Methane-Trapping Ice May Have Triggered Gulf Spill 341
sciencehabit writes with an excerpt from Science that begins: "Methane-trapping ice of the kind that has frustrated the first attempt to contain oil gushing offshore of Louisiana may have been a root cause of the blowout that started the spill in the first place, according to [UC Berkeley] professor Robert Bea, who has extensive access to BP p.l.c. documents on the incident. If methane hydrates are eventually implicated, the US oil and gas industry would have to tread even more lightly as it pushes farther and farther offshore in search of energy."
Re:Farther offshore? (Score:5, Informative)
Depth, pressure.
Re:oil leaks aren't natural? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course we do. The Gulf is said to leak 2000 barrels a day naturally.
Some natural leaks in the gulf of California are even bigger.
Re:Arctic? (Score:5, Informative)
This doesn't really answer why it's not a problem in Alaska, but the temperatures aren't actually much different. Alaskan offshore drilling is in relatively shallow water, which at those latitudes is somewhere in the low single digits C once you get below the ice pack; while this operation in the Gulf was at about 1700 meters depth, where the temperatures are also in the low single digits C. (There's lots of complicating factors, but this graph [blogspot.com] of depth v. temperature for three different latitudes gives an idea.) There's differences in pressure, which might matter, but also big differences in geology.
Re:Farther offshore? (Score:5, Informative)
Is there a correlation between the amount of methane hydrates and the distance from shore?
The correlation is between distance from shore and depth + temperature.
Here's some nice graphs showing depth vs temperature for methane hydrates [doe.gov]
And here's a picture of seafloor depths for context [wikipedia.org]
Better Article (Score:5, Informative)
This one has more detail [myway.com], and is actually really-well written. Really, an AP story with some investigative journalism. Kudos, guy, you're making your co-workers look bad. :)
Re:probably a bit ignorant here (Score:5, Informative)
Oil is really valuable, so there's a very high bar for the monetary cost of disaster to be not worth it, on a purely profits-vs-cleanup-costs basis.
Some back-of-the-envelope estimates. Say this disaster ends up costing BP $10 billion. Say that any given rig has a 1% chance of causing a disaster of that magnitude. So we assign a $100 million amortized cost per rig, to cover the "chance this rig will catastrophically blow up". Is it still worth drilling in that case? Well, it actually barely changes the economics at all: these deep-water wells cost about $500-600 million to drill and put into production to begin with. So add to $100m to that and total costs are basically still on the same order of magnitude.
In particular, these rigs can produce a lot of oil. BP's Thunder Horse rig in the gulf produces 250,000 barrels per day. Even if they make only $10/barrel operating profit (probably a low estimate), that's $2.5m per day in profits from the well, i.e. almost a billion dollars per year. Unless fully 10% of such wells incur $10b catastrophic cleanup costs every year, BP comes out ahead.
Re:probably a bit ignorant here (Score:5, Informative)
Re:oil leaks aren't natural? (Score:4, Informative)
The California seafloor leaks are much larger. I don't think they know exactly how much, but this source [isa.org] quotes "8-80 Exxon Valdez spills", I would guess they mean annually. That's somewhere between 86.4 and 864 million gallons.
Clathrates == Oceanic farts: smelly and too warm (Score:3, Informative)
Read up on the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum [wikipedia.org]. The whole world was so warm, there was basically no ice anywhere on the surface (maybe some at extreme depths), and the Arctic Ocean was warm enough for alligators. One theory [wikipedia.org] for why temperatures spiked so high has to do with a runaway positive feedback loop, where rising temperatures cause clathrates to melt out, which causes more heating.
So no, not just a drop in the bucket.
Cheers,
Re:Spill baby spill! (Score:5, Informative)
Article says "Drillers have long been wary of methane hydrates because they can pack a powerful punch.. . . " . . . Doesn't exactly sound like this was a new and unforseen problem, . . .
The drilling is taking place in deeper and deeper water. Deep waters have high pressure and the low temperature. Both of these make formation of methane clathrates more likely. The high pressures a mile beneath the ocean surface also make it easier to dissolve gas in the oil. Avoiding pipeline blockages and explosive decompressions is not trivial. To the extent the industry is pushing the limits of what has been done before (and they are pushing limits of depth) they can be surprised by details that they haven't encountered before.
Re:It's the BP spill, not Gulf spill. (Score:5, Informative)
And what if it turns out that, in fact, BP broke no regulations, bent no rules and this was simply something that nobody could have for-seen and no safety equipment on the planet could have withstood the pressure released from below the earth's surface? Would it be the Mother Nature spill?
Also, I don't think a lot of you appreciate the safety culture in an offshore environment for American companies. Safety is number one. Nobody wants to die on the job, nobody wants their actions to cause somebody else's death and no company wants to tell someody's loved one they died on the job. Safety is a very serious thing offshore - for employees and employers. Following procedures, regulations, safety protocols is paramount to everything else.
Re:probably a bit ignorant here (Score:2, Informative)
Cobasys is no longer controlled by Chevron (it is jointly owned by Samsung and Bosch):
http://www.cobasys.com/investors/ [cobasys.com]
They will sell you nimh battery packs:
http://www.cobasys.com/products/transportation.shtml [cobasys.com]
compensation for vicrims (Score:5, Informative)
The good news is that there will be a charity concert in New Orleans, so BP won't have to pay so much money to their victims.
If it ends up like Vladez oil spill BP won't have to pay anything. More than 20 years later the fish [cnn.com] have not recovered and the fishermen have not been compensated. Heck, oil still persists [adn.com], is still found. Large corporations laugh while going to the bank to make another deposit while the people pay.
Falcon
Re:probably a bit ignorant here (Score:5, Informative)
I think making them pay the actual total cost of cleanup might be a better solution.
Unfortunately, their liability was limited to $75M under the 1990 Oil Pollution Act [epa.gov]. Of course, wanting to close the barn door after the horse has burned it down, the White House now wants to increase that to $10B [al.com], a figure slightly more in line with something that would make an oil company slow down and think about how shoddily their operations are being run [salon.com].
Re:interestingly, themselves sometimes touted (Score:5, Informative)
ya know, I hear this all the time but no-one ever provides a citation. Do you have a citation? (don't go look one up, you said it with such authority, you should have one already).
I don't know if you are trying to be funny or if you are just too lazy or stupid to google it yourself. Either way, I took the liberty of doing it for you. I typed in "Methane greenhouse gas" (no quotes) in the google box and pressed enter. The first link [epa.gov], first paragraph showed me this:
Methane
Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere for approximately 9-15 years. Methane is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period and is emitted from a variety of natural and human-influenced sources.
From now on, I expect you to be a big boy and find your own citation.
Seriously, if you were trying to be funny, then I guess the joke's on me because I don't get it. I'll be an optimist and hope that a Slash reader and contributer would know better. Allow me to "woosh" myself in the hope that it truly was a joke.
Re:Arctic? (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder how they've avoided the problems up around Alaska or other places where it's actually cold enough for there to be ice - much less methane trapping ice.
I'm a gas field operator in Alberta, and hydrates can be a massive problem, especially when the wells are not big enough to justify dehydrating the gas at the well site and has to flow to a central facility. Since I operate a sour gas field (contains hydrogen sulfide) the problem is even worse. At our normal field pressures the gas starts to hydrate at around 20 C (68 F) if we are not taking extra steps to control it. It is one of the biggest causes of equipment damage and injuries/deaths. I have never operated oil wells so I am not knowledgeable about how they effect production of oil, but I have read about deaths due to mishandling hydrates at the wellhead of oil wells in Alberta and BC. To reduce the rate that they form, we inject chemicals such as methanol into the gas, and have line heaters at regular intervals along the pipeline. They are a regular problem and danger.
Re:Spill baby spill! (Score:3, Informative)
Our options are as follows:
1) Continue drilling and have an accident every few decades
2) Switch to wind/solar with all-electric vehicles immediately and pay about 5000% of world GDP in the next 10 years doing it and 3 - 5x current energy prices thereafter
3) Switch to an all-Amish life
4) Work on a gradual transition to cleaner and more sustainable energy sources by continuing to utilize what we have and what works while developing new stuff that actually works
You seem to be advocating options 2 or 3. Some people seem to be in favor of option 1. The only option that makes any sense at all to me is number 4. That requires that we drill for a while longer to continue supplying ourselves with the energy we need today while we develop better sources for the energy we'll need tomorrow. This spill, while terrible and unfortunate, is nothing compared to the havoc and destruction that will be wrought by either inaction or wrecklessly rushed actions on the part of humanity trying to fill its ever-growing thirst for energy.
That the largest economy and energy consuming nation in the world is even considering allowing its entire energy policy to hinge on a single accident is sheer lunacy. The only sane path is a slow, deliberate one dictated by need and reason alone.
Re:probably a bit ignorant here (Score:3, Informative)
Oil companies are out there to make money. If you had offered Chevron a high enough price, they probably would have designed and developed batteries for you. And sold them to you. It is not Chevron's fault that a gallon of gasoline is worth 55 man hours of manual labor in terms of energy, and so way less expensive than your batteries.
Notice how IBM decided to start supporting Linux, despite the fact that it is a competitor to what was then their core products. They would rather cash in on their competitors products than not, especially if it means their competitors won't.
Re:interestingly, themselves sometimes touted (Score:5, Informative)
If someone actually comes up with a feasible, scalable alternative to fossil fuels, the switch to using that idea would just take care of itself due to market forces.
Only if that were true, but it's not. Those who use fossil fuels get to pass on the external costs to others. One way to make polluters pay is by taxing carbon. But of course some complain that that harms businesses or people. Are you one of them?
And that's only half of it. Fossil fuel supporters complain about how alternative energy sources get subsidies. Well, guess what? So do fossil fuels. Here's Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) bragging about how his bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!' [youtube.com]. He starts by saying the Nuclear Power industry has received $145 Billion in federal subsides over the years. But combined solar and wind have only gotten $5 billion. In another video the CEO of Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies [grist.org]. Those subsidies for nuclear power above? The Freemarket CATO institute reprinted a "Forbes" article printed on 26 November 2007 about how the Nulear Power Industry is Hooked on Subsidies [cato.org]. Among other things it says "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors." In 2007 [treehugger.com] in the US all alternative energy sources including the $3.0 Billion corn based ethanol got, when corn is not a good feedstock for ethanol, got $4.875 Billion dollars. Subtract that $3 Billion and geothermal, solar, wind, and others only got $1.875 Billion. Coal got $3.760 Billion. Itself, oil [issues.org] has gotten the majority of federal energy incentives.
What is happening is the government and not a free market is picking winners and losers. The government should end all subsidies, including allowing industries to pass external costs to others, and let the different players compeat.
Falcon
energy (Score:3, Informative)
For Pete's sake, the guy was saying we should stop oil production to force people to use non-existent renewable energy.
Ever hear of geothermal? Solar? Wind? They all exist. And if they were given as much in subsidies as coal [grist.org], nuclear power [youtube.com], and petroleum [issues.org] they would be producing a lot more energy.
Falcon
Re:You're seeing the problem (Score:5, Informative)
There is a ton of energy available in this form, throughout the oceans. It's a concern that the instability of these methane structures could actually cause some rapid climate change, if they're disturbed by warming oceans, current changes, etc.
That same instability makes them damn hard to mine for energy. A number of companies and research organizations have tried, but so far, everyone that's disturbed them has watched as the methane bubbled up to the surface, and escaped into the air.
Re:peak oil (Score:4, Informative)
Siiiigghhh.. fish farming.. you know, as opposed to getting in your boat and going out to fish in the ocean then being surprised when one day there's no fish?
Oh that's what you mean? Like farmed fish don't need to be fed and don't know massive amounts of antibiotics. Except they do. Farmed fish requires vast amounts of wild caught fish to feed. Daniel Pauly [time.com] "a professor of fisheries science at the University of British Columbia, has calculated that it takes 2 to 5 lbs. of anchovies, sardines, menhaden and the other oily fish that comprise fish meal to produce 1 lb. of farmed salmon". Because they are packed into small areas they also need those antibiotics [bellona.org], which end up in the ocean leading to antibiotic resistance. Fish farms also create dead zones [stanfordalumni.org].
Still think fish farming is the answer?
Falcon
Re:You're seeing the problem (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Spill baby spill! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You're seeing the problem (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You're seeing the problem (Score:2, Informative)
gas/oil ratio units (Score:3, Informative)
By weight or volume?
It's by volume, in units of standard cubic feet [1] of produced gas per barrel [2] of oil produced (i.e. after the gas has escaped).
[1] "standard" meaning "at standard temperature and pressure"
[2] 1 barrel = 42 US gallons
Re:energy (Score:3, Informative)
For Pete's sake, the guy was saying we should stop oil production to force people to use non-existent renewable energy.
Ever hear of geothermal? Solar? Wind? They all exist. And if they were given as much in subsidies as coal [grist.org], nuclear power [youtube.com], and petroleum [issues.org] they would be producing a lot more energy.
Falcon
Um... no. No they would not.
Geothermal, while prevalent in some parts of the world, is not that big of a resource here. And most of the places where geothermal is available are national parks. Could you imagine the uproar if you tried to build a power plant at Yellowstone?
Solar is nowhere near efficient enough to power the country. It can be a nice boost, hardly economic, and government subsidies are not enough to help. For starters, government subsidies exist [examiner.com]. There are also several tax breaks you can receive for "greening" your home, but it will never be enough to make it cost effective [sciencedaily.com]:
He found the cost for an installation ranges from nearly $86,000 to $91,000, while the value of the power produced ranges from $19,000 to $51,000.
I don't know about you, but I don't have an extra $91,000 sitting around to spend on something that will save me $51,000 over the next 20 years. Also, this study fails to consider the sunk costs. In other words, if I were wisely invest that $90 G's instead of blowing it on solar panels, it would grow. Take whatever money it would have made and add that to the loss. I'm not alone here. A very small percentage of Americans have $900.00 to spend, much less $90,000.00. Oh, and then there are cloudy days, night, snow covered roof tops, hail, shadows from when the sun crosses to the other side of your house and so on that make solar an even less economic proposition.
Now, if you are talking about massive power plants located in the desert, when then you have other issues. See, you green buddies at the Sierra Club [msn.com] tend to block most of these programs because, even though they could save the earth, they may endanger a turtle that lives in the sand. That pretty much stands for any of these green projects. Someone, somewhere is going to get their feelings hurt. And these someones tend to have lawyers. So, don't bitch at me. Call the Sierra Club!
Finally, Wind! Wow! This is a fun one. I'll start with this quote [answers.com]:
Another interesting point with wind systems is that fossil fuel plants normally run on standby to support the wind fluctuations that occur. So, not only do we see only 8 to 10% of a rated power output, but this is offset by the fossil fuel consumed an not delivered to the grid. The net result is that most wind packages deliver less then zero power, when you consider the wasted fuel at the fossil fuel plant.
Of course, as the Kennedys showed us, some people don't like the way they look. You remember Ted Kennedy, right? That big green liberal that BLOCKED wind power because it might disrupt the view from some of his mansions?
So, in to put it more succinctly, renewable energy does not exist, at least not to the point where it can completely replace fossil fuels. While all these other ideas do produce energy and will reduce our fossil fuel dependence for producing electricity, I believe the only viable solution is nuclear. Oh, your green buddies blocked that too!
Now the elephant in the room that I've ignored until now is that all the proposals yo