The Scale of the Deepwater Disaster

Originally posted by MikeboydUS
Just wait till the Hurricanes and tropical storms rain this crap and storm surge it all over the Southern US.

That's what I've been thinking about. If they don't get this cleaned up and it continues to keep leaking, a hurricane could suck this stuff up and throw it everywhere. Not to mention that the storm surge alone would push oil inland even further.

Originally posted by dbates

Originally posted by MikeboydUS
Just wait till the Hurricanes and tropical storms rain this crap and storm surge it all over the Southern US.

That's what I've been thinking about. If they don't get this cleaned up and it continues to keep leaking, a hurricane could suck this stuff up and throw it everywhere. Not to mention that the storm surge alone would push oil inland even further.

Wouldn't that be kind of a "good thing"? A hurricane forming and sucking up the Oil and throwing it onto land where it would be much easier to clean and manage?

After all, we do deserve it. We love oil so now we must face the consequences.

as i read through this thread i noticed that a lot of people are focusing on how much oil has been released, but i haven't seen anything on the amount of methane that's been dumped into the atmosphere as a result of this. does anyone know?

this started with methane and methane is a greenhouse gas. if large amounts of methane are dumped into the atmosphere then this could have global consequences as it could result in larger, longer-lasting hurricanes and drought in some places of the world.

how come nobody is looking at the methane angle?

The deadly blowout of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding, according to interviews with rig workers conducted during BP's internal investigation.

Link

... there is stronger evidence that runaway methane clathrate breakdown may have caused drastic alteration of the ocean environment and the atmosphere of earth on a number of occasions in the past, over timescales of tens of thousands of years; most notably in connection with the Permian extinction event, when 96% of all marine species became extinct 251 million years ago

Link

could this become an extinction level event?

[edit on 5.23.10 by toreishi]

BP says tube collecting less oil, as damage continues

www.ctv.ca...

Just as U.S. President Barack Obama announced he was sending top administration officials to monitor the massive oil spill in the Gulf Coast, the company at the heart of the disaster said one of the ways it's trying to stem the flow of oil is working less effectively.

John Curry, a spokesperson for BP, told the Associated Press that a 1.6-kilometre-long tube inserted into the leaking well has siphoned about 216,000 litres of oil in the last 24 hours. That's a considerable drop from the 350,000 litres of oil per day the tube siphoned on Friday.

While the company said it expects the amount of oil siphoned to vary each day, the dramatic drop appears to be another setback in the effort to control the worst environmental disaster in the United States since 1989, when the Exxon Valdez spilled nearly 42 million litres of oil into the ocean near Alaska.

More than 22 million litres of oil have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 workers.

There are so many threads on the Gulf Oil catastrophe it is pretty confusing. I had suggested that ATS create a forum to this urgent matter as was done with Swine Flu but no joy.

Inasmuch as we are still in the midst of this on going disaster, I feel that the focus of priority remain:

1. Stop the leak.
2. Assess the damage.
3. Do whatever is humanly / technologically possible to mitigate and clean up the damage to the ecosystem.

Here is what I consider to be a positive approach to Step 2. This is from our local state university here on Fla's West coast in Tampa Bay. (University of South Florida)

www.tampabay.com...

[edit on 23-5-2010 by kinda kurious]

Today I was really quite shocked to see how the MSM is reporting this crisis. They are totally downplaying the whole thing. I saw a report on Sky News today where they were discussing the clean up as oil had reached the shores of LA and the pictures used was of FOUR guys shoveling a top layer of sand off a pristine looking beach into plastic bags. As if to say: "Nothing to worry about it, four guys can deal with this". I found it very worrying to say the least.

reply to post by loam


I had an idea. Why couldn't they make a type of "fabric" made from something like kevlar or woven steel or something as thick and heavy duty as like a firehose or who knows what and make some kind of an inflatable balloon like structure, stick this into the place where the ruptures are and inflate it, or better still, fill it with a liquid as thick as the oil. If the material the balloon is made of is heavy duty enough, and they can inflate it with something that will make the inflated device solid enough, wouldn't that be able to block the flow of oil??

Mark Linehan
Salem, MA

Originally posted by muse7

Originally posted by dbates

Originally posted by MikeboydUS
Just wait till the Hurricanes and tropical storms rain this crap and storm surge it all over the Southern US.

That's what I've been thinking about. If they don't get this cleaned up and it continues to keep leaking, a hurricane could suck this stuff up and throw it everywhere. Not to mention that the storm surge alone would push oil inland even further.

Wouldn't that be kind of a "good thing"? A hurricane forming and sucking up the Oil and throwing it onto land where it would be much easier to clean and manage?

After all, we do deserve it. We love oil so now we must face the consequences.

You're not taking into consideration the massive oil plume that is suspended 3000 ft below the surface of the gulf which happens to make up over 80% of the spill. The surface oil may get sucked up and distributed over land possibly making it easier to clean up but also contaminating our fresh water systems as well...remember, 1 liter of oil will render 250,000 gallons of fresh water toxic.

reply to post by toreishi


I've been trying to draw attention to the methane since the 14th of May in this thread:

Gulf spill: is the methane a bigger problem than the oil?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I've done a ton of research on past studies, called the sources for news stories. collected as much data as I could find. I called David Valentine, a researcher at UCSB whose estimates were quoted in many news stories to verify the quoted figures. Turns out that the numbers used by the news, 7,500 tons of methane released so far, were based upon unrealistically low assumptions, and the minimum lower limit is at least double that, probably much, much more. He didn't give me an upper limit.

In my thread I've pointed out that nearly two weeks ago oxygen levels near the visible oil plumes measured 30% less than they were prior to the spill. but no one is tracking the huge invisble cloud of methane spreading throughout the spill area. Oil-eating bacteria use up the ozygen in the water and relese methane, methane-eating bacteria use oxygen and release carbon dioxide and water.

Dead animal life decompose and release methane, too. All in all, besides the fact that the spill is creating new dead zones, and the oil is creating visible immediate problems, global warming is getting a massive booster shot. When the hurricanes hit, they will be blowing oil-contaminated water wherever they hit, spreading the problem far inland. Frankly, I'm not sure what will happen with a lot of methane in it, too, but there is no reason I know of to think it will be anything but bad.

reply to post by loam


UPDATE

1,000 barrels per day.
5,000 barrels per day.
25,000 barrels per day.
65,000 to 75,000 barrels per day.
90,000 barrels per day.

BP well may be spewing 100,000 barrels a day, scientist says

BP's runaway Deepwater Horizon well may be spewing what the company once-called its worst case scenario — 100,000 barrels a day, a member of the government panel told McClatchy Monday.

"In the data I've seen, there's nothing inconsistent with BP's worst case scenario," Ira Leifer, an associate researcher at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a member of the government's Flow Rate Technical Group, told McClatchy.

Leifer said that based on satellite data he's examined, the rate of flow from the well has been increasing over time, especially since BP's "top kill" effort failed last month to stanch the flow. The decision last week to sever the well's damaged riser pipe from the its blowout preventer in order to install a "top hat" containment device has increased the flow still more _ far more, Leifer said, than the 20 percent that BP and the Obama administration predicted.

Leifer noted that BP had estimated before the April 20 explosion that caused the leak that a freely flowing pipe from the well would release 100,000 barrels of oil a day in the worst-case scenario.

[edit on 8-6-2010 by loam]

reply to post by loam


Thanks for update loam.

Just to add that Doug Suttles COO of BP "promised" the top hat would capture the vast majority of spewing oil. Yet another lie.



[edit on 8-6-2010 by kinda kurious]

MSM reports "DOOMSDAY scenario" about new Oil Spill

:shk:

Scary reality.

It still amazes me the world is only now waking up.

It's all speculation on my part, but I can't figure out where I went wrong:

How about 350,000 barrels per day?

I just saw a news story on Fox News saying the release may have been twice the earlier estimates.

U.S. Estimates Double Oil Flow Into Gulf

With all sorts of estimates for what's flowing from the BP well -- some even smaller than the amount collected by BP in its containment cap -- McNutt the most credible range at the moment is between 840,000 gallons (3.1 million liters) and 1.68 million gallons (6.3 million liters) a day. Then she added that it was "maybe a little bit more."

But later Thursday, the Interior Department said scientists who based their calculations on video say the best estimate for oil flow before June 3 was between 1.05 million gallons (4 million liters) a day and 1.26 million gallons (4.7 million liters) a day. The department mentioned only a cubic meter per second rate from Woods Hole -- not a rate that translated into actual amounts -- and those numbers only added to the confusion on just how much oil is gushing out.

Previous estimates had put the range roughly between half a million and a million gallons a day, perhaps higher. At one point, the federal government claimed only 42,000 gallons (160,000 liters) were spilling a day and then it upped the number to 210,000 gallons (795,00 liters).

The real figures will remain a big mystery. I'm just curious why BP's initial estimate of 5,000 barrels a day was so completely off the mark. It makes you wonder if they purposefully lied to make it look like less of a disaster than it already was.

-ChriS

Of course BP lied because of lawsuits and besides why not try to sneak in a lower estimate and for a while most people believed it.

What I don't understand is why they never tried explosives. Granted, it's at the bottom of the ocean but it wouldn't matter if placed properly.

Plus, BP already has the ball rolling on drilling relief wells into this same deposit in the coming months. It's not like BP would've lost the oil. They could've actually saved all the oil that didn't spew into the gulf.

They could have done this day 1 instead of spending all this time and effort up till now.. Plus the negative ecological/environmental impact we could've all averted. The dirt/debris from the explosion would plug the hole would it not? Of coarse, it would've required alot of explosives but who cares?

Similar approaches have been used before after the first Iraq war only those explosives were used to put out the fires so they could get in close enough to add the necessary hardware to stop the oil flow from the spewing wells.

I've been searching online for other people discussing this approach and found some interesting links.

A Solution to BP's Huge Spill? Blow it up With Huge Bomb, Says Top Marine

Now he thinks he has a solution to the BP oil spill -- blow the hell out it.

Gayl suggests using the GBU-43 MOAB — known as the “Massive Ordinance Air Burst” or “Mother of All Bombs” — which has been "proven, safe and ‘green", according to Gayl. If a MOAB is unavailable, Gayl says a Vietnam-era Daisy Cutter would also do quite handsomely.

The USMC genius suggests:

Either one … can be enclosed in a simple pressure shell, that is augmented with several tons of liquid oxygen canisters, and lowered to just a few meters above the leaking well head. An oxygen-enhanced MOAB or Daisy Cutter detonated at a water depth of 5,000 feet will indeed have an interesting effect on all the well-related plumbing and equipment that is above, at, and slightly below the sea floor…. The exploding MOAB or Daisy Cutter would have an incredible implosive-sealing effect on oil plumbing within the immediate vicinity of the detonation.

Is it time to blow up the leaking Gulf oil well? BP doing its best to keep that option under wraps
By David Neiwert Monday May 17, 2010 6:00pm

Smith originally brought on Christopher Brownfield to discuss the potential for using a nuclear bomb to stop the leak, and Brownfield said that yes, it was decided a viable way to stop it -- it has been done four times previously. But he gave many compelling reasons NOT to use a nuclear warhead for the job -- the biggest one being that the same job could be accomplished with conventional explosives.

Brownfield: Yes, I think -- stopping the spill immediately. And the reason why we haven't seen that option is because, frankly, BP is still at the helm. I think President Obama needs to take charge of this, bring all the assets of our military to bear, bring the U.S. Army Corps of engineers, bring the U.S. Navy, and bring in all the private-sector organizations that have the equipment for deep-sea operations to make this happen. Let's explode this, collapse the well, and put an end to it.

-ChriS

Here Is what bothers me about the whole thing, The backups on the BOP, most have 3 backups to shut in a well. I know this as I worked offshore for quite a while. Now I can see one not working, even two not working for what ever reason.
But all three not working? That has to be one for the record books.
I do not know what type of BOP that was set on the floor on top of the well head casing ,but it can not be that much different from some of the other types , just larger for High Pressure wells.

So far I have not seen anything in the new's about why the main shut off or the backups did not work. No one has said a thing about it.
What I am seeing is that the new's keeps getting less and less in detail about what is on going and with what has happened! Now I see on the new's that the access to the Gulf is cut off to people and the New's media. Does anyone else see a issue with this?

There has to be more people here on this site who worked offshore on the rigs like I have and did, anyone who has , has to be thinking the same thing I am.
Why! and what happened. because so far there has been no data on this.
And SWAT Teams to inspect the Rigs? You have to be kidding, that would be like sending me out to the closest Clinic to do surgery on someone, I would have no Idea what to do .