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British Petroleum: The Nuclear Option
I have never been able to use my talents both as a securities analyst and a nuclear weapons designer simultaneously, but British Petroleum (BP) has at last enabled me to rise to the call.
Back before personal computers, the Internet, and hedge funds were invented, most mathematicians, like myself, ended up working for the Defense Department in some form or another. In my case, that involved a summer with the Atomic Energy Agency working on the neutron bomb at the nuclear test site at Mercury, Nevada in the early seventies.
There, yields meant millions killed, not interest paid. After BP’s serial failures in plugging their Gulf leak, several industry and military figures have suggested doing the job with a small tactical nuclear weapon. This would actually work, and I learned for the first time from CNBC that the Soviet Union used this desperate measure on three runaway wells in the past.
From the fifties to the seventies, the US conducted hundreds of underground tests, which involved drilling a six foot wide hole 1,000 feet deep, filling it with concrete, and then pushing a big red button. To my knowledge, radiation leaked to the surface in only one case, when a bomb was set off near an unmapped geological fault, frying two ranchers.
The explosion would create a cavern deep under the surface which would be sealed by the 400 million degree temperatures these weapons create, containing the radiation. I remember walking around some old above ground sites, and the sand had been turned to colorful glass.
The kind of bomb needed already exists in the US arsenal. Only 20 pounds of fissile material is required to build a nuke, a sphere smaller than a golf ball. Remember, uranium and plutonium are four times heavier than lead. That is small enough to ram down an oil well, with room to spare. Such a weapon, called the “Davy Crocket” was designed to be carried and operated by a single soldier, and was actually field tested in Nevada during the fifties. That was before we figured out that many of our own troops involved in such a maneuver would end up dying of cancer, so the project was shelved.
There would be no violation of the nuclear test ban treaty, since it covers only above ground tests. Underground tests ended voluntarily in 1992, mostly because they were too expensive, not because of some high minded ideal.
All of BP’s efforts to date have really been “Hail Mary’s” doomed to failure. The only real chance is to relieve the pressure by drilling several adjacent wells, and that will take months. If BP has discovered the mother of all fields with pressures so enormous, they can’t be controlled with modern technology, a possibility which some geologists admit, then more huge leaks will spring and the nuclear option will be the only one left. In the meantime, if a serious hurricane hits the region, a mathematical probability, then we will see the environmental equivalent of Chernobyl meets Katrina.
In this scenario, you can kiss BP goodbye.
To see the data, charts, and graphs that support this research piece, as well as more iconoclastic and out-of-consensus analysis, please visit me at my brand new site at www.madhedgefundtrader.com . There, you will find the conventional wisdom mercilessly flailed and tortured daily, and my last two years of research reports available for free. You can also listen to me on Hedge Fund Radio by clicking on the “Today’s Radio Show” menu tab on the left on my home page.
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By Soul- “Because they are not really interested in stopping this. It is all part of the program.”
I’d say so.
Many good observations/comments on this article. The answers are there. But your statement in brevity sums it up.
From about the third day this was looking like an intentional act to me, a planned event. I have no doubts about it any more. The perception of incompetent government, corporate greed, ineptitude, and stupidity are in my eyes merely a palpable smokescreen for the true agenda. I believe we are witnessing the kick off for the second wave of the takedown of the U.S. financial system and an acceleration of the eugenics program which is already well under way. A silent war, an attack on this country buffered by misinformation and propaganda is being waged against the American people.
British Petroleum is the government. Its major shareholders run this planet. There is no fix, at least one which will be allowed.
Don’t kid yourself that these criminals didn’t know what the Corexit 9500 was going to do to the habitat of millions of people when it begins to rain down on us. Time will tell whether millions are sickened and end up being evacuated… and I do really hope I’m wrong about this.[bummer]
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, it was planned that way.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The reason why they are trying to cap the well is so they can preserve the oil. There are trillions of dollars worth of oil down there @ $75/barrel according to CNN. Nuking the pipe means kissing that all goodbye, and then increasing our depedency on foreign sources.
Also, from a geological perspective, there isn't much "bedrock" down there. It's more like sand. A nuke would be unpredictable. It could just open up a new "hole" and allow a bigger releasing of oil/gas.
And think about the environmental aspects if a hurricane came through and sucked up radioactive water and dumped it on the southeast?
Well, yeah! A top kill would have meant NO OIL FOR BP! That's why it was low on the list of failed techniques. Fat chance that they would have been permitted to drill another well into that fat, juicy, greasy pile of dollars.
And if it's nuked -- nobody gets it..... BP is toast!
Someone above probably already said this, but no way any president would ever want on his resume that he nuked the gulf. 40 Monica lewinskys would be easier to overturn (pun intended)
How's your RIG call doing?
Oh, I see that it is down 20% in the week.
Using a nuke is very risky!
It risks breaching the well casing (assuming it isn't already breached) as well as creating cracks in the muddy sea floor through which the oil and gas can find escape routes. Instead of one leak, you might end up with hundreds.
Maybe there already is a country-side pool of oil in some remote, unobserverved, part of Russia from when they "sealed" an oil well in the 1980's? Friendly advice is not always friendly!
Exactly. The resultant pressure would drive oil, gas, water, etc through existing fissures, creating larger ones hundreds, if not thousands of meters away.
Yes, absolutely. I commented on the danger of this plan last week. Dumb idea. I would suggest getting an experienced geologist to post their thoughts on the "nuke option". I asked one last week and he debunked this strategy.
No way in hell will the gubbamint do anything that might shift the blame to them when it is already squarely placed on a foreign corporation.
People have a panic reaction to anything nuclear. Since we have no teaching of physical reality in most US schools now the only response most people know to the word nuclear is an emotional one - and they are conditioned deeply to feel fear and dread when they hear it.
Besides - I wouldn't put it past government to screw up and blow the whole top of the formation open releasing a decade of seepage in minutes. The gas would probably smother all living things along the coast resulting in millions of deaths. If it can be made worse government intervention will usually find a way to do it.
Hurricane Season: Joe Bastardi states, "My biggest fear is that it goes beyond the nasty season I have forecasted since February. 2010 may be remembered as the hurricane season from Hades."
What I am wondering is WHAT WARMING EFFECT will all of this surface oil have on the Gulf temperature?
His forecast was made PRIOR to the BP incident and he was far from being an optimist.
Since crude is a mixture of numerous substances and all with different heat absorption (boiling points), how can the effect be predicted?
Didn't we look at this "nuke baby, nuke!" a week ago?!
EURO chart indicates a move soon :
http://stockmarket618.wordpress.com
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/latest-market-outlook-1
Good grief. Those axioms will get you every time. Just a couple of "what ifs:"
If the nuclear option fails (as in makes a bigger hole), then what? How do you clean a mess that is now irradiated?
Is not the New Madrid fault nearby, not to mention the plates in the Caribbean? What effect will this "small" device have on them?
As a mathematician, surely you recall Pascal's wager? This would appear to be its inverse.
Obviously, I dont think we should do the nuke option, which is precisely why I think the govt is testing the waters and warming people up to the idea that we will do it.
I don't want any part of an idea where Barry has to "warm me up" to support it.
Only use the nuke if Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are connected to it.
That would be an effective environmental clean-up.
That sounds rather partisan. Did you have some Republicans you want to add to the payload?
Old Tom Toles cartoon dialogue (referring to dumping iron in the ocean to stop global climate change but applicable here):
"We can turn nature on and off like a beer spigot!"
"We'll be careful!"
Agreed that the northern Gulf is pretty much a total loss at this point (d'oh!), and the Keys, Everglades, and Miami Beach in the line of fire (whoop de doo), and of course the hurricanes will spray the coastal South with toxins (eh whatever).
From 'The Hollow Men':
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
Is not BP's symbol the multifoliate rose of death's twilight kingdom?
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
this is the russians doing it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU
So they fried a couple of ranchers because of an unmapped geological fault, in an area they could survey while breathing, but could not predict the unintended consequence of what (the fault) was only maybe at most 2000 feet away (down or sideways) in a known, controlled, survey at your leisure environment. And popping off a nuke 0 to 18000 feet under the ocean floor, which is 5000 feet under water, where the geologic info is provided by a company of very questionable competence and were looking for oil not hidden faults or fractures, to maybe seal up a hole in an oil bladder that could be under enough pressure that our technology cant handle it, is an option at this point. Tough call.
So you learned this from CNBC first? You obviously don't read Zero Hedge and only use it direct attention to your worthless blog. While you are most likely a very smart man, your contributions here are worthless to me.
Howie, do you feed that high horse that you ride?
Or do you just go out and round up a new one when the old one dies?
I don't think that is quite fair. I spoke for myself, not the blog, and I think MHFT contributes drivel to this blog. His posts are inferior to your comments. I like your stuff because you crack me up.
You don't tell people it's time to buy RIG or charge money for the pleasure of having lunch with you. Last time I checked, opinions are like assholes, we all have one and I am allowed to have mine.
I like your comments as well.
No worries. I am a giant asshole (just ask anyone who deals with me) So generally, I have to hire lunch companions but mostly I just stay in the office.
I'm available for hire. I promise to bore you to death for some won ton soup. And your fortune cookie.
Somehow the final line spoken by Rick Blaine at the end of Casablanca comes to mind........
LMAO...thanks for that one.
+1
This has not and will not be seriously considered for one very simple reason. BP does not own nuclear weapons, the US Government does.
There is NO WAY...I repeat...NO WAY the government is going to deploy a solution that moves itself into the blame seat in the event of failure. Whether or not it's a viable solution, it will not happen.
didn't the sockpuppet send 3 nuclear scientists down to the gulf about a week after the rig blew?
The politics of the situation have changed drastically since then. My comments are based on today's environment.
How about British Petroleum: the Johns Manville option?
You don't really expect them to pay the avalanche of claims being written up in law offices everywhere now do you???????
You mean cramming a bunch of fiberglass building insulation into the wellhead? That's creative --but... ;)
Manville filed for bankruptcy in 1982 to shield itself from asbestos claimants and operated profitably for many years while under bankruptcy protection.
Big business hates tort proceedings more than anything because of the unpredictable nature of the outcomes.
BP will go 11 and then let a bankruptcy judge "meter out" the claims in an "orderly" (read well paid for) nature.
Our legal system is filth.
Dude, this is such a totally awesome idea - let's GO FOR IT!
Dynamite fishing in a lake the size of the whole freakin' Gulf of Mexico.
Strike up the Dixieland jazz, boys, we're fixin' to have us a JUBILEE!
America.....fuck YEAH!
There's nothing like the taste of grilled Flipper in the morning.
I would go along with the use of CONVENTIONAL explosives.
They need something to COLLAPSE the shaft in on itself(the debis from this tactic), would seem to be at least as viable an option as what their doing now..NOTHING.
As a Texan, this is an unmitgated disaster..the thought of letting this leak go on for SIX more months, is untenable.
This shit is not just staying together as a blob, it's got components that are breaking down, and mixing with the salt water..........
DosZap
I have already read that the seafloor partially collapsed.
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/50368
A series of explosions appears to have collapsed the seafloor and blown up the BOP at the well head. Oil and gas are billowing out of a depression in the seafloor where the BOP used to be at an exponentially greater rate than anything seen before.
Then Nelson had this:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/06/07/senator-nelson-says-bp-well-integrity-may-be-blown/
Oil and gas may be 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.
Gulley,
I have seen that also, but if their able to CAP the one that's still leaking, we know their at 5k feet there.
What I envision, is lowering the conventionals, into this, and the way I have seen the details of the well, it's like another 1k feet to the resevoir.
Lower the explosives down(the existing shaft) about halfway, and detonate there.
This would be APPEAR to be way below the leak sites.
Collapsing there, should(should) close the shaft altogether.
Well before reaching the seabed floor.
Just an idea.
With a seabed consisting for the first few hundred yards of "soft" deposits of the Mississippi, and the "rock" containing the oil being a salt dome, to use a nuke would definitively mean to flirt with an even bigger disaster than the one currently at our hands.
In my uninformed opinion, after discussing this matter with people who really get what is going on, we better cap this well soon or we are looking at destruction of the north gulf eco-system for decades. Just wait till the oil is sucked up by a hurricane and carried inland. Or when it starts polluting the east coast. The results will be far worse than anyone could imagine. Obama has to act now, and nuke it before it is too lake. This disaster make Katrina look like a bad joke.
The nuclear option is a non-starter in this situation because it is the wrong tool. Nukes make holes. They were considered for excavation and the like (as well as for pushing a spacecraft in Project Orion--awesome visuals there). But we are trying to plug a hole here. The most effective way to use a nuke here would be to shove it into the wellbore and leave it. Come to think of it that would be a nice way to use all the nukes in the world. Stuff them in holes at the bottom of the ocean.
A more serious idea: Try duct tape. All the duct tape in the southern US. If that doesn't work, evacuate the region and declare it a National Sacrifice Zone like our nuclear weapons fabrication facilities at Hanford and Savannah River.
Instead of Okies, we'll have "BoPpies" taking their families and belongings along the highways. Maybe California won't be so quick with the internment camps this time...oh hell who am I kidding? Enjoy the camps.
> Nukes make holes.
Exactly. So in theory you would need to hope the nuke explosion pressure at the edge of the hole it creates would seal the pipe and the molten stuff solidifies before the 10,000 psi oil pressure blasts through it again. Good luck with that!
Btw MHFT, what gives you the impression they would be able to insert a nuke deep into the existing well pipe against the outflowing oil stream - even if it's golf ball or just marble sized?
So most likely they first would need to drill another hole close by, to insert the nuke.
And about the Soviet Union doing it before: I had heard that rumor 2 weeks ago, and would still need some more credible sources (CNBC anybody?) to actually take it as fact.
Apples and oranges for a host of reasons, but check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU
The nuke might not work due to the pressure messing with the explosive lenses or crushing the core e.t.c - or it might work A Lot better with the pressure holding it together a few usec longer... Then it might just collapse the entire well so all the oil can escape at one. Then the Russians would laugh at the stupid Americans thinking that the solution to any problem is shoothing shit or blowing up shit because thats what works in the movies ;-)
IOW - it sounds like a bad idea.
Because of the salt/sediment mixture of the seabed, the nuke blast would obliterate the ocean floor as opposed to pushing/relocating bedrock and plugging the leak.
Massive coverup of beachgoers also getting sick now which has been reported as early as June 2nd:
"it's not just the workers who are getting sick. Some beach-goers are even reporting illness after being just near the water."
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/13936
You don't nuke the sea bottom! You drill down to the impermeable rock above the oil/gas, and detonate in that layer. This SHOULD work. Of course it is axiomatic "we don't know what we don't know" and this has never been tried before in a similar situation.
The option of turning the Gulf-of Mexico into a tar-pit, is pretty awful as an alternative however.
My understanding is that it's about 1000 feet of loose silt then ALL calcium carbonate or salt dome, all the rest of the 30,000 feet down. That's not stuff that will melt and seal. It's stuff that fractures, which is precisely why oil companies "frac" "tight rock" to get faster oil production. A nuke in the Gulf is not very smart if that is the actual geology, not because nukes are stupid but because the geology says anyone who puts a nuke there is stupid.
So put the nuke option to bed. It will almost certainly not work and it will very probably make matters worse. The only viable option I've seen discussed amongst real oil people down here in Houston is relief wells, then perma-capping via cement plugs. The nuke discussion elicits howls of laughter amongst professional geologists, but the nuke idea is about the sort of hare brained idea that I'd expect from a Wall Street trader.
Yes, that means months more oil spilling into the Gulf, hundreds of thousands of jobs lost, real estate values plummeting all along the Gulf, businesses closing, long term ecological damage... but hey, you need to fill that SUV, right?
The real problem is that oil production is massively subsidized. Most of the US military machine is a direct subsidy to ensure free flowing oil. Environmental costs globally from oil companies are largely ignored. Go read up about what has happened in Nigeria due to oil companies. If you remove the global subsidy of oil, the price immediately skyrockets, so the free market has never been allowed to speak about the real price of oil. And if the free market was allowed to speak, then we wouldn't be using nearly as much oil, unless innumerate idiots make the decisions (which is what we've had for the last 60 years). I don't know what we'd do instead but that's why we let the market work, or why we should let the market work, right?
This article suggests both parties are lying
Spill rate far worst than latest estimate
By Tom Eley9 June 2010
Scientists continue to raise doubts about a new government estimate of the rate of the BP spill.
Ira Leifer, who serves on the government-sponsored committee of scientists tasked with estimating the size of the spill, said that he believes that BP’s latest effort to stem the rate of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico has likely made the situation far worse than the latest official estimate, which placed the spill at 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day. That estimate, it has been revealed, was actually the absolute low-end range determined by Leifer and other scientists on the committee, the Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG). No high-end range has yet been released.
Leifer, an expert on fluid dynamics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told the New York Times that cutting the riser pipe may have worsened the spill many times over. “The well pipe clearly is fluxing way more than it did before.” Leifer said. “I don’t mean by 20 percent. I mean multiple factors.”
If Leifer is correct, then BP’s claims that it is siphoning off nearly 15,000 barrels a day—three times the 5,000 barrels-per-day rate put forth for months—would then only represent a fraction of the spill. This would vindicate an early estimate by Stephen Wereley of Purdue University, a highly-respected expert in particle analysis, who estimated a spill rate of about 80,000 barrels daily, before the riser pipe was cut.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/rate-j09.shtml
Amsterdammer
I just read 100,000 barrels a day.