Gulf Oil Spill Nearing Loop Current 334
An anonymous reader writes "Per The Weather Channel's tropical expert Dr. Richard Knabb, 'based on satellite images, model simulations, and on-site research vessel reports, I think it is reasonable to conclude that the oil slick at the surface is very near or partially in the Loop Current. The Loop Current is responsible in the first place for extending that stream of oil off to the southeast in satellite imagery. With its proximity to the northern edge of the Loop Current it may be only a matter of weeks or even days before the ocean surface oil is transported toward the Florida Keys and southeast Florida.'" Other experts are a little more cautious: "We know the oil has not entered the Loop Current," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said at a news conference Monday afternoon. "A leading edge sheen is getting close to it, but it has not entered the Loop Current. The larger volume of oil is several miles from the Loop Current."
Oil at Key West already. (Score:5, Informative)
I think this story is a little old now, oil is already at Key West.
Coast Guard: Tar Balls Found Off Key West, Fla.
POSTED: Monday, May 17, 2010
UPDATED: 11:26 pm EDT May 17, 2010
KEY WEST, Fla. -- The U.S. Coast Guard says 20 tar balls have been found off Key West, Fla., but the agency stopped short of saying whether they came from a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Some 5 million gallons of crude has spewed into the Gulf and tar balls have been washing ashore in several states along the coast.
Scientists are worried that oil is getting caught in a major ocean current that could carry it through the Florida Keys and up the East Coast.
The Coast Guard says the Florida Park Service found the tar balls on Monday during a shoreline survey. The balls were 3-to-8 inches in diameter.
Coast Guard Lt. Anna K. Dixon said no one at the station in Key West was qualified to determine where the tar balls originated. They have been sent to a lab for analysis.
Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Re:Nuke it. (Score:5, Informative)
Streamlines (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nuke it. (Score:4, Informative)
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history [wikipedia.org] are doomed to repeat it in summer school.
Mostly BP's fault (Score:5, Informative)
Rachel Maddow has shown an interview named BP's haste lays waste to Gulf waters [msn.com] with a whistleblower from BP who explained that just a little before the disaster a BP manager told Transocean manager to do the work of putting in the corks into the well faster, so that the pumping of oil could be done faster. Aparently the Transocean manager was against it and they had an argument and BP won.
So it's mostly BP's fault, but I think still Transocean should not have complied with this clear violation of the procedure.
i'm not an expert (Score:3, Informative)
but japan and france have been nuclear dependent for decades, and i don't see many oil spills off their shores
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan [wikipedia.org]
additionally, a lot of anti-nuclear opinions are based on 1960s era nuclear tech. new pebble bed reactors, air cooled: the staff can just walk away from these things, no melt down, no china syndrome
thorium can be used as a source (very abundant) if uranium (mined domestically) gets low. and breeder reactors can turn the waste, even old waste that exists today, into 1/10th the volume, that is only mildly radioactive, for only a century
and if we haven't figured out fusion by the time the uranium and thorium and oil runs out, well then we deserve to be doomed to the collapse of civilization
because i hope you realize, if we don't have a coherent energy source plan, as oil gets deeper and more consumed, that that is what we are headed for
Re:Good. Now it will leave the Gulf and move out (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good. Now it will leave the Gulf and move out (Score:2, Informative)
The acoustic thing you are talking about is a switch, not an additional valve. It would have been another, redundant system alerting the failed blow out preventer that it should close (early on in the recovery process, they sent robots down and attempted to activate the blow out preventer, so it is quite clear that it failed).
I don't pretend to understand the systems well enough to know whether the acoustic switch would have activated earlier than other systems (a scenario where it may have made a difference), but I get the impression it would not have made much difference. Mostly, that impression comes from the 60 Minutes interview where one of the crew members claimed that during testing, they accidentally ran a bunch of pipe through the active part of the blow out preventer, causing an unknown amount of damage to it. They tested the system after that, but they didn't inspect it, and it isn't clear exactly how much predictive value they thought the testing had.
Re:Good. Now it will leave the Gulf and move out (Score:2, Informative)
and then the Democratically Elected Government of Iran was removed through a coup and APOC was once again free to do as it pleased
Not a coup, operation Ajax. A CIA rifleman shot the democratically elected leader of Iran in the head during a rally. That's why they hate us.
Re:Good. Now it will leave the Gulf and move out (Score:2, Informative)
All 3 are responsible. They can sue each other later...
The important thing is to get the leak stopped. Let the courts sort out responsibility (and liability) at their own pace.
The thing to consider, though... how do you put a price on catastrophe? These companies don't really have enough money to compensate for it -- and in reality, since when could you ever compensate with MONEY something this ridiculously catastrophic to all things biological being affected.
I think you are placing too large a value on those biological things. It's just an oil leak, not the end of the world. It's not even doing anything really serious like contaminating drinking water.
Re:Nuke it. (Score:4, Informative)
But not because the O in H2O acts as O2...
Re:Minimal Impact? (Score:3, Informative)
The researchers don't even know that what they measured was oil.
Asper later e-mailed Los Angeles Times staff writer Raja Abdulrahim, who had interviewed him Sunday in Cocodrie, La.:
1) We are not 100% sure that the plumes are oil. We have NOT analyzed the samples yet and won't know what's in them until we do. That will take at least a few days or even a week or more and we don't want to rush these results. The sensor we used is not definitive for oil and other compounds do respond in a manner that is similar to oil and could be confusing us.
Anyone interested in journalistic responsibility (and the lack thereof)on this story should read this article:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-noaa-skeptical-of-oil-plume-reports.html [latimes.com]
Re:Nuke it. (Score:4, Informative)
Since 1971 and counting? Talk about the mother of all fires!
That's child's play. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania [wikipedia.org] has been burning since 1962.
Re:Nuke it. (Score:3, Informative)
Placed properly, it will collapse the bore hole. Its been done before, the physics are well understood.
The bomb would be detonated UNDER GROUND, not just under the water. They drill a new hole a little ways off. The drop a nuke down it, seal off the top enough to ensure no significant amount of radiation gets released into the sea water, detonate it and the explosion pushes the rocks around it out, effectively closing the bore hole over a large distance by crushing it.
Think of it like putting a straw in between a wall and a ballon then blowing up the ballon until the straw is no longer allowing anything to fluid. The difference is, when the nuke (ballon) deflates, the rock isn't going to expand back to the open shape.
The physics are well know, we've detonated MANY bombs underground on our own soil. We know how far down it needs to be and how it will effect the surrounding rock.
They aren't going to lay a nuke on top of the well head and blow it up, stop being an ignorant fuck and talking like thats whats happening. There would be no fall out.
And for reference, there is more radioactive material in the sea water between the surface of the ocean and the well head than there is in the nuke.
Stop spreading fear when you have no understanding of what the plan was.
Re:Nuke it. (Score:3, Informative)
British Petroleum would lose the well permanently and have to drill a new one.
--
BMO
I love how trolls can get modded +5 Insightful here. Please elaborate on your experience in the oil & gas industry.
I am a product engineer that designs subsea equipment. The company I work for sells equipment to the majors, one of them being BP. I can't tell you the amount of hours people have worked to try and fix this problem. In addition to the people involved, people that have had zero to do with the original Horizon products/well are creating Plan A - D solutions in 24-hour shifts. This is all in an effort to stop the leak as fast as possible, regardless of who has the liability (that will be worked out later).
If nuking it was a viable option, then I'm sure BP would risk losing a well at the cost of re-drilling a new one. The PR nightmare alone is worth that cost. I know it's easy to say BP is evil, but now all eyes are on them to fix the issue. If they create another problem (such as nuking the well), I doubt you would be the first one to defend their actions.
Things are not so black and white. Consider that you're operating in under high pressure (15-20ksi), with minimal access and visibility. Any equipment you send down there NOW has to be taken off the shelf. new designs have 4+ week deliveries (normally 8+). There is no such thing as "plug and play". Each customer, each project is different. So now you are patching together equipment from other clients (off their shelves) to make something work.
I can't speak for BP, but I can tell you I take pride in my work, and my coworkers are the same. We don't release anything that is unsafe. Period. I don't know about this project, but anyone in the industry can tell you that the environmental regulations we design to for Mobile Bay are stringent. No one wants to have this type of disaster.
At the same time, how many PHB's have you had that focused on schedules/costs instead of features/the product? That's their job. People make tradeoffs. I have to say that no PHB I know would knowingly risk damage to people/the environment over making more money. But it's never that clear is it? How do you balance risk and safety? What is the definition of effective? You never have all the metrics to make the right call. There are a lot of people/processes that make this well happen, a problem in any area can lead to this.
Oh, and in case you think I'm a shill, I would love it if we all drove electric cars. But until everyone decides to drop plastics for the corn variety, or gas for electric, you need fossil fuels.