Hundred-Ton Dome To Collect Oil Spill 565
eldavojohn writes "After failing to contain the Gulf oil spill any other way, a massive containment dome had the finishing touches put on yesterday. It amounts to a giant concrete-and-steel box made by Wild Well Control that is designed to siphon the crude oil away from the water. They expect an 85 percent collection with this device. It's not a pretty situation as Google Earth illustrates."
Man. (Score:2, Redundant)
Here's to hoping it works. This is one major clusterfuck, and a really unfortunate one at that. If this concrete dealy doesn't work, what other options do they have?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Pay politicians more money to make sure they can continue drilling.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
What's wrong with offshore drilling? Please tell me you aren't someone who is going to condemn an entire industry because of one accident. No human enterprise ever attempted managed to get underway without mistakes. The important thing here is to learn what went wrong and take steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again in the future.
For better or worse human civilization can not exist without environmental impact. The knee-jerk reaction to this unfortunate incident by certain politicians is disappoin
You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact? If BP were forced to shoulder the entire cost of this mistake, they would go bankrupt. And so, as usual, it is the rest of us who will have to pay. Socialism for the rich, paid for by the poor.
If you and I lived next to each other, and I ran a pipe from my toilet into your yard, you would be pretty pissed off, wouldn't you? You'd probably demand I stop shitting in your yard. And I would say, "Human civilization can not exist without environmental impact, shit happens, get over your knee jerk reaction and get used to it, hippie."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact?
You are welcome to try the alternative of not living in an energy intensive society if that would better suit your needs. I hear that sub-Saharan Africa is wonderful this time of year.
If BP were forced to shoulder the entire cost of this mistake, they would go bankrupt.
Got a citation for that or are you just making assumptions?
If you and I lived next to each other, and I ran a pipe from my toilet into your yard, you would be pretty pissed off, wouldn't you?
Bad analogy, because that implies a deliberate decision was made to cause this oil spill. A better analogy would be that your sewer pipe fails for whatever reason and floods my yard with shit. In that instance I would expect you to clean up the mess and fix the pi
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact?
You are welcome to try the alternative of not living in an energy intensive society if that would better suit your needs.
When did 'energy intensive society' come to mean 'poor people pay when the rich screw up'?
A better analogy would be that your sewer pipe fails for whatever reason and floods my yard with shit.
No, a better analogy is that his sewer pipe fails and covers the entire neighborhood with shit...and because cleaning that up would bankrupt him, everyone affected is told to pitch in and give him money for cleaning up his own mess. Screw that.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, a better analogy is that his sewer pipe fails and covers the entire neighborhood with shit...and because cleaning that up would bankrupt him, everyone affected is told to pitch in and give him money for cleaning up his own mess. Screw that.
That analogy fails because his shit pipe is not serving a purpose for the rest of the neighbourhood. Oil drilling is keeping our civilization going - whether you think that's a good thing is another debate, but there are circumstances when society has to take the risks for the critical processes that it depends on. I'm all for reducing our dependence on oil and I'm all in favour of wind farms and tidal generation and orbital solar panels beaming power down by laser and nuclear power plants and thermal funnels and all that, but we are where we are right now and what means we need oil, and to a certain extent we must accept the risks that go with it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
the only industry that would be impacted is transportation based on heavy fuels like jet fuel and diesel and those also have alternatives.
You do realize that virtually every other industry depends on the transportation sector to move goods around, right? How do you think your food makes it from the fields to the cities? Scotty, beam me up?
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:4, Informative)
Speaking of food, most people in the industrial nations also _eat_ petroleum. In the USA the ratio appears to be 13 kcal petroleum energy to produce 1 kcal of food, according to: http://www.jhsph.edu/bin/g/k/What_You_Eat.pdf [jhsph.edu] (25:1 for producing meat).
I'm not sure if there's enough organic food to go around, at least in the developed countries (there isn't in some undeveloped countries either).
It is possible to produce lots of crops per area by planting many different types of crops in the same area ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercropping [wikipedia.org] ) but this is usually more human labor intensive - machines don't tend to cope with that sort of thing as well.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Shakrai was implying that the free market will take care of things
I said no such thing, don't put words into my mouth.
BP will shoulder the entire cost of the cleanup
False. I only said that the cost of the cleanup was as yet unknown and that it was premature to assume that BP couldn't cover it without going bankrupt.
He was also making a false dichotomy by claiming that we either pay the cost of having spills, or have no energy, which is bullshit.
No, I said that society comes with an environmental cost. The only thing that's bullshit here is your lies about my previous remarks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Shouldn't, oh I don't know, their profits be less, to cover the costs?
That's an idea, but ultimately it's still the rest of us that will be paying for it. If you have a 401(k) or mutual fund account you almost certainly hold some oil company shares and receive dividends from them. Slash their profits through newer taxes and/or fees and you'll either for it with reduced earnings or a higher price at the pump.
You were NOT implying that BP will shoulder the cost of the cleanup?
They've said they will, but as I've said it's too early to say with certainty what will happen. Why don't you wait until the cost of the cleanup is known before you ma
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:5, Interesting)
you realize that the liability of BP is capped by law at a ridiculously low amount?
I find it amusing that the industry thought they could get away with that one. That they thought such a law could withstand the will of hordes of enraged and ruined people. No, BP is going to pay far, far more than $75 million. If they could stop the leak right now, and gather up all the spilled oil before it does any more damage, they could live this one down. It may turn out not as bad as feared. Seems unlikely from what I've heard.
No one has forgotten the Exxon Valdez. If this is worse, and every indication is that it will be much, much worse, this will never be forgotten either. What's a big company's reputation worth? A lot more than a paltry $75 million. To this day, I still sometimes avoid Exxon gas stations. Corporations have learned that they absolutely cannot afford such epic mistakes, no matter what technical limitations in liability they've won with lobbying. There were safety measures they could have taken to avoid all this. Union Carbide didn't survive Bhopal. Piper Alpha is the biggest oil platform disaster ever, but Occidental survived. This one doesn't have as many deaths. But it may be bigger. If that oil leaks for another 3 months, BP's downfall may be the least of the consequences. The entire Mississippi delta, Florida's coast, west and east, and who knows where the loop current and gulf stream might ultimately transport the mess?
The industry has really shit its nest this time.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why's it gotta happen tomorrow, Shakrai, or is that another strawman?
If during the oil embargo of the 1970's, when Americans had to line up to get gas and we had our first national fossil fuel freakout, we'd had a "Manhattan Project" for getting off of fossil fuels, there's a good chance that we'd have not only moved well along the way to cleaner sources of energy, but we'd be probably be energy independent and wouldn't have to fuck around with Iran and Iraq and Saudi Arabia on top of it.
But when Ronald Magnus Reagan tore down those largely symbolic solar panels on the roof of the White House, he was sending a clear signal to the Oil industry that the party was just getting started, and they wouldn't have to worry about any interruption in the flow of profits for a long time.
Unless you believe that oil fields are refilling themselves from some magical source at the center of the Earth, there's going to be a reckoning day for fossil fuels. The willingness of generation after generation to let this reckoning day smack our children or grandchildren in the face with a brick sort of gives the lie to all the claims from the Right that they're worried about how budget deficits are going to affect "our grandchildren". If they really cared about the well-being of "our grandchildren" there would be more concern about finding a better way to travel down the road than by burning gallon after gallon of refined flammable liquid, of which there is a finite supply.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why's it gotta happen tomorrow, Shakrai, or is that another strawman?
Because unless it can happen tomorrow, we are still going to have to extract oil from the Earth and the whole point of my original comment was to condemn those that fail to realize this basic fact.
we'd had a "Manhattan Project" for getting off of fossil fuels
I'm getting tired of hearing this. The Manhattan Project cost $2,000,000,000. Wikipedia says that would be around $22,000,000,000 if it was adjusted for inflation. DoE's annual budget for 2009 was $24,100,000,000. That's 109% of the total cost of the Manhattan Project. It's probably 200-400% DoE's stated mission is to end American dependence on foreign oil. How well is that working out for us?
You need to realize that not all problems can be solved by throwing money at them. If it was a simple matter of money we would have figured this out a long time ago. The sad reality of the situation is that there really aren't a whole lot of non-nuclear alternatives for fossil fuels that can compete with them in terms of energy density. Nuclear, hydro and wind are a decent bet for replacing fixed energy production/consumption (power plants, factories, houses, etc.) but won't work so well for mobile purposes (ships, planes, automobiles).
But when Ronald Magnus Reagan tore down those largely symbolic solar panels on the roof of the White House
Yes, it's all Ronald Reagan's fault that the laws of physics conspired to make hydrocarbons an easy to extract energy dense resource.
If you really want to debate a complicated issue like energy policy by blaming one man for it's failure, I would see your Ronald Reagan and raise you a Jimmy Carter. Carter's decision that the United States would not reprocess spent nuclear fuel created the nuclear waste issue and removed a carbon free energy source from the table. One would think that a US Naval Officer with reactor training would have known better, but there you go....
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:4, Informative)
Man, you do love you some strawmen. GP's post is clear, with the reference to RR and the solar panels, that problem is one of will, not money. Also,
No, the GP said that we need another Manhattan Project to solve our energy woes. I pointed out that DoE's annual budget exceeds the total cost of the Manhattan Project, thus it would seem apparent to anyone that another project on the scope of the Manhattan project will not even scratch the surface.
Besides, the focus on solar rather misses the point. Solar is next to useless for mobile applications (ships, trucks, planes) that are the primary consumer of oil derived hydrocarbons. If you want to look at this from a scientific standpoint instead of a political one, which energy source do you see on the horizon with sufficient energy density to displace petroleum in this application?
I'm sure there's plenty of money to be found elsewhere, especially when, as GP said, you don't have to be occupying half a dozen countries at once.
No amount of money is going to change the fact that hydrocarbons are the most energy dense non-nuclear fuel.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if we'd only drilled closer to shore, like we did in Santa Barbara when we had that huge oil spill, then suddenly the oil industry would not have tried to cut corners and would have been a lot more responsible and everything would just be fine.
That's not the way things work when companies are always walking the line between maximum profits and safety. They are always going to use the least amount of precautions that they can get away with, and even if we were to drill 10 feet off the beach in shallow water, there would still be ecological catastrophes.
You're looking for an easy way with fossil fuels. There is no easy way. Even if we were to collect every drop of oil in the Northern part of the Western Hemisphere, there still comes a time when we have to find other solutions to our energy needs. We can wait for devastating shortages later to decide to do something, or we can start doing something now before we have huge world wars over the dwindling supply of oil.
I've got no problem paying an extra dollar a gallon to fund a serious, all-out effort to get off fossil fuels. I've got no problem with nationalizing all of BP's US operations until this mess is cleaned up and all the economic damages to the businesses and individuals in the region are paid. But pretending, in 2010, that there's just no end to the cheap supply of oil makes me distinctly uncomfortable.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Really? so the oil industry is paying the full costs to clean this up? 100% costs, they are writing a check to the Feds for all the costs of the coast guard, navy, etc?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a false dichotomy. You make it sound like we have only 2 choices: Either deal with oil spills like this, that could have been prevented if BP had installed a $500,000 blowout valve on the well, or live in a tribal village with no electricity or oil.
What
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
BP can handle it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/7640072/BP-Gulf-clean-up-could-cost-200m.html [telegraph.co.uk]
Cost of clean up, $200 million
http://www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2010/May/the-gulf-of-mexico-oil-disaster.html [investmentu.com]
$2-7 billion
BP
Revenue - $246.1 billion (2009)
Operating income - $26.43 billion (2009)
Net income - $16.58 billion (2009)
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/downloads/B/bp_fourth_quarter_and_full_year_2009_results.pdf [bp.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact? If BP were forced to shoulder the entire cost of this mistake, they would go bankrupt. And so, as usual, it is the rest of us who will have to pay. Socialism for the rich, paid for by the poor.
If you and I lived next to each other, and I ran a pipe from my toilet into your yard, you would be pretty pissed off, wouldn't you? You'd probably demand I stop shitting in your yard. And I would say, "Human civilization can not exist without environmental impact, shit happens, get over your knee jerk reaction and get used to it, hippie."
If your shit would power my car, I'd welcome it!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
All BP's operations on US soil and offshore in US waters should be nationalized.
If corporations want to have all the rights of people, of US citizens, then they have to be ready to accept all of the responsibilities. A corporate "death penalty" for a screwup of this magnitude is not unreasonable.
Right now, corporations get to privatize the profits but socialize the risks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, how about this: I build a sewer that leaks onto your property accidentally. And I say, "eh, screw you, I'm not paying for it. My liability is capped by the government, YOU pay for it."
You present a false dichotomy, claiming we either have to pay for these kinds of spills, or use power plants that run on unicorn horns. Sunshine and wind, obviously, are real things and plants CAN run on those. But the point is, it is not an either/or situation.
I'm not saying, "don't drill." I'm saying, make companies pa
Re:Man. (Score:5, Insightful)
"condemn an entire industry because of one accident" ... one accident and their complete lack of preparedness for it.
If it was some fly-by-night corp, this would be expected. BP is a bit bigger and more established and should have had measures in place to deal, or attempt to deal, with this sort of scenario. And considering they seem to cook off a rig or two (in the event hurricanes don't do it for them) when ever it looks like oil prices aren't where they want them to be at they should at least be prepared to deal with the cleanup.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually they really where prepared pretty well for it.
There where and are many thousands of feet of booms prepositioned and ready to go.
What no one really seems to be talking about is what happened to the blow out preventor?
That is the huge question and no one really seems to be asking.
This should have never happened. The blow out preventor has no less then three ways to shut off the oil and ALL of them have failed?
This has never happened before! Every rig has one of these and if their is some design flaw
Re:Man. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think a lot of people are very interested to learn why the Blowout Preventer failed, given that they have multiple failsafes, and are built to account for this exact sort of incident, including two "shear rams" that should have been able to cut through anything stuck in the valve to seal it.
BP's got a poor track record, and should be sued into oblivion if we find out that they tampered with or disabled safety measures on the BOP.
However, there's no evidence of this just yet, and several companies were involved with this particular rig at the time of the incident.
From what I've been reading, the BOP failure could either be narrowed down to a complete, colossal screw-up by BP, or a Rube Goldberg series of events that prevented the BOP from working.
Obviously, we'll be seeing many new safety measures installed on all current and future BOPs, as well as ROVs that can supply sufficient hydraulic power to close the shear rams in the event of a multiple system failure.
Re:Man. (Score:4, Interesting)
BP owns the oil lease, and are responsible for everything that happens there, including safety and disaster mitigation.
When BP contracted to someone to put the rig in place and drill, they set the safety standards for their contractor to follow, and were responsible for ensuring performance to contract.
When your employee doesn't follow your rules, it's as much your fault as theirs.
Re:Man. (Score:4, Informative)
"The blowout preventer failing is unheard of in the oil industry."
A 1999 government report found at least 117 failures. Amazing what you can do with a simple google search.
http://www.mms.gov/tarprojects/319/319AA.pdf [mms.gov]
Anyone who says otherwise is clueless or lying or both.
Re: (Score:2)
Fuck you very much....
It is all about risk versus reward, and let's see, risk: major oil spill that is really going to fuck the eco system up for a long time (potentially world wide). Reward: none. Yep, ZERO reward. Oil should just go away already. As long as it sticks around, the longer we are NOT going to have alternative fuel sources taken seriously.
Now I am not some eco-nut that is against everything that could damage the environment. Hell, come build another 10 or so nuke plants in my backyard and I wi
Re:Man. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please tell me you aren't someone who is going to condemn an entire industry because of one accident. No human enterprise ever attempted managed to get underway without mistakes.
If it's an industry where one mistake translates to environmental and economical damage on the scale we are witnessing at the gulf coast right now, then yes, condemning (and perhaps even abolishing) said industry may be the right thing to do.
Re:Man. (Score:4, Informative)
What's wrong with offshore drilling? Please tell me you aren't someone who is going to condemn an entire industry because of one accident. No human enterprise ever attempted managed to get underway without mistakes. The important thing here is to learn what went wrong and take steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again in the future.
What went wrong was believing the the oil companies when they said they had a plan in the first place. When ever there's a mistake we get boned. Every time - this isn't just an isolated case - the industry has a 100% track record with major oils spills. The contingency plan that was supposed to keep this from happening didn't get implemented or just wasn't sufficient.
For better or worse human civilization can not exist without environmental impact. The knee-jerk reaction to this unfortunate incident by certain politicians is disappointing to say the least.
It is unfortunate that the knee-jerk reaction of a certain number of politicians is going to be to defend the oil companies and their actions will predictably be enough to keep us from making any real progress.
Well of course, you dingbat (Score:3, Informative)
Let me tell you why your claim is busted thinking.
There are hundreds of spills that you don't hear about that could have been major spills. However, the oil companies have detailed plans and procedures for how to deal with them. As a result, these spills don't become major ones, and they don't count in your grand analysis. Of course the
Re:Man. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm would be all for off-shore drilling if:
1. There was a constant inspection regime paid for entirely by the industry. In other words, there is an armed government official with absolute power to stop drilling, and his salary paid entirely by whoever owns the well and the platform.
2. All caps on liability were removed and the owners of the well and platform were forced to pay all costs of a spills, without limit of any kind.
3. Any evidence of ignoring of safety requirements would lead to lengthy prison sentences for all involved, and a ban on the companies involved in the accident of no less than five years from any extraction.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So similar to the Mine Safety and Health Administration? Or how about the SEC? We've seen how well those have worked out. Any time you have a small regulatory body working in a single industry you end up with conflicts of interest. Industry players come into the agen
Good intentions but... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. There was a constant inspection regime paid for entirely by the industry. In other words, there is an armed government official with absolute power to stop drilling, and his salary paid entirely by whoever owns the well and the platform.
Bit of a conflict of interest there don't you think? Do you seriously expect an inspector to readily shut down production on the person that pays their salary? If so you are FAR more optimistic and trusting of human nature than I am.
2. All caps on liability were removed and the owners of the well and platform were forced to pay all costs of a spills, without limit of any kind.
I'm not aware that there are any caps on liability (please cite if you know of any) other than the flesh eating lawyers employed by the oil companies. Given the results of previous litigation the oil companies seem to be able to defend themselves rather effectively.
3. Any evidence of ignoring of safety requirements would lead to lengthy prison sentences for all involved, and a ban on the companies involved in the accident of no less than five years from any extraction.
Sounds gre
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Please tell me you aren't someone who is going to condemn an entire industry because of one accident.
Because of course this is the first major incident that has dumped vast amounts of oil into the environment.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with your assumption is that this is destroying an ecosystem. Do you even know what crude oil is? It's a naturally occurring, additive free, organic substance. It doesn't rampantly kill life on contact like say, mustard gas.
It's not an assumption, because this is not the first oil spill ever.
And yes I know what crude oil is, do you know that "naturally occurring, additive free, organic substance" and "harmless" are not adjectives?
Nobody is claiming it's going to instantly kill anything on conta
Re:Man. (Score:4, Interesting)
If this concrete dealy doesn't work, what other options do they have?
My understanding is that the only other option is to drill a relief well. Unfortunately it will take months before they have the equipment and logistics in place to do that.
I'd like to know how this dome is supposed to work in rough seas. The oil is going to be contained within the dome and brought to a surface ship. What happens when that surface ship can't maintain position due to inclement weather? Hurricane season starts in another few weeks....
Re: (Score:2)
They are just going to drop that containment dome over the blow off valve. It is not going to be suspended by the ship.
Re: (Score:2)
They are just going to drop that containment dome over the blow off valve. It is not going to be suspended by the ship.
I thought they were also planning to siphon off the oil... I wouldn't think this dome would be heavy enough to contain the immense pressures inside that well, particularly when combined with the bouyancy of the oil itself.
Re:Man. (Score:5, Informative)
I'd like to know how this dome is supposed to work in rough seas. The oil is going to be contained within the dome and brought to a surface ship. What happens when that surface ship can't maintain position due to inclement weather? Hurricane season starts in another few weeks....
Probably the same way the original rig [wikipedia.org], which was a semi-submersible, dynamically positioned platform, was controlled: via a system of computer-controlled engines which maintain the vessel's position over the drill site.
Re:Man. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd go...
Re: (Score:2)
Figure out who to sue and how.
This is America. That's easy. Everybody.
85% (Score:5, Insightful)
That number would be more encouraging if the amount coming out were not so massive. This spill is going to create a lot of suck for years to come.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand why they don't have skimmers for harvesting the oil off the surface of the water instead of trying to burn it or break it down with even more chemicals.
Good luck with that (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
American Chernobyl (Score:2, Funny)
And that structure looks nothing like a dome.
Does't the oil business have contingency plans for this kind of thing?! And companies that specialize in this kind of work?! America is filling the Gulf with FAIL.
Re:American Chernobyl (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand why they can't just bury it under 100 tons of concrete.
I see you're modded as funny... Serious answer though is the bottom of the GoM is pretty much just muck/slime/goo. It'll just bubble out via the next easiest path.
Ironically, the currently winning theory at the oildrum is the blow out was caused by a cement failure. Something down there doesn't cement-seal very well, so the simplistic solution of dumping more is possibly not the best engineering solution.
Does't the oil business have contingency plans for this kind of thing?!
Ummm, you'll notice they're working like an anthill stirred up with a stick, not exactly sitting arou
what are the chemical dispersants? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anybody tell me about the chemical dispersants? what happens to the 'dispersed' oil plus these chemicals? This is a naive question, please educate me but surely this means you now have oil+chemical in your water rather than just oil in your water - is the dilution level so low that it doesn't affect the sealife that is later caught to eat, does it combine with the oil to something that it relatively innocuous that breaks down in sunlight, or something that sinks to the sea bed etc?
Information welcomed, just curious about what happens to that oil if its not skimmed off the surface or burnt off, but chemically treated and left in the ocean and left there. Maybe it's just so dilute it doesn't matter, I don't know. Any knowledge on this, folks?
Re: (Score:2)
The oil droplets descend to the bottom of the ocean. Some ecologists think this is worse than letting it sit on top of the ocean. You can clean birds, but you can't clean the plankton that feed the bottom of the food chain.
Re:what are the chemical dispersants? (Score:5, Interesting)
Those who think letting the oil sink is a bad idea are a distinct minority.
Sure, if there wasn't oil in the water we wouldn't want to dump dispersants in, but there is, so this is the lesser of two evils.
The sea floor is a veritable desert compared to the ocean surface. The food chain starts in the first 10' of water, where plankton have access to sunlight.
There are creatures that will be effected by oil on the sea floor like crabs and such, but it's still better than letting it run ashore.
Briefly, oil on the ocean floor or dispersed in the water column is bad. Oil on the ocean surface is worse. And oil on the ocean surface at the shoreline and in the estuaries is an ecological catastrophe.
Re:what are the chemical dispersants? (Score:4, Insightful)
Those who think letting the oil sink is a bad idea are a distinct minority. ...
There are creatures that will be effected by oil on the sea floor like crabs and such, but it's still better than letting it run ashore.
I don't think you understand the full consequences of oil on the sea floor.
Every time a big storm comes through,
(and this is the Gulf of Mexico... hurricane central)
the sea floor gets stirred up and oil gets carried to shore.
The gulf coast is going to have oil contaminations problems for years.
Re:what are the chemical dispersants? (Score:4, Informative)
The gulf coast is going to have oil contamination for years regardless of whether the oil is dispersed or not. Many years of lower concentration contamination is likely favorable to saturating the swamps and estuaries with oil now.
Further, my understanding is that agitated dispersed oil is likely to spread out in the full 3 dimensions of the gulf of Mexico, which isn't good, but it's less bad than having it bob to the surface or concentrate on the bottom where it bio-accumulates in the few deep sea bottom feeders.
Remember when your high school chemistry teacher told you that dilution isn't the solution to pollution? Well when containment isn't an option - like with an oil spill, dilution is preferable to concentration.
Re:what are the chemical dispersants? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:what are the chemical dispersants? (Score:5, Informative)
The article does not report this, but other articles have noted that this oil is mostly mixed with water (more than previous spills). This could give hope that more birds than normal can actually be saved.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The average survival time for a cleaned bird is 1-5 days, from the last data I have seen.
You misread the report. "Cleaned bird" is the internal code name for a line of Seagate hard drives.
Re:what are the chemical dispersants? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anybody tell me about the chemical dispersants? what happens to the 'dispersed' oil plus these chemicals?
See wikipedia "Bile" entry... Similar concept but in an ocean rather than the guts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile [wikipedia.org]
To make a very long story very short, oil naturally biodegrades over time by water internal-chemistry organisms, not oil internal-chemistry organisms. At a rate directly proportional to the surface area of the drop. Giant "ball" of oil the size of a football stadium will take much longer than a nearly infinite cloud of little microscopic droplets.
If a life form existed on earth with oil based protoplasm rather than water, you wouldn't need the dispersant because that life form could live inside the volume of the oil as opposed to upon the surface...
Think about bio sources of oil in the ocean. if there were no way to degrade oil, the oceans would be full of cod liver oil and whale oil. Similar with natural seeps of crude.
Much like radioactivity, crude is mostly harmless when properly distributed at an extremely low level in a large volume... its concentrated stuff thats the problem.
Re:what are the chemical dispersants? (Score:5, Informative)
Sorbitol esters. Basically modified sugar alcohols. An example of this class of compounds is the Polysorbate 80 that is used to emulsify mild fats in ice cream.
Extremely biodegradable and pretty unlikely to cause any environmental damage.
Re: (Score:2)
Soap + undisclosed proprietary chemicals that are known to bio-accumulate. It will be nice having that enter the food chain.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Meet you at Red Lobster!
D'ome! (Score:2, Funny)
They tried it on Springfield.
Re: (Score:2)
Oblig. "Simpsons did it!"
I know what a siphon is! (Score:2)
"...is designed to siphon the crude oil away from the water."
Really?
siphon
- a tube running from the liquid in a vessel to a lower level outside the vessel so that atmospheric pressure forces the liquid through the tube.
- A pipe or tube fashioned or deployed in an inverted U shape and filled until atmospheric pressure is sufficient to force a liquid from a reservoir in one end of the tube over a barrier higher than the reservoir and out the other end.
- To draw off or convey through or
Re: (Score:2)
Really. The third definition fits nicely--"as if through a siphon". The pipe will not technically be a siphon tube, but the oil will flow through it in a similar manner.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I find it really hilarious that they'd go to the trouble to quote the definition but not realize that one of them works.
Pedantry failure: Reboot semantic centers of brain and try again!
I think most people understood that the word was used in a non-literal sense to imply the intent of getting the oil from under the dome, not the actual mechanics.
Re: (Score:2)
you know ... they're probably going to attach a tube to the dome. And buoyant forces will force the liquid through it (though they'll probably pump too).
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, really.
Siphoning is the act of using a tube with different levels of pressure at each end to transfer a liquid from one end to the other. Using atmospheric pressure or different elevations is just one method of siphoning.
The greater level of water pressure at the bottom will push the oil (mixed with water) up to the lower level of pressure at the top of the box/tube contraption, where it will be whisked away in a controlled fashion (rather than dispersing into the Gulf).
It's much like sucking water ou
The "dome" is called a cofferdam. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
"Cofferdam" would confuse techtards, although the term was common in schools a few decades back when bridge construction was still considered worthy of understanding.
Should have had these waiting on the shelf (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been amazed at the Oil industries apparent inability to do any contingency planning. If this dome technology is known to be the best quick-fix for containing this type of oil leak, they should have had a few of them already built and sitting on a back lot in Port Arthur, just in case.
Instead, they have to construct them from scratch when the emergency presents itself. That's resulted in a huge waste of time as the clock is ticking and the environment becomes more and more damaged.
Having spares would have been a cheap insurance policy. Don't these people even think about risk mitigation?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Don't these people even think about risk mitigation?
They did. They had a blowout valve in place that was supposed to kill the oil flow. It failed. Not something that has ever happened before and not something that could have been predicted.
We could conduct offshore drilling for the next hundred years and probably not see another failure via this route.
Re:Should have had these waiting on the shelf (Score:4, Insightful)
So they put all their faith in a blowout valve that apparently had an unanticipated failure mode. That's not risk mitigation, that's as assumption that, since you don't recognize the risk, there is no risk.
One layer of protection here was far to thin. In Norway and Brazil they require that wells also have remote control shutoffs. That would have been another layer of protection.
Keeping extra domes around would have been another layer of protection - a relatively low cost "when all else fails" measure. Seems like they didn't do it because they had too much confidence that all else couldn't possibly fail.
They were wrong.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The part that failed was the remote controll shutoff!
Except that it wasn't. It was a blowout preventer, and what failed was the automatic cut-off (which should have normally reacted to the spill all of its own). There is no remote control [wikipedia.org] manual shut-off switch (which is precisely the part that is required by law for offshore drilling everywhere except the U.S.).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They did. They had a blowout valve in place that was supposed to kill the oil flow. It failed. Not something that has ever happened before and not something that could have been predicted.
We could conduct offshore drilling for the next hundred years and probably not see another failure via this route.
If that's the only failsafe they had, that's a problem.
They were drilling at extraordinary depths, here, and they must've known that, if something catastrophic *did* happen, it would be exceptionally difficult
Re:Should have had these waiting on the shelf (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Should have had these waiting on the shelf (Score:4, Informative)
Do you have a citation for that? Because if that's true, that's pretty frickin' serious.
Re:Should have had these waiting on the shelf (Score:5, Insightful)
Fun things to watch (Score:5, Informative)
Fun things to watch in the news coverage:
Pressure creep. A gross estimate is about a PSI per foot of well depth. Its unlikely the actual pressure at the bottom of the well could exceed 20K PSI. Whats squirting out the top, order of magnitude less. Maybe, extreme cases, you can go plus or minus 50%, maybe. So, people whom know what they're talking about, knowing the drilling mud was around 18 pounds per gallon, and roughly how deep the well is, pretty much know how much pressure the stuff is boiling out of the well. However, the breathless journalists and political hacks feed on each other and one up each other for dramatic reasons. The wildest screamers blew thru 100K psi about two days ago, and I think we're well on our way to nuclear fusion pressure range in journalist-land.
Flow rate creep. An entire modest oilfield might produce 100K barrels per day. Real flow rate out of this well is probably in the range of 2K to 10K bpd. The screaming journalists and hacks recently blew thru 60K bpd, some beyond 200K bpd. We are rapidly approaching the point where the journalists-types will report figures better suited to the entire production of the country of saudi arabia, etc.
Unit changes. The flow is probably a modest 5K BPD. That doesn't sound as cool, so a couple days ago the journalists switched to gallons per day. As the flow decreases, I expect the screamers to switch to pounds per day, finally maybe milliliters per day, just to keep the numbers up.
Flow rate exaggeration. 5K BPD is like a firehose, vaguely. Journalists, over the past few days, have worked their way up on top of each other from adjectives like "dribbling" up to descriptions more in line with a Saturn-V rocket motor at full blast. Its going to flutter the "dome" around like a garden hose hitting a gnat. Uh huh, Yeah right.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You missed the Loop Current Creep. The concept here is that the spill will get pulled out of the Gulf by the Loop Current and contaminate the East Coast of the US. I saw one diagram that had it all the way up to New Jersey.
Re:Fun things to watch - you forgot Fault Creep (Score:5, Funny)
0) "It's not leaking"
1) "It wasn't us"
2) "It's just one mistake"
3) "The media is making it all worse"
4) (still pending) "It's because the liberals hate nukes"
I'm glad you are concentrating on what's important.
Re:This thread is worthless without pics (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider R'ing TFA. Second link has pics. Dear Lord, people, who in the world ties your shoes in the morning?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This thread is worthless without pics (Score:5, Funny)
No need to tie Velcro shoes.
But you can still try.
Re: (Score:2)
She Did Comment On It (Score:2)
I'd like to know if she's given her opinion on this. I'm sure it would be insightful.
Well, from Swamp Politics [swamppolitics.com]:
There will be a lot of hearings "to discover the cause of the explosion and the subsequent leak," Palin writes ,and action will be taken "to increase oversight to prevent future accidents....
"Government can and must play an appropriate role here," she adds. "If a company was lax in its prevention practices, it must be held accountable. It is inexcusable for any oil company to not invest in preventative measures. They must be held accountable or the public will forever distrust the industry..."
Yet, she contends, "even with the strictest oversight in the world, accidents still happen. No human endeavor is ever without risk - whether it's sending a man to the moon or extracting the necessary resources to fuel our civilization.
"I repeat the slogan "drill here, drill now" not out of naiveté or disregard for the tragic consequences of oil spills.... I continue to believe in it because increased domestic oil production will make us a more secure, prosperous, and peaceful nation."
I don't know if I'd call it insightful but it seems to be a route to maintain her initial assertions of drilling here. I'm certainly not a fan of Palin but that response is probably a lot more reasonable than you or I were hoping for. She and I just share a fundamental disagreement about where our country's focuses for energy and energy independence should lie.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And - It WORKS!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
No, the dome isn't even lowered yet. The first leak was sealed using submersibles. Furthermore, it isn't expected that sealing that leak will do much (if anything) to reduce the total outflow.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Starting to see things differently (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a big difference between 1-2 million birds dying in one geographic location over a short amount of time versus hundreds of millions spread relatively evenly across the globe. It also doesn't stop at birds. Crabs, clams, crawfish, fish, etc, etc.
Roughly a quarter million people die each day [answers.com]. That doesn't mean that wiping out the population of Buffalo NY [wikipedia.org] every now and again is "ok". It would simply devastate the area (for other humans who live around there, etc.. probably good for the environment tho...).
I know this stuff happens naturally and I get that. Natural disasters have more or less hit the "reset" button on the planet a few times. But going out and causing it (intended or not) is stupid and entirely preventable. Just because an asteroid or another event pretty much wiped out life on the planet in the past doesn't mean that killing/poisoning large quantities of life now, no matter how small in comparison, is a-ok!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Alternatives? I'd like to see them tried... (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, so now we have this oil well accident that some want to call an ecological disaster of unimaginable proprotions. That this accident illustrates how incredibly stupid it is to drill for oil, and even worse to do so in some ecologically sensitive area.
Yes we have some people making these claims. These people are irrational or have an agenda. The fact of the matter is that all that the actual damage we have documentation of so far (despite all the journalists looking for disaster evidence) are one dead jellyfish and two birds that needed to be cleaned of oil contamination. Otherwise no significant oil contamination in ANY sensitive marshes or wetlands.
The fact is that oil is itself a product of natural biological processes, and nature does have mechanisms for dealing with it over time. The Gulf itself is naturally and continuously contaminated by seepage from oil deposits, to the tune of an estimated 2,000 barrels a day. Every day. Over a history of millions of years. The ecology there has adapted to deal with oil, although not the large quantities from a point source like this incident without some damage.
The fact is that once this spill is contained the ecosystem will recover. It might seem to take forever if you are a fisherman working those waters, but to call it an ecological disaster is just silly.
The only true ecological disasters this planet faces is the accumulated biosphere pressure of human overpopulation and the occasional asteroid strikes.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
YET. Calling the matter closed when the vast majority of the oil spill has yet to reach shore is vastly too premature.
There is no particular evidence that the oil spill is inexorably destined to reach land. The spill size is currently shrinking due to various containment efforts. And likewise calling it a world changing environmental catastrophe is vastly premature when the evidence of damage is slight indeed.
The Brown Pelican, which only just recently was taken off the endangered species list, does not.
Oh