Oil Spill

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TromboneAl said:
Here's a question about this cap thing: You have a pipe that loosely connected on top of the leaking pipe. BP says that they won't be able to get all of the oil, so presumably some oil will be leaking out the sides of this loose connection.

But if you had the proper amount of suction on this capture pipe, why couldn't it get it al?. That is, if the suction pressure is so high that it pulls seawater into through the gaps, how would oil escape? True you'd get an oil water mixture at the surface, but the primary goal is to stop the leaking.

Another question: how deep is this well from the ocean floor to the oil pocket?
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misnomer #1 about oil and nat gas - it isn't pockets, pools or underground caves. the oil is actually within porous rock. but to answer the question, anywhere from 18,000' (or what ever the TD, total depth of the well is). of course, it could be anywhere in the well (within reason, i wouldn't expect it to be too shallow). if anyone tells exactly where it is coming from, they are lying.

misnomer #2 about oil and nat gas - it isn't pumped. well, it can be. but, it relies on it's lighter density (you can transfer that to pressure) to create a pressure differential and flow to the surface. this is called natural flow. of course, people have become accustomed to seeing the pumpjacks of west texas (or bakersfield). offshore, these don't exist, mainly b/c of deck space and a fail-safe safety valve about 300' below the mudline which is mandated by the MMS (and no, this well would not have had one installed yet, don't start that....). then there is the saying, it's much better to blow than suck:D. while your dirty mind chews on that, you can just about double the horse power for sucking opposed to blowing. meaning more space and more cost. throw natural gas into the mix, horsepower requirements go through the roof, or you gas lock your pump. my opinion is that bp has no intention to hook a pump up to this if capping is successful. finding one would be a problem and then getting hooked into the system somehow would be another problem...but not impossible. one step at a time...i would image the cap would give a decent seal, maybe not perfect, but a 90% or so solution.

you can also use oil and water's dislike of each other to separate the two...think salad dressing.
 
audreyh1 said:
The Texas beaches have never been the same. Big old nasty tarballs came up for years, and you needed special solvents to clean them off your skin. Even now on the "white" beaches the sand still has dark mixed in, and you still get a dark stain on your feet.
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I'm not disputing the fact that there have been man-caused oil residue come ashore in Texas. But Texas beaches, like most other seashores, have always had natural occurring oil seepage washing up. Ancient indians along the coast used oil and tar they found on the shores to make paints for ceremonial decorations. Early Anglo settlers in places like Port Aransas used to collect tar balls along the beaches to waterproof their roofs, grease wagon wheels, etc.

I've read several reports in the last couple of weeks of tar balls washing ashore in places like Florida, that were not from the BP platform. But the only way that was determined was by a scientific analysis of the oil. Those tar balls you see could have come from a spill, a flushed bilge, a leak from a ship, or from Mother Nature herself.

Edit to add: In 1793, during the travels of English explorer James Cook, his navigator, George Vancouver, recorded in his journal that they had anchored off of Goleta, California. Vancouver reported that the sea was
"... covered with a thick, slimy substance, which, when separated or disturbed by any little agitation, became very luminous, whilst the slightest breeze, that came principally from onshore, brought with it a very strong scent of burning tar." He continued that "... the sea had the appearance of dissolved tar floating on its surface, which covered the ocean in all directions within the limits of our view."
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...you can just about double the horse power for sucking opposed to blowing. meaning more space and more cost. throw natural gas into the mix, horsepower requirements go through the roof, or you gas lock your pump.
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Thanks for the interesting info.

I'd think that at this point, cost and deck space would take a back seat to removing as much oil as possible.
 
TromboneAl said:
Thanks for the interesting info.

I'd think that at this point, cost and deck space would take a back seat to removing as much oil as possible.
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cost i agree with. deck space...you can't just shift some numbers around on paper for that. i've worked on the enterprise, the rig dedicated to the problem well. while she's a big ship (800 feet or so long, 30 something feet wide), there isn't a lot of space on her. although, she is setup to do well testing and has the processing facilities for that. finding and powering a multiphase pump would be difficult...

hopefully this mess gets worked out soon...
 
I've been looking at the live feed. Although there's a lot of oil coming out the sides, BP says they've yet to close the vents that will prevent that.
 
TromboneAl said:
Here's another question the news media have not answered. This isn't any kind of anti-BP rant, I'm just curious about how things are supposed to work. When BP says it will pay for all damages caused by the spill, do they mean they will pay, for example, the wages of a dishwasher in Florida who is laid off because reservations at the resort are way down?
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Now that is an interesting question.... but here is what I think will happen... they will pay the resort some money based on whatever... and the resort will KEEP the money...

A lawyere here can probably say about liability better.... but I think that it has to be a direct cause.. so... the resort can not get people in because of oil on the beach.. but the local McD does not since the oil did not affect them... even though they do not have any tourists coming in to buy their burgers...

SOOO, the guys who own fishing boats get money... their deck hands do not..

This is just my opinion.....

Hey, maybe someone from Alaska who went through this can chime in...
 
Talked to my nephew who lives on the AL coast and he says oil has arrived on the beaches there. Not a surprise but really is a shame. He said it looks like a ghost town compared to what it normally is this time of year. Fortunately his restaurant is located in Daphne, AL close to Mobile, so his business is still good. His customers are primarily locals. But there will be lot's of businesses that will not survive on the coast who are dependent on tourist. And you can bet, each and everyone of these businesses will not be compensated by BP.

Oil ashore at Gulf Shores, Ala., smell in air - BusinessWeek
 
Dawg52 said:
Talked to my nephew who lives on the AL coast and he says oil has arrived on the beaches there. Not a surprise but really is a shame. He said it looks like a ghost town compared to what it normally is this time of year. Fortunately his restaurant is located in Daphne, AL close to Mobile, so his business is still good. His customers are primarily locals. But there will be lot's of businesses that will not survive on the coast who are dependent on tourist. And you can bet, each and everyone of these businesses will not be compensated by BP.

Oil ashore at Gulf Shores, Ala., smell in air - BusinessWeek
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So sad! :(:(:(
 
When left to their own devices, the Oil Companies...

Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it | Environment | The Observer

This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: "Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable."

With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution.

"If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention," said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. "This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta."
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RonBoyd said:
When left to their own devices, the Oil Companies...

Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it | Environment | The Observer
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Same thing in Ecuador. It seems that Chevron really trashed some pristine areas.

According to the 1993 report "Crudo Amazónico" (Amazon Crude) by the environmental lawyer Judith Kimerling, from 1972 until it left Ecuador in 1992, Texaco intentionally dumped more than 19 billion gallons of toxic wastewaters into the region and was responsible for 16.8 million gallons of crude oil spilling from the main pipeline into the forest. By comparison, the infamous Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in 1989 spilled 10.8 million gallons off the coast of Alaska.
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Chevron in Ecuador
 
I guess it's the ex-engineer in my, but I'd have thought most people would want to know whether the latest fix is working. But it's not even a top story anymore.

CBSNews.jpg

From my view of the live feed, it looks like an almost total failure. The oil is gushing out the bottom of the top hat, and that's not going to get better when they close the vents.

OilFromBottom.jpg

But what do I know?

On Thursday they said they'd know in 12-24 hours, but there hasn't been much since then.
 
I wish they would choose one: gallons or barrels, and stick to it.
 
TromboneAl said:
I wish they would choose one: gallons or barrels, and stick to it.
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Remember this is one of the same companies that prices their fuel at price + .9 cents.

Gallons are a more impressive number if they are recovering it, barrels are better when you are spilling.
 
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10% or 33% either way they captured the same amount of oil, 252,000 gallons of oil per day. The discrepency is in the estimated amount of oil being spilled.
 
It looks like they are catching about a third of what was leaking and have the ability with time to ramp up and catch more. I think it is going to be a long summer in the gulf. Hope the relief wells can get drilled without difficulty or interference from mother nature.
 
Heard a report they are up to 10000 barrels a day, good news!
What I have yet to hear are any new estimates taken after they cut the riser.
 
That live feed looks livelier than ever. Perhaps cutting the pipe increased flow by 30% and now we're capturing part of that extra.

They said that cutting the pipe might increase flow, but I never heard a report on whether it actually did (or a report saying they couldn't tell).

There's no camera angle showing the top of the top hat (the part with the vents), perhaps it would be obscured by oil anyway.

I wonder if there's a web site for oil engineers that has some info that isn't dumbed down for general consumption.
 
Al, I think the flow of oil leaking from under the cap is visibly less now than earlier today. In this feed it appears to be flowing out more slowly and the "cloud" of oil not as thick - you can see an occasional glimpse of the body of the cap through the oil, something you weren't able to do earlier today.

Edit - Disregard the above. I was looking at a different feed. This one is as bad as earlier.
 
WoW! If you say so. but it still looks like a lot of oil. However, as I have never seen oil flowing from a pipe 5,000 ft under water, what the heck do I know. I will pass judgment on BP's performance a year or two from now. For me, this is like analyzing each rifle shot in a battle. Let's see how the war comes out. The lost several battles so far, but it's not over.
 
I think that a difference in frame rate can make it seem to be coming out faster.
 
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