posted
i was planning on taking the brat to fish at Grande Island in just a few weeks- looks like i may not get to:
Workers struggle to contain oil spill Where a BP-leased rig sank last week, killing 11, oil is continuing to gush beneath the water’s surface. Shoreline communities brace for possible fallout.
Work crews continued their attempts Monday to stanch the 1,000-barrel-a-day oil spill that is gushing beneath the deep waters off Louisiana, as communities along the Gulf of Mexico braced for the possibility of polluted beaches and fisheries that are crucial to the region's economy.
Throughout the day, technicians maneuvered remote-controlled submarines around the leaking well left by the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which sank Thursday after an explosion and fire. Their goal was to seal off the well by manually activating a 450-ton mechanism called a blowout preventer, which sits atop the wellhead.
As of Monday afternoon, they had not succeeded, in part due to the difficulties of working at about 5,000 feet below the water's surface.
The Coast Guard on Friday suspended its search for 11 workers missing after the blast, who are presumed dead. Now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has turned its attention to the effect of wind and tides on the oil slick, which is about 30 miles from the coast of Venice, La., and measures 48 by 39 miles at its widest points.
posted
BATON ROUGE, La. —Efforts had been made to stop the oil spill in Gulf of Mexico yet until now, the crew are struggling to contain the leaks.The new solution they had think of is lighting some of the petroleum on fire at 11 a.m. Central time in an attempt to burn it off before it reaches shore.
Coast Guard officials said burning within boomed-off areas has worked with other offshore oil spills. If they decide to go forward with such a plan, they said, the burn likely wouldn’t be visible from shore,to determine the density of the oil, although they acknowledged the huge smoke plumes could add to air pollution.
The slick was about 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of the mouth of the Mississippi River, drifted to within 23 miles of the ecologically fragile Louisiana coastline on Tuesday. Thus, pushing the officials to consider the ignition as an option to slick off the oil.
About 42,000 gallons of oil a day are leaking into the Gulf from the blown-out well where the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank last week. Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead. The cause of the explosion has not been determined.
“The big things that we have to pay attention to are the sea conditions,” Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Steven Carleton said. “Solid oil obviously has the ability to burn, but it doesn’t burn the same way that gasoline does.”
It is an inherently risky move, said engineers, but less risky than the alternatives.
“When you’ve got an oil leak like this, you use every tool in the toolbox to keep it offshore,” said Edward Overton, a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. “If it gets to shore, it’s going to coat everything with this sticky, gooey stuff and create a tremendous, awful mess.”
The spill put scores of wildlife species at risk, including the gulf’s valuable stocks of shrimp, crabs, oysters, and other seafood, plus shorebirds including pelicans, terns and sandpipers. Commercial fishing in Louisiana is a $2.6 billion-a-year industry that supplies up to 25 percent of the seafood to states outside Alaska and Hawaii.
In today’s burn, a portion of the oil will be moved into a fire resistant boom about 500 feet long, the Coast Guard said. The oil will then be towed to a more remote area, ignited and burned in a controlled manner.
quote: On Monday, the Huffington Post reported that BP and Transocean, along with dozens of other members of the oil industry, have vigorously opposed new safety regulations proposed last year by a federal agency that oversees offshore drilling. The new regulations, which have been attacked by the industry in over 100 letters sent to the agency, were prompted by a study showing many accidents on such rigs from 2001 to 2007.
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quote: On Monday, the Huffington Post reported that BP and Transocean, along with dozens of other members of the oil industry, have vigorously opposed new safety regulations proposed last year by a federal agency that oversees offshore drilling. The new regulations, which have been attacked by the industry in over 100 letters sent to the agency, were prompted by a study showing many accidents on such rigs from 2001 to 2007.
The sad thing is that it happened, and the reality of it is that it is just the nature of the beast.
We still need oil until we become clean.
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quote:Crews struggling to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will light some of the petroleum on fire at 11 a.m. Central time in an attempt to burn it off before it reaches shore.
A Coast Guard spokesman said on Wednesday that crews would begin with an initial burn in a confined area of the spill to determine the density of the oil.
According to a statement released by the group of industry and government officials supervising the burn, the oil will be consolidated “into a fire resistant boom approximately 500 feet long; this oil will then be towed to a more remote area, where it will be ignited and burned in a controlled manner.”
From there, officials will conduct “small, controlled burns of several thousand gallons of oil lasting approximately one hour each.”
...
BP engineers have failed so far to activate a device known as a blowout preventer, a valve at the wellhead that is meant to stop oil flow in an emergency, and is the only short-term solution for capping the well.
What I am wondering is why they haven't been able to activate the BOP and shut this thing down.
I don't know much in the field of offshore oil drilling but I've been involved with the drilling of a few gas wells and I know that a working BOP is critical to drilling safely. I am under the impression that the regular inspection, testing and refurbishing of BOP's are drilling industry standards.
Something smells fishy here and it's not the smell of all the fish that will die from this latest disaster...
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posted
we will always make mistakes, we are human.
this is a real disaster, not just for the environment but politically too. Obama was reaching out to oil interests, i know they want more, but it was a start, and now it will be even harder for him to do so.
i just started going down to the barrier islands last year after they were fianlly ready for tourists that are not picky, and now i guess i won't bother. Maybe the burn will be successful, but i really can't stand seeing tarry beaches. There's something about an oil soaked beach that seems fundamentally evil.
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posted
Nothing is 100% safe... Nuke plants are a great solution until one of them melts down and the government press goes on and friggen on about the damage done.. same as is happening now with this oil spill.
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quote:Government officials said the blown-out well 40 miles offshore is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated — about 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, a day.
At that rate, the spill could eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history — the 11 million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989 — in the three months it could take to drill a relief well and plug the gushing well 5,000 feet underwater on the sea floor.
Also, look who Transocean LTD, (owner of the Deepwater Horizon), is pointing the finger at:
Drilling Process Attracts Scrutiny in Rig Explosion
quote:The scrutiny on cementing will focus attention on Halliburton Co., the oilfield-services firm that was handling the cementing process on the rig, which burned and sank last week. The disaster, which killed 11, has left a gusher of oil streaming into the Gulf from a mile under the surface.
Federal officials declined to comment on their investigation, and Halliburton didn't respond to questions from The Wall Street Journal.
quote:Originally posted by Relentless.: Nothing is 100% safe... Nuke plants are a great solution until one of them melts down and the government press goes on and friggen on about the damage done.. same as is happening now with this oil spill.
true dat, nukes are way too dangeruous, and unappealing.
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posted
They said it takes 59 400ft wind units to equal the energy of 1 offshore oil platform. They also say the energy required to build these massive wind units doesnt equal what they put back into the grid.
Then you have all these people crying about getting wind, then they dont want them in their backyard!
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.
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quote:Originally posted by NaturalResources: I think that is where this is headed Glass...
Just wait till the conspiracy theorists catch wind of this.
Oh I am sure the Bush administration will get some sort of blame. That card is done being played, and yet people use it still like they do the race card. Its really sad.
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posted
well it hit shore, and it sounds like it hit right where i went last year and was planning to go again...
this area was so rich in trout and shrimp that everybody working the water that i met was very content. acouple of old farts that had moved there from MS were downright giddy, they told me they had never caught so much in MS and weren't going bacj after the rebuiling in MS was done-
the Grande Iskand people were very proud that they had rebuilt without help so quickly, and told me they were way ahead of the MS fishing people and they were right, that's why i was all the way down ther instead of in MS
it just occurred to me that the '06 Alaska pipelein leak was BP too...
The source of the leak was found after enough snow had been removed from the site. The spill, discovered Thursday by a BP operator, prompted the company to shut down the processing plant, depressurize the line and block off both ends, but workers Sunday found that oil is still dripping from the breach.
posted
Oh come on.. how can not even you admit the publicity on this is pure anti oil BS?... Anti everything BS... Yes I know.. You wanted to go to Grand Isle.. don't we all with it's half a road and all.. It's a great place. Who gives a **** if there is an oil spill.. who cares? It WILL happen.
The important part of this whole non-issue is the FEDERAL government's response to send teams to all oil platforms to do "Inspections".
quote:Originally posted by Relentless.: Oh come on.. how can not even you admit the publicity on this is pure anti oil BS?... Anti everything BS... Yes I know.. You wanted to go to Grand Isle.. don't we all with it's half a road and all.. It's a great place. Who gives a **** if there is an oil spill.. who cares? It WILL happen.
The important part of this whole non-issue is the FEDERAL government's response to send teams to all oil platforms to do "Inspections".
Keep an eye on that.
post better. Sometimes you are your [fill in the blank]
-------------------- Nashoba Holba Chepulechi Adventures in microcapitalism...
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posted
Looks like another one just tipped over off of LA. Seems odd to have two tip over in the same region within a week of each other? Now before we go assuming the anchoring or any other such thing was shoddy and to blame... Need to look at the track record. Something's afoot. And no.. it's not terrorism as it is popularly defined.
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posted
HOUSTON, April 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Coast Guard said Friday it was responding to another oil drilling rig accident near Morgan City, Louisiana.
The "mobile inland drilling unit" overturned in the Charenton navigational channel south of U.S. Highway 90 at Morgan City. (Reporting by Bruce Nichols)
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quote:Originally posted by Relentless.: Looks like another one just tipped over off of LA. Seems odd to have two tip over in the same region within a week of each other? Now before we go assuming the anchoring or any other such thing was shoddy and to blame... Need to look at the track record. Something's afoot. And no.. it's not terrorism as it is popularly defined.
it happens all the time. nobody dies and they get it under control qucik? it's not news...
somebody dies? it's news, a handful of people die? it's big news, this one is the Armagedon of oil.
i'm hearing people make quiet sounds like this will possubly be fixed in 6 months maybe never properly fixed... an ti will be 50 million to 100 million gallons of oil spilled...
tar from key west to Mexcio's Yucatan
at the risk of having a Pat Robertson/Katrina moment? I'd like to say that God is telling us something... global warming be damned this is enough reason to go green, and no! i don't mean ban oil or anything draconian, i mean get off the total dependance on it so we don't have to push this envelope so hard that we screw up...
the real pobelm is that we are drilling deeper than we have the real capabiltiy to, that's quite obvious right now...
NASA accidents are taken in stride too, but they are not ignored.
i am thinking i may go down to work, it's gotta be cleaned up
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posted
LA governor Bobby Jindal is reading from a typed up paper to give a speech. When you look at it from a professional perspective...the things he is saying he should be able to say or know off the cuff. If this was going down I would not have to read from anything if I was the state governor. He is just speed reading and it is too hard for some people to take in I imagine.
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.
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posted
any mistatement at times like these can ruin a political career, i don't blame him for being careful.
i'm not afan of his but he seems to be one of the "good guys", regardless of party... it is very unusual for Louisian to produce a "good guy" politiican
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posted
The news coverage on this is BS relentless?
quote: How far the spill will reach is unknown, but the sheen already has reached into precious shoreline habitat and remains unstopped
quote: The Coast Guard has estimated that about 200,000 gallons of oil are spewing out each day —
quote:The slick nearly tripled in just a day or so, growing from a spill the size of Rhode Island to something closer to the size of Puerto Rico
quote: On Thursday, the size of the slick was about 1,150 square miles, but by Friday's end it was in the range of 3,850 square miles...That suggests the oil has started spilling from the well more quickly,
quote: Experts also cautioned that if the spill continues growing unchecked, sea currents could suck the sheen down past the Florida Keys and then up the Eastern Seaboard.... The Florida Keys are home to the only living coral barrier reef in North America, and the third largest coral barrier reef in the world.
quote: billions of dollars have been invested in coastal restoration projects that may be at risk.
quote: Officials have said stemming the flow of oil is their top priority, but the seas have been too rough and the winds too strong to burn off the oil, suck it up effectively with skimmer vessels, or hold it in check with the miles of orange and yellow inflatable booms strung along the coast.
quote:In a separate interview on NBC television, Suttles said that rigs at the site will begin drilling relief wells, and that the effort could take about 90 days to have an effect on the leak.
90 days before the relief wells start having an effect. If the new estimates of 200K gallons of oil a day are correct (which some experts disagree with, originally BP said 40K gallons a day was leaking) this spill might not quite double the Valdez spill before the leak is capped.
Over 400 species of birds, animals, and aquatics are threatened by this spill and that number will rise dramatically if currents take the oil into the Florida keys.
It took Exxon 4 years and 2 Billion dollars to clean up the Valdez spill and animal populations for certain species (especially aquatics) are still in recovery mode more than two decades later. We could be looking at the destruction of the Louisiana/Mississippi/Alabama fishing industry for the next generation.
And you Relentless are worried about government inspectors on rigs?
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posted
exxon should prolly have been put out of the oil transport biz from the Valdez. Thye were negligent over hiring the captain.
in 90 days they will only be able to siphon off some of the oil, not stop it. And that is questionable too, because it is not a for sure technique, they could possibly make it worse if they don't hit the right spot, and the bottom is at 5000 feet to begin with...
the 40k per day was low, it's been re-estimated at 200,000 gallons per day after the coat guard reviewed the size of th eslick and how fast it was growing...
the same thing happened at he Alaska pipeline leak that shut down the pipe for months. they said it was neglible at first and then they admitted is was much bigger and then the inspectors got off their asses and found miles of pipeline that were dangerous and decaying much faster than anticipated...the pipleine leak and subsequreent shutdown contributed seriously to teh price rise in oil, and this will too. we pay for the repair no matter how we try to punish BP? it comes out of our pockets and that is not unfair. The only thing unfair is somebody MAY have been negligent, but we will prolly never know for sure.
it's not unusual to try to underpplay the seriousness at first, cuz if you fix it quick? the media goes away...
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posted
In a hastily called news conference, Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry of the Coast Guard said a scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had concluded that oil is leaking at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day, not 1,000 as had been estimated. While emphasizing that the estimates are rough given that the leak is at 5,000 feet below the surface, Admiral Landry said the new estimate came from observations made in flights over the slick, studying the trajectory of the spill and other variables. Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for exploration and production for BP, said a new leak had been discovered as well. Officials had previously found two leaks in the riser, the 5,000-foot-long pipe that connected the rig to the wellhead and is now detached and snaking along the sea floor. One leak was at the end of the riser and the other at a kink closer to its source, the wellhead.
But Mr. Suttles said a third leak had been discovered Wednesday afternoon even closer to the source. “I’m very, very confident this leak is new,” he said. He also said the discovery of the new leak had not led them to believe that the total flow from the well was different than it was before the leak was found.
The new, far larger estimate of the leakage rate, he said, was within a range of estimates given the inexact science of determining the rate of a leak so far below the ocean’s surface.
“The leaks on the sea floor are being visually gauged from the video feed” from the remote vehicles that have been surveying the riser, said Doug Helton, a fisheries biologist who coordinates oil spill responses for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in an e-mail message Wednesday night. “That takes a practiced eye. Like being able to look at a garden hose and judge how many gallons a minute are being discharged. The surface approach is to measure the area of the slick, the percent cover, and then estimate the thickness based on some rough color codes.”
quote:Originally posted by The Bigfoot: The news coverage on this is BS relentless?
quote: How far the spill will reach is unknown, but the sheen already has reached into precious shoreline habitat and remains unstopped
quote: The Coast Guard has estimated that about 200,000 gallons of oil are spewing out each day —
quote:The slick nearly tripled in just a day or so, growing from a spill the size of Rhode Island to something closer to the size of Puerto Rico
quote: On Thursday, the size of the slick was about 1,150 square miles, but by Friday's end it was in the range of 3,850 square miles...That suggests the oil has started spilling from the well more quickly,
quote: Experts also cautioned that if the spill continues growing unchecked, sea currents could suck the sheen down past the Florida Keys and then up the Eastern Seaboard.... The Florida Keys are home to the only living coral barrier reef in North America, and the third largest coral barrier reef in the world.
quote: billions of dollars have been invested in coastal restoration projects that may be at risk.
quote: Officials have said stemming the flow of oil is their top priority, but the seas have been too rough and the winds too strong to burn off the oil, suck it up effectively with skimmer vessels, or hold it in check with the miles of orange and yellow inflatable booms strung along the coast.
quote:In a separate interview on NBC television, Suttles said that rigs at the site will begin drilling relief wells, and that the effort could take about 90 days to have an effect on the leak.
90 days before the relief wells start having an effect. If the new estimates of 200K gallons of oil a day are correct (which some experts disagree with, originally BP said 40K gallons a day was leaking) this spill might not quite double the Valdez spill before the leak is capped.
Over 400 species of birds, animals, and aquatics are threatened by this spill and that number will rise dramatically if currents take the oil into the Florida keys.
It took Exxon 4 years and 2 Billion dollars to clean up the Valdez spill and animal populations for certain species (especially aquatics) are still in recovery mode more than two decades later. We could be looking at the destruction of the Louisiana/Mississippi/Alabama fishing industry for the next generation.
And you Relentless are worried about government inspectors on rigs?
They said SWAT teams... hardly inspectors... and if this thing is really that bad I'll eat my words. Gut is saying they are hyping this for an agenda. If it is that bad I'll know... I live down here on the coast.
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posted
i wasn't joking when i said this was the Armafriggingeddon of oil DQR. Oil Experts are quietly crying already, it's the worst man made disaster since Chernobyl. We will all pay for this one way or another, so exect 10 cents per gallon more no matter what.
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it's a 5th generation rig made in South Korea capable of drilling to 30,000 feet. it sank the day after the explosion and apparently lacked a remote trigger for the blowout preventer, the dead man switch did not activate automatically as it should have, which means it was probably damged in the explosion(s) which was a blowout.
regulators in two major oil-producing countries, Norway and Brazil, in effect require them. Norway has had acoustic triggers on almost every offshore rig since 1993.
The U.S. considered requiring a remote-controlled shut-off mechanism several years ago, but drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, according to the agency overseeing offshore drilling. The agency, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, says it decided the remote device wasn't needed because rigs had other back-up plans to cut off a well
he U.K., where BP is headquartered, doesn't require the use of acoustic triggers.
An acoustic trigger costs about $500,000, industry officials said. The Deepwater Horizon had a replacement cost of about $560 million,
posted
BP Plc executive Doug Suttles said Thursday the company was worried about "erosion" of the pipe at the wellhead.
Sand is an integral part of the formations that hold oil under the Gulf. That sand, carried in the oil as it shoots through the piping, is blamed for the ongoing erosion described by BP.
"The pipe could disintegrate. You've got sand getting into the pipe, it's eroding the pipe all the time, like a sandblaster," said Ron Gouget, a former oil spill response coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"When the oil is removed normally, it comes out at a controlled rate. You can still have abrasive particles in that. Well, now, at this well, its coming out at fairly high velocity," Gouget continued. "Any erosive grains are abrading the inside of the pipe and all the steel that comes in contact with the liquid. It's essentially sanding away the pipe."
uh, this is the reason for the Armageddon scenario...
this could end up being an open fissure on seabed that empties the whole formation.
once the pipes gone the oilsand will erode the rock even faster...
the scenario gets uglier and uglier from there, and there's no way we can slow down the flow withing 90 days, and that is only slowing it down to help with the velocity of flow, not stopping the flow...
at 5000 feet? the ocean is pressing down on the formation with 2182.3345 pounds per square inch
this is why the oil experts are quietly crying.
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