Oil Spill -- Non-Political & Non-Legal Issues

[ronocnikral]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texas Proud The big problem with that is when a hurricane decides to come a calling... The ships have to leave.. oil is now flowing into the GOM to be moved around by said hurricane... The cap was supposed to allow them to 'turn it off' when needed...

from what i have seen, the new "cap" has some simple BOP's to contain the well. i would be surprised if they didn't have some type of EDP (emergency disconnect package, most likely run on the end of the riser) included so when they run riser (or pipe), they can drive off if needed and the well can still be contained.

worse case scenario from here...1 well volume of hydrocarbon into the big drink. if they are unable to get connected up with the riser.

get the relief wells down, circulate around some mud, chase with some cement, shut in, pressure test, viola. i guess they could lube and bleed, but why risk screwing with everything having the relief wells so close?

[TromboneAl]

I can't find any news about that "A Whale" supertanker skimmer. I saw one news item that said the test was complete bust, and they were trying to rig something up to get the oil funneled into the input ports.

[Westernskies]

Well, now that the leak has stopped, it is time to shift the microphones over to the Monday-morning quarterbacks with 20/20 hindsight so than can start testifying in the court of public opinion about how this (and every other conceivable) calamity could have been prevented. Second- guess every decision. Where were these self-proclaimed media whores experts BEFORE the latest "disaster of the week" befell us? I get tired of hearing these smug I-told-you-so wonks whining "nobody listened to us before" -apparently they didn't have the credibility in their professional/academic communities to get their theories and processes implemented upfront... Why should we listen to them after the fact?

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl I can't find any news about that "A Whale" supertanker skimmer. I saw one news item that said the test was complete bust, and they were trying to rig something up to get the oil funneled into the input ports.

I do google news, sort by date, but there was not much:

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/n...l-cleanup.html

This one is dated yesterday 7/14 - but they refer to 'this weekend' rather than a date, so it is possibly an old story re-posted? Maybe you could work backwards from their 'testing for two weeks comment'.

Quote:

Taipei - The Taiwan Marine Transport Co said Thursday that it was expecting a verdict this weekend on whether its ship, dubbed A Whale and touted as the world's largest oil skimmer, would be allowed to join in cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. "A Whale is undergoing the final test this weekend," company spokesman Danny Wang said in Taipei. "We are waiting for the result." The company converted the ship from a supertanker, and there were questions about how effective it would be as a skimmer. The US Coast Guard and the US government's Environmental Protection Agency have been testing it for two weeks.

I still don't get the 'testing' requirement. Why not put it to work, and find out as you go? If it isn't doing much, well there is your answer. As long as it picks up more oil than the engines leak I fail to see the harm. Getting back to my "house on fire" analogy, you don't stop the fire trucks and say "let me build this small test fire to check your effectiveness before I let you spray water on the real fire".

Something tells me the answer is outside the scope of the thread title....


-ERD50

[TromboneAl]

Quote:

I still don't get the 'testing' requirement. Why not put it to work, and find out as you go? If it isn't doing much, well there is your answer. As long as it picks up more oil than the engines leak I fail to see the harm.

I agree with you. One guess is that whoever will be paying a bazillion dollars per day for this thing (BP) wants to make sure that it works better than a guy in a rowboat with a colander.

[Zathras]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Westernskies Well, now that the leak has stopped, it is time to shift the microphones over to the Monday-morning quarterbacks with 20/20 hindsight so than can start testifying in the court of public opinion about how this (and every other conceivable) calamity could have been prevented. Second- guess every decision. Where were these self-proclaimed media whores experts BEFORE the latest "disaster of the week" befell us? I get tired of hearing these smug I-told-you-so wonks whining "nobody listened to us before" -apparently they didn't have the credibility in their professional/academic communities to get their theories and processes implemented upfront... Why should we listen to them after the fact?

Without specifics on which reports/experts/individuals you are speaking of it is difficult to answer your question.
Many people (certainly not all) that are critical of this event WERE warning about this before the disaster. It is just that the media was paying no attention or weren't out digging for more information.

Yes, there will besome Monday morning quarterbacking but there are also people that had no idea of the risky behavior or the ignoring of safety issues that, in part, led to this disaster. Now that they are aware, they are naturally asking questions.

And yes, some catastrophies are unavoidable, but some are avoidable.

[Westernskies]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl I agree with you. One guess is that whoever will be paying a bazillion dollars per day for this thing (BP) wants to make sure that it works better than a guy in a rowboat with a colander.

Now, if you put coffee filters in that colander... then you'd have something..

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl I agree with you. One guess is that whoever will be paying a bazillion dollars per day for this thing (BP) wants to make sure that it works better than a guy in a rowboat with a colander.

But as I understand it, this guy has no contract with BP. I think if they just started scooping up, and documented what they captured, some sort of payment would be worked out. I don't think BP is going to get away w/o paying them (contractually -yes; PR-wise -No) if they document that they were able to help.

Whatever the other ships are getting paid, pay the A-Whale guy the same rate per gallon captured.

Seems awful simple to me. Now if .... <self-delete following comment to stay within thread title>

-ERD50

[calmloki]

Latest oil covered bird is responsible for massive tourist resurgence on the gulf coast:

[kumquat]

I think it's time I volunteered to help with the cleanup.

[harley]

Quote:

Originally Posted by calmloki Latest oil covered bird is responsible for massive tourist resurgence on the gulf coast:

While I agree with the non-political aspect of the thread title, until the oil is removed I'm not completely convinced about the legality issue.

[Avalon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by calmloki Latest oil covered bird is responsible for massive tourist resurgence on the gulf coast:

Heh.....I was thinking 'one slick chick'.

[travelover]

Kinda reminds me of the last time I changed my own oil.

[TromboneAl]

Next time say "No, Honey, you can't watch."

[BigNick]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zathras Without specifics on which reports/experts/individuals you are speaking of it is difficult to answer your question. Many people (certainly not all) that are critical of this event WERE warning about this before the disaster. It is just that the media was paying no attention or weren't out digging for more information.

Yep... but there are plenty of people out there for whom, if it didn't happen on TV, it didn't happen. That would be a wrong approach, simply on arithmetical grounds, even if the media didn't have a combination of their own agenda and the need to keep the sorts of people interested who buy the advertisers' fine products.

[John Galt III]

I just read (Yahoo news I think) that this is the second largest oil pocket in the world. I wonder if any other wells are currently extracting oil from it?

[chinaco]

Quote:

Originally Posted by IndependentlyPoor Shell drilling engineer goes after BP well design and drilling practices at the Aspen conference. This does not look good for BP. A little shocking. I have never seen a big company go after another like this. Shell Video on "How to Drill a Well" Now Posted - Science and Tech - The Atlantic

The other large oil companies do not want the focus on them... They would prefer it to be a careless BP problem rather than a careless Oil Industry problem.

[Leonidas]

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Galt III I just read (Yahoo news I think) that this is the second largest oil pocket in the world. I wonder if any other wells are currently extracting oil from it?

That rank doesn't seem right. It appears that the area where BP was drilling Macondo prospect (Mississippi Canyon Block 252) was estimated to have about 3.5 billion barrels of oil. http://www.gomr.mms.gov/PDFs/2009/2009-022.pdf Shell just found a much smaller field (100 Million bbls) in the Mississippi Canyon just before the Deepwater Horizon blew up.

It seems like there is a lot of oil being discovered in the GOM (BP found an estimated 4-6 Billion bbls in the Tiber Field - Keathley Canyon), but compare it to what was found offshore in Brazil about the same time (Tupi, Jupiter, Sugar Loaf) and it's small. Those fields combined are more than ten times larger than Macundo or Tiber. Similar sized field was found offshore of Kazahkstan in 2000.

Of course the significant difference is that the GOM projects were all either pumping oil, or well on the road to doing so. And of course the GOM is friendly territory

Map that shows wells, their depths, and includes the Deepwater Horizon site.

[Leonidas]

So, there was this giant oil slick - the size of Kansas - floating around out there in the GOM. And now?

Quote:

The numbers don't lie: two weeks ago, skimmers picked up about 25,000 barrels of oily water. Last Thursday, they gathered just 200 barrels. Still, it doesn't mean that all the oil that gushed for weeks is gone. Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment. "[It's] mother nature doing her job," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

BP Oil Spill: Where Did All The Crude Go? Mother Nature Breaks Down Slick in Gulf of Mexico - ABC News

150 planes are flying daily patrols from Florida to Texas looking for oil. A fleet of 800 skimmers is floating around just waiting to attack some oil like Chester Nimitz sinking enemy carriers at the Battle of Midway.

Quote:

Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft, a government on-scene coordinator, is stationing vessels at the many inlets that run into Louisiana's precious marshes to ward off the arrival of any toxic sludge, what he calls his "fire department." "In the event we do see any oil approaching... we're right there waiting for it, ready to attack it and get it before it really gets into those marshlands," he said.

So we have real admirals, the skies are dark with spotter planes, and you could practically walk from skimmer boat to skimmer boat; and what do they find? 200 barrels.

Just a week or two ago, the oil slick was going to end all life along the shore from Brownsville to Key West. And now they can't find it. Where did it all go? Did friendly aliens come take it away? Is it swimming underneath the Mississippi on it's way to attack St. Louis?

[TromboneAl]

If the impact is minimal, they'll have to give Tony Hayward his job back.