Oil Math 101

[redlin67]

[karder]

Although BP is financially responsible for this accident, they should not be in charge. When I was a firefighter at a house fire or a accident scene, i did not let the property owner call the shots.

I know this is a very complicated issue, but obviously BP is not capable of fixing this problem. That became evident in the first couple of days after the initial disaster. The ineffective handling of this leak by the Federal Government is the result of the American people electing a community organizer to be President. Obama has done nothing more than look concerned and make stern statements.

Why we have not called a national emergency meeting and brought together scientists from the U.S. oil companies, and NASA, to come up with a solution is beyond me. NASA has some of the best scientific minds in the world, particularly when it comes to problem solving. I certainly don't expect Obama to have the answer to this problem, but he needs to take control of the disaster away from BP and bring in some scientists who can engineer a solution. Actually this should have been done on day 2 or so. 52 days into the spill and all we have is tap dancing by BP and stern condemnation from Washington, but no attempt to use our countries vast physical and intellectual resources to engineer a solution.

[G26ster]

refused to allow experts from other countries (some of whom have more experience with deep sea rigs) to come to our aid saying there was a law against foreign ships in our waters.

Uhh...Deepwater Horizon, Discoverer Enterprise, (the current drillship handling the recovery) and a lot of Transocean's other vessels are Marshall Islands flagged.

The Jones Act, enacted in 1920, places restrictions on certain shipborne activities in U.S. waters to boats built in the U.S. and operated by American workers.

"The Jones Act, enacted in 1920, places restrictions on certain shipborne activities in U.S. waters to boats built in the U.S. and operated by American workers. Foreign Policy magazine noted last month that a number of nations had offered to help contain the spill by sending over skimmer ships, but US officials turned the offers down, saying thanks, but they could handle the spill on their own. It was unclear what was going on at the time, but politicians and commentators on both sides of the partisan divide are now wondering whether the Jones Act is behind the refusal.

During Katrina, Bush waived the act, writes Wilson, yet Obama has yet to do so for the Gulf crisis -- which some speculate has to do with Obama's support for labor unions, which benefit from the Jones Act in non-crisis times. The administration and the Coast Guard have responded by saying they've accepted help from a number of nations in terms of equipment, including 3,000 meters of containment boom from Canada, and two oil skimmers from Mexico. But those are all operated from U.S. ships, by American workers. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told Fox, "If there is the need for any type of waiver, that would obviously be granted. But, we've not had that problem thus far."

[txmatt]

Alernative sources of energy (wind, nuclear) only accounts for less than 1% of our available energy. Oil and natural gas are the majority by far.

Where are you getting this number? Sounds crazy to me. Probably oil company lies. You are talking total possible energy available like until sources are exhausted? In the US?

[redlin67]

Okay, I misquoted the nuclear, this is 6%, hydroelectric is another 6%, but wind, solar, geothermal and wood combined are less than 1%. Oil is 38%, gas 23%, and coal is 26%. This is global consumption as of 2004, but I am sure it hasn't changed very much, if anything, the demand for oil has increased with the increased demands from China and India. Oil company propaganda, maybe, I got the info from Wikipedia.

[rdcrags]

Good job, Annoyed. You said it all. I'm wordless.

TX CHL 1997
CO CHP 2005

[KD5NRH]

If the BOP's were damaged, and the early reports are that this was a KNOWN issue before cementing, then BP is in serious trouble, like criminal charges trouble.

From the testimony so far, a couple of people overheard the BP company man make a comment that implied he was aware of the damage to the annular preventers, and was depending on the shear rams if anything went wrong.

I certainly don't expect Obama to have the answer to this problem, but he needs to take control of the disaster away from BP and bring in some scientists who can engineer a solution.

You really think BP doesn't want the well shut down? Or do you want the same type of management and bureaucracy that has screwed up every Federal project so far in charge of this?

The most qualified wild well engineers in the world are already working on the solutions. You're not going to find better ones wandering around some Federal lab.

[TexasGal]

I see there are some members here who know quite a bit about the process that was being used to drill this well. I know nothing. I live where there is natural gas drilling and that is no help in understanding this mess. I saw a news story where it was reported there was a heated argument the morning before this thing blew over replacing the heavy drilling mud with seawater. The guy in charge of the rig (I think) objected strenuously to replacing the drilling mud. The other guy pulled rank of some kind and ended the argument. Does anyone know if the drilling mud was actually replaced with the seawater and this was what the cause was? I thought it had to do with an equipment failure. Was it one or both? Just trying to make sense out of the bits and pieces...

[txmatt]

Okay, I misquoted the nuclear, this is 6%, hydroelectric is another 6%, but wind, solar, geothermal and wood combined are less than 1%. Oil is 38%, gas 23%, and coal is 26%. This is global consumption as of 2004, but I am sure it hasn't changed very much, if anything, the demand for oil has increased with the increased demands from China and India. Oil company propaganda, maybe, I got the info from Wikipedia.

That's a bit more believable. Also worth noting that in this country we get about 20% of our electricity from nuclear. And nuclear in the US is seriously underdeveloped and underutilized. Wind and solar can be great in some applications, but as far as large scale power production goes are pipe dreams. Also when it comes to available energy, i.e. energy that could be used in the future, in the US I would imagine coal and nuclear are at the top of the list.

[drjoker]

Yeah,

If 40,000 barrels of oil weighs thousands of TONS, why are they using flimsy devices weighing less than 1 ton to plug the leak? Simple physics states that it will not work. But, BP is cheap and stingy. They are pinching pennies on the repair job to save pennies. They really need to employ a plug or solution that weighs thousands of TONS in order for it to work. But, they don't because anything weighing thousands of tons will be expensive. Now, they're asking for federal aid. So, BP messed up but we the taxpayer are going to pay for it and "bail out" BP.

Folks, who "bails out" us when we mess up? Nobody. Why should corporations get special treatment?

I think Big O should freeze BP's assets and use it to pay off the damages using eminent domain or some other legal clause. A solution that weighs thousands of tons should be implemented ASAP and this should be paid by BP.

= BP

[GOP]

I'm curious, but if BP shouldn't be in charge of plugging the hole, and I'm not disagreeing here, then who should? Obama accepted "blame" for the oil spill response, but I don't see any Federal drilling rigs, so who should be in charge?

[KD5NRH]

If 40,000 barrels of oil weighs thousands of TONS, why are they using flimsy devices weighing less than 1 ton to plug the leak? Simple physics states that it will not work.

Simple physics states that if you just stick a plug in a blowout well, the casing blows out below the seafloor and there's no way to stop the leak.

Maybe you should try learning a bit about well control. They've already spent enough to buy a plug weighing millions of tons if that would work.

[Right2Carry]

This is not the first oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from an oil rig. This happened once before in 1979 and leaked for 9 months before it was finally plugged.

1979 OIL SPILL
Gulf oil spill has 'perfect precedence' in 1979 disaster.
BY NIRVI SHAH
nshah@MiamiHerald.com

The exploratory oil well two miles below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico exploded in a ball of fire, spurting millions of gallons of crude into the sea. As weeks turned to months, oil executives grappled with capping the well. The growing slick turned into an immediate ecological nightmare.

The year was 1979. The blowout of the Ixtoc I, drilled by the Mexican-run Pemex, retains the dubious record of causing the world's largest accidental oil spill, dumping an estimated 138 million gallons over nine months. Eventually, Pemex cut off Ixtoc I with two relief wells and a cement seal.

With top BP executives, scientists and Obama administration officials searching for a solution to capping the Deepwater Horizon blowout off the Louisiana coast, perhaps they could find a blueprint in the Ixtoc I experience, observers say. They also may find lessons from the Montara oil spill last August off the northern coast of Australia, where it took five tries and nearly three months to stop the flow of as many as 84,000 gallons a day into the Timor Sea.

If some scientists, who say BP and the U.S. Coast Guard are underestimating how much oil is leaking now, are right, the current gusher could easily eclipse the demise of Ixtoc I in the Bay of Campeche. By their count, instead of the 210,000 gallons leaking per day, it's more like 4 million.

``Everybody keeps saying the spill in the Gulf is unprecedented,'' said geologist John Amos, president and founder of SkyTruth, a nonprofit that investigates environmental issues using satellite images. ``That is such nonsense (nonsense subsitituted for a word that is not allowed per forum rules). We had perfect precedence.''

THE IXTOC I

When the Ixtoc I burst into flames on June, 3, 1979, Wes Tunnell and other researchers had to figure out how long it would take the current to carry the oil, in one form or another, 600 miles to south Texas.

``We projected that it would reach the Texas coast in about two months. It exactly did,'' he said. By August, ``it coated the Texas beaches in a ribbon of oil 30 to 50 feet in width from Rio Grande to Port Aransas.''

In some places, the coating of oily sludge was only an inch deep. In others, it was a nearly a foot-and-a-half layer, he said, turning off tourists.

``The south Texas restaurant and hotel organizations, at the time, claimed that they lost $50 million in revenue. Back then that was a lot.''

The lead time did help, however, said Tunnell, 65, who doesn't do as much field work now, as associate director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies. While the edges of the region's barrier islands turned black, booms laid across the few entrances to the area's lagoons kept much of the oil out of some of the most fragile ecosystems, he said.

That's far different than the intricate, exposed marshes of Louisiana now in peril from Deepwater Horizon oil.

Measuring the recovery of the south Texas coast was difficult, he said. A tropical storm hit the oily beaches in September, as Pemex struggled to cap Ixtoc.

``The tropical storms helped clean off the Texas beaches,'' he said, and some environmental studies were abandoned as a result. ``The good side is, between one and three years later, everything was back to normal. It doesn't take long for these sandy beach habitats to replenish themselves.''

Tom Linten, now a senior lecturer at Texas A&M University -- Galveston, was hired to spread oil dispersant over the Gulf in 1979. He commissioned a Canadian plane used to put out forest fires to spread the chemical over the open sea.

``When that plane came over and hit [the oil], it was like a curtain was pulled back or something. It disappeared,'' said Linten, 74. ``We were all standing there thinking, `My God. That was unbelievable.' ''

As Linten, 74, watches developments surrounding the latest spill in the Gulf, he leaves predictions about what will happen to the legion of scientists and specialists gathered in Louisiana. ``Compared to what they have these days, we were like horse and buggy. I have confidence with the great advances in technology, robots, et cetera, et cetera, this thing will be brought under control.''

MONTARA OIL SPILL

Those wishing the oil industry had learned its lesson -- and that technology had truly advanced over the last 30 years -- say a catastrophic spill less than a year ago in the Timor Sea dispels any notions about the industry's evolution.

In the waters between Australia and Indonesia, a Thai-company's well blew out in a similar fashion to what occured in the Gulf of Mexico last month. ``It's an eerie foreshadowing of this,'' said Amos, of SkyTruth. ``There was a willful disregard of that spill.''

The tally of oil that spewed into the ocean from the so-called Montara spill varies from 1.2 million gallons to 9 million gallons. It took 10 weeks and five attempts at drilling relief wells to stop the leak.

As the concerns about oil contaminating the Gulf coast's fragile marshes become reality, environmental fallout on the other side of the world is already being realized from last year's spill.

``Literally dozens of species including birds, dolphins, turtles, sea snakes, fish and whales move through the area affected by the Timor Sea spill. Thousands of individual animals will feel the full force of a toxic cocktail of sweet light crude and dispersant chemicals,'' said Gilly Llewellyn, the World Wildlife Fund's conservation manager in Australia.

``During our research expedition to the area, I witnessed pods of dolphins swimming through oiled water, a heartbreaking sight. And what we managed to see on the surface was undoubtedly just a fraction of what was happening.''

``This no-holds-barred pursuit of oil and gas is madness,'' she said, adding that the Australian government recently approved new drilling areas off its coasts.

``Governments around the globe must learn a lesson from these catastrophes and think long and hard about drilling in sensitive areas. What if a spill the size of the one in the Gulf were to happen in the Great Barrier Reef, or the Arctic?''

Miami Herald researcher Rachael Coleman contributed to this story.

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[KD5NRH]

The year was 1979. The blowout of the Ixtoc I, drilled by the Mexican-run Pemex, retains the dubious record of causing the world's largest accidental oil spill, dumping an estimated 138 million gallons over nine months. Eventually, Pemex cut off Ixtoc I with two relief wells and a cement seal.

With top BP executives, scientists and Obama administration officials searching for a solution to capping the Deepwater Horizon blowout off the Louisiana coast, perhaps they could find a blueprint in the Ixtoc I experience, observers say.

You mean like, say, drilling two relief wells and planning to cement it in as soon as the RWs get the flow low enough?

Yeah, I can't imagine why they haven't thought of that.

[aardwolf]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the scuttlebutt about the CBL crew bugging out before the explosion.