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BP and the Government Are Underplaying the Difficulty of Stopping the Oil Leak
While BP and the government say that permanently capping the oil well is no problem, they act like they have no idea what they're doing.
Indeed, Admiral Thad Allen is now saying "We’re concerned about the vital signs of this well":
He's also saying that completion of relief well will be delayed until
mid-September, at the earliest, and that the government is looking for
problematic “material” in the well:
What's really going on?
Well, initially, if the well had structural integrity,
there wouldn't be concern about the "vital signs" of the well, there
wouldn't have been delay after delay in completing the relief wells,
there wouldn't be never-ending rounds of new tests, there wouldn't have
been an attempt to seal it (or perhaps more accurately, patch it) from
the top using cement, there wouldn't be an attempt to remove "material"
from the well.
Indeed, what does
"removing material" even mean? Does that mean removing crumpled casing
or drill pipe, or does it mean clearing out caved-in portions of the
well and trying to rebuild those portions from scratch?
Moreover, one of the world's top experts in oil drilling disasters - Dr.
Robert Bea - told me yesterday that the geology underneath the seafloor
at the leak site is fractured, and includes very loose salt formations.
This geology may make it very hard to kill the well, even using
relief wells, and he says that we may never be
able to kill it. He also said that there are uncorroborated reports
of additional leaks other than the main well, but that BP isn't sharing
enough information to be able to assess whether or not that there are
additional leaks. (Dr. Bea told me that BP is using a "cloak of
silence", and is refusing to even show the government videos of what the
seafloor looked like before the April explosion).
So instead of simply trying to cap an existing
well, it may be more accurate to think of this as trying to build a new
well - or at least trying to duck tape the old one - so that it has
enough integrity to be permanently stopped.
Update: Admiral Thad Allen just confirmed in a press briefing some of what I wrote above:
At 1:30 in: Collapse of formation surrounding wellbore may be blocking bottom of annulus, not cement. …
At 3:15 in: We don’t know what is blocking annulus… Might not take
much to move whatever is blocking bottom, therefore risking direct
communication between reservoir and surface.
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This is really bad news; too many lies plus Matt Simmons untimely death. He said all along the seafloor was spewing oil & gas. Sounds like he was right. What really bothers me though is the coverup. Anytime you have large groups of Gulf locals on youtube & the blogs trying to get the message out that the government is screwing them along with BP, and to have the chief scientist of NOAA come out & admit he was lying about official statements of the status of the oil remaining, shows me we have a serious, serious coverup. Matt Simmons was concerned about an potential explosion and more loss of human life. What if that's the case and it's sooo bad they don't dare tell us. Discuss among yourselves beetchasss!
Augustus..... JimRockford....Gasminder
comments???
and also some comments on the Plumes if you have time (and I know Gas you were concerned about the subsurface so you get a pass on this question)
22-Mile Plume Migrating in Gulf of Mexicohttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-19/bp-oil-spill-leaves-22-mile-und...
Has anyone noticed that the plumes being discussed now are the same ones that were discovered back in May and June. The reporting on these plumes (size, location, speed of drift, etc) stops at the end of June. From then until now they have been testing the samples taken from the plume(s) to verify that a.) there was actually oil in them, and; b.) the oil, if there, came from the BP oil gusher.
These plumes were discussed at great length on theoildrum.com. They were discussed to a lesser extent here. I posted here a link to a blog kept by a scientist on one of the research ships that was taking samples from the plume(s). That blog discussed what the scientists were doing and showed pictures. The author stated that nothing could be stated for certain until they verified whether oil was actually present in the plume(s) (as the plumes could not be seen with the naked eye) and the source of any oil confirmed within the plume(s). The author stated that it would take some time to verify the presence of oil and its source.
Again - this is not new information. What is new is verification that there is oil in some parts of the plume(s) and that the oil in the plume(s) has the same signature as the oil from the BP gusher.
Hey, right in the middle of the Pats game they played a BP commercial....that is the first one I have seen on tv in Seattle. Maybe they have been running these for awhile now but I never noticed. You guys have nothing to worry about, BP said they are going to stay as long as needed. PHEW.
"clean up every drop of oil"
tony hayward. no?
ps. for tony...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCcCzj_yRtk
No, it wasn't Tony but I am not sure who it was...and I don't have it dvr'd. But yes, for both BP and Tony, "why don't you go outside and play hide and go fuck yourself?" LMFAO!
did he say jaded. thad. yes, he did.
what? change the bop, two relief wells on hold,
debris. 1000 gal. in the annulus? communication
with the reservoir? collapsed formation into the annulus?
decreasing pressure? christ, he had me confused at annulus!
wtf is happening here? and where? what is the location
of this cluster f**.. and are there more than one cluster
fucks available?
i lost track, how many bops are down there now?
it is a good thing that visibility is limited and the live
feeds from the rovs don't work. i suspect the android
pile up junk heap forming down there would look like
a used car lot in brooklyn before long.
i saw a nice android porn video from down there the
other day. these probes and tubes and things
hammering into one another, and apparently leaking
some kind of gas, with bubbles and stuff.
i was looking for coordinates to locate and i can't remember if there were any?
.
ps. millions of gallons of dispersant and did he
say JADED? yes, he did.
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hVv6AD4VfM
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo9gDPjQF1c&feature=related
.
how come the new bp live feeds don't show
a n and e , or x and y reading anymo'?
just asking.
ps,,
so are the scientist saying that not all components
of crude oil, when treated with dispersants and leaking
uncontrollably will rise to the surface while the camera
crew is ready, or while someone with appropriate
credentials is there to make a report. oh my, that is
shocking.
i liked the video with the fisherman dragging the
oil absorbent pad/rag. while it is important to take into
account the tales and fables fishermen tell concerning
their catch, they also know things in their bones that
scientist grasp and struggle to "prove", frequently
unsuccessfully.
I always felt if you give BP/Tadd enough rope they would hang themselves. Great work GW as usual. The only thing BP has going for it is that the corexit has hidden the oil from the TV cameras (if you don't see it on TV it doesn't exit). The rational scientific explaination concerning the blowout well and the fragile salt formation on which the well was drilled must be demanded and given to the American people. Enough is Enough.
The rational scientific explaination concerning the blowout well and the fragile salt formation on which the well was drilled must be demanded and given to the American people.
Why. What part of the solution are you?
Maybe they could build the mosque on top of the leaking oil well?
what, you don't like members of a certain
religious affiliation? why, and does that reasoning
apply across the spectrum of religious affiliation?
or "affiliation" in general?
just asking.
"We don't know what is blocking annulus..."
Seems like someone has their head up their annulus.
Good work, as usual, GW
FTW!
"Annulus" is one of those words that just sounds dirty, no matter how you say it.
This girl hits because she thought I was touching her annulus.
See? Dirty.
Context is everything. Holes drilled deep into the ground have an annulus. Humans don't have an annulus. So how can you legitimately be trying to touch anyone's annulus? You deserved to be hit.
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/america
http://covert2.wordpress.com
Headline: BP holding millions of gallons of crude in a transparent sub-surface containment vessel. That will later be pumped back into the plugged well.
There has been a steady and patient stream of commentators from the start of this catastrophe who have said at various times and citing a variety of evidence that the well bore was blown. That this was the only conclusion that fit all the data including press releases and engineering approaches. It's blown and they can't wrap themselves around it.
If the well is blown then there is nothing much more they can do. They can walk away from it of course, but they might not be able to fix it at all. That might be hard to accept in an era of techno-triumphalism, but in the end when the SHTF you're stuck with it.
There's no iApp for this one. We screwed up. Not the only screw up, not the biggest one, not the one that will cost the most lives, and not the one that will disturb the largest part of the planetary ecosystem. Just one more screw up in a long line of screw ups that will cost us dearly.
Sucks to be us.
'Poodle's' oil barrel to 'closest friend in the world'
P.S. Bitchez!
Dear George,
Did you see this website, where they found some evidence of a hughe oilplume, the missing oil?
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7545&tid=282&cid=79926&ct=162
University of North Carolina sent out a research vessel in July.
No updates yet.
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20100719/ARTICLES/100719642
Just read that too. Everyday a new 'already-usual' happens on every corner. Shit folks, nothing changes.
Quite bored. Started youtubing 'Planet X, is earth doomed?'
Got bored too.
[Bitter derision ON]
Top oceanographer: Feds “misleading” public, only 10 PERCENT of oil has been removed from ocean
They are going to have to punch that formation with many holes and let her rip for as long as it takes to tap it out. Manage it in exactly the wrong way to bleed the pressure out of it as fast as possible. Spend untold extra millions punching holes in the thing like a pincushion in order to minimize profits.
Who they are is the question.
Adm. Allen's carefully crafted words give me pause - it's like he's had an attorney go over every statement to make sure he's covering his a**.
My prediction is that this charade can't last more than about 6 months at most. They cannot continue to hide problems if the well is truly not contained.
IMHO by January 2011 we'll have a pretty good idea what's been really going on.
Which is precisely why my options expire in Jan 2011.
I was relieved when they had some form of static 'kill' in place, just for the residents and the associated aquatic environment. I still believe that BP will mis-manage themselves into a corner, so my position is mainly against the company - not the gulf turning into a petrochemical superfund site.
"Hopefully" and all the other meandering in Allen's commentary is not giving me great confidence here.
They will try to plug the thing, and fail miserably. Billions of dollars and giant, man-made islands of machinery will not overcome the geology, and, if the history of human dickering with such things is any indicator, it's going to get a whole lot worse as they keep toying around with the fucking thing. I wouldn't be surprised if they somehow managed to fracture the entire strata above the reservoir and send the whole damn thing into overdrive in one sickly belch of crude that boils up and turns the entire Gulf into one big toilet. What a bunch of asshats.
I have to admit, the situation is getting a little bizarre.
Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc will replace the blowout preventer on the Gulf of Mexico Macondo well before doing the so-called bottom-kill procedure, National Incident Commander Thad Allen said today in the statement on the Deepwater Horizon Response website.
Now wait just a damn minute...isn't this another one of Matt Simmon's claims?...REPLACE the BOP?!?
dont forget, there are 2 wells
Bea says no one but BP knows whether the abandoned well is leaking ...
What leak?
Woe, after Matt Simmons, not sure if I'd be willing to go public...
Ya know how you say "Suuuuuueeeeeeey" to call a pig? These posts are "oil-leak-troll" bait. I will be interested to see what shows up to post.
I see you got junked for being too hurty to the swine. Which is an Epic Win!!
Indeed!
You are close to your one year B-day. Congrats.
I hope you are doing well in RL.
The other headlines on this topic coming in are wonderful and terrifying. I'd love to see these pieces of shit nailed to a cross.
Thanks MS!I am hanging on...like the more fortunate.I have a job....but who knows how that will work out as the darkness spreads from Mordor.I hope you and yours are well.
It is always nice to see you here MS.
MsCreant, I'm delighted that more and more people are paying attention to ZH birthdays. Thanks. That's how we build and strengthen the Zero Hedge community.
Agree CD. I left a Marilyn Monroe video for you near yours. Hope you saw it.
Watch you ass GW... you saw what happened to Simmons...
and of course the well is leaking, thanks for keeping us informed.
is this really different than expected?
http://covert2.wordpress.com
bloody hell another URI style spammer. ..no-one cares about your dumb WP blog.
This only adds to insecurity among folks living on the coastline.
No one down here on the coast gives a damn. The Saints are playing again, BP is paying claims, the malls and restaurants around southeast Louisiana are all full. Maybe a Cat Five firing up in the Gulf will turn some heads, but otherwise it's party time.
Right in character for BP stonewalling. From Bloomberg:
BP Refuses Requests for Documents, Transocean Says http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-19/bp-refuses-requests-for-documents-related-to-gulf-spill-transocean-says.htmlIt's all bullshit, of course. Buying time, hoping, praying, duping, etc.
Meanwhile BP stock continues it's grind lower. My put contracts are looking better and better.
I hope the assholes go completely bankrupt and out of business. Probably won't happen...but, I sure would embrace it.
In the 80s, I worked for Atlantic Richfield, later absorbed by BP. I have a pension coming from BP (Atlantic Richfield), so dangit, I really don't think I should have to forgo that any more than I should have to pay reparations when my ancestors died fighting to free the slaves. Apples and oranges? You tell me... but I'm ok with you making fiat dollars on your put contracts
I don't know the status of your actual pension fund but theoretically BP could go toes up tomorrow and your pension would still be there, assuming normal growth of the funds already deposited into it from this point. While there is some room to vary, if BP's pension is in fact underfunded as of today considering all the billions in profit BP has made over the years, you have much bigger problems that you think you might have had even if BP had no GOM problems.
I would suggest you don't assume anything and start doing some actual research into the condition of your pension fund. NOW. The amount BP should be depositing into the pension fund each year should be the amount needed to take care of each years additional liability racked up as a going concern for it's current workers, plus or minus overall performance and other issues I won't go into. Look into it, don't assume anything. BP should have very few pension problems if it died tomorrow.
CD, quit wasting time in the comments section (and get busy writing some new articles)!! I NEED more mind-altering articles, you know, the kind that only YOU can write...HURRY UP DUDE, I CAN'T WAIT MUCH LONGER!!:)
Thanks for the update GW!