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."
And - It WORKS!!!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Latest reports are that the smallest of the three leaks is now contained. Hopefully the other two will quickly follow suit !
Good luck with that (Score:3, Interesting)
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....
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: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: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:1, Interesting)
Google "Corexit 9527" or "Corexit 9500"
These are the dispersants being used. Essentially they break up the chains of hydrocarbons in the oil causing it to disperse in the water. This works better in deeper water.
Think of a water column that is 1 meter square by 30 meters deep. The oil floating on top is extremely thin. The dispersant breaks up that oil and dilutes it into the entire water column.
The dispersant's specific gravity is less than that of water, but greater than oil so it gets between the water and the floating oil. A little bit of wave action helps work the dispersant into the oil causing it to be most effective.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fun things to watch (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: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:2, Interesting)
"Society" does not come with an environmental cost. We don't have a planned economy, we have a free market, therefore, it is private industry that comes with the cost. Private industry profits, but society pays the cost. Shouldn't, oh I don't know, their profits be less, to cover the costs? Why should WE be the ones to pay the costs while the bastards making the decisions are taking home tens of millions in bonuses? Maybe THEY should pay the costs, they made the decisions.
So, you are NOT saying the free market will fix this? Cool! We're in agreement then. The free market WILL NOT FIX THIS. Glad we agree that the free market will not magically fix everything.
You were NOT implying that BP will shoulder the cost of the cleanup? You are saying, while BP execs take home millions in bonuses and BP stock holders continue to profit, SOCIETY will pay for the cleanup. Glad we agree here, too.
Sorry for saying you were implying things you weren't. I'm glad that we agree that under our version of the free market, private industry takes the profits while society pays the bills. I'm sure you are just as outraged by this unfairness as I am, and you will want to force everyone to pay their own costs rather than making us pay for them. I'm glad that you, too, are tired of the rich stealing from us, and I'm sure that you will want to do as I do and speak out about this unfairness.
Re:Should have had these waiting on the shelf (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: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:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:1, Interesting)
We already made a deal with BP, though, to limit their liability as a way to encourage them to come in and extract the oil there (presumably to put downward pressure on fuel costs).
If BP was required.. from the outset.. to cover the entire cost of the cleanup, there are a number of things they might have done.
The simplest is to simply not drill in the gulf. That wouldn't really hurt us, so it's no big deal. They'd drill somewhere else (they're an oil company, so they have to drill somewhere), and make whatever deals they want there.
But presuming the other sources of oil are too difficult to extract, they might still be interested in the gulf. They'd just mitigate their risk by pre-positioning assets in the area which could catch it early and obviate the need for expensive post-spill coastal cleanup.
Now, they didn't do that because we basically promised that WE would do that (it was implicit in our offer to take on the unlimited downside potential of a spill over the legislatively determined limit). Then we didn't.
It's okay, though because we can change the laws after the spill to make sure that BP is still on the hook.
A Good Primer to Explain the Problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Although drilling is a cowboy science, there are a few concepts to it that are not immediately obvious and help explain what they're doing. I'd like to define the problem a little bit better, which may actually lead to someone finding a better answer.
The problem that they're facing is that there is a pipe placed in a hole down many thousand feet into an oil reservoir [wikipedia.org], most likely at the edge of a salt dome [slb.com]. The reservoir is at very high pressure (which is common in the GoM and one of the benifits of drilling here), and effectively we have an uncapped fire hydrant spewing high pressure fluid into the ocean, which floats up and producing the lovely oil sheen. As you'll notice, all attacks follow this vein... capping the end of a wildly spewing fire hydrant. My personal opinion isn't really relevant, but hey, they've got to show they're trying all options.
During drilling we control well pressures during drilling with heavy mud fluids [wikipedia.org], which provide counter-pressure and keep this problem in check. From a discussion on a plane yesterday with someone in well completions, they had set a plug in the drilling fluid (probably a brine at this point, replacing the mud) but may not have tested it well enough, and enough gas escaped from below the plug to displace the drilling fluid with a large bubble of gas. The low density of the gas created an unstable pressure system, and allowed the pressure below to burst through the plug and cause a kick [wikipedia.org], sinking the rig. Note that rigs tend to drill many wells at the same location now, spreading them out using directional drilling [wikipedia.org] but not actually moving the rig. When we drill a well and a production platform is not yet in place, we temporarily cap the well... using the same process that didn't go so great this time. So when the drilling platform sank, any already drilled and capped wells were likely damaged as well. These are likely easier to shut off due to properly operating subsurface safety valves [wikipedia.org] being in place (required in the GoM), and possibly BoP stacks [wikipedia.org] being in place still as well (not likely but maybe? usually these are removed after drilling).
So here we are, with the BoPs not working on this one well, and it's gushing oil. In most situations we drill a relief well, because when we intersect the gushing well, our wellbore is full of drilling mud, and we can kill the flow by using extra-heavy mud weighs to stifle flow right at the source. This is, in my opinion, the best and most complete option. The problem to this method is that it takes days/weeks, not hours/days, and we want an "hours/days" solution. Hence the multi-million-dollar "cork" they are trying to place on top of this fire hydrant. I see estimates of 3 months [foxnews.com] in the news [npr.org] for the relief well being effective, and I think that's a bit high but reasonable. "Off the cuff" (do not use this as a real estimate) I like to guess about 500 feet of drilling a day, and this well is 13,000 feet, but that's certainly much too optimistic in this case.
Here is a link [wikipedia.org] to an event similar to this one near Australia
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: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 contact. But if you had any idea of the environmental damage caused by previous spills, you wouldn't be talking like this "naturally occurring" substance isn't going to cause any problems in the quantities and concentrations here. Go ask an actual biologist or environmental scientist or anyone who has actually studied the impact of oil spills if they're concerned about this "organic substance". If they say that yes they are, make sure to remind them that the oil is additive free!
Oil naturally leaks in plenty of places on the planet. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090513130944.htm [sciencedaily.com]
You realize that article is talking about oil seeping out over an extended period of time, filtered through and partially biodegraded passing through ocean floor sediments before it even reaches the ocean water? Not pumped out through a cleanly bored holed designed to maximize pressure and thus output. The Exxon Valdez spill wouldn't have been a big disaster if the oil had been leaked out slowly over twenty years, and 11-110 of them wouldn't be a big issue on the time scales it took it to reach that level of concentration in the soil.
It does kill some animals fairly quickly, but it also feeds algae and other microorganisms as well as plant life on the shore. I expect that the "fallout" from this spill will hurt the fish and shrimp industries this year, but in the coming years, they will have bumper crops. I'm not saying this isn't an environmental incident, I just fail to see the doomsday scenarios that everyone is talking about.
Yeah, now who's making assumptions? Fail is the operative word here. Here's a couple links: http://www.answers.com/topic/exxon-valdez-oil-spill [answers.com] and http://www.eoearth.org/article/exxon_valdez_oil_spill [eoearth.org] showing how the environmental impact and disruption of ecosystems was ongoing ten and even twenty years later. There's plenty more on teh googles. Fishing was disrupted for multiple years, and catches have never recovered. Mortality remains high among contaminated fish and other animals.
It's not about doomsday from one spill, it's about damage to ecosystems that are already stressed. It's about idiots saying that it's not such a big deal so lets not stop doing it, ensuring that there will be subsequent stresses.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not trying to be an ass about it. I think everyone can agree with the fact that what's done is done. BP hasn't avoided responsibility for stopping the leak, but that's an obvious benefit to them given that their investment is quite literally washing out to sea. They have, however, been very vague with their statements about cleanup. With so many people looking for a get-rich-quick lawsuit I don't really blame them. I don't know how you define the extent of responsibility, but the ultimate impact of this can hardly be estimated. And from my perspective, BP did not have sufficient safeguards or contingency plans in place.
Re:Should have had these waiting on the shelf (Score:2, Interesting)