How much oil is down there ? BP says 50 million barrels while insider says up to 10 billion barrels!

The size of the reservoir the leaking oil is coming from has been mentioned here and there but so far there hasn't been a thread to try and ascertain the amount so I'm starting one. I've noticed that alot of us seem to think the reservoir holds several billions of barrels but I think we might have been confusing the well that blew (the Macondo well) with the Tiber Oil Field. An easy mistake to make as they are in the same area pretty much. The Tiber Well is BP's biggest find to date with an estimated 4-6 billion barrels. The Macondo well by comparison is estimated to hold 50 million barrels. This is still a massive amount of oil of course but probably not enough to cause some global disaster or ELE event .

But DOES it hold 50 million barrels, or is alot more down there ? I'm not sure we CAN make any conclusions but it's interesting to read the differing views.

This is BP's biggest find and NOT the leaking well in question:

The Tiber Oil Field is a deepwater offshore oil field located in the Keathley Canyon block 102 of the United States sector of the Gulf of Mexico. The deepwater field (defined as water depth 1,300 to 5,000 feet (400 to 1,500 m),[3]) was discovered in September 2009 and it is operated by BP. Described as a "giant" find, it is estimated to contain 4 to 6 billion barrels (640×10^6 to 950×10^6 m3) of oil in place. Although BP states it is too early to be sure of the size – a "huge" field is usually considered to contain 250 million barrels (40×10^6 m3). It required the drilling of a 10,685 m (35,056 ft) deep well under 1,260 m (4,130 ft) of water, making it one of the deepest wells ever drilled at the time of discovery

source


THIS is the one that is leaking :

The Macondo Prospect (Mississippi Canyon Block 252, abbreviated MC252) is an oil and gas prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, which was the site of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion in April 2010 that led to a major, ongoing oil spill in the region.
The prospect may have held 50 million barrels (7.9×10^6 m3) producible reserves of oil

source

So is this 50 million barrel figure correct ? Hayward seems to think so:

Hayward told a Congressional committee on Thursday the reservoir still held 50m barrels, providing fresh urgency to efforts to contain the oil, or seal off the gusher completely with a relief well.
Hayward's statement to Congress represents the first definitive word so far from BP on the potential it saw in the Macondo well. BP exploration plans, submitted to the US government, had suggested production in the order of 15,000 barrels a day, a figure confirmed by Hayward to Congress.
But the 50m figure cited by Hayward took some industry insiders by surprise. There have been reports the reservoir held up to 500m barrels – the figure quoted by Hayward's questioner, Joe Barton, a Republican from Texas.
"I would assume that 500m barrels would be a more likely estimate," said Tadeusz Patzek, the chairman of the department of petroleum and geosystems engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. "I don't think you would be going after a 50mbarrel reservoir so quickly. This is just simply not enough oil to go after."

BP spokesmen said that Barton was referring to recoverable oil rather than the total size of the reservoir.
"We haven't made an assessment of the reserves as far as I know," said Toby Odone, a BP spokesman. "You start evaluating the reservoir once you complete the well. Obviously we didn't get to that point."

source

Others have their own opinions......

Wolf Blitzer (CNN) says:
One -- one expert said to me -- and I don't know if this is overblown or not -- that they're still really concerned about the structural base of this whole operation, if the rocks get moved, this thing could really explode and they're sitting, what, on -- on a billion potential barrels of oil at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Bloomberg notes:
The ruptured well may hold as much as 1 billion barrels, the Times reported, citing Rick Mueller, an analyst at Energy Security Analysis in Massachusetts

Oil industry expert Matthew Simmons also puts the number above one billion barrels

And Rob Kall (OpedNews writer) claims that a source inside BP tells him:
Size of reservoir - estimated by BP and its partner, Andarko to be between 2.5B and 10B bbl. (that's 100,000,000,000 gallons and 400,000,000,000 gallons).

Given that BP's nearby Tiber and Kaskida wells each contain at least 3 billion barrels of oil ,estimates of more than a billion barrels for the leaking Macondo reservoir are not unreasonable.

source

I looked around to find a fuller comment from Rick Mueller and came across this :

Rick Mueller, an oil industry expert at Energy Security Analysis, in Massachusetts, said that the well’s powerful flow rate, which has been estimated by the government at up to 60,000 barrels a day and shows no sign of slowing down, suggested that the well could be far bigger than previously thought, the Times reported.

BP previously estimated that the field contained 50 million to 100 million barrels of oil.

A company spokesman told the Times that BP engineers had been unable to determine the size of the field because they had not completed the relevant tests before the explosion on April 20.

source

So there we go, a number of disagreements over the reservoir size. It's frustrating that Rick Mueller is another one of those people citing unknown persons while bandying about the figure of 10 billion barrels which probably WOULD kick of an ELE event if the reservoir bled out. Is this reckless doom-mongering from a writer who wants some attention ? I guess we will never know

Rick Mueller connects the powerful flow rate to an underestimated reservoir size- does anyone here have the scientific background to explain why he would reach this concusion ?





[edit on 25/6/10 by cosmicpixie]

The Minerals Management Services in 2004 updated their estimates of the total oil deposits in the Gulf to the tune of 45 billion barrels, and then there's the 232 Trillion cubic feet of natural gas lurking down there.

I got this:

The MMS has estimated that significant oil and gas resources exist in the Gulf of Mexico in areas greater than 100 miles from shore – approximately 45 billion barrels of oil and 232 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Infrastructure exists in the region and industry has an excellent track record for safety and environmental protection. We need access to new areas in the Gulf of Mexico in order to bring that energy to market

from this link

along with this smoking gun statement:

US oil and gas production contributes more than $6 billion annually to the US treasury – second only to Federal income tax payments.

and as for an overall estimation from the MMS comes this:

Federal offshore waters hold the greatest potential for finding and bringing new energy resources to market in the next 5 to 10 years. MMS estimates that there are currently 85.9 billion barrels of oil and 419.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that are technically recoverable from all federal offshore areas.

which ties directly into this:

"would provide jobs and a significant tax source for local communities "

The things that would really help us understand what is really going on down there, are being held from us. It would be nice to know where the migration channels are, and other underwater anomalies.

edit to add: What made me take a step back on this was their reports on natural gas. If the Federal Offshore potential is over 400 trillion cubic feet, and yet the gulf has over 200 trillion cubic feet, that has to be a monstrous pocket of gas down there

[edit on 25-6-2010 by OuttaTime]

[edit on 25-6-2010 by OuttaTime]

I did a thread on this a while back, only got a couple of replies though so i'll post the link and see if we get a better response here in this thread.

How much oil remains under the Gulf

In the article there it said that the leak had only spilled about 1.5% of the total oil down there.

Not good.

CX.

So there we go, a number of disagreements over the reservoir size.

I can believe it, since they can't even get on the same page as to how much is leaking out. I still read reports/articles that are still talking 20,000 barrels a day, and last week I read an article on The Discovery Channel news that some reporter actually said there was 50,000 Gallons a day coming from the well.
The informed are underinformed, and the underinformed are just parroting govt quotes.

reply to post by OuttaTime


yeah I know about the figures for the entire gulf region but was focusing on this particular reservoir as that's the one leaking. The whole gulf isn't going to spew forth it's lot , well it doesn't seem likely...

If a landslide occured then maybe nearby reservoirs would be affected, I don't know....Macondo is about 120 km long by 8km wide according to this article and there are other reservoirs close by

Originally posted by CX
I did a thread on this a while back, only got a couple of replies though so i'll post the link and see if we get a better response here in this thread.

How much oil remains under the Gulf

In the article there it said that the leak had only spilled about 1.5% of the total oil down there.

Not good.

CX.

That 1.5% figure is based on the lowball figure of 50 million barrels beiing down there. Puts it in perspective when you start talking about half a billion barrels instead like the person challenging Hayward at the hearing mentioned

reply to post by cosmicpixie


I see your point, and I think your figures are quite accurate. What I'm wondering here is the size and locations of the migration channels that connect these different reserviors together. Apparently BP has kept these geological findings under operational prudence. If neighboring reserviors are connected to the Macondo region, then the crevace would be self replenishing regardless of the capacity of Macondo. If it is 50 mil barrels, then we're in for a loooong ride. At the pace it has been leaking, it should be about empty by now, but it is still gushing. It's quite a puzzler.

reply to post by OuttaTime


Good point, I'd forgotten about that. I gather you've looked into it and can't find anything online to shed some light on the migration channels. We really are in the dark here aren't we

BP always claims 50-100 million barrels! Look at the money dumped into project liberty and that site is estimated at 100 million also NOW DO YOU REAllY THINK BP WOULD DUMP BILLIONS INTO THIS PROJECT FOR SUCH A CRUD RETURN? BUT WHY SHOULD BP TELL YOU THE TRUTH ANYWAY SINCE THEY ARE SPENDING THE RD FUNDS ITS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS EVEN BLOCK 252!

BUSINESS.......

anyway it's over a billion from my research and contacts within the oil business.

I was under the impression that they've actually tapped into a batholith which is spewing a never ending supply of Abiotic crude oil. If this is true it means this thing will never deplete its reserves.

Considering it's now confirmed that the casing is in fact completely gone, the Nuke solution is looking more and more appealing. Although it bears certain risks, the risks of NOT attempting this would be much greater.

Looks like we're going to have glow in the dark fish for the next 100 years or so

Originally posted by cosmicpixie
reply to post by OuttaTime

 

Good point, I'd forgotten about that. I gather you've looked into it and can't find anything online to shed some light on the migration channels. We really are in the dark here aren't we

Still looking . In 2003 Fugro Geoservices did a 2D and 3D analysit before BP was granted mineral rights to Macondo. I went to their site and did a search for MC 252 and Macondo, yet it yielded these results:

"Your search - MC 252 - did not match any documents.
No pages were found containing "MC 252". "

"Your search - Macondo - did not match any documents.
No pages were found containing "Macondo".

But in the Geography docs I read about the seabed structures in the gulf (and is probably the same in many areas), the salt domes form on top of the bedrock, sandwiched under thick layers of sea sediments. It explained how salt domes form, and in that action, the seepages move from dome to dome, or create new domes (depending on porosity, pressure, gravity, etc). If Macondo is a deep well, and there is a downhill migration pattern of salt leech channels (that 45 billion barrels of oil in the gulf seabed), then it would also conclude that BP had ulterior motives of tapping into upstream rigs as well. The scenario I see in my head is the equivalent of those 3 or 5 tiered fountains you see. Gravity moves the water downhill (so to speak) and becomes part of the downward tiers until it reaches bottom. In this case, the Macondo Prospect.

Originally posted by discl0sur3
I was under the impression that they've actually tapped into a batholith which is spewing a never ending supply of Abiotic crude oil. If this is true it means this thing will never deplete its reserves.

Considering it's now confirmed that the casing is in fact completely gone, the Nuke solution is looking more and more appealing. Although it bears certain risks, the risks of NOT attempting this would be much greater.

Looks like we're going to have glow in the dark fish for the next 100 years or so

The nuke option is a dead horse anymore these days, especially with the findings of nearly 230 trillion cubic feet of gas under the gulf. I had also read in another article that there is a cavern underneath the oil pocket. No explanations on what this cavern is from them though. Like they say, 'never use a match to find a gas leak'

Originally they were reporting the well was a cavern the size of Mt. Everest.

There is other satellite imagery being withheld by the Obama administration that shows what lies under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be around the size of Mount Everest. This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public, according to our sources.
Source

So, what's the size of Mt. Everest?

The official elevation of Mount Everest as the highest peak of the world is 29,029 feet or 8,848 meters in height.
Source

Here's the approximate volume of Mt. Everest.

Mount Everest is has a volume of approximately 365 cubic miles from sea level to the summit. 365 cubic miles = 1 521 386 372 716.335 7 cubic metres
Source

They were also reporting "It is the largest or 2nd largest oil/gas deposit ever found."

Originally posted by jeffrybinladen
BP always claims 50-100 million barrels! Look at the money dumped into project liberty and that site is estimated at 100 million also NOW DO YOU REAllY THINK BP WOULD DUMP BILLIONS INTO THIS PROJECT FOR SUCH A CRUD RETURN? BUT WHY SHOULD BP TELL YOU THE TRUTH ANYWAY SINCE THEY ARE SPENDING THE RD FUNDS ITS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS EVEN BLOCK 252!

BUSINESS.......

anyway it's over a billion from my research and contacts within the oil business.

That question does come to mind. Why all that money and making the deepest drill on record for a measley 50 million barrels?

well i wouldn't worry until the bop topples over I hear they are close with RW1...and so let's see..... I still think it's tilted 10 degree but that could be a camera trick and so who can say.....Obviously we need an intersect fast!!!

I hope it's next week or before the end of the month, the casing could have issues but provided the BOP is upright i'm confident BP can kill this well even so.

It's good to have all the input, it helps to try and get a clearer perspective on the issue. Got to hit the hay now though, I've been pulling way too many late nights here with the oil spill drama so will check in tomorrow to see if anyone comes up with any more info.

The nuke option is a dead horse anymore these days, especially with the findings of nearly 230 trillion cubic feet of gas under the gulf. I had also read in another article that there is a cavern underneath the oil pocket. No explanations on what this cavern is from them though. Like they say, 'never use a match to find a gas leak'

I agree, it's it terrible idea but based on the current state of the BOP and the surrounding formations they're fresh outta others...watch this:



[edit on 26-6-2010 by discl0sur3]

At this point, it does seem unstoppable, and I feel that there are no viable options left. And from what I can gather about possible migration channels between reservoirs, it may go on for years. I cannot find any visual info on2D or 3D ground penetrating radar to verify it, I've read in articles that these salt domes are usually interconnected. If the seabed there is loose and silty, the results of an unexpected concussion may have disastrous results (beyond what already exists) as the well sits on the side of an underwater cliff.

My apoligies Pixie. I'll stay on the thread now