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Post by scpg02 on May 30, 2010 21:19:47 GMT
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Post by Maui on Jun 1, 2010 18:03:14 GMT
I have been getting a very different perspective from Nature magazine (London, Macmillan) than the US media. They have a journalist aboard a research vessel in the Gulf, which has been desperately trying to gather baseline data and establish a realistic estimate of the size of the plume. Meanwhile, BP has canceled use of underwater surveillance by autonomous gliders, while supporting the search for possible natural oil seeps into the Gulf (v. 465, # 7297).
An Editorial states, "US agencies have moved too slowly in gathering key data on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico," and an Opinion by David Valentine of UCSB suggests to "Measure methane to quantify the oil spill." But for some reason, NOAA is showing a lack of ambitious mobilization.
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Post by scpg02 on Jun 7, 2010 23:21:24 GMT
BP Well Bore And Casing Integrity May Be Blown, Says Florida’s Sen. NelsonBy: bmaz Monday June 7, 2010 11:15 am Oil and gas are leaking from the seabed surrounding the BP Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida told Andrea Mitchell today on MSNBC. Nelson, one of the most informed and diligent Congressmen on the BP gulf oil spill issue, has received reports of leaks in the well, located in the Mississippi Canyon sector. This is potentially huge and devastating news. If Nelson is correct in that assertion, and he is smart enough to not make such assertions lightly, so I think they must be taken at face value, it means the well casing and well bore are compromised and the gig is up on containment pending a completely effective attempt to seal the well from the bottom via successful “relief wells”. In fact, I have confirmed with Senator Nelson’s office that they are fully aware of the breaking news and significance of what the Senator said to Andrea Mitchell. Furthermore, contrary to the happy talk propounded by BP, the Obama Administration and the press, the likely success of the “relief well” effort on the first try in August is nowhere near a certainty; and certainly nowhere near the certainty it is being painted as. About five days ago, I responded to someone in comments with the following: [/i][/ul] I may have been uncomfortably close to the mark. And the quote from Sir Richard Mottram was dead on the money; if Senator Nelson is correct about the breach of fundamental well integrity, the game is close to over for the Gulf of Mexico. We shall see where this goes from Nelson’s initial comment. But make no mistake, Nelson is a careful guy not prone to overt hyperbole, and he clearly understood the ramifications of what he was saying. It also means, of course, that BP and the Obama Administrations continue to give the American public short shrift in the truth and honesty departments. How surprising. Article link
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Post by scpg02 on Jun 8, 2010 23:31:34 GMT
Rosie O'Donnell Doubles-Down: Calls For 'Communism' In America To Confiscate Corporate Assets
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Post by Pooh on Jun 10, 2010 3:48:58 GMT
To what extent are Environmentalism and Federal regulations partly responsible for the explosion and spill? (This does not excuse BP or its partners for errors of omission or commission. )- Federal regulations for off-shore oil drilling have required increasingly greater distances off-shore.
- On the continental shelf, the greater the distance from shore, the greater the depth.
- The greater the depth, the greater the pressure and the colder the temperature. (The pressure under 5,000 feet of water is about 147 atmospheres if www.convertworld.com/en/pressure/ is correct.)
- Methane Hydrate (Methane Clathrate) forms under conditions of pressure and cold.
- Bringing it to the surface could cause it to disassociate into methane and water.
- Methane gas is explosive in air.
So, did environmental activists and Federal Regulators (attempting to avoid damage from oil spills by moving it further from shore) help create the very conditions that led to the explosion, the deaths of workers, and the disaster?
It is not as if the Feds (as well as BP), did not know about it; they have for decades. See: Anonymous. “ Methane Hydrates: A Carbon Management Challenge.” Oak Ridge National Laboratory Review 33, no. 2 (2000). www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v33_2_00/methane.htm "In the SPS (a test chamber), methane is bubbled into the seawater-containing vessel. The fluid is cooled to ~4°C and pressurized between 50 and 100 atmospheres to form methane hydrates. ... "What are the risks of recovering methane from ocean hydrates? Could the release of methane make the sediments unstable enough to cause the collapse of seafloor foundations for conventional oil and gas drilling rigs? Could the melting, or dissociation, of methane hydrate ice lead to releases of large volumes of methane to the atmosphere, raising greenhouse gas levels and exacerbating global warming?" Dillon, William. “ Gas (Methane) Hydrates -- A New Frontier.” Scientific. U.S. Geological Survey, September 1992. marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html "Hydrates store immense amounts of methane, with major implications for energy resources and climate, but the natural controls on hydrates and their impacts on the environment are very poorly understood. "Gas hydrates occur abundantly in nature, both in Arctic regions and in marine sediments. Gas hydrate is a crystalline solid consisting of gas molecules, usually methane, each surrounded by a cage of water molecules. It looks very much like water ice. Methane hydrate is stable in ocean floor sediments at water depths greater than 300 meters, and where it occurs, it is known to cement loose sediments in a surface layer several hundred meters thick." Walter, Katie. “ Methane Hydrate: A Surprising Compound.” Scientific. Science & Technology Review, March 1999. www.llnl.gov/str/Durham.html"As scientists around the world learn more about this material (Methane Hydrate), new concerns surface. For example, ocean-based oil-drilling operations sometimes encounter methane hydrate deposits. As a drill spins through the hydrate, the process can cause it to dissociate. The freed gas may explode, causing the drilling crew to lose control of the well. ... "But its applications are clear when one considers that dissociation of seabed methane hydrate deposits could cost the lives of workers on an oil drilling platform. ".
For further information, Google: ocean oil drill "methane hydrate" site:.gov
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Post by scpg02 on Jun 12, 2010 0:52:44 GMT
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Post by scpg02 on Jun 12, 2010 6:02:58 GMT
I do post counter information when I get it.4000 UN vehicles in Florida ready to hit the streets – Or Are They?by Matt on May.31, 2010, under conspiracy, government, police state You can all relax now. There are no UN vehicles on that airport as many websites and blogs are saying. In case you haven’t heard, there has been some excitement over a Google earth image showing what people have estimated to be around 4,000 white United Nations vehicles on a small airport near Green Cove Springs FL at Reynolds Airpark just off highway 16. The thing is, no one has mentioned these until recently, and in light of the oil spill, it has people all worried that the UN is here ready to take over the southern states. The vehicles are no longer there. The Google earth image was taken in 2008. I had a friend of mine who lives in Jacksonville FL drive down there today and see. He reported that the runway is empty, no vehicles at all. So at this point since the images everyone is putting on the web are two years old and the vehicles are all gone, no one will ever know if they were in fact UN vehicles, or just commercial white vans ready to be shipped overseas or elsewhere. Hey, I don’t doubt for one minute that the ruling so-called elite would love to use foreign troops on our soil to attack us. But this particular story unfortunately cannot be confirmed one way or another at this point. If someone were to come forward with video evidence of these, and having definitive proof on the video that it was taken at Reynolds Airpark then that would be a different story. Even if these were UN vehicles, it still would not be something to worry about. One thing interesting though is who owns the property. The police are telling people to stay away because Pegasus is complaining about trespassers. Pegasus is a military contractor that makes the in flight displays and other aircraft related items like GPS systems. Below are two photos from my google earth program. The left one shows the unknown white vehicles on this runway and the center one shows the grid with the date the photo was taken. Right of that is a recent one from the weather channel website. ( see the link for the pictures) One thing I do know about all this… People like Alex Jones will repeat saying over and over that the UN has 4,000 vehicles ready to take to the streets and take us all to the camps. That will keep people scared and tuning in to his network to see if their leader has come up with a solution.
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Post by scpg02 on Jun 14, 2010 15:39:22 GMT
www.rense.com/general91/oilor.htmOil Volcano Pressure Too Strong For ContainmentDr. James P. Wickstrom 6-9-10 It has been estimated by experts that the pressure which blows the oil into the Gulf waters is estimated to be between 20,000 and 70,000 PSI (pounds per square inch). Impossible to control. What US Scientists Are Forbidden To Tell The Public About The Gulf What you are about to read, is what the scientists in the United States are not allowed to tell you in great fear of the Obama administration. They are under the threat of severe repercussions to the max.. Scientists confirming these findings cannot be named due to the above, but what they believe, they want to be known by all. Take a U. S. map, lay it flat and measure inland just the minimum 50 miles of total destruction all around the Gulf of Mexico as to what you will read below. The carnage to the United States is so staggering, it will take your breathe away. Should what the scientists who are trying to warn everyone about be even close to being true... all of Florida will be completely destroyed as will everyone and everything on it. You decide!! Everyone has the right to read what I have just written in this article, as well as to what is written below by the scientists who the Obama administration and BP are trying to shut up. Please share with as many as you can. --Dr. James P. Wickstrom graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/05/05/learning/oilslickLN/oilslickLN-blogSpan.jpg SUMMARY OF WHAT IS HAPPENING The estimated super high pressure release of oil from under the earth's crust is between 80,000 to 100,000 barrels per day. The flow of oil and toxic gases is bringing up with it... rocks and sand which causes the flow to create a sandblasting effect on the remaining well head device currently somewhat restricting the flow, as well as the drilled hole itself. As the well head becomes worn it enlarges the passageway allowing an ever-increasing flow. Even if some device could be placed onto the existing wellhead, it would not be able to shut off the flow, because what remains of the existing wellhead would not be able to contain the pressure. The well head piping is originally about 2 inches thick. It is now likely to be less than 1 inch thick, and thinning by each passing moment. The oil has now reached the Gulf Stream and is entering the Oceanic current which is at least four times stronger than the current in the Gulf, which will carry it throughout the world within 18 months. The oil along with the gasses, including benzene and many other toxins, is deleting the oxygen in the water. This is killing all life in the ocean. Along with the oil along the shores, there will be many dead fish, etc. that will have to be gathered and disposed of. SUMMARY OF EXPECTATIONS At some point the drilled hole in the earth will enlarge itself beneath the wellhead to weaken the area the wellhead rests upon. The intense pressure will then push the wellhead off the hole allowing a direct unrestricted flow of oil, etc. The hole will continue to increase in size allowing more and more oil to rise into the Gulf. After several billion barrels of oil have been released, the pressure within the massive cavity five miles beneath the ocean floor will begin to normalize. This will allow the water, under the intense pressure at 1 mile deep, to be forced into the hole and the cavity where the oil was. The temperature at that depth is near 400 degrees, possibly more. The water will be vaporized and turned into steam, creating an enormous amount of force, lifting the Gulf floor. It is difficult to know how much water will go down to the core and therefore, its not possible to fully calculate the rise of the floor. The tsunami wave this will create will be anywhere from 20 to 80 feet high, possibly more. Then the floor will fall into the now vacant chamber. This is how nature will seal the hole. Depending on the height of the tsunami, the ocean debris, oil, and existing structures that will be washed away on shore and inland, will leave the area from 50 to 200 miles inland devoid of life. Even if the debris is cleaned up, the contaminants that will be in the ground and water supply will prohibit re-population of these areas for an unknown number of years. (End of scientists information release.) From Tom Buyea FL News Service
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Post by murf26 on Jun 15, 2010 12:08:25 GMT
I suspect that everyone's familiar with Saturn, one of the gas planets in our solar system. Titan, one of its moons, has been in the news lately. It seems that scientists believe there may be a chance for some bacterial life on Titan because of its composition: hydrocarbons. There are lakes of hydrocarbons on its surface as well as clouds of methane; the temp is a constant -280 degrees. the liquid methane is frozen as hard as our steel here on Earth.
Sorta makes me wonder if we could be moving that way? Maybe not in the near future but eventually.
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Post by stranger on Jun 15, 2010 18:09:37 GMT
Per request, here is a link to the pessimistic view of the Deepwater Horizon blowout: www.theoildrum.com/node/6593/648967As I have commented before, the oil eating microbes in the Gulf can eat several hundred barrels a day. A 10,00 bbl/day blowout would take a year or two to made into fish food. But a 150,000 bbl/day blowout is something else entirely. While this well seems to have been jinxed from the start - the coup de gras seems to have been MMS' order to fill the well with seawater and then pour concrete on top of that. And those were not the Minerals Management Service's only failings. Denninger at the Market Ticker has a list of the most glaring omissions, here: market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2390-BP,-The-Gulf,-And-Fools.html While it was the rig operators responsibility to check each of these items, it was MMS' responsibility to inspect them and make sure the rules were complied with. Stranger
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Post by hunter on Jun 15, 2010 22:45:21 GMT
Per request, here is a link to the pessimistic view of the Deepwater Horizon blowout: www.theoildrum.com/node/6593/648967As I have commented before, the oil eating microbes in the Gulf can eat several hundred barrels a day. A 10,00 bbl/day blowout would take a year or two to made into fish food. But a 150,000 bbl/day blowout is something else entirely. While this well seems to have been jinxed from the start - the coup de gras seems to have been MMS' order to fill the well with seawater and then pour concrete on top of that. And those were not the Minerals Management Service's only failings. Denninger at the Market Ticker has a list of the most glaring omissions, here: market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2390-BP,-The-Gulf,-And-Fools.html While it was the rig operators responsibility to check each of these items, it was MMS' responsibility to inspect them and make sure the rules were complied with. Stranger this is an amazing failure of everyone involved: BP, the MMS, the EPA, the industry, etc. It is clear to me that the attitudes of those making decisions were not in tune to the actual level of risk. They mistook luck for brilliance- always a lead to fatal error. I happen to believe that when the relief well is drilled and positioned correctly, that the well will be stopped. This is not a supernatural event. But the error BP has made here will change the oil industry forever, and may hasten its decline.
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Post by scpg02 on Jun 16, 2010 5:01:29 GMT
Per request, here is a link to the pessimistic view of the Deepwater Horizon blowout: www.theoildrum.com/node/6593/648967As I have commented before, the oil eating microbes in the Gulf can eat several hundred barrels a day. A 10,00 bbl/day blowout would take a year or two to made into fish food. But a 150,000 bbl/day blowout is something else entirely. While this well seems to have been jinxed from the start - the coup de gras seems to have been MMS' order to fill the well with seawater and then pour concrete on top of that. And those were not the Minerals Management Service's only failings. Denninger at the Market Ticker has a list of the most glaring omissions, here: market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2390-BP,-The-Gulf,-And-Fools.html While it was the rig operators responsibility to check each of these items, it was MMS' responsibility to inspect them and make sure the rules were complied with. Stranger thehill.comRahall probes revolving door between oil industry, MMSBy Ben Geman House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) is pressing the Interior Department for information about federal offshore drilling regulators who have worked for the oil-and-gas industry in the past. The request, in a June 8 letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, is part of a wider committee probe of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and offshore drilling policy. Rahall’s letter asks for the number of current Minerals Management Service inspectors that have previously worked for the oil industry — including a list of companies they worked for and what their jobs were. It also seeks “information regarding rotation practices designed to ensure that inspectors maintain arms-length relationships with offshore facility personnel.” Multiple reports by the Interior Department’s inspector general have uncovered inappropriate ties between MMS and industry employees, such as regulators accepting sports tickets from oil company personnel. The letter also seeks other information about the embattled MMS, which Salazar is splitting into three separate agencies. Rahall wants data about MMS’s staffing levels in various regions, a summary of the qualifications of current field and supervisory inspectors, information about training that inspectors receive and other documents.
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Post by scpg02 on Jun 16, 2010 15:59:01 GMT
www.zerohedge.comMatt Simmons Revises Leak Estimate To 120,000 Barrels Per Day, Believes Oil Covers 40% Of Gulf Beneath The SurfaceSubmitted by Tyler Durden on 06/15/2010 17:53 -0500 Matt Simmons was on Bloomberg earlier, adding some additional perspective to his original appearance on the station, in which he initially endorsed the nuclear option as the only viable way to resolve the oil spill. Simmons refutes even the latest oil spill estimate of 45,000-60,000 barrels per day, and in quoting research by the Thomas Jefferson research vessel which was compiled late on Sunday, quantifies the leak at 120,000 bpd. What is scarier is that according to the Jefferson the oil lake underneath the surface of the water could be covering up to 40% of the entire Gulf of Mexico. Simmons also says that as the leak has no casing, a relief well will not work, and the only possible resolution is, as he said previously, to use a small nuclear explosion to convert the rock to glass. Simmons concludes that as punishment for BP's arrogance and stupidity the government "will take all their cash." Now if only our own administration could tell us the truth about what is really happening in the gulf... clipsyndicate.com/video/playlist/8178/1516742?wpid=7804
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Post by billyjack on Jun 19, 2010 17:07:59 GMT
There is alot of false information about the processes involved with the blowout. I am posting to correct alot of erroneous data submitted by "experts" who do not have any background or technical expertise. The Matt Simmons hysteria comes to mind. I am a certified petroleum engineer and have practiced for over 30 years and have actually been on a rig floor when it tried to blow out.
1) The reservoir pressure is at most around 13,099 psi, based upon the density of the "rat hole" mud of 14#/gallon. Had it been any larger BP would not have been able to attempt to run casing. 2) Based upon Darcy's equation that determines the rate of flow of fluid through porous media using the known data and reasonable assumptions for the unknowns based upon 30 years of experience the flow is 25,000 to 60,000 stock tank barrels per day. The equation is as follows: Q(rate bbls/day)= 7.082 X K(permeability) X h( formation thickness) X(Pe(reservoir pressure)-Pw(pressure at sandface)/ viscosity/Bo(formation vol factor(res bbl/stock tank bbls)/Ln(Re(radius to external boundry)/Rw(wellbore Radius). 3) There is no vast open cavern or pool of oil. The oil flow is coming from the tiny spaces between sand grains, the sand grains are compacted by 18,000' of overburden earth so there will be no collapse due to depletion. 4) Water flooding into the wellbore will not flash to steam, at pressure the boiling point of water goes up, there is water in the foramtion that is not boiling, ever heard of a pressure cooker changing the boiling point of water. 5) The erosion from flowing sand is negligible. Again having flowed back sandy liquids personally, if it was major the wellhead and blowout preventer would have been gone in the first 24 hours. 6) Finally whether there has been a breach of the casing or not the relief wells will work. The hysteria that they won't is unfounded. I have drilled thousands of feet of open hole without casing it off and the fluids still stayed within the hole I drilled. The very nature of drilling mud helps to stabilize the open hole so even if the casing is breeched we can condition the mud to heal the breech, much as blod clots heal veins and arteries. 7) This is not intended to defend BP as based upon what little technical information released indicates that they did not proceed in a prudent fashion on several levels. This is what happens when accountants are running operations instead of engineers. 8) I have no clue about the effects of the spill on the environment, as I have spent 30 years avoiding these type of catastrophies, however I would like to point out that Roberto DeBaca recaulked his ship with tar balls on the beach at Port Isabelle in 1519. So there has been oil going into the GOM for millenia.
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Post by nautonnier on Jun 19, 2010 18:00:35 GMT
" This is what happens when accountants are running operations instead of engineers."
How true
and in this case the accountants are being directed by politicians - about as bad a setup as can be imagined.
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