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Oil slick bigger than Exxon-Valdez

  • Thread starter thez_yo
  • Start date
expect more of this in the Gulf in the future.....the Chinese are drilling on the US side of Cuba......them boys have REALLY shown they care bout the environment and safety.....
 
expect more of this in the Gulf in the future.....the Chinese are drilling on the US side of Cuba......them boys have REALLY shown they care bout the environment and safety.....

Well...there goes the south then. Maybe all the people who are living in "reclaimed from the swamp" land will move away in fear and the water will fill back in where it's supposed to be and the pitcher plants will get their land back. I used to go to the Everglades in Florida to see the swamp...it's not the swamp anymore :-(
 
I feel really bad for the estuary, and I really hope they cap that undersea oil well real soon:
Thanks for the link, it had some more info than my usual set of sources. As for getting it stopped soon - not likely at all. The 'underwater 'dome' is weeks away & relief well is months. Hopefully they will have a breakthrough with the valves on the ocean floor.

If anyone finds any 'real' info on how some of the failures happened, please share the links. In another life, I spent 8 years working on offshore oil rigs and this type of accident is almost unfathomable to me. It seems that they had to lose control of the mud column (drilled into a surprise zone?) and then the fail-safe BOP's on the seafloor failed to actuate.

With the looming mass of impending legal tangles, I doubt anyone who really knows anything will be talking ...

Well...there goes the south then. Maybe all the people who are living in "reclaimed from the swamp" land will move away in fear and the water will fill back in where it's supposed to be and the pitcher plants will get their land back.
If you're referring to the land in S. Louisiana, the coastal areas are relatively new (geologically) and are not typically home to Sarracenia. Some of the big issues there are saltwater intrusion (aided by thousands of oilfield pipelines), elimination of land-restoring floods and the concomitant subsidence.

I used to go to the Everglades in Florida to see the swamp...it's not the swamp anymore :-(
While there obviously has been huge changes in S. Florida due to people, Everglades National park is the 3rd largest park in the lower 48 states and there is still a lot of wetlands to see - where were you looking? Iirc, they've even made some headway in restoring the natural water flow in some areas...
 
not sure if we will discover exactly what went wrong, this one was sitting in water a mile deep.....something really musta gone sideways for all the fail safes not to work.....course it is BP and they dont have the best record for this kinda stuff to start with....
 
not sure if we will discover exactly what went wrong, ...
After I posted above, I did some more searches. This article (actually the embedded article) gives me the explanations I was looking for (& some great pics). What it said is even more amazing considering the stage the well was in - they had actually run the casing & cemented it in place. Normally the well is completely 'safe' at that point. Unless I'm reading something wrong, this makes it less fathomable to grasp .... wow. :scratch: ... I need to go reread it again... ???
 
Thanks for the link, it had some more info than my usual set of sources. As for getting it stopped soon - not likely at all. The 'underwater 'dome' is weeks away & relief well is months. Hopefully they will have a breakthrough with the valves on the ocean floor.

If anyone finds any 'real' info on how some of the failures happened, please share the links. In another life, I spent 8 years working on offshore oil rigs and this type of accident is almost unfathomable to me. It seems that they had to lose control of the mud column (drilled into a surprise zone?) and then the fail-safe BOP's on the seafloor failed to actuate.

With the looming mass of impending legal tangles, I doubt anyone who really knows anything will be talking ...

If you're referring to the land in S. Louisiana, the coastal areas are relatively new (geologically) and are not typically home to Sarracenia. Some of the big issues there are saltwater intrusion (aided by thousands of oilfield pipelines), elimination of land-restoring floods and the concomitant subsidence.

While there obviously has been huge changes in S. Florida due to people, Everglades National park is the 3rd largest park in the lower 48 states and there is still a lot of wetlands to see - where were you looking? Iirc, they've even made some headway in restoring the natural water flow in some areas...

I find trashy British tabloids to contain a lot of trash, but then also more actual news from the "news" we're getting here because the U.S.-filters aren't on there like they are for the BBC (very U.S.A. slanted) and all of the big news corps in the states. And glad to know this kind of accident doesn't happen too often - I have no scale in my mind of how many rigs there are, or how many new ones go up in a year, or really how many people work on one. Care to elaborate a-day-in-the-life-of? Or some more on the drilling process and stuff like that?

I guess I understand that a lot of people in that area are fairly poor and can't really get away from fishing those waters and all, but it seems like that area might be better left to nature in the long run even if there aren't any pitcher plants. First Katrina, now this, and assuming global warming and rising sea water, I think they're all screwed. Also stopping natural flooding is just setting up for random more disastrous flooding down the path, when people aren't expecting it to happen because they thought they've "stopped that problem".

There's also a bunch of big factories using the Mississippi as their own industrial water pipes so that river is pretty heavily polluted so the incidence of genetic and birth defects is high for populations living along that watershed, but then again people don't want to move from their homes because a.it's their home and b.they don't have the money to do that and to set up shop elsewhere. I think I'm a hippie at heart and at the end of the day, I realize that I both want to stop people from wrecking the Earth and all the plants and animals, but also I realize that people need to live and support themselves somehow, and I don't know how to reconcile those two opposing points of view. :crazy:

I was aiming more for Florida with that comment because it has been filled in with dirt pretty hard in the last 20 years to make room for more people. That major state/interstate road (I75 I think) that goes through the everglades used to be swampy and 'gatory all the way down (was driving down from Vermont) and now it has all sorts of tourist shops and housing developments. It may still hold a lot of swamp, but that's if you take one of those big fan-pushed-boats further into the heart of it because you can't see as much of it as you used to from the road. I'd prefer to just look around from the road because of fear of being eaten, and I don't want to accidentally trample anything by boat or foot (again, for killing it or getting some horrible parasites).

---------- Post added at 12:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:17 PM ----------

After I posted above, I did some more searches. This article (actually the embedded article) gives me the explanations I was looking for (& some great pics). What it said is even more amazing considering the stage the well was in - they had actually run the casing & cemented it in place. Normally the well is completely 'safe' at that point. Unless I'm reading something wrong, this makes it less fathomable to grasp .... wow. :scratch: ... I need to go reread it again... ???

It might be that since BP apparently understated the amount of oil seeping up (3X as much was it?) that maybe they haven't told the whole truth about what stage of setting-up they were at as well? Maybe the people on the rig didn't want to get in trouble for "stopping the work for no good reason" because they didn't think whatever problem they were having was a big one that they couldn't fix...
 
I have no scale in my mind of how many rigs there are, or how many new ones go up in a year
Here's a site for rig counts. The longer-term graphs are helpful to get a perspective... (I was down there from 1980-88 iirc)

... or really how many people work on one.
I thought that there were ~135 or so on the Deepwater Horizon at the time of the accident. The number of people will fluctuate a lot - depending on the rig activity / stage of development.

Care to elaborate a-day-in-the-life-of? Or some more on the drilling process and stuff like that?
Realistically, this would take a lot more time than I have & I suspect that there are some good sites out there that explain the process.

One of the things that most people do not grasp is the depth & breadth of the oil ecosystem. The news tends to focus on the big oil companies - because it's their oil, their wells & their money. However, when it comes to the actual work, there are very few actual oil company employees participating in the process. Depending on the activity, out of 130-150 people, only a handful (& possibly only 1) will be oil company employees. All of the other people are contractors. Some work directly for the oil company and others work for other contractors. Every company has a niche that they exploit. You've heard that BP didn't own the rig - Transocean did. Transocean employed most of the people directly involved with drilling the well. Other companies are brought in as needed. I worked for a company that 'logged' the well (told them what was in their well - in amazing detail). There are other companies that maintain the drilling 'mud', run the casing and a myriad of other activities.

It might be that since BP apparently understated the amount of oil seeping up (3X as much was it?) that maybe they haven't told the whole truth about what stage of setting-up they were at as well? Maybe the people on the rig didn't want to get in trouble for "stopping the work for no good reason" because they didn't think whatever problem they were having was a big one that they couldn't fix...
BP understated the amount of oil (as did Coast Guard & everyone else). While I'm not a fan of the big oil companies (I could tell you many stories), I'm also not a fan of conspiracy theories - unless they're justified. I suspect that it was understated because they didn't know - how can you tell exactly how much oil is pouring out of a well head 5000 feet down? As for mis-stating what they were doing - also unlikely. As I mentioned above, they don't do almost anything on their own, they hire people / companies to do it for them. Just knowing what people were on the rig at the time (& who was there the week before) can tell anyone with a clue about the industry what stage they were in.
 
It was reported on CNN earlier that there was no "blow out preventer" installed, and that such a thing is standard in such an operation. What exactly that means I don't know, but if they cut enough corners there could be billions of dollars in fines at LEAST.

Either way, no punishment can undo the damage, and it's ironic that something so valuable could be so catastrophic. This couldn't happen with solar power, to be sure

EDIT I somehow couldn't read the above-linked article, but it tends to contradict what I posted there. It's odd how little information is actually available on such a massive disaster-in-progress
 
  • #10
its a temporary problem anyway.....these hydrocarbons are a naturally occurring substance....its crude oil, not plastics, 5000 barrels worth of crude seep out of the floor of the Gulf every day naturally......does it suck? yes......is it gonna screw things up along that portion of the coast? yes.....is it permanent? hell no......actually this and even Valdeez are nothing compared to the crude oil lost in ships along the english channel during WWII due to German U-boats sinking tankers.....nature can deal with crude with out much long term problems....
 
  • #11
Being on fire is usually a temporary problem too, but tell that to the person who is burning and see the comfort it provides
 
  • #12
if you had any clue how much crude runs through southern LA pipelines from out of the gulf you would wonder why stuff like this doesnt happen more......as i said it sucks and it needs to get shut down ASAP but in the scheme of things the plastics that crude turns into is a bigger and more pressing problem in nature than that crude hitting the coast line....

actually Valdez isnt even in the top 20 worst oil spills of all time....when Saddam blew the terminals in Kuwait in 91 it released an estimated 240 million gallons of oil.....in 79 an exploratory oil well went to hell in the Gulf of Mexico it released 140 million gallons.....Valdez was about 10 million gallons and ranks 34th among the largest oil spills......
 
  • #13
http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/site/2931/
http://www.epa.gov/bpspill

BOP is a necessary component. It's not something they can just skimp on. Besides, many reports and photographs show that there is infact a BOP stack and show the underwater control panel. They just can't seem to get the thing shut. After having worked on training material for the multiple oil companies like Chevron, BP, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Anadarko and many more, I can tell you that the only odd thing to me is that they only mentioned being unable to activate the shearing ram, my question is what about the blind rams(which crushes the entire pipe and closes off the annulus), or the pipe ram(which just closes off the annulus)?

They claim that it may be stuck at the tool or pipe joint, if you've ever seen a subsea bop stack, their like 15 feet tall. it would seem that they would need to some how move the pipe/tool up or down to get the joint section out of the bop rams. Also, they dont mention if the bops hydraulics are working, which would indicate a problem, but sure mentioned that it worked 10-11 days ago and are now blaming cameron for the faulty stack. all equipment get tested by the american petroleum institute before it can be used on any rig.

edit: and get tested on a regular basis during use.

i personally think they hit a pocket of higher pressure while drilling through the various layers of the formation and workers didnt compensate or adjust the mud to handle it. a blowout in simple terms is an uncontrolled flow. with all the downhole electronics and sensors they use while drilling nowadays, ie., MWD, I think the sensors crapped out and they werent aware of it which led to this incident.

I agree with rattler though, oil seepage occur and mother nature handles it just fine in most cases, but most seepages are not quite the estimated 5000 barrels a day. My concern now is the immediate impact on wildlife and plant life in the gulf coast along Mississippi and Alabama. These "booms" arent going to do squat considering the waves that will push the oil over the tops of them.

A relief well, pfft, what a joke.....burning the oil, oh boy, in texas we thought the mexico grass fire smoke was bad, wait til you see the smoke from burning off millions of gallons of crude.

~billy
 
  • #14
i pretty well fully agree with your assessment Billy...

the 5000 barrels a day natural seepage fact though was mainly to illustrate the fact that crude is not locked a quarter mile below the ocean floor or earths surface like some seem to believe.....no its not the same as the gusher but the fact is that it is a natural substance being released and im sure similar has happened before recorded history due to earthquakes and landslides underwater....

it is a bad thing short term but they are natural hydrocarbons that nature knows how to break down unlike the plastics we manufacture....it will be rough on that coastal ecosystem for some time but its far from permanent.....i am far more concerned about the two masses of plastic floating in the Pacific than i am about this crude.....
 
  • #15
Them trash clouds could be harvested with existing technology, if anyone cared to do so.
 
  • #16
your right they could, and were it off the US coast they would.....point being ecologically the masses of plastic are a bigger problem in the big picture than this underwater gusher....only reason they are making a big deal out of the gusher is its off the US coast.......screaming and hollering cause its at the front door and not on the other side of town....
 
  • #17
BOP is a necessary component. It's not something they can just skimp on. Besides, many reports and photographs show that there is infact a BOP stack and show the underwater control panel. They just can't seem to get the thing shut. After having worked on training material for the multiple oil companies like Chevron, BP, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Anadarko and many more, I can tell you that the only odd thing to me is that they only mentioned being unable to activate the shearing ram, my question is what about the blind rams(which crushes the entire pipe and closes off the annulus), or the pipe ram(which just closes off the annulus)?
I have the same questions. Do you know where the energy to activate the BOPs are kept in really deep subsea operations like this?

i personally think they hit a pocket of higher pressure while drilling through the various layers of the formation and workers didnt compensate or adjust the mud to handle it.
This would be the normal assumption since that's typically when danger is highest. However, check out my previous posts. One of the links states that they were done drilling and had actually cemented casing. Typically this is like re-locking up the formation. The well can then be closed up and just sit there for an indefinite period. In fact, this is fairly normal as rigs drill wells, run casing and then cap them as the production facilities are being built. If that post is accurate (& it appeared to be), something very unusual appeared to have happened here....

I agree with rattler though, oil seepage occur and mother nature handles it just fine in most cases, but most seepages are not quite the estimated 5000 barrels a day.
Distributed, widespread leakage is very different than a point source of this magnitude...

A relief well, pfft, what a joke.....
Not sure what you mean? This & the 'dome' seem like the only alternatives ... & it's going to take some time - wowza! :0o:
 
  • #18
I have the same questions. Do you know where the energy to activate the BOPs are kept in really deep subsea operations like this?

In everything I ever worked on, it was always hydraulics lines that run to the subsea bop from the rig or production platform with the riser....if the riser is gone, there is usually clusters of hydraulic tanks on the sea floor either attached to the bop or sits on the side of the bop as a separate unit. maybe the rig sank on it and destroyed the tanks?

This would be the normal assumption since that's typically when danger is highest. However, check out my previous posts. One of the links states that they were done drilling and had actually cemented casing. Typically this is like re-locking up the formation. The well can then be closed up and just sit there for an indefinite period. In fact, this is fairly normal as rigs drill wells, run casing and then cap them as the production facilities are being built. If that post is accurate (& it appeared to be), something very unusual appeared to have happened here....

unusual indeed, i've read a couple of different things but you're post had me thinking, and i havent a clue, there usually isnt any "surprise" pressure after the drilling process is done and the well is capped...was it capped or just cemented?

also, even for the drilling process, they have to cement the casings, starting with the conductor casing then the intermediates, and so on in place in sections as they get deeper using smaller and smaller drill bits. dont know if im explaining this right...but i know it in my head...

Not sure what you mean? This & the 'dome' seem like the only alternatives ... & it's going to take some time - wowza!

They're talking 3 months to drill a relief well without stopping the flow, thats all i really meant by "pfft, what a joke"

~billy
 
  • #19
Well, good to know all that. I don't have a clue when it comes to knowing anything about industrial machining safety. I don't watch TV so I don't know if they're saying anything on the news, but I presume that some big BP rep will go on record with an official statement soon, and I'm sure they'll have a hoarde of people analyzing the disaster for a good month at least, so we'll get some answers.

It wasn't a conspiracy theory so much as ... well I dunno what I was thinking because I've got nuthin'.
 
  • #20
In everything I ever worked on, it was always hydraulics lines that run to the subsea bop from the rig or production platform with the riser....if the riser is gone, there is usually clusters of hydraulic tanks on the sea floor either attached to the bop or sits on the side of the bop as a separate unit. maybe the rig sank on it and destroyed the tanks?
I thought I read that it's sitting ~1300 ft away. I've read a few places that there is a kink in the pipe which is reducing the flow - that's probably the riser remnant...

unusual indeed, i've read a couple of different things but you're post had me thinking, and i havent a clue, there usually isnt any "surprise" pressure after the drilling process is done and the well is capped...was it capped or just cemented?
From what I read, the casing is cemented. However, once the casing is in & cemented - the production zones are sealed in - unless somebody screwed something up - which obviously had to be the case ...

also, even for the drilling process, they have to cement the casings, starting with the conductor casing then the intermediates, and so on in place in sections as they get deeper using smaller and smaller drill bits. dont know if im explaining this right...but i know it in my head...
Yup - that's the way it works - from the 1st pipe they 'spud' in - it keeps getting smaller...
 
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