Only 120,000 barrels of 'oil' hit the Gulf?

You know when you go to get your oil changed, and that thick black stuff comes out of the crank case? That isn't what came out of the gusher. 'Clean' non-used motor oil isn't even what gushed.

Estimates have the spill at up to four million barrels (170 million gallons). So we'll assume that is the high mark.

What the 'oil' actually was is what's been under-reported to this day. Without understanding what crude is, and what the gushing actually consisted of, it's hopeless trying to measure the amount of "oil".

Sweet light crude oil isn't all what we envision when we think of oil.
Instead it's roughly:
75% VOC's (gasoline, diesel, acetone, paint thinners, etc).
20% waxes (candles, baby oil, etc).
5% asphaltenes (road asphalt, roofing tar, etc).

Guess what: the (75%) VOC's literally evaporates into thin air. That's what all of the respiratory problems people were having was about.
www.mms.gov...

But wait: 40% of the gushing was natural gas. No, not gasoline, natural gas... an actual gas, not a liquid. VERY different than "oil".

60% of 4,000,000 barrels leaves us with 2,400,000 barrels of actual crude.

So that means...
There was roughly 1,800,000 of VOC's (that should be about all evaporated by now).

That leaves about:
480,000 barrels of waxes and...
..........(oil) drum roll please..........
120,000 barrels of asphaltenes.

And that is going by the high estimates!



Now the crude is a 'even' mixture of all of the above, but as it hits the mile of water at high pressures it would separate faster than if not. The orange "mousse" in the early photos was a good example of the solvents and waxes still together, but mostly lacking tar. Tar generally ends up sinking, the waxy stuff floats away. But after long enough the different compounds mostly tend to separate into their own elements.

Perhaps most importantly: Asphaltenes aren't acutely toxic. Picture a large blacktop a mile beneath the surface.

What does suck however is those pesky dispersants. While a million gallons sounds like a awful lot, consider that the dynamic gulf is about 642 TRILLION gallons. But what the dispersants (that also evaporate) did do was thin the tar out (some of it anyways).

[edit on 18-8-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss


But of course, there is the small issue of the Corexit.

Hey, you get down to the nitty gritty OP. I like that.

Tell me, do you think things would have been better if they did not pump 2 million gallons of corexit into the gulf? edit to add, that they have let us know about.

I know for a FACT that all natural resources and contaminants have been around longer than we have been around. One thing I find humorous, since we have been pumping the abiotic oil sources from the upper areas, we humans have actually cleaned up the environment.

That right there is a HUGE conspiracy glossed over. Imagine, oil seeps continuously from natural seeps. Now, if we are depleting the upper sources, are we NOT actually cutting down on those very natural seeps?

Keep er up OP, sooner or later common sense breaks through.

[edit on 18-8-2010 by saltheart foamfollower]

There were "tarballs" washed up on the sand and, managed to be found under the sand as well. Now this is but a search link, with multilinks to beaches with "tarballs" washed up. I wonder what % of the 25% that is on the ocean floor, or the 75% that has "gone" these tarballs represent, never mind what the % of the same, of oily scum recently reported on the surface waters??

aolsearch.aol.co.uk...

[edit on 18-8-2010 by smurfy]

Oh noes! The thread they wish would die and whither away...

I guess people would rather be ignorant and not have a clue about what crude oil actually is...

reply to post by saltheart foamfollower


Hey thanks for commenting!

I can't say for sure whether or not corexit is much much much more worse, although I do know that it has some unatural stuff in it. I also know that some of that is used for things like cosmetics.

On the one hand it helps thin 'the oil', on the other it could thin it too much. I read where one mega skimmer ship didn't get much results because the 'oil' was too thin via the corexit.

I read claims in an ATS thread that if you spill oil off a boat the fine is ten times worse if you squirt dish soap on it.

I did a little looking around to find out the evaporation parameters of corexit but didn't have much luck.

When I first heard there was controversy with corexit my thoughts were they should have just been pumping solvents such as acetone or xylene into the well head. Both (and others) are already in the oil. But I think it might be a waste of time trying to drop these on it from above, although maybe not I don't know for sure the difference.

reply to post by smurfy


One thing is for sure: tarballs are easier to clean up than solvent sludge.

[edit on 19-8-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

You forgot about the water content of the crude. The watery oil is the first oil to come out of a well. It is expensive to refine so I bet they just let it leak instead of trying to gather it.

Wise or not, the oil itself never bothered me as much as the Corexit does. Nature probably could have handled the oil over time, but the combination of the two seemed like a whole new ballgame. Choosing an agent that was more damaging than others on the market was odd too. Someone said in a recent thread that they might have used multiple dispersal agents, and I meant to follow up on that but never did. This is very interesting stuff to consider.

reply to post by ~Lucidity


I
feel
ya.

This
thread
can't
die
fast
enough
for
them.

[edit on 20-8-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

So many conflicting reports!

A senior government scientist admitted for the first time today that three-quarters of the oil that gushed into the ocean from BP's broken well was still in the Gulf of Mexico, repudiating his own earlier assurances that the worst of the spill was over.

www.guardian.co.uk...

matt sim says 120,000 a day

reply to post by sabbathcrazy


Matt Simmons was a banker at best & a journalist at worst. No one of his hysterical comments has proven true to date.

His 120,000 bopd may be right, but it has not been quantified whether this volume is stock tank oil or reservoir oil. The op is right about volatiles, but oil is normally reported in stock tank barrels, which is the stable liquid in a tank at atmospheric pressure & 60 degrees farenheit temperature with natural gas seperated.