And they are already saying it will effect fisheries in New England
The bluefins spawn in the Gulf

Dunbar Plumbing said:

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.

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I'll give yah a dollar if you can guess how many tens of thousands of gallons of oil have leaked since my last post on 6-02-10.

You think Operation Repo is bad on TruTv, wait till you see the faces on the people in florida when they are surrounded by an oil slick.


And here:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGxGVGiD3yk


This is just one of the issues that happens when that volume mass sits in one area, it's gassing off. Cancer rates are going to soar in those coastal states, no one will be able to pinpoint it.

It'll just happen, over time, victims.


Chevron just had a oil spill, there's another one leaking out there aside from this one. Media is tight lipped about 3, let alone one.

The Bp gas stations are losing all their customers here in Northern Kentucky/Greater Cincinnati area. People so pissed off about the poor design this has taken.

The Science Channel was showing NatGeo's Gulf Oil "Spill" special last night. Very interesting and of course concerning. It seemed they were pandering to BP's image as a tradeoff for access though.

This link shows a post on The Oil Drum which is probably as accurate an assessment of the situation you will find anywhere.
Bear in mind "The Oil Drum" is an oil industry forum and just like here someone would rapidly shoot BS full of holes...
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593#comment-648967

When you read that you will have a pretty good idea of what is going on...
I assure you it's ugly and it won't be found in the papers...

I have come to the realization that American taxpayers will have to pay for this, which is no bad thing.

The industry should have been better regulated, so it's the fault of American voters.

Pay the taxes or have dirty beaches. The choice is yours.

I quite like the Golf Coast and Florida as well as the people living there, so as a non-American living here I propose to pay higher taxes.

Bigger Government is the only fix to this and more jobs for my friends in DC.

Ian Gills said:

I have come to the realization that American taxpayers will have to pay for this, which is no bad thing.

The industry should have been better regulated, so it's the fault of American voters.

Pay the taxes or have dirty beaches. The choice is yours.

I quite like the Golf Coast and Florida as well as the people living there, so as a non-American living here I propose to pay higher taxes.

Bigger Government is the only fix to this and more jobs for my friends in DC.

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Yea you are right...
After the hollow shell of BP is sold off to the Chinese the taxpayers will have it applied to their tab

BP will be long gone and forgotten but the mess will linger on....

Europhonies

British Petroleum has more than enough money to pay for this--the $20 billion they set aside is a drop in the bucket compared to the total value of their assets. Also, how come when an American company does something in Europe, lets say, it is the fault of the American company but a European company pollutes America and somehow then it is still the fault of America. Hypocrites like Ian, if they read a story about Microsoft or Intel doing something bad in Europe, would exclusively blame the American company and not Europeans for not regulating tightly enough.

Of course, the real goal of Europeans attacking America is to distract attention for their imperialist past (and present.) They can go on gleefully about how America is contributing to drug wars in Mexico, for example, but ignore narco states in West Africa financed by Euro drug money.

OK then blame the British. Just like New Orleans tried to do before they realized that a lot of the tourists that go there are from England. Duh!



Like I said before, it's not really a British company any more. Americans own half the shares.

A bit like America really. Once ours but not any more. Although it was a little bit better when it was!

They were happy times.

A very concerning accident and the sad thing is there's not really much they can do to prevent a big oil spill. As already mentioned, the oil will be moving up to Florida and even New England will get its share of it. The natural consequences in the affected areas can't even be estimated yet, I am afraid it will be worse than most of us think. I am really angry at BP and all the people involved in the disaster, they are destroying earth.

If this isn't sad, I don't know what is -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY-tIEqzcmU

Apparently the water has started to evaporate into the air and turn into rain water -- oily rain water. I don't even want to imagine how this oil spill is going to affect crops, homes and worst of all, people. Really scary stuff we're seeing here, I must say. What do you guys think? Isn't this horrible? I think the worst part of it is that if we DON'T BP, we risk having them lose all of their money and resources for actually fixing the oil spill. It's such an unusual and confusing situation.

I listen to George Noory on Coast to Coast AM. He had a guy on that said there is about a 15 mile span of Ocean floor Raising up around the well. The guy said they have been doing it all wrong. If that big underwater zit pops, we are really going to be in trouble! Don't shoot the messenger. It was in the last three weeks I heard this, I think.

Yeah, the next thing is that it seems like a lot of mistakes were made right after the actual accident - the oil could move underwater and spill and I am sure they could have done better in reacting to the accident and minimizing the damage.

Good news out of the gulf...

Sunday afternoon they dropped the transition riser in place on top of the gusher and they got a good flange seal made up.

They just completed dropping a new cap in place and locked it on with a hydraulic coupling a few minutes ago.

They may now after some testing possibly be able to shut the well off if its integrity looks good after testing...

Worst case scenario is they will be able to collect 100% of the oil and either process or burn it off at the surface except when severe storms come through and they have to disconnect.

They just completed dropping a new cap in place and locked it on with a hydraulic coupling a few minutes ago.

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Sounds like one of Redwood's invoices.

Or in other words, fancy language for a fernco. Where were the plumbers when I asked them for solutions?

Three months later, millions of gallons spilled, wildlife killed and thousands of livelihoods at risk and the plumbers here couldn't even be bothered to slap a banded coupling on it!