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Experts: BP Lowballing Size of Leaking Oil Reservoir
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On May 1st, I warned
that the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf was much higher than
either the government or BP were admitting:
As a
story in the Christian Science Monitor shows,
the Gulf oil spill is much worse than we've been told:
It's
now likely that the actual amount of the oil spill dwarfs the Coast
Guard's figure of 5,000 barrels,
or 210,000 gallons, a day.Independent scientists estimate that
the renegade wellhead at the bottom of the Gulf could be spewing up to
25,000 barrels a day. If
chokeholds on the riser pipe break down further, up to 50,000 barrels a day could be
released, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration memo obtained by the Mobile, Ala., Press-Register.As
estimates of the spill increase, questions about the government's
honesty in assessing the spill are emerging.
***
"The
following is not public," reads National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's Emergency Response document dated April 28, according
to the Press-Register [see this]. "Two additional release points were found
today. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become
unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher
than previously thought."
An order of magnitude is a factor of 10.
The
Wall Street Journal reported Friday that John Amos, an oil industry
consultant, said that NOAA revised its original estimate of 1,000
barrels after he published calculations based on satellite data that
showed a larger flow.
The 5,000 barrels a day is the "extremely
low end" of estimates, Mr. Amos told the Journal.CNN
quotes the lead government official responding to the spill - the
commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Thad Allen - as stating:
If
we lost a total well head, it could be 100,000 barrels or more a day.Indeed,
an environmental document filed by BP estimates
the maximum as 162,000 barrels a
day:
In an exploration plan and environmental
impact analysis filed with the federal government in February 2009, BP
said it had the capability to handle a “worst-case scenario” at the
Deepwater Horizon site, which the document described as a leak of 162,000
barrels per day from an uncontrolled blowout — 6.8
million gallons each day.
Now,
I am warning that the amount of oil still in the reservoir might be much bigger than BP is admitting.
Specifically,
BP claims that there are 50 million barrels worth of oil in the reservoir
underneath the leaking spill site.
But the Guardian noted
Friday:
But the 50m figure cited by
Hayward took some industry insiders by surprise. There have been
reports the reservoir held up to 500m barrels – the figure quoted by
Hayward's questioner, Joe Barton, a Republican from Texas.
"I
would assume that 500m
barrels would be a more likely estimate," said Tadeusz Patzek, the
chairman of the department of petroleum and geosystems engineering at
the University of Texas at Austin. "I don't think you would be going
after a 50mbarrel reservoir so quickly. This is just simply not enough
oil to go after."
Indeed, Wolf Blitzer said:
One
-- one expert said to me -- and I don't know if this is overblown or
not -- that they're still really concerned about the structural base of
this whole operation, if the rocks get moved, this thing could really
explode and they're sitting, what, on -- on a billion potential barrels of oil at
the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Bloomberg notes:
The
ruptured well may hold as much as 1 billion barrels, the Times reported,
citing Rick Mueller, an analyst at Energy Security Analysis in
Massachusetts.
Oil industry expert Matthew Simmons
also puts the number above one billion barrels (see this
Bloomberg interview, for example, where he says that - unless stopped -
120,000 barrels a day will leak for 25-30 years; that adds up to 1,095,000,000
to 1,314,000,000
barrels).
And Rob Kall claims
that a source inside BP tells him:
Size of reservoir -
estimated by BP and its partner, Andarko to be between 2.5B and 10B bbl.
(that's 100,000,000,000 gallons and 400,000,000,000 gallons).
Yes
- all of those numbers are BILLIONS.
Given that BP's
nearby Tiber
and Kaskida wells each contain at least 3 billion barrels of
oil (see this,
this,
this
and this),
estimates of more than a billion barrels for the leaking Macondo reservoir are not unreasonable.
Why the Size of the Reservoir Matters
The size of
the reservoir is important for several reasons. Specifically, the more
oil in the Macondo reservoir, the longer the oil leak will flow if the
efforts to cap it fail.
Moreover, higher volumes of oil and gas might change the pressure of materials gushing out of the leaking well. As CBS notes:
The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent
found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M
University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the
spill.
I will leave it to the scientists to
calculate what a larger volume of oil (with 40% methane) would mean for
pressure. Higher pressure may make it harder to cap the leak, and may
wear out the casing quicker by speeding up the rate at which sand and
other small particles in the oil abrade the metal. Lower pressure would
ease both problems.
Finally, the more oil and gas in the
reservoir, the higher a priority the government may consider it to
produce the well at all costs. See this and this.
»
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The size of the oil field doesn't matter. It's the gas pressure that caused the explosion and is causing the oil to spew forth. Once the gas pressure is minimized by drilling 100 relief wells... the spill will become a trickle... kinda like natural seepage, baby.
This is why GW is taking a lot of heat... because GW obviously skipped a few of his Oil Drilling 101 classes. Just like me.
So you are talking August 2013 when the 99th relief well still hasn't worked?
"100 relief wells".
That would be great!
But BP is only drilling 2 ...
Could it possibly be that the reservoir engineers, petroleum engineers, and drilling engineers at BP actually know more about the oil business than either you or Rosie O'Donnell?
Tell us something scarey about the Sigsby Salt. I want to stay up late tonight worrying.
"Could it possibly be that the reservoir engineers, petroleum engineers, and drilling engineers at BP actually know more about the oil business than either you or Rosie O'Donnell? "
Well, they didn't know enough to prevent the blow out, so I figure I'd go with Rosie if I had to choose.
The people on that rig failed to monitor the indications that the well was about to flow.
Just a fair question for you. Since your mother had an auto accident, should you be allowed to drive? Get a consult with Rosie on that one too.
You won't be alone as many of the loones writing posts here would seem to be regularly unable to choose between Rosie or an engineer.
Ummmmmmm.............
Yeah they did KNOW.
They shorted the Blowout Valves, by 15.........using only 6.
AND, they had a problem with ONE of those 6, and shut it off..................Should have had at least 21.
WTF, would any oil company drill that deep, and increase the factor for a blowout,by shorting relief valves?.
Halliburton gave these numbers before Congress.
Rosie O'Donnell never would have done that
"Size of reservoir - estimated ... to be between 2.5B and 10B bbl."
All I've ever seen are estimates between 2 and 2.5 billion barrels. These are not new estimates.
What I've seen were estimates of 150 million barrels.
A billion barrels is just not a reasonable estimate from 65' of pay thickness. 2.5 billion is absolute nonsense that would be found on "before it is news". In other words, the fantasy before the facts are known.
It must be estimated as at least twenty five times as large as any Saudi reserves if it to generate a really good scare headline. This new BP reservoir is fed by the vast underground lake of oil that lubricates the mantle so that it is able to slide on the core of the earth. People who have seen that lake report that it has monsters swimming in it.
within the ruins of atlantis no less
the mother vampire squid's lair no doubt