Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

[don]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

Kids should discuss in the classroom the points that I have raised here.

Steve: On another subject, I wondered what you thought of the "Leave No Hero Behind" post.

Don

[Starving Steve]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

A couple of questions that I would like to ask you, Rajiv, and all those in the ecology movement to-day, especially those in Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Federation, WARN, and the Sierra Club:

1.) What is "an ecological tipping-point"??????????????????????????????????? To me, this term is eco-nonsense or ecology non-science;

2.) What is "a delicate ecology" or "a delicate environment"????????????????????????????????????


Everything that I learned about the Earth and its living-things indicates to me that life on this planet is robust, and nothing is delicate. The biological-environment (or what most call, "the ecology") thrives on stress, of all types. Life gets more robust as time goes on because evolution weeds-out the misfits and the weak. Mutations allow life to progress and become even more robust, i.e. even better adapted to the stresses in the environment through time.

If I am right, oil-eating bacteria and oil-eating micro-organisms should do quite well now in the Gulf of Mexico. They will flourish, and the oil spill will disappear naturally, probably in a year or two.... In Alaska, barely a trace of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill was left in about that time ---two years. Five years-on in Alaska, only a few marks on rocks on the shoreline were left from the oil spill.

This is an important lesson in biology, and this is a teachable moment in the discussion here. Kids should discuss in the classroom the points that I have raised here.

I believe the ecology movement is way off-base and is dealing in non-science. Even worse, I suspect the ecology movement is linked to tort-lawyers and politicians who are enriching themselves by misleading the public...... Am I wrong?????

[touchring]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

No word from Thad Allen on Matt Simmons reported 120,000 barrel per day "seepage" 7 miles from the Macondo wellhead however. Damn those folks at BP are good at coverups...

Like I said, Matt Simmons is now trying to make himself look like a fool to escape liability.

[GRG55]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

...I see that Thad Allen is saying the detected seepage two miles from the well is "likely not" related to Macondo...

No word from Thad Allen on Matt Simmons reported 120,000 barrel per day "seepage" 7 miles from the Macondo wellhead however. Damn those folks at BP are good at coverups...

[Starving Steve]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

Exactly!

[touchring]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

So please get a grip on yourself. I know it is hard to see your life savings disappear, particularly when one is living on a small budget, and living very frugally, and having done almost everything right to plan for a retirement. We are all on the same page as you. However that still does not undo the damaging affects of the oil spill. Yes, over time things will hopefully come back to normal. But, just like you, many of the people in the Gulf of Mexico states, are seeing their livelihoods disappear, and they do not know how, when and where they can get their life back together again.

I see this more as a political crisis than ecological, the Obama administration is making use of the BP crisis to divert attention from his policy failures, his failure to curb job losses, his failure to address both trade and budget deficits, his failure to boost morale in Afghanistan.

I think that the Obama administration might even be intentionally allowing red tape to prevent the leak from being plugged earlier.

[Roughneck]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

A lot of the damage to the oyster beds has been because of the massive fresh water diversion under way to try and keep as much water flushing through the marshes as possible and lessen the impact of the oil.

[GRG55]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

Couldn't this also mean that the pressure in the formation is high enough to compensate for the oil leaked through a breech? If I blow hard enough, I can still inflate a balloon with a small hole in it (as long as the balloon doesn't burst!)

It's possible, but your analogy is not quite a replication of what is happening between the reservoir and the wellbore. The two are equalizing slowly, so the differential between the two is declining - not a steady state. A relatively stable rate of pressure increase in the wellbore implies a high degree of pressure containment, not a material leakage. The pressure in the wellbore has risen some 800 psi [to more than 6800 psi] since the initial build up when the valves were closed. A lower gradient between the reservoir and the wellbore, and a higher gradient between the wellbore and the other side of any leak, should result in a decline in the rate of increase of pressure in the wellbore. That isn't what is being reported, which implies the formation itself may be severely damaged.

One of the major uncertainties is that nobody knows what failed downhole to cause the blowout in the first place [remember this well was supposed to be completely cased and isolated from all producing reservoirs when it blew out] so nobody knows exactly what path the hydrocarbons are taking to enter the wellbore. If it is a liner lap failure [as I speculated early on] then the entry path may be quite constricted and that too could behave somewhat like near-wellbore formation damage.

Finally, nobody here should be too concerned that there is a reported leak on the wellhead. Bolting together high pressure connections in 5000 feet of salt water using cameras and robots isn't trivial. If one or two of the myriad of connections down there isn't completely pressure tight, believe me that's not a surprise. When we bolt together high pressure connections in a gas plant on surface [for example after making internal inspections of the equipment, which requires dismantling piping and vessel connections] we tape off each of the flange connections and use a gas detector to check for leaks. There are always connections that need to be redone to seal up everything.

I see that Thad Allen is saying the detected seepage two miles from the well is "likely not" related to Macondo. And I have no idea where Thad Allen expects the driving force for a "quick rise in pressure" is supposed to come from...maybe he's been misquoted, or meant to say a "quick fall in pressure"

From AP a few hours ago:

Feds: Cap on ruptured BP's oil well leaking

By MATTHEW DALY (AP) – 4 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Oil is leaking from the cap on BP's ruptured oil well, but federal officials intend to leave it in place for now.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says Monday afternoon that the leaks are so far not a major concern.

He also says seepage about two miles away is likely not related to the ruptured well.

Allen says if there was a quick rise in pressure, they would open the well immediately to keep from creating leaks deep underground...

[LargoWinch]

Re: As expected, BP abandons Top Kill approach

During WWII, there were oil slicks all over the North Atlantic Ocean from the east coast of America and Canada, all of the way across to Europe, and then north all of the way into the Arctic Ocean and all of the way east to the White Sea. ... And the marine environment came back stronger and healthier and cleaner than ever.

SS you never fail don't you?; _SW

[Starving Steve]

Re: As expected, BP abandons Top Kill approach

During WWII, there were oil slicks all over the North Atlantic Ocean from the east coast of America and Canada, all of the way across to Europe, and then north all of the way into the Arctic Ocean and all of the way east to the White Sea. In the Pacific Ocean, there were similar oil slicks, almost everywhere. These oil slicks--- and they were massive--- gradually dissolved-away by waves, micro-organisms, and bacteria. Although messy, they were NOT a disaster at all. And the marine environment came back stronger and healthier and cleaner than ever.

[Rajiv]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

Whether or not I own stock in BP, and whether or not I own shares in oil and oil-sand trusts in Alberta and Saskatchewan, I say here the plain truth on my honour: "Oil is a non-toxic and a natural part of the environment everywhere on Earth. Every living thing decays into oil because every living thing is made out of hydro-carbons. Oil seeps out of fissures everywhere on this planet, and oil seeps out of fissures in significant amounts all along the central and southern California coast. Oil seeps out of fissures all along the faults of central and southern California. I swam in natural oil in Monterey Bay in California as a kid. Every swimmer in the California surf knows that oil is part of the natural environment and is not toxic. With every wave, oil is deposited all along the beaches of central and southern California. The oil is broken-down by natural processes, including bacteria eating the oil."

Yes all of that is true. But concentrations matter a lot. You can drink very dilute lye solution. However, if you drink concentrated lye solution, it will cause immense damage to your intestinal system, and if consumed in enough quantity, will kill you. Similarly with acids. Drinking dilute acetic acid (vinegar) can even be beneficial for you. However, consuming concentrated acetic acid can be damaging.

So please get a grip on yourself. I know it is hard to see your life savings disappear, particularly when one is living on a small budget, and living very frugally, and having done almost everything right to plan for a retirement. We are all on the same page as you. However that still does not undo the damaging affects of the oil spill. Yes, over time things will hopefully come back to normal. But, just like you, many of the people in the Gulf of Mexico states, are seeing their livelihoods disappear, and they do not know how, when and where they can get their life back together again.

I believe the Ixtoc spill in 1979, spilled more oil than has been spilled in the BP spill.

Here is a writeup on the impacts of Ixtoc.
Gulf oil spill: parallels with Ixtoc raise fears of ecological tipping point

Juan Antonio Dzul was a teenager when the Ixtoc 1 oil rig collapsed in June 1979 in the Gulf of Mexico, 70 miles from the fishing town of Champotón where he grew up and still lives. The memory of the huge spill that followed is etched on his mind.

"The oil covered the reefs and washed up on the shore. Fish died and the octopuses were buried under the oil that filled the gaps between the rocks where they live," he recalled in a phone interview. "Even today you can find stains on rocks a few centimetres deep, and if you stick something metal in them the smell of oil still escapes."

Champotón was one of the first and worst-hit areas reached by the estimated 3m barrels of oil that poured into the sea over the next nine and a half months. The Ixtoc disaster is still by far the largest peacetime spill, as well as a lesson-packed forerunner of the disaster in progress, as the Deepwater Horizon also exploded and sank after a blowout preventer failed.

The parallels are most striking in the methods that failed to cap the damaged well head beneath.

"They tried to put a funnel on top of it, injected mud and saltwater and cement, but everything they tried to put in the well was forced out by the pressure," says Abundio Juarez. He was one of the top engineers in the state-owned company, Pemex, that was exploring the Ixtoc deposit at the time, although he was not directly involved in the control effort.

He says the company also tried golf balls. "We sent divers down and today they have robots, but the only solution then, and now, is a relief well and that takes time."

Pemex also used booms and skimmers, and dumped chemical dispersants on the slicks. That, the scientists say today, helped reduce the amounts reaching the shore but sent encapsulated oil down to the sea bed with some initially devastating effects, particularly for shrimp larvae.

Meanwhile, the oil was washing up all along the gulf, a foot deep in some places, as it was pushed northwards by prevailing winds and currents until it finally crossed the Texas border two months later and eventually coated almost 170 miles of US beaches. The beach that caused most international concern in Mexico was Rancho Nuevo, a key nesting ground for critically endangered Kemp's Ridley sea turtles which had already lumbered up the sand in their hundreds to lay eggs. By the time the eggs hatched, the oil was lapping at the shore. Had an emergency US-Mexican operation not airlifted them over the spill to cleaner waters beyond, a generation might have been wiped out.

But although Ixtoc was a big disaster, it did not develop into the long-term catastrophe that scientists initially thought was inevitable.

"This is not to say there were no consequences. Just that the evidence is that these are not as dramatic as we feared," says Luis Soto, a marine biologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "After about two years the recuperation was well on the way."

Wes Tunnell, now at the Texas Harte Research Institute, took samples before and after the oil arrived in Texas that showed an immediate 80% drop in the number of organisms living between the grains of sand that provide food for shore birds and crabs.

"Sampling a couple of years after the spill indicated the populations were back to normal," he says. Six years after Ixtoc 1 exploded it was hard to find any evidence of the oil, he says. "It is rather baffling to us all. We don't really know where it went."

But although their message is hopeful, those who studied the Ixtoc disaster warn against assuming the gulf is automatically heading for another quick comeback.

Ixtoc 1 stood in just 50 metres (165ft) of water, while Deepwater Horizon was drilling 1,500 metres below the surface. It is also likely that the quantity of chemical dispersants being used today is significantly larger, potentially blocking the work of the oil-eating micro-organisms.

But what worries Tunnell most is that over-fishing may have reduced the ability of the gulf to bounce back. "It was much more resilient 30 years ago than today. My fear is it is reaching a tipping point."

[Jay]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

I
The last reports are that the pressure in the well continues to build at about 2 psi per hour. If the well is leaking then one would have expected either a loss of pressure in the wellbore when it ruptured, or at the very least no futher pressure build-up.

Couldn't this also mean that the pressure in the formation is high enough to compensate for the oil leaked through a breech? If I blow hard enough, I can still inflate a balloon with a small hole in it (as long as the balloon doesn't burst!)

[don]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

Whether or not I own stock in BP, and whether or not I own shares in oil and oil-sand trusts in Alberta and Saskatchewan, I say here the plain truth on my honour: "Oil is a non-toxic and a natural part of the environment everywhere on Earth. Every living thing decays into oil because every living thing is made out of hydro-carbons. Oil seeps out of fissures everywhere on this planet, and oil seeps out of fissures in significant amounts all along the central and southern California coast. Oil seeps out of fissures all along the faults of central and southern California. I swam in natural oil in Monterey Bay in California as a kid. Every swimmer in the California surf knows that oil is part of the natural environment and is not toxic. With every wave, oil is deposited all along the beaches of central and southern California. The oil is broken-down by natural processes, including bacteria eating the oil."

Cajuns on Gulf Worry They May Need to Move Again

By SUSAN SAULNY

CHAUVIN, La. — Stanley Sevin knew it was time to have the difficult conversation with his parents when he saw the oil sheen shimmering under his family’s dock on the bayou. He had been putting it off ever since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April.

“Sell the house and go start fresh somewhere else,” Mr. Sevin, 24, pleaded with his family, shrimpers of Cajun ancestry. “The business is dead and this life is over.”

For the Cajuns of South Louisiana — exiled in the 1700s from French settlements in Acadia, now part of eastern Canada, for refusing to swear allegiance to the British — life along the bayous has been bittersweet, with the constant threats of lightning-quick destruction from hurricanes and floods on top of the slow-motion agony of coastal erosion.

What they got in return for their tolerance of living in what early cartographers called No Man’s Land was a world-class bounty of seafood and freedom in an environment of striking natural beauty. Now that is in jeopardy.

The oil spill has delivered a dose of misery for all those who live intimately with the land here. But for the Cajuns, whose rustic French-American culture is almost wholly dependent on the natural bayous that open to the Gulf of Mexico, it has forced the question of whether they can preserve their way of life — and if so, at what cost?

“This has been the lowest low for me,” said O’Neil Sevin (pronounced SAY-vann), Stanley’s father, whose 45-foot skimmer, Heaven Bound, has been mostly bound to its dock on Bayou Petit Caillou because prime fishing areas are closed. The Sevins live above their fishing business on the bayou, and fish their dinner out of it, too. “My wife cried and cried over this. Just the other night she told me, ‘Thank God there isn’t a loaded gun in this house.’ ”

Along Little Bayou Black in Houma, north of Chauvin, Wylma Dusenbery, the matriarch of a large Cajun family of folk singers, said: “When our people got here from Nova Scotia, they called it ‘la paradis de la Louisiane.’ It was paradise.” She paused, then said sternly, “Nobody’s moving.”

Interviews with Cajuns along the coast show that the spill has also renewed a generations-old resolve to persevere in an inhospitable environment, for the sake of independence and family unity. They refuse to be expelled again, so they say, by a 21st-century menace spreading economic hardship in their beloved but grief-giving lowlands.

Many Cajuns can count on a few fingers the number of miles they have moved away from parents or grandparents. Ask Randy Jones, a deckhand on the Heaven Bound, how many generations his family has lived along Bayou Petit Caillou and he answers, “All of them.” Typical of many here, he cannot fathom another way of life.



In Chauvin, in south Terrebonne Parish, it is as common to hear people speak Cajun French while shopping at the Piggly Wiggly as on the shrimp docks. You can hear zydeco on local radio hosted by a D.J. who speaks the patois. Fried fish is not uncommon at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The economy in the parish of 110,000 people, about 50 miles southwest of New Orleans, is heavily dependent on the fishing and oil industries — precisely what the spill has hurt most.

While Cajuns on the coast may be able to hold on for now, the question of what happens in the long run remains.

“I would not expect to see any great migration away, regardless of what happens to these communities,” said James Wilson, assistant director of the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “It’s a life-or-death decision for them: People can’t see a life anywhere else. If they can’t live the life that they’re used to within their culture, then that is death.”

Stanley Sevin, a mechanic, decided years ago to get out of the family business because he did not see a future in shrimp. He founded a company, SS Motorsports, and hopes to move away.

He still thinks his family should consider it.

“I’ve never seen them so devastated,” he said.

His mother said: “I understand he wants better for us because he’s seen us struggling. But living away, that’s something I can’t think about right now. We Cajuns are stubborn and hard-headed, what can I say?”

Slipping into the mix of Cajun French and English that he usually speaks, O’Neil Sevin said, “Here, it was never easy, mais yeah, it was une bonne vie.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/us/19cajun.html

[don]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

Whether or not I own stock in BP, and whether or not I own shares in oil and oil-sand trusts in Alberta and Saskatchewan, I say here the plain truth on my honour: "Oil is a non-toxic and a natural part of the environment everywhere on Earth. Every living thing decays into oil because every living thing is made out of hydro-carbons. Oil seeps out of fissures everywhere on this planet, and oil seeps out of fissures in significant amounts all along the central and southern California coast. Oil seeps out of fissures all along the faults of central and southern California. I swam in natural oil in Monterey Bay in California as a kid. Every swimmer in the California surf knows that oil is part of the natural environment and is not toxic. With every wave, oil is deposited all along the beaches of central and southern California. The oil is broken-down by natural processes, including bacteria eating the oil."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Larp-...layer_embedded

[Starving Steve]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

Whether or not I own stock in BP, and whether or not I own shares in oil and oil-sand trusts in Alberta and Saskatchewan, I say here the plain truth on my honour: "Oil is a non-toxic and a natural part of the environment everywhere on Earth. Every living thing decays into oil because every living thing is made out of hydro-carbons. Oil seeps out of fissures everywhere on this planet, and oil seeps out of fissures in significant amounts all along the central and southern California coast. Oil seeps out of fissures all along the faults of central and southern California. I swam in natural oil in Monterey Bay in California as a kid. Every swimmer in the California surf knows that oil is part of the natural environment and is not toxic. With every wave, oil is deposited all along the beaches of central and southern California. The oil is broken-down by natural processes, including bacteria eating the oil."