Internal BP Document Says Spill Could Reach 100,000 Barrels Per Day

Internal BP Document Says Spill Could Reach 100,000 Barrels Per Day

www.businessinsider.com

Today Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.) released an internal BP document showing that the company's own analysis believed that a worst-case scenario, based on damage to the well bore, could result in 100,000 barrels of oil per day.

Read more: www.businessinsider.com...

(visit the link for the full news article)

100,000 barrels a day?! wow..... This is alot worse then I ever thought. Makes you wonder if it was this bad from the beginning, and they were never telling the truth about it.

www.businessinsider.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Further into the article:

Little by little, the most apocalyptic oil scenarios are becoming more realistic.

Congressman Ed Markey has released an internal BP doc that shows that under certain scenarios, the flow from the leaking wellhead could hit 200K.

Today Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.) released an internal BP document showing that the company's own analysis believed that a worst-case scenario, based on damage to the well bore, could result in 100,000 barrels of oil per day.

In the document, BP stated: If BOP and wellhead are removed and if we have incorrectly modeled the restrictions – the rate could be as high as ~ 100,000 barrels per day


up the casing or 55,000 barrels per day up the annulus (low probability worst cases)

To read the document, CLICK HERE.

This number is in sharp contrast to BP’s initial claim that the leak was just 1,000 barrels a day. At the time this document was made available to Congress, BP claimed the leak was 5,000 barrels a day, and told Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the worst case scenario was be 60,000 barrels a day. This document tells a different story.



Read more: www.businessinsider.com...

Of course, they were lying from the start because they had a vested interest in painting it as mild. Also, what also stands out to me is that no matter what they try....they can not fix it. This is divine and nothing will stop it until its purpose is fulfilled. Have faith and pray!

Well 100K gallons is supposed to be 42 Million gallons of oil.

Hmm doesn't sound to good.

Maybe it can still be fixed...

The US gov should step in and say "we are fixing this and you (BP) are paying for it"

Trusting BP to fix this is like trusting an arsonist to put out the fire he started.

[edit on 21-6-2010 by area6]

HOLY CRAP!!!!!!

Does anyone know if this 100,000 barrels is only oil or is it other things such as methane as well? Is this 100,000 barrels of (oil + methane + other gasses)? Or just 100,000 barrels of oil...

The reason this is significant, is because BP has already said that the mixture coming out is 50% petroleum, and 50% methane and other gasses

And if this 100,000 barrels only accounts for the oil, then that means that there is another 4 million gallons of methane being released each day AS WELL!!!

If it DOES include the methane, then that's still ~2Million Gallons of Methane being leaked each day... of which 50% of that is making it to the surface because it's covered with oil, so it will not dissolve as easily in the seawater...

So we either have 1 Million gallons of methane or 2 million gallons making it to the surface each day, depending on whether or not the 100,000 barrels includes the methane or not.

Either way thats A LOT OF METHANE!!!!!!!

REAL GLOBAL WARMING!!!!!!!

I'm assuming alot of gas is leaking with the oil as well. 1,000,000 barrels every 10 days is completely crazy!

reply to post by HunkaHunka

Good question. The 100,000 BPD of oil was cited in their "worst case scenario" statement back when they made their license app. It (apparently) does not take into account the methane gas or methane hydrates that are being released but are (obviously) not washing up on the coast line in layers of deadly brown gop. So, we still don't really know what the total oil+methane gas/hydrates figure is.

Just by the way, I saw a poster on a few threads -- can't recall who, sorry -- who's been saying that it's not methane hydrate being released down there, only methane gas.

The USGS (among others) would disagree with him, because at that depth of around 1.5 KM (5,000) feet and with a sea temp of probably no more than 4 degrees Celsius, methane hydrates can exist and are stable in their crystalline form.

In fact, the original attempt to put an "oil catcher dome" over the leak failed because the covering's opening (designed to redirect the flow) was clogged by methane hydrate crystals. BP's COO Doug Suttles released the details of this problem around May 8th and it was widely reported.

For anyone who's interested, here's a link to the USGS/Woods Hole Science Center page about the subject, that shows with text and easy-to-follow graphs that methane hydrates can exist at the leak site. And not only can they exist, they do exist. If they didn't then that "oil catcher dome" wouldn't have been a failure because of them.

As that page shows, when those hydrates rise up through the waters they eventually reach a higher temperature and/or lower pressure where they become unstable and form methane gas. And this further exacerbates the problem of measuring the flow size. Are we getting full details of the amount of oil that's escaping, or of the methane? And regarding the methane, do we measure it at the hydrate leak rate, or the roughly 160 x larger number when it's become methane gas and has reached the surface or is close to it?

Complex problem. Be nice if BP would be a bit more forthcoming.


[edit on 21/6/10 by JustMike]

in some other article that I don't have to hand atm they are saying by mid July they can collect 80,000 barrels....couple of other tankers on the way or something. So factor in collection rates too, though of course it's likely alot more than 100,0000 barrels would gush

reply to post by cosmicpixie


They just claimed on CNN they have collected 275,000 barrels so far... but that's still a FAR WAY off from what's leaking out now... at 100,000 barrels a day...

Originally posted by Quickfix
Well 100K gallons is supposed to be 42 Million gallons of oil.

Hmm doesn't sound to good.

Maybe it can still be fixed...

At 100,000 barrels per day, that's 4.2 million gallons a day. The downside of it is since BP had publicly denied that much outflow, and going by the recent figures (minus half the volume being VOCs), we are still looking at over a billion gallons in the Gulf so far. If the Tiber oil field holds between 4-6 billion barrels, we're not even half way though this mess. In another 60 days we will have another couple billion gallons of oil in the gulf. Although they are trying to siphon off some of it, either way it's just another drop in the pool, since they can't keep enough tankers in the area to run 24/7.
No matter how you slice it, it's still bad news.

[edit on 21-6-2010 by OuttaTime]

Originally posted by HunkaHunka
reply to post by cosmicpixie

 

They just claimed on CNN they have collected 275,000 barrels so far... but that's still a FAR WAY off from what's leaking out now... at 100,000 barrels a day...

wow that's pretty sad. That's the equivalent of shutting off the BOP for 2 days. That's a pretty weak effort by BP, and people wonder why we're so mad at them.

let's say the relief wells fail or the BOP topples and out it all comes....what happens inside the empty reservoir of oil then ? What effects on the surrounding sea bed would an empty reservoir have ?

Originally posted by cosmicpixie
let's say the relief wells fail or the BOP topples and out it all comes....what happens inside the empty reservoir of oil then ? What effects on the surrounding sea bed would an empty reservoir have ?

That's what we're hoping DOESN'T happen. If the case, lining, and BOP pop out, then we will be looking at a true oil volcano. The bottom and top hole will wear away at both ends creating larger and larger openings (like the shape of an hourglass) . All of that debris swirling at the base of the well will accelerate the erosion of the drill walls. The Bernoulli principe will accelerate the flow at the narrow point until it just decays and what we'll be looking at is a gaping chasm spewing its guts everywhere at incalculable flow rates. The pressures will jettison out oil and gasses until the pressure of the seafloor water bears down on it. It is at that point that the seawater, being heavier than oil, will begin leeching down into the reservoir. If the reservoir pressure drops too quickly, we could be looking down the barrel of a cave-in (if the shell isn't too badly damaged).
All we can hope for now since they pump in water as the pump out oil in the normal process, is that the replenishing water retains enough pressure to prevent collapse.
That area also rests on a continental plate. I'm not sure how far from the drop-off it is, but at this point, an underwater landslide can't be completely ruled out, since sediment and debris make up the ocean floor in that delta area. Underneath the sediment but above the bedrock is where the salt domes form and are used as a lubricant to plate shift.

These salt dome also create their own natural fault lines.

Think of it as a heavy rainfall on a steep muddly hillside. I'm hoping none of this happens, but I've been trying to philosophise the future scenarios in this pea brain of mine

[edit on 21-6-2010 by OuttaTime]

[edit on 21-6-2010 by OuttaTime]

reply to post by OuttaTime


thanks for your explanation. I had read as much elsewhere but none of the articles youched on the empty reservoir scenario. So BP are still pumping water in to compensate for the oil loss ?

Originally posted by cosmicpixie
reply to post by OuttaTime

 

thanks for your explanation. I had read as much elsewhere but none of the articles youched on the empty reservoir scenario. So BP are still pumping water in to compensate for the oil loss ?

From what I understand so far from the drilling process, they establish the well, then extract oil as they push water in. So I'm thinking its a displacement process. From figures that I've seen, the average well outputs less than 1,000 barrels/day (there are 4,000 rigs in the gulf )so it would be a very gradual re-establishment of pressurized norms. And with things happening that slow, the constant pressures prevent formations of sudden cracks or faultlines, and the flowrate is so low, that there is basically no friction or surges to speak of. In this Gulf scenario, the pressures and velocities are happening too much too fast, and that is where the physics of common knowledge go out the window. We're in unexplored territory now.

edit. Forgot to finish

BP, from what I know so far, are not trying to put any water back in the hole. It's flowing out faster than they could possibly put it back in. Even top kill failed miserably, and they were injecting mud at 12,000 psi into an 11,000 psi leak. The pressures these days have been speculated to be as high as 40,000-100,000 psi, depending on if they actually tapped into a methane pocket. All BP is doing down there now is trying to catch enough of it as they can, so the can get it to the gas pumps. It's their only saving grace in this disaster. They're losing their @$$ on this, which has led them to consider shutting down all their operations in the North Sea. Their outflow of revenue has exceeded their reserve. And judging by the size of the cover-up, they're in alot deeper than they had planned to be.

[edit on 21-6-2010 by OuttaTime]

[edit on 21-6-2010 by OuttaTime]