Rolling 2010 Oil Spill Thread

And that's for the new, approved dispersant. The article makes it clear that BP would probably run out of these and use their old backup supply, which is a more toxic substance that hasn't been approved in the US.

....all so that they avoid the 'bird covered in oil' photo op

These guys really have their safety bases covered don't they. Jesus fuck. And there I was on the politics thread like a month ago going "well, drilling isn't necessarily a bad thing, hem, haw, blah". Fuck me.

I just read up on this thing and it's rly depressing me. What sort of impact is it going to have on the environment over the next year? How is it going to affect peoples' health, and will you even be able to fucking go to the beach anymore?

What sort of impact is it going to have on the environment over the next year100 years?

:(

wait, their rig is called Atlantis? After the mythic city lost in a disaster that sank it to the bottom of the ocean?

Oh i meant to add "Next decade?" to that.

I was young but experienced the IXTOC 1, in which 454,000 tonnes were spilled, about twelve times as great as the 37,000 tonnes spilt by the Valdez in Prince Edward Sound. Beaches from Brownsville to Galveston had crud, which was cleaned up by volunteers and tide over the course of 3 months. There was little/no evidence of the spill even on the nearest Mexican beaches within 3 years.

The Gulf is pretty resilient, and crude is disposed of by bacteria, heat, and waves much more rapidly than the Arctic. Every year, about 600 natural oil seeps release about 2 Valdez spills worth of oil into the Gulf every year. In fact, the largest oil field in the Gulf was discovered in 1976 when a fisherman named Rudesindo Cantarell noticed abnormally oily patches on the surface. Pemex named the Cantarell field, responsible for about half of Mexico's production for many years, after him.

There are environmental disasters that have much longer lasting consequences. Dioxin in groundwater. Near permanently poluted rivers from mining (especially in China and Eastern Europe). Global warming. But they don't produce newsworthy photographs.

So far, the engineering discussions are looking fairly positive for this one being contained. Besides the containment "domes", it appears some bright guy at Cameron or BP figured out how to repurpose the blow-out preventer to pump heavy mud into the top of the well, rather than waiting for 2-3 months for the relief well to touch-down near the site of the bottom-well plug failure.

Don't worry, the Gulf coast oil industry will suffer. In fact, most of the deep-water rigs are being bid much higher dayrates to work in other basins. After all, the Gulf was only producing about 1.5 million bbl/day (about 8% of U.S. consumption), and we can afford the additional $130 million to buy it from elsewhere. China's still extending credit. Right?

The IXTOC spill took place hundreds of miles from the Texas coast, and didn't end up impacting the TX coast for several months, correct? Again, comparing your experience with that spill to Exxon Valdez on the current spill is apples and oranges.

I'm not sure why you linked to the study about 2 Valdez spills worth of oil in the Gulf every year. The article itself notes that the oil spilled out in this manner is a hundredth of a millimeter thick, and "impossible to see with the human eye and harmless to marine animals". So what is the point you're trying to make? Oil in water isn't a big deal? Against all evidence?

I suppose maybe you're trying to make a point about coastal resiliency to oil spills, but again, that assertion flies in the face of evidence of ruined communities, economies and ecosystems.

"Don't worry, the Gulf coast oil industry will suffer." ? The only, ONLY potential "bright side" of this whole debacle was that potentially it could help to spur on desperately needed energy/climate legislation. A lot of the consequences of climate change are difficult for people to comprehend either because they come in the form of warnings about the future, or increases in the probabilities of events such as severe weather, droughts, etc. In other words, a lot of the issue is difficult to communicate because it's somewhat abstract. This oil disaster, on the other hand, is concrete and undeniable, and thus serves as a potential turning point for a lot of closed minds. But in response, you repeatedly opine about how oil spills aren't a big deal and worry about the health of the oil industry?

What's your point?

I simply wished to counter the speculation about decades or a century of devastation above.

It's potentially going to be pretty lousy for some coastal marshes and barrier islands from Grand Isle to Mobile, but the Gulf is warmer and not nearly as enclosed as Prince Edward sound. In Alaska, the spill washed ashore almost immediately, without any time for weathering. Here, most of the volatile components (like the gasoline fraction) evaporate off, leaving heavier tarballs that mostly sink to the mud and get eaten by bacteria. The Gulf eddy current presently active will tend to draw a good deal of the spill into a clockwise rotation that will send the much of the spill away from shores to deposit in the abyss. There's also a huge difference in that whereas Prince Edward sound was roadless wilderness with little infrastructure, Houma and Morgan City are two huge centers for the service industry and only about 150 mi away, so the response has been an order of magnitude faster.

I understand the desire to have some press focus on environmental concerns. I think its a great idea to wean ourselves from carbon fuels. But I spent quite a bit of time investigating the issue when I first studied peak oil issues around 1998-2001. We have enormous investments in housing sprawl and transport infrastructure for which green alternatives, even when economically competitive, will only scale with great difficulty, and 3+ decades of intense investment. I suspect the political will to do so, however, will come from sustained $200+/bbl oil. At which point oil industry will do just fine without access to the U.S. Gulf, though most of the jobs will migrate to countries nearer the more prospective basins.

By the way, I'm the environmental nutcase on energy boards. I guess its only fair that I'm viewed as the industry apologist around here.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/05/while-oil-slick-spread-interior-department-chief-of-staff-rafted-with-wife-in-grand-canyon-.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwQOD_Ir2vQ

http://www.matteroftrust.org/programs/hairmatsinfo.html

so the first shot at using the "containment dome" didn't work.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6430AR20100509

The problem is gas hydrates, essentially slushy methane gas that would block the oil from being siphoned out the top of the box. As BP tries to solve it, oil keeps flowing unchecked into the Gulf in what could be the worst U.S. oil spill.

"I wouldn't say it's failed yet. What I would say is what we attempted to do last night didn't work because these hydrates plugged up the top of the dome," Suttles said.

"What we're currently doing, and I suspect it will probably take the next 48 hours or so, is saying, 'Is there a way to overcome this problem?'"

even though it may very well wind up being completely useless, i gotta say i'm impressed with how quick this four-story tall, 100+ tons structure went from being a lightbulb in some engineer's head to grounded on the ocean floor in less time than i've taken to write a two-page paper. can't figure out what purpose the scaffolding-looking stuff on all sides of it is, though.

http://www.treehugger.com/containment-dome-468.jpg

can't figure out what purpose the scaffolding-looking stuff on all sides of it is, though.

hold on, let me find a diagram that explained its purpose...

Here we go:

http://i40.tinypic.com/20b049h.jpg

hey, thanks. ok, that's what i assumed it was, just to stop it from sinking in too far to the sediment-rich floor, but then i couldn't figure out why the opening to allow the pipe in wouldn't rise up a little bit further than the flaps, so it doesn't pinch it. in all the pictures i've seen, the flaps look about even with the top of the opening. oh well!

wow.

David Rainey, BP’s VP for Gulf of Mexico exploration, was on the rig celebrating its safety record when it blew up. Although 11 workers were killed, Rainey and the other BP employees on the rig safely escaped the inferno.

can picture him doing a homer simpson-esque "WE ARE SO SFE! WE ARE SO SFE! S-F-E! I MEAN S-A-F-E!" dance

yes but what does he really mean by 'S-A-F-E'?

hmmm probably means he is a place where people can store valuable objects

also maybe they were participating in an impromptu game of whiffleball and he narrowly avoided being tagged out by the unusually good blowout preventer technician

Hay should help:

http://www.wimp.com/solutionoil/

The next tactic is going to be something they call a junk shot," Allen told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "They'll take a bunch of debris -- shredded up tires, golf balls and things like that -- and under very high pressure, shoot it into the preventer itself and see if they can clog it up and stop the leak."

http://i37.tinypic.com/2wgd4ee.jpg

when my sink gets clogged, it's because rice and pasta have accumulated at the bottom of the sink and have covered the drain -- maybe they should try that

fuck yeah, Sisko!

Hah "Junk Shot". Damn, they really didn't prepare AT ALL for this type of event, did they? The free market at work.

just goes to show, there is no problem that can't be solved by kicking it in the balls.

Wouldn't clogging the leak with a bunch of debris just cause a build-up of pressure that will find a way out somewhere else? Of course, this may be why BP doesn't pay me big bucks.

when my sink gets clogged, it's because rice and pasta have accumulated at the bottom of the sink and have covered the drain -- maybe they should try that

Hair works well for clogging drains - and it also adheres to oil - so maybe this approach will work:

Sopping Up An Oil Slick With Castaway Hair
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126536482

BP now urgently looking for Ned's phone number.

http://paulrademacher.com/oilspill/

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/05/11/us/11oil2-cnd/11oil2-cnd-hpMedium.jpg

NYT - Size of Oil Spill in Gulf Underestimated, Scientists Say

Two weeks ago, the government put out a round estimate of the size of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico: 5,000 barrels a day. Repeated endlessly in news reports, it has become conventional wisdom.

But scientists and environmental groups are raising sharp questions about that estimate, declaring that the leak must be far larger.

Repeatedly endlessly in news reports...BY THE NEW YORK TIMES. god DAMMIT, there have been indications for over a week now (upthread, for example) that the 5,000 barrels/day estimate was highly likely to be bullshit!

“I think the estimate at the time was, and remains, a reasonable estimate,” said Dr. Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator. “Having greater precision about the flow rate would not really help in any way. We would be doing the same things.”

Environmental groups contend, however, that the flow rate is a vital question. Since this accident has shattered the illusion that deep-sea oil drilling is immune to spills, they said, this one is likely to become the touchstone in planning a future response.

“If we are systematically underestimating the rate that’s being spilled, and we design a response capability based on that underestimate, then the next time we have an event of this magnitude, we are doomed to fail again,” said John Amos, the president of SkyTruth. “So it’s really important to get this number right.”

Based on “sophisticated scientific analysis of seafloor video made available Wednesday,” Steve Wereley, an associate professor at Purdue University, told NPR the actual spill rate of the BP oil disaster is about 3 million gallons a day — 15 times the official guess of BP and the federal government. Another scientific expert, Eugene Chiang, a professor of astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated the rate of flow to be between 840,000 and four million gallons a day. These estimates mean that the Deepwater Horizon wreckage could have spilled about five times as much oil as the 12-million-gallon Exxon Valdez disaster, with relief only guaranteed by BP in three more months.

Gotta love the evil music in this clip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlPPFcy-3Vo&

Sorry, that's from thinkprogress

Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry.

A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day — much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.

The method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent.

the particle image velocimetry method is intriguing but i wonder if it accounts for all the natural gas, which looked to be a pretty significant part of the output but obviously wouldn't fill a barrel like the crude. but whatever.

what concerns me more than the lack of a leak rate estimate is the fact that the bulk of the spill is occupying "a huge cone, a mile high and about two miles across" that's subject to undersea currents, which, by bp's own admission, are untrackable at various depths. they don't even know where it's going!

some1 school me -- is the pipe that's gushing gas & oil in that clip still gushing gas & oil right now at that rate?? plz say no

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/13/bp-boss-admits-mistakes-gulf-oil-spill

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume"

well I guess if you look at it that way...

some1 school me -- is the pipe that's gushing gas & oil in that clip still gushing gas & oil right now at that rate?? plz say no

― contl;drizer (J0rdan S.), Friday, May 14, 2010 1:17 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

you mean the one that's been doing that for the last three weeks, unabated, with previous efforts to contain it having failed and all prospective solutions untested at this depth and involving shooting shredded tires and golf balls into the well? yes.

Steven Chu on it all. As is said before the interview, "As a mental exercise, try and imagine what these answers would sound like if "Brownie" or some other top Bush officials were still overseeing disaster relief in the Gulf."

x-post Yeah, that BP tools "it's a big ocean" defense just doesn't fly.

man, Chu sounds like Reed Richards or Geordi LaForge or something in that interview. "Well, I happen to know a little, just a little mind you, about gamma rays, and recently I was working on a Negative Zone Portal that could - potentially - be adapted to create a subspace feedback field...."

The shock that the footage prompts, along with the fact that it was immediately used bu researcher to demonstrate that the oil was leaking in much higher quantities than official estimates, is probably why BP suppressed the video for weeks.

what fucking scumbags

what fucking scumbags

― rahni, Friday, May 14, 2010 2:04 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

btw I am loving lame-duck Stupak giving these guys the business

Big Oil? Scumbags? I am SHOCKED. Why, I had heard that BP is one of the greenest oil companies! Well, don't worry, this will all be cleaned up in a few months. Can we please get the discussion back to where it belongs - the financial wellbeing of BP, the gulf coast oil industry, and BP-branded gas stations that may be hurt by boycotts that aren't happening?

where's that tl;dr apologist from upthread with all the links

I'm dubious about Wereley's results, simply because a 7" production string has difficulty producing over 60 kbbl/day, completely unchoked. Just as a matter of fluid viscosity. In this case, at the blowout preventer the shear ram seems to have cut the production casing, but annular rams that held the seal around the shear ram scissors blade failed. 5500 bbl/d is 2.67 gallons/second, which (oil isn't all that compressible) seems consistent with the video imagery (once one knows scale of the casing and riser).

Ultimately, the actual amount doesn't matter much compared to the public perception. Lawyers will benefit, insurers will make much US GoM production economically marginal, and this spill killed the climate bill.

As I said above, we could always buy our gasoline to feed our bloated sprawl on our collective credit card. We don't actually have to produce anything we need now that everything is digital.

oh there you are