This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Matt Simmons Says Gulf Clean Up Will Cost Over $1 Trillion, Sees BP At $1, Says "We Have Now Killed The GoM"
Matt Simmons shares some startling revelations in his latest Bloomberg TV interview, in which he says none of the propaganda matters on TV 24/7 (photoshopped or not) as the ultimate clean up cost will likely be well over $1 trillion, and a result he is unconcerned about his BP short. He ultimately see the stock going down to $1. What Simmons alleges however is far more startling and audacious: that this is a joint cover up effort between the administration and BP, in which both entities keep throwing sand in the eyes of observers while distracting everyone from the matter at hand: "What we don’t know anything about is the open hole which is caused by
the drill bit when it tossed the blow-out preventer way out of the
hole…and 120,000/day minimum of toxic poison has now covered the floor of
the Gulf of Mexico. So what they’re talking about is the biggest
environmental cover-up ever. And they knew that that well, that riser,
would finally deplete. And then they could say it’s over." On blaming the catastrophe on Transocean: "For two days they kept saying it’s a rig fire. When the rig sank they
could no longer call it a rig fire. It’s a riser leak…Because if they
said the truth they would all go to jail." The conclusion: "Unfortunately, we now have killed the Gulf of Mexico."
On whether the well pressure should be a concern:
“No, it’s a total diversion - that’s the gas condensation that was trapped in the drilling riser which blew off the wellhead at 10:01 PM CT on April 20th, it's a mile-long compressed natural gas."
"What we don’t know anything about is the open hole which is caused by the drill bit when it tossed the blow-out preventer way out of the hole…and 120,000 minimum of toxic poison has now covered the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. So what they’re talking about is the biggest environmental cover-up ever. And they knew that that well, that riser, would finally deplete. And then they could say it’s over. And unfortunately, we now have killed the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Some 5-10 miles away is what the NOIA research vessels have now proved is a deep oil lake that is growing by the day and it’s very toxic oil and its gases are very lethal. Basically if we have a hurricane now, we would have to evacuate the Gulf Coast.”
On the financial implications for BP:
“When people find out the magnitude of the story, I don’t know if we can technically clean up the Gulf but it would cost at least a trillion dollars.”
Simmons on his reaction to the rig explosion:
“First of all when I woke up, when my wife turned on the television at 7:00 AM on the 21st and I saw this shocking news, that one of the greatest deepwater rigs ever built by one of the great companies in the industry, Transocean, was in the middle of this terrible fire, and then they said this was a rig fire, this is fuel on the rig, I know that there was 700 gallons of diesel on the rig, I said ‘This is a lie, the Gulf of Mexico is on fire. Why are they saying this?’ For two days they kept saying it’s a rig fire. When the rig sank they could no longer call it a rig fire. It’s a riser leak…Because if they said the truth they would all go to jail.”
On whether the blame lies squarely with BP:
"I think Transocean need Congressional Medals of Hero for this…I am really disgusted. Other than John Hofmeister, the retired president of Shell America, he's the only other person in the industry who I've seen to speak out."
Simmons on why he is shorting BP stock:
“You bet I did. Because I thought BP was going to go under. I’ve been saying that for months and months and when I read that 20 of the 24 Wall Street analysts had a ‘buys,’ I said ‘ That’s ridiculous, I’m going to short them.’ I’ve never shorted a stock in my life before.
"I have patience. The stock will go to one."
“They promised to clean up the Gulf, is that right? Do you know how much it will cost if they can technically do it? Well over a trillion dollars.”
On whether there is hope for a permanent solution now that the oil has stopped leaking:
“No, because that’s not the gusher. That was a little bit of condensation that would have ended anyways. There’s no way to fix the gusher because there’s no casing left in the hole other than doing a small diameter nuclear bomb…It's the only way. With no casing left in the hole, the odds of the relief well working are zero. What the relief wells do-- if they can find the casing, they then cut a 4 inch hole--and then they have something to capture the mud with. With no casing there, it's like pouring oatmeal down a fire hydrant…The casing is not there. It's scattered over the ocean floor. The government now has gamma ray images of the actual blow-out preventer, which is five stories high, weighs 325 tons and it has two sections of casing that pierced through five stories of metal."
»
- 42696 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
The key here is that it is a "joint cover up". The mess will not be cleaned by man. It will be cleaned by nature and lots of time. Unfortunately, there will be untold misery for many many years as those in control use this disaster to profit (think carbon and other taxes).
ask yourself one simple question....WOULD THE US GOVERNMENT LIE TO ITS OWN PEOPLE !!!!!!!!!!!!! IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT 9-11. OR THE BANK BAIL OUTS OR SUB PRIME...THEN YOU HAVE YOUR ANSWER
+1.
I'll up that to Many.
Corexit the dispersant being used in the Gulf to make the oil soluble with water:
http://cryptogon.com/?p=16328
I'd be more worried about this Corexit crap than the oil. At least the oil is a natural substance that will break down eventually and eventually the ecosystem can rebuild. Corexit is essentially toxic make-up to make the whole disaster look better than it really is. Who knows what this stuff will mess up?
You have to love this guy's description of BP's Corexit vs. clean-up calculation. It's almost word-for-word Tyler Durden's description of how his car maker employer decides whether to recall a defective part or not.
Corexit scares me. does anyone know the long term effects of this stuff? at least we understand what oil does...
Search this site using corexit. The long-term effects have been discussed to death already.
Another thing, Corexit is a banned from use in the UK. Fine and dandy in Gulf though.
Matt does have a tendency to exaggerate. Two years ago he predicted oil would be trading at $200 in 2010.
It's still 2010. Not at all impossible that we get to 200 by December - just very unlikely. But I do agree with you - he also said circa 2004-05 that within 3 years we'd have a catastrophe in the U.S. because Nat Gas production would fail.
This is the first time I've doubted Simmons. He needs to be able to articulate his thoughts better. He's all over the map, and it's unclear what his point is.
The way we get to $200/barrel is a war....likely with Iran or Venezuela, although another "kerfuffle" in the Caspian would not surprise me. Remember that war between Georgia and Russia before the 08 Olympics (pre-Lehman ancient history)?
Now, we have all this production shut-in in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. I think that prices move higher for energy.
Let's keep it simple. Who has the biggger incentive to lie? Matt Simmons or BP and the Bammy?
Um ... okay I give up. Who?
I guess the administration/BP/MSM coverup of the 20 million gulf coast residents Simmons said last month were going to need to be evacuated due to tropical storms, toxic benzene and hydrogen sulfide clouds, plagues of locusts, cats and dogs sleeping together, blah, blah, has been incredibly effective, because I haven't heard a peep about problems resettling the refugees. Wait - let me guess - they've all been quietly shipped off to secret death camps for orderly disposal, and the ongoing coverup of this "gulf coast redneck genocide" has been so effective that not even their relatives know.
Seriously - yeah, it's gonna be one massive longterm mess down there - but this continuous end-of-the-world doomspew by folks like Simmons and ZH's "George Washington" is getting old. Just once I'd love to see a little followup honesty, something like:
"Dear Readers: Last month we loudly parroted Matt Simmons` latest prediction of The End of The World. We deeply regret to report that TEOTW has been just a wee bit late in arriving ... however we believe this is merely a matter of timing, and as such, claims that 'we are full of shit' are greatly exaggerated."
Just Once.
+1. Old George Washington hasn't had much to talk about with that cap on the well, has he?
Put your money where your mouth is and go buy a condo down on the beach.
Ridiculous. Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't.
that said, I'm not 100% on board with Simmons, but I do agree that there are too many unknowns to comfortably assert that it's safe to go back in the water, so to speak.
Hurricane season lies ahead; idiopathic seeps continue unabated; the relief wells are still not even completed, much less functional.
No reason for a ZH retraction until the situation clearly and FINALLY resolves...
If everybody is lying, how will we know when finally happens?
Air quality: A 3 - 4 % rise in headaches, heart palpitations, nausea
Skin (dispersants, chemical exposure): Rashes, burning
Internal issues - you have already all heard them - bleeding from orifices etc.
Marine life:
Fish that we catch: The fishermen will tell us. They are not testing for the chemicals so only smell tests right now. You want to trust it, go ahead. The best test is the lovely fly - no fly wanting to be in your fish - someone is wrong with it (could also be bacterial).
Fish that we do not catch: That is up to the marine biologists and oceanographers and they are there.
Marchlands, beaches, etc.: We shall see next year. The chemicals in the beaches etc. could cause the problems above.
Oil in the water column: Unknown and not being tracked on any coordinated basis. Scientists are trying to find funds to do more research.
Hurricane bring oil onto shore: Only will know what happens after it happens.
There may never be a "finally" ever.
I asked how we would know when finally happens if everybody is lying. Lying can only happen when people (not rocks) make statements.
Every single instance you have given as answer to my question how will we know is based on math and science. Not one of your answers involved personal specualtion.
Just wanted to point that out. The natural sciences will tell us - regardless of the truth of human speculation.
Is everyone insane? Has everyone already forgotten what just happened?
Latest official estimate is that the well leaked 1,500,000 gallons to 2,500,000 gallons a day for 88 days.
Multiply that out and you get 132,000,000 to 220,000,000 gallons of oil.
Or, 10 to 20 Exxon Valdez disasters.
Do you really think BP gets to laugh this off?
Yes they do. But not because it doesn't matter. But because they are BP.
Indeed. And recall that crude oil is toxic in water at 11 parts per million.
That is, every barrel of crude can toxicify 90,909 barrels of water.
Corexit is toxic at 2 PPM, so each barrel of it can make 500,000 barrels of water toxic.
FYI: 1 barrel = 42 gallons.
I don't trust this Simmons guy any further than I can throw him. He was an advisor to George W Bush, one of our country's biggest TRAITORS OF ALL TIME.
Look, here's the problem with Simmons. The guy doesn't make any damn sense!
Do you remember a few weeks ago he was flailing about the leak several miles away?! Now it's that the well has "no casing" and the relief well won't work?!
Frankly, I don't trust him...anyone associated with Bush is a criminal and a traitor (and yes, I vote Repub or Ind.).
Simmons is full of shit. Although I'm open minded and would invite him to BETTER ARTICULATE his position so maybe we could see what he somehow sees. His sources are still a mystery, of course!
------------------------------------------
Let me just add Simmons was absolutely right on one account. Those two BP company men Donald Vidrine and Kaluza (sp.) are some real SOBs who deserve CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.
In all fairness, he talked about the casing and the relief well not working about a month ago. This isnt new from him. It could all be BS, but he has stuck to his guns.
*lulz*
I cannot follow this dudes logic. Sounds like a kook. They have not capped the gusher? Then where is the oil and gas that should still be spewing? A trillion dollars to clean up the Gulf? How so? So, I have no idea what the fuck this guy is talking about but he sounds demented. No position in BP. In fact, haven't owned a stock since summer 2008.
The cost of a full cleanup and habitat restoration and long-term health monitoring would probably be $100-200B over 20 years. So $1000B isn't off by a whole lot. Hyperbole sure, but not insane by any stretch.
I seem to recall something similar about the Mount St. Helens eruption - it would be decades before anything grew there and the following spring, green shoots were everywhere.
and I agree BP is criminally and civilly culpable in this debacle.
Volcanic ash isn't toxic. You can throw grass seed on it and have a lawn in a week.
Understand what we are talking about here.
Just to present what others write here all the time, pretending to be logical:
Not toxic? Go get in a volcanic ash bed and breath for a while. Look at the chemicals that are released with it. It has reportedly wiped out the earth in past geologic events. Or how about if it covers YOUR house. Or drink a few glasses of it with your cereal. Then get back from us on the pay phone from the hospital.
Such a tough guy . . .
... sigh ...
The gases that co-occur with volcanic ash will kill you. H2S in particular, CO and CO2 as well. Even the steam will bake you on the spot. But after it sits around for a while that stuff is gone.
The remaining ash is mostly inert glass-like pumice. Makes a nice mulch. You can buy it by the yard at the rockery.
Do you actually know anything?
But after it sits around for a while that stuff is gone.
After the oil sits around for a while, won't it be gone too - which I think was Augustus' point. It will evaporate, degrade, be eaten by microbes, etc. It is bad now, just like Mt.St. Helen's was bad now, once. It is the later that looks better, both for volcanoes and for oil accidents.
I seem to recall something similar about the Mount St. Helens eruption - it would be decades before anything grew there and the following spring, green shoots were everywhere.
please, not with the "green shoots" again! ;-)
You can't really Kill anything in nature. At least not something the magnitude of the GoM.
It will, if all the negative prognostications come to fruition, quietly return to normal over time just as a rubber plantation did once the robber barons left it in peace, or your back yard will return to a woods once you abandon it.
All our attempts to rape the earth are temporary in their obscenity.
Once the natural bounties of mother earth have had enough of our relentless, rapacious, exploitative behavior she will just kick our asses off, and we will be the ones to die off while she returns to as near a state of perfection and innocence as she was before she gave birth to 6 billion bad seeds.
As posted a couple of weeks ago, George Carlin did a stand up bit and said the same thing.... except funnier. Dont take offense, its George afterall.
umm take this tour...
http://www.thecoolist.com/abandoned-places-10-creepy-beautiful-modern-ru...
you don't understand ecosystem complexity.
The American midwest used to have herds of bison that would span from one horizon to the other. Then came farms and hunters and railroads and the bison are virtually gone, maintained now as curios by conservationist landholders. You could leave the midwest today and the bison would not return, net even from their pitiful little boutique herds. You know why? Because they would be competing with abundant animals not present when they dominated the praries. Cattle and horses and goats and sheep and God knows what else. Oh and not counting diseases, some of which are brought in by domestic cattle and decimate the bison. The great herds are gone forever or at least a million years, in all likelihood.
Just a single example, that. I could write all day on the subject and never leave North America.
It does not always come back. Remember that.
Like the human spirit, time heals all wounds. How much time it will take to heal the GOM is the question. Now, Mother Nature might bitch slap us in the process, but she will heal. 100 years, 1000 years, 1,000,000,000 years, no one knows for sure.
I do but you don't understand the infinitesmal amount of time we have been on this earth and her capacity for renewal and destruction.
and What frankrizzo says...
Quoting Anony,
and we will be the ones to die off while she returns to as near a state of perfection and innocence as she was before she gave birth to 6 billion bad seeds.
If you so dislike the human race, why not lead by example and kill yourself?
Well, for one thing, if I did, it wouldn't change a thing.
For instance, look at your own inhuman behavior for confirmation of my thesis.
Thank you for helping to prove my point.
Read below for other more cogent affirmations that the earth will only tolerate so much abuse before she gets rid of you.
(The Merry Minuet)
They're Rioting in Africa (The Merry Minuet) (Sheldon Harnick) Intro: There are days in my life when everything is dreary I grow pessimistic, sad and world weary. But when I'm tearful and fearfully upset I always sing this merry little minuet: They're rioting in Africa They're starving in Spain There's hurricanes in Florida And Texas needs rain. The whole world is festering With unhappy souls The French hate the Germans, The Germans hate the Poles Italians hate Yugoslavs South Africans hate the Dutch And I don't like anybody very much But we can be grateful And thankful and proud That man's been endowed With a mushroom shaped cloud And we know for certain That some happy day Someone will set the spark off And we will all be blown away They're rioting in Africa There's strife in Iran What nature doesn't do to us Will be done by our fellow man.Is it just me or are the interviewers completly clueless? That interview was really annoying.
My impression was the blond couldn't believe what he was saying but didn't want to call him on it.
Controversy sells. Boring reality usually does not. Which one are you going to use to sell newspaper, airtime, or eyeballs?
Looks like ol' Matt has been making the rounds.
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2010/7/17_Matt_Simmons.html
The Oil Drum has been saying the same. This appears to be far from over.
"Learn to swim" - Maynard James Keenan, Aenima (1996)
I agree with him, IF the casing is damaged the relief well will not work and most probably you have oil coming up some place else right now.
I said from the start 50/50 a nuke will have to be used.
If the casing is gone then yes it will be a $1 trillion clean up.
The casing is not gone. Matt is full of shit.
how do *YOU* know?
They are ranging it in the relief wells now that they are below the last shoe. There are pictures of drillpipe in the broken riser. Both of these mean the casing cannot have been blown out. Matt Simmons knows this. Understand that the theory he is peddling is that EVERYTHING you have seen is fake.
OBJECTION lacks personal knowledge
Sustained
Overruled - see above.
"Unfortunately, we now have killed the Gulf of Mexico."
R.I.P.Mash here.
Awesome. Dieoff.org is so hip it can't see past it's own pelvis.
+500
What the hell are gamma ray images?
Is this not out of astronomy?
Mash this.
That one threw me as well - I had fate in guy up to that point.
gamma rays are the highest energy light in the universe - it takes a lot of energy to produce those babies.
But I guess if they can produce X ray photographs they may be able to produce Gamma photographs.
I hope to God this guy is wrong but maybe if it wakes up the public to the level of incompetence/malice in government circles then maybe just maybe it is the shock needed to reanimate the corpse of duty and honour.
The one thing that strikes me about these disasters that are now coming thick and fast is the lack of a chain of command and overall responsibility.
I think the whole Friedmanite philosophy has done a good job in cooking western civilisation.
Congratulations to Ayn ,Milton and Alan - we have tested their philosophies in this little test tube and their medicine as been proven toxic.
You just need some cobalt-60.It is a strong gamma emitter.Much more potent and penetrating than x-rays, just the ticket for inspecting really opaque objects.Like a BOP.
Thanks Cistercian - just one question and this may be a dumb one - How do you capture high energy photons on a plate or imaging device.
Would not such high energy photons go right through your photographic apparatus or do they use it differently.
Calculating the structure of the seabed not unlike sonar.
The high energy photons are readily detected.I don't know what they use now, maybe shielded CCD's or film.A charged plate like mammograms would probably work too.
Just for a perspective on scale, the Gulf contains 664 quadrillion (664 thousand million million) gallons of water. It is estimated about 67 million gallons of oil remain in the Gulf. The remaining spilled oil represents one part per 10 billion of the entire GoM. (Of course concentrations may be higher in certain locations :{ )
Your scale exercise is interesting but somewhat misleading. Sea-borne oil--especially heavy crude--does not simply dilute. Rather it tends to remain concentrated for months/years and is highly adherent during that period (the reason we have tar "balls" and not tar "Parts" (per billion).
Heavy crude's stability has extremely adverse effects on a number of ecologies--marshes, coral reefs, turtle nesting beaches--as well as on individual animals. for example, several thousands each of turtles and sea birds are already believed dead, numbers which represent far more than 1 in 10 billion of their GOM populations.
Most of the life and system dynamics in the GoM occur in the top 6 feet of the water column.
Most of the beaches on the shores of the GoM only ever interact with the top 6 feet of water.
Most of the oil is found floating and mixed into the top 6 feet of the water in the GoM.
I think you had a point, but I must have missed it. Would you like to try that again?
Not debating - just clarifying. Does this mean that hurricanes don't really pull up the deep water to the surface, thereby refreshing what is in the top 6 feet on a yearly basis? And, is most of the oil really on the top 6 feet. I thought conventional wisdom claimed that most of the oil was in the oil plumes at significant depths in the gulf (said oil being in the form a droplets so fine that the human eye cannot see most of them).
You are wrong about the life and system dynamics of the GOM occuring in the top 6 feet of the water column. Completely wrong. Pelagics.
http://lubbockonline.com/local-news/2010-07-21/tech-scientists-hold-noth...
With these statements from Matt Simmons it's clear that one party, either him or BP/Admin, must be completely wrong with their official statements.
The good question remains which one??
I am obviously not excluding the possibility that Simmons is correct.
And I am a bit nervous about the fact that BP, at long last suddenly so "easily" capped the well, with lower than expected pressure readings.
But the truth will come out, the next major hurricane will tell.
They could all be wrong. And probably are.
They may not all be deliberately lying.
The truth is out there, it is not better than we have seen already for we have seen almost nothing. It is probably worse, perhaps much worse. Probably we will never know how bad it was, but not knowing is not the solution. Not knowing is FAIL.
We have to look. Though it cuts us, we have to look.
All these scare stories don't worry me one bit. I'm sure the situation is only half as bad as described.
IMO , they are releasing these disasterous scenarios, so when more of the truth comes out, they can say it is not as bad as expected. it seems to work in the investment world for awhile, anyway
I got old asbestos tile flooring in my home, under newer flooring. Hardly even know it is there. But if someone disturbs it, tears it up, it becomes a threat to health of inhabitants.
If there truly is a huge quantity of oil pooling in the Gulf, and if a hurricane would produce currents that would disturb it, mix it with seawater and bring it to the shore or into the air, got an enviro problem on a much larger scale than my asbestos issue. Especially since a hurricane is much more likely to appear in the Gulf than is a madman with a grinder in my basement.
So, is there truly a huge quantity of oil pooling? Is that hard to find out? Would BP lie about that? Would our gubmint lie about that? If so, why?
if you are on TV and talking about an event of this maginitude, then you have a financial interest at stake and you will say whatever if fucking takes to cover your ass. trust no one, especially if they are on TV.
I honestly don't believe any of them. BP has been caught, outright and red-handed, lying to the public on numerous occasions throughout. (including the idiotic photoshopping of meaningless photos most recently) Our Federal Government has lied to us so often that we've become numb to it. And this guy admits that he's shorting BP stock while proclaiming the end of the company and the GOM. They all seem to be crooks looking out for their own interests. The only thing I do believe is that this is an unmitigated disaster on every level (environmental, economic, cultural, human). The other thing I believe? I will avoid eating shrimp or oysters for quite a while.
May 27,2010 The U.S. coastguard claims engineers have managed to use mud to stop the flow of oil from the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the first step in BP's plan to seal the breach for good with cement. Live webcams still showed material jetting out from the well head - but BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said he believed mud, not oil, was now coming out of the ruptured pipe.
http://gizmodo.com/5592836/bp-photoshops-another-official-image-again-te...
look.. what could BP have done instead
http://www.visualeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/what-bp-could-...
+ 1
Bearish DOW chart update:
http://stockmarket618.wordpress.com
I'm with Matt Simmons 100%... There is oil still leaking out there and they are covering it up. If they announced the problem, people would panic and the markets would collapse. They are just buying time to try and come up with a plan before they put the whole world into shock. Thad Allen retired as Coast Gaurd Admiral at the end of May and became the National Incident Commander, essentially another Obama appointed Czar. They did this eliminate the US Military's liability when the shit hits the fan. There is so much evidence of a large cover-up that I can only hope that the extent of the damage will be reversible.
If you KNOW there is oil leaking out there, give us the coordinates of the leak. Quit covering it up. Why would you endanger the public by hiding the coordinates of this massive leak so it can be addressed? I believe that You don't give a damn about anyone, just about keeping your secret.
do you deny there is oil leaking? it appears you do.
It appears that you claim oil is leaking in significant amounts. I'm not talking about the natural leaks. Asking where is this oil leaking is a fair question. Do you mean it is leaking as Matt Simmons says - from the original well. It you think this well is still leaking, where is the leaking oil going to?
Good one!
I have met Matt, and read most of what he has written. I have never had a hint that he's crazy, provocative maybe, but not crazy. His theories about peak oil are well reasoned and researched. Of course, this reputation is why people are taking him so seriously.
Clearly, what we have been watching for the last 3 months simply couldn't be the oil left in the riser. It always looked like about a barrel per second to me, which is 84,000 barrels per day, which corresponds pretty closely with what everybody has been saying. The mile long riser would have been depleted in a few minutes, not to mention its pressure would have dropped to zero immediately.
The only thing that makes sense (well not really) is that the first well drilled by BP blew out at the well head and this second well (the one we see on TV everyday) was actually a relief well for that first one. Then there was a second blow out that did what we know to the Macondo 252, but the first well scattered its casing all over ocean floor, and is a leaking volcano of oil some 5(?) miles from the Macondo well.
Imagine this at the bottom of the ocean .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lakeview1Gusher.jpg
I consider this extremely unlikely, and is really an attempt on my part to understand how Matt could be correct with just a few lingo slip ups. This would be catastrophic for both BP and the administration. I can see BP lying about that because they could go to jail, but not the government.
But Matt's not a young guy, so maybe he's suffering from dementia. That would be sad. Wacky stuff for sure.
Or brain tumor/cancer. I've wondered the same myself. By all accounts, at one point he had a magnificent mind. That magnificence is not much on display recently.
At the risk of breaching protocol, here are some tangentially related thoughts from another thread:
I would urge you to check out the pg 16 map of the 'Initial Exploration Plan' from BP. Note the locations and distance of the two proposed wells.
Also note the interview from 60 Minutes referenced in GW's other post.
Is there any available documentation on HOW DEEP the first drill attempt went?
Then take a look at pages 24 & 25 of the mission report from the NOAA vessel Thomas Jefferson, which went to see if it could measure the quantity of oil underwater.
I am curious as to whether anyone thinks there may be a common thread here...
I am also curious to find out more, if there is documentation or press that discussed the topic, please share. I am aware of the previous drilling rig being seriously damaged by a hurricane (Ida, I think it was) -- but that was in summer/fall 2009. The drill attempt the electrical tech is talking about is implied to have occurred this year, as the process to drill the existing (though now not exactly up-to-spec) well was set back by several weeks and lots of budget overruns due to the drill failure/breakage.
I am asking if there is a scaled diagram or drawing in circulation of what it looks like. Also, as many coordinates of the wellhead as I find, they are all off from both each other and the originally proposed well locations by several (5-10) seconds in both directions, and I am just curious if there is an OFFICIAL value provided. The proposed well locations were only a few hundred feet away from each other to begin with.
As a final thought, the ONLY way to currently have a first-hand account of what is actually happening on and near the seabed of the GOM is through the feeds provided by BP. Very few in the world have the technical capacity to even GO there, and .gov has blocked access to ALL who would attempt to look. Even the NOAA research vessel tasked with trying to image the amount of oil under the water was NOT given permission to breach the 5-mile exclusion zone around the well. Think on WHERE all of the available 'objective' information about the situation is coming from.
Mako, big fan of yours on the site. I worked with Matt for several years and he is prone to apocalyptic leanings as it is his nature. However, he is a stickler for data and combing through data and likes to argue and stick with facts.
Sadly, he speaks with too many generalities. The BOP is on TV 24x7. I would like to see Matt's views of what we are witnessng, where he thinks the condensate flowing from the riser is coming from? I takes over 90 days for condensate trapped in a one mile long riser to disperse?
I hope Matt is wrong but I do worry that all of his hard work and diligence in defining the peak oil argument will not be discredited. He is sounding a bit loony and again I like and respect the guy and worked with him.
We shall see.
His conclusion that lead to the Peak Oil argument are as full of crap as this revelation.
I don't know what the cleanup costs will be, certainly huge, but so far the beach damage has been relatively modest compared to what I thought would have happened by now. It is not over, not by a long shot. but if it does not get a great deal worse on the beaches I believe BP will survive it.
Gee, genius, think millions of gallons of Correxit might have had a role in *now pay attention here* thoroughly dispersing the oil, keeping it suspended underwater, and therefore, preventing it from washing up on shore in greater quantities? Ya know, just because the oil isn't washing up on shore in massive quantities doesn't mean it's not out there - somewhere. In fact, one might (and this is a real stretch here) argue that BP actually went out of its way to unleash millions of gallons of Correxit on the GoM to placate self-deluding twits like you who swallowed the illusion that "things weren't so bad" hook, line and sinker. I'm sure your a big fan of Correxit and all, attributing mythical properties to that magic elixir which has absolutely no unintended side-effects, so no biggie, right?
And while we're on the topic of what you "thought" might have happened, perhaps you wouldn't mind providing a link to your own body of work/research in deep-sea exploration/deep-sea drilling, oceanography or any other pertinent area of expertise wherein the rest of us might be convinced to assign a greater degree of credibility to your posts, which honestly, seem to be expressly intended to contradict Simmons regardless of the content of his message. Could Simmons be a crackpot? Absolutely. Have you proved yourself to be anything other than a malcontent (and Big Oil Lackey) with a bone to pick where Simmons is concerned? Nope, not really. Otherwise, what say we give it a few years before giving the all clear on the ecological catastrophe front. But yes, with millions of people like you out there, I'm sure BP's future is assured . . . unfortunately.
Have you proved yourself to be anything other than a malcontent (and Big Oil Lackey) ...
He has to those who actually know the math and science. His talk is incoherant rambling to those who don't know the math and science, as such talk always is.
Are you claiming in your post above that the dispersed oil in the deep-water plumes will one day wash up on the beaches and foul them the way the heavy crude coming ashore on the surface has? It sounds like that is what you are claiming. If you are not, then Augustus' point about the beaches stands. He was discussing what he thought the damage to the beaches would be. He was not discussing what he thought the universal damage of the blowout would be.
Ummmmm - what math and science? I've seen nothing of math and science thus far. In fact, I've seen very little math and science from either side of this debate. But by all means, Richard, show me the "math and science". Or better yet, direct me to Augustus' math as it directly pertains to this spill. I'm not half bad at either, so lemme have it . . .
Oh, and Richard, I'm relatively blunt so just where did you gather that I was claiming that dispersed oil was anything but concealed with Correxit and very much intended to remain that way.
I've seen nothing of math and science thus far.
Yes, you have seen it. You maybe havn't recognized it.
pigpen - all that you say about Matt may have been true at one time. He is no longer a stickler for data and arguing with facts. He is making shit up and screaming it as loudly as possible for reasons that should be clear. (a - he is short BP; b - he is trying to get attention for his new business; 3 - both of the above, take your pick).
He has consistently made repeated forceful accusations that physically cannot be true. These facts are know at the most basic levels of the industry. They include "60,000 psi at the wellhead" (then of course it went higher, I've explained repeatedly that the wellhead pressure could never have physically exceeded 14,000 psi); "the casing blew out of the well" (we have seen pictures of drillpipe in the riser, this means the casing cannot have blown out); the BOP is gone (we have video right now of the Cap sitting on the BOP, we have video of the massive flow of oil coming out of the BOP as the cap was being placed on it); "lakes of oil at the bottom of the ocean" and now "all this was condensate from the riser".
These are not "semantics" - these are PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITIES and an "oil industry expert" would know them.
gasmiinder, I am amazed msnbc and ratigan or bloomberg and their bevy of hosts have NOT harped upon any of the issues you have mentioned. they are too obvious even for a non energy person to ask.
he is no longer working on facts and it smells like a vendetta against BP whether it is bc he is short some stock or conflicted with his new venture. I do know one thing he is an oilfield service guy and from the beginning he has been defending transocean (wrongly or rightly I have no idea and no dog in the hunt).
it is sad to see him spouting off like a madman who lost his medication. there is a reason his firm that bears his name has distanced themselves from him. i would not be surprised if they rebranded after this stunt.
in a word embarrassing
I will give him credit for defending TransOcean, it is clear from the publicly available data that the cause of this disaster was BP. Completely, utterly, only, and without question.
A good comparison, for case law, EPA regulations, Clean Water Act remediation, publicity, public backlash, politicians being bought and sold etc, might be
the General Electric cleanup on the lower Hudson River over the last 25+ years.
It's been going on since before I was born, it has been in court many many times, the EPA has completely failed and helped GE cover up the problems, and the remediation efforts were purposefully made to fail and was covered up by the Federal government.
http://www.cleanupge.org/gemisdeeds.html
http://www.riverkeeper.org/campaigns/stop-polluters/pcbs/
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/answers-about-dredging-in-t...
http://onhudson.typepad.com/onhudsoncom/2010/07/general-electric-loses-s...
See y'all at my place!
Only question is will gulp kill wal-marts be able to get rid of all body bags and corpse handling gloves! This goona be another big pharma pig men flu scare where 1/4 billion in flu shots thrown away expired!! black plugue rat bastards bp & big pharma!! Stealing all of AmeriCON'ds cheese!!
My most sincere apologies, in the top 6 feet of the gulf, the ratio is closer to one part per ten million. Do you feel better?
If you can't think, don't bother those of us who can.
The following blog post gives the perfect setting for the Geo Wash / Matt Simmons form of analysis
Reading for Comprehension
http://geophysics.vox.com/library/post/reading-for-comprehension.html
<snip>
Unfortunately, there are a number of people who do use such press releases as research sources; worse, they use them as primary sources [4]. As a result, a game of “Science Telephone” ensues [5]. And with each round of the game, the distortion only increases.
For an example, consider this report on Helium: Doomsday: How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a 'world-killing' event
Like the start? It is a dead giveaway of the “If it bleeds, it leads” school of journalism.
“251 million years ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions, poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all life on Earth. Experts agree that what is known as the Permian extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the world.”
This paragraph is a “truth sandwich”; in between the distortions, there is a layer of truth. The Permian extinction event was probably the most extensive extinction event that ever happened; over 95% of the marine species known to have lived at the time [6] went extinct. However, there is only partial evidence for a massive methane eruption, much less one big enough to have caused a mass extinction event. Currently, there are several theories, all of which are equally well-supported and so equally likely.
<snip>
Matt Simmons has gone insane. He said the other day that "the well bore is wide open, there's no well casing, there's no blow out preventer, just gushing oil unrestrained" He further added that there is "an ocean of oil, fifty miles square and a 1/2 mile deep under the GOM"
Uh, earth to Matt Simmons, they capped the BOP as a temporary fix, the pressures are holding, and the relief well will be ready for mud in 1-1/2 weeks.
Such nonsense
I must be insane, too. How could I doubt what BP says and shows right there on there live video screen? Of course the relief well idea makes sense, just like using a dispersant made sense. Capping the one spot where the oil can be captured has been revealing, so that continues to make sense, as well. What's wrong with us truthers? We're so wacky.
Seriously, if what Matt Simmons said were true, do you not think that there would be at least one other credible person backing him up publicly? What he is saying, if true, would be so important and so devestating that there would be no way to keep it hidden.
As an aside, there is no way that the gusher we watched on video for the past 60 days was "methane gas condensate vaporising from the riser pipe". That is just beyond silly, as any methane in the riser would have emptied (i.e. stopped flowing) within minutes, never mind days, after the accident.
We're both, like, are you serious? to each other. Funny.
Anyhow, I would never base the validity of an idea on its media coverage. I mean, I've never gotten used to the idea that people actually believe in Jesus, yet you can't get elected in this country unless you at least pretend to. So a country of people telling each other that there is no oil, does not move me one way or the other. I still want to find out the truth, regardless of what others believe. 911 was years ago and the talking heads are still preaching the old lies. Why should I put any weight into that?
Truthers - birthers - gulfers
It all requires exactly the same mindset.
Well, if you've discovered the secret, please share. Tell me all about my mindset.
(Though I've never really cared where Obama was born. This was once a country of immigrants. Why should it matter?)
I have no idea what your mindset is. All three of the beliefs I mention require a person be so committed to a viewpoint that they will ignore the straightforward, reasonable, reality based explanations and instead cling to very complicated scenarios rooted first and foremost in "it was all a massive fake put to together just to fool us all".
Okay, kewl. I can't take offense since I don't ascribe to that viewpoint.
And I suppose that the Iraq´s weapons of mass destruction were merely misplaced or buried under the sand. Gee, Bush would have NEVER lied about that.
Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance. Get your head out of your ass.
Geo Wash is on his team. Gordon_Gekko is a firm supporter. Money may be involved. But don't you consider these two credible anymore?
Agreed, GW is the only one supporting this guy and he has proven not to be credible. There is a huge protest in Lafayette, LA- they are getting killed by Pres. B.O.'s policies/ moritorium.
does this bozo even have a command-center to serve as a basis for the release of photographic dramatizations?
Well its better to be paranoid than complacent.....so will pay attention to what he is saying. Being complacent is what got us the finanical crisis.....
There are some intersting pointers: If everything is good, why are BP and govt. controlling media access?
Right, and if the order is to protect us, why aren't cleanup crews ordered to wear protective gear? But, we're the crazy ones...
Probably one of the best ways to assess the seriousness of the ongoing BP, GoM, oil catastrophe is to periodically look in on what the cameras reveal.
Over the last several weeks, I've gone from one source of the BP live feeds to another because they seem to vary in quality and become less reliable over time. Currently, the "go to" source for video feeds for me is:
http://www.jtnog.org/
That one has been fairly reliable and has the further advantage of showing multiple cameras at once, something that not all feeds will do.
One can also do a little bit of coordination between the feeds and the location of the ROVs by following the movement of the ships at the location, including the ROVs:
http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/default.aspx?zoom=10&mmsi=636014465¢erx=-88.23762¢ery=28.56287#
Over the last few days, the Skandi Rov cameras have shown a number of "seepage" events and the main cap has become progressively more murky, seemingly indicating seepage of gas and oil from the cap.
IMHO, things look tenuous at best, a comment that is based solely upon what can be observed from time to time. The degree of seepage and the evidence of leakage appears to me to be increasing rather than decreasing.
The simple fact that that the administration and bp have a 100% monopoly on all news that is coming from the gulf is certainly reason for concern. Is what we are watching on the live feeds everyday fact or a very well orchestrated coverup. Like so many other things in our history, the truth may never be known.
In the absence of independently verifiable sources, how do you even know what you are seeing on the feeds is actually "live"? Or even from the BP well? I don't have reason to doubt that it is...but I also think BP/Govt have VERY strong incentives not to exert extreme control over the newsflow.
Tape-delay wouldn't surprise me; neither would a "body double" well to which they could cut over to if the current cap has a catastrophic failure...
Yes how DO you know.........
The planes were robot controlled........the passengers spirited away. An administration that couldn't keep perfectly legal financial traces secret killed 3000 people and blew up two cities and kept it all perfectly quite.
The birth certificate is fake . . . . they put announcements in the Honolulu paper because they knew he'd run for president someday . . . because he's really programmed to destroy us all............
OH MY - I'm sorry. We were discussing fake video feeds and manipulated oil flows and multi-ton equipment staged in secret to make convince us . . . . and the new super secret oil that is heavier than water along with the chemicals more toxic that raw plutonium.....
It all makes sense if your "theory" is more important that THINKING.
It is all being filmed in a studio. Simmons has a secret source who told him where it is. That is what he is holding over them to keep them from actually challenging him directly. You are probably correct on the multiple wells. That is how BP has spent all that money in such a short time. Maybe they need eight, one for each ROV.
> Like so many other things in our history, the truth may never be known.
Oh, in this case it will. Just wait for the next major hurricane.
Of course oil isn't spilling onto the coast in droves. With the Valdez you had an oil tanker on the surface burst open, but here we have a gusher deep underwater. Apparently the dispersants are actually intended to sink the oil, rather than disperse it, meaning what BP is really doing is hiding the oil and thus hiding the potential damage to the environment in a way that helps BP's bottom line.
Here is the article:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/07/20-0
This would all change with a strong hurricane, however. It is quite likely from what I've read that this spill is at least ten times worse than Valdez going by some of the higher estimates. If we go by the official Valdez figure it's at least 30 times greater. How that translates into reality depends on how much latitude courts are willing to give BP. Exxon was able to damages greatly reduced from over $5 billion to less than $1 billion, which only happened after a court made them pay for the decade-long delay in payments that occurred during the appeal process.
Had the damages stuck the Valdez spill would have meant a total of $8 billion paid out over at most 750,000 barrles of oil, with most citing 250,000. It seems BP's plan to avoid a proportionate payout is to get the oil deep under the Gulf so no one can know how much damage has actually been done.
JFk, 9/11 and now the BP/Govt GoM coverup. If the Govt decides the well is capped, then its capped. There will be multiple reports/ commissions to prove its was capped and there is no health hazard. If the BOP/casing did blow out, the CIA has arranged for the pieces to be picked and destoyed. BP will never pay for all the cleanup because the UK is now purchasing more Treasuries as China/Japan reduce holding. Thats the deal, get over it. BTW get out of the GoM area if possible because it is bad for your family's health.
I would like BP & the Federal Government to refute Simmon's contentions. The whole problem is they have turned he Gulf into a Police State and aren't answering to The People...
They have refuted his claims. they are telling you at each briefing what the leak rate is. They have not found any seabed leaks from this well. What more is there to refute?
His theory that the well casing blew out of the well and two sections were left in the 5 floor structure. So the happy film of the cap on the blow-out preventer is a meaningless side-show. Which would mean the Federal Government you trust so completely is lying to you...I know, that must be a "sit-down" moment for you. Maybe you can read the story while you sit and ponder this terrible possibility.
Do you think then that Simmons is naive about his government? I ask because on King World News recently, he said BP is stuck in a lie that has gotten out of control but that the government officials were just allowing BP to manipulate them, basically. I'm not so sure. But he's the one talking to many of them, and I'm even further removed from top officials so how would I know. I originally suspected BP was set up by Haliburton and co., but these days I am feeling so in the dark that I almost don't even have an opinion. Naturally, this defaults me to being skeptical, at least.
Maybe. Or BP was slow to admit the truth and the Goverment and then they made a corrupt decision aout how to handle that reality? e.g. 1) It was political poison to admit they had been duped to the point of no return, or 2) A BP failure would threaten the financial system...think a giant Enron party to something like $1 trillion of derivatives. Who knows. But I'm with you...I don't trust the information anymore.
There are pictures of drillpipe in the riser. They've been posted here at ZH. The drillpipe would have been INSIDE the casing. In order for the casing to have "blown out" of the wellbore 13,000 feet of 9 5/8 by 7" tapered steel pipe would have had to blow past the 4 1/5" drillpipe while leaving it in the riser. It would also have been quite difficult for 13,000 (2 1/2 miles) of steel pipe to be 'hidden'.
There is nothing to refute. He is nuts and he is speaking specifically to confuse the uninformed.
Where does he say that 13 thousand feet of a drillpipe blew straight up? I missed that one.
Simmons claims that the well is an open hole down to the oil bed. No casing, no piping. If there had once been casing down to the oil bed and it is no longer there, where is it now and how did it get there? I'm not trying to be nasty to you, but this is what is meant when the other posters talking about thinking, or the lack of same. Take what Simmons did say, and then think through the rest. Those who know the math and science of the oil field let that information inform their thinking. That informed thinking allows them to set bounds on what could happen, as measured against what the speculators claim might have happened.
If there was casing there once, which Simmons agrees there was, and it is not there now, which Simmons claims is the case, is there any other way for the casing to get out of the hole other than straight up?
The well casing is below the wellhead. The BOP sits on top of the wellhead. It was leaking and there is quite a bit of video showing it. the new BOP stack is on top of the old one. It is all right where it is supposed to be. Matt Smmons is the meaningless side-show. I'm not sure how you are able to function if you are involved in anything requiring logical thought.
Cognitive Dissonance read the briefing transcripts last night and it made her "feel better". Who knows, maybe it would work for the ZH readership at large.
Matt is not the first to report on this. There was a very credible article (in my opinion) in the publication called the Oil Drum with similiar analysis about the well casing being compromised down hole and we've been hearing for some time about leakage from the seabed including from one Florida Senator going back over a month ago. Here it the Oil Drum article:
A grim technical view on the BP Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_60341.shtml
Editor's Note: This is the most credible report/analyis we have read to date about what is really happening with what could turn out to be the worst environmental disaster in all of human history. The editor of The Oil Drum website provides an introduction to the report.
- Les Blough, Editor
What follows is a comment from a The Oil Drum reader. To read what The Oil Drum staff members are saying about the Deepwater Horizon Spill, please visit the front page. (Were the US government and BP more forthcoming with information and details, the situation would not be giving rise to so much speculation about what is actually going on in the Gulf. This should be run more like Mission Control at NASA than an exclusive country club function--it is a public matter--transparency, now!)
- Oil Drum Editor
OK let's get real about the GOM oil flow. There doesn't really seem to be much info on TOD that furthers more complete understanding of what's really happening in the GOM.
As you have probably seen and maybe feel yourselves, there are several things that do not appear to make sense regarding the actions of attack against the well. Don't feel bad, there is much that doesn't make sense even to professionals unless you take into account some important variables that we are not being told about. There seems to me to be a reluctance to face what cannot be termed anything less than grim circumstances in my opinion. There certainly is a reluctance to inform us regular people and all we have really gotten is a few dots here and there...
First of all...set aside all your thoughts of plugging the well and stopping it from blowing out oil using any method from the top down. Plugs, big valves to just shut it off, pinching the pipe closed, installing a new bop or lmrp, shooting any epoxy in it, top kills with mud etc etc etc....forget that, it won't be happening..it's done and over. In fact actually opening up the well at the subsea source and allowing it to gush more is not only exactly what has happened, it was probably necessary, or so they think anyway.
So you have to ask WHY? Why make it worse?...there really can only be one answer and that answer does not bode well for all of us. It's really an inescapable conclusion at this point, unless you want to believe that every Oil and Gas professional involved suddenly just forgot everything they know or woke up one morning and drank a few big cups of stupid and got assigned to directing the response to this catastrophe. Nothing makes sense unless you take this into account, but after you do...you will see the "sense" behind what has happened and what is happening. That conclusion is this:
The well bore structure is compromised "Down hole".
That is something which is a "Worst nightmare" conclusion to reach. While many have been saying this for some time as with any complex disaster of this proportion many have "said" a lot of things with no real sound reasons or evidence for jumping to such conclusions, well this time it appears that they may have jumped into the right place...
TOP KILL - FAILS:
This was probably our best and only chance to kill this well from the top down. This "kill mud" is a tried and true method of killing wells and usually has a very good chance of success. The depth of this well presented some logistical challenges, but it really should not of presented any functional obstructions. The pumping capacity was there and it would have worked, should have worked, but it didn't.
It didn't work, but it did create evidence of what is really happening. First of all the method used in this particular top kill made no sense, did not follow the standard operating procedure used to kill many other wells and in fact for the most part was completely contrary to the procedure which would have given it any real chance of working.
When a well is "Killed" using this method heavy drill fluid "Mud" is pumped at high volume and pressure into a leaking well. The leaks are "behind" the point of access where the mud is fired in, in this case the "choke and Kill lines" which are at the very bottom of the BOP (Blow Out Preventer) The heavy fluid gathers in the "behind" portion of the leaking well assembly, while some will leak out, it very quickly overtakes the flow of oil and only the heavier mud will leak out. Once that "solid" flow of mud is established at the leak "behind" the well, the mud pumps increase pressure and begin to overtake the pressure of the oil deposit. The mud is established in a solid column that is driven downward by the now stronger pumps. The heavy mud will create a solid column that is so heavy that the oil deposit can no longer push it up, shut off the pumps...the well is killed...it can no longer flow.
Usually this will happen fairly quickly, in fact for it to work at all...it must happen quickly. There is no "trickle some mud in" because that is not how a top kill works. The flowing oil will just flush out the trickle and a solid column will never be established. Yet what we were told was "It will take days to know whether it worked"...."Top kill might take 48 hours to complete"...the only way it could take days is if BP intended to do some "test fires" to test integrity of the entire system. The actual "kill" can only take hours by nature because it must happen fairly rapidly. It also increases strain on the "behind" portion and in this instance we all know that what remained was fragile at best.
Early that afternoon we saw a massive flow burst out of the riser "plume" area. This was the first test fire of high pressure mud injection. Later on same day we saw a greatly increased flow out of the kink leaks, this was mostly mud at that time as the kill mud is tanish color due to the high amount of Barite which is added to it to weight it and Barite is a white powder.
We later learned the pumping was shut down at midnight, we weren't told about that until almost 16 hours later, but by then...I'm sure BP had learned the worst. The mud they were pumping in was not only leaking out the "behind" leaks...it was leaking out of someplace forward...and since they were not even near being able to pump mud into the deposit itself, because the well would be dead long before...and the oil was still coming up, there could only be one conclusion...the wells casings were ruptured and it was leaking "down hole"
They tried the "Junk shot"...the "bridging materials" which also failed and likely made things worse in regards to the ruptured well casings.
80 Barrels per minute is over 200,000 gallons per hour, over 115,000 barrels per day...did we seen an increase over and above what was already leaking out of 115k bpd?....we did not...it would have been a massive increase in order of multiples and this did not happen.
Try finding THAT quote around...it's been scrubbed...here's a cached copy of a quote.
Later we found out that Allen had no idea what was really going on and had been "Unavailable all day"
So what we had was BP running out of 50,000 barrels of mud in a very short period of time. An amount far and above what they deemed necessary to kill the well. Shutting down pumping 16 hours before telling anyone, including the president. We were never really given a clear reason why "Top Kill" failed, just that it couldn't overcome the well.
There is only one article anywhere that says anything else about it at this time of writing...and it's a relatively obscure article from the Wall Street Journal "online" citing an unnamed source.
Wall Street Journal On-line
WASHINGTON—BP PLC has concluded that its "top-kill" attempt last week to seal its broken well in the Gulf of
Mexico may have failed due to a malfunctioning disk inside the well about 1,000 feet below the ocean floor.
The disk, part of the subsea safety infrastructure, may have ruptured during the surge of oil and gas up the well on April 20 that led to the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, BP officials said. The rig sank two days later, triggering a leak that has since become the worst in U.S. history.
The broken disk may have prevented the heavy drilling mud injected into the well last week from getting far enough down the well to overcome the pressure from the escaping oil and gas, people familiar with BP's findings said. They said much of the drilling mud may also have escaped from the well into the rock formation outside the wellbore.
As a result, BP wasn't able to get sufficient pressure to keep the oil and gas at bay. If they had been able to build up sufficient pressure, the company had hoped to pump in cement and seal off the well. The effort was deemed a failure on Saturday.
BP started the top-kill effort Wednesday afternoon, shooting heavy drilling fluids into the broken valve known as a blowout preventer. The mud was driven by a 30,000 horsepower pump installed on a ship at the surface. But it was clear from the start that a lot of the "kill mud" was leaking out instead of going down into the well."
There are some inconsistencies with this article.
There are no "Disks" or "Subsea safety structure" 1,000 feet below the sea floor, all that is there is well bore. There is nothing that can allow the mud or oil to "escape" into the rock formation outside the well bore except the well, because it is the only thing there.
All the actions and few tid bits of information all lead to one inescapable conclusion. The well pipes below the sea floor are broken and leaking. Now you have some real data of how BP's actions are evidence of that, as well as some murky statement from "BP officials" confirming the same.
I took some time to go into a bit of detail concerning the failure of Top Kill because this was a significant event. To those of us outside the real inside loop, yet still fairly knowledgeable, it was a major confirmation of what many feared. That the system below the sea floor has serious failures of varying magnitude in the complicated chain, and it is breaking down and it will continue to.
What does this mean?
It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot...the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?...the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle?...it doesn't leak so bad, you close the nozzle?...it leaks real bad, same dynamics. It is why they sawed the riser off...or tried to anyway...but they clipped it off, to relieve pressure on the leaks "down hole". I'm sure there was a bit of panic time after they crimp/pinched off the large riser pipe and the Diamond wire saw got stuck and failed...because that crimp diverted pressure and flow to the rupture down below.
Contrary to what most of us would think as logical to stop the oil mess, actually opening up the gushing well and making it gush more became direction BP took after confirming that there was a leak. In fact if you note their actions, that should become clear. They have shifted from stopping or restricting the gusher to opening it up and catching it. This only makes sense if they want to relieve pressure at the leak hidden down below the seabed.....and that sort of leak is one of the most dangerous and potentially damaging kind of leak there could be. It is also inaccessible which compounds our problems. There is no way to stop that leak from above, all they can do is relieve the pressure on it and the only way to do that right now is to open up the nozzle above and gush more oil into the gulf and hopefully catch it, which they have done, they just neglected to tell us why, gee thanks.
A down hole leak is dangerous and damaging for several reasons.
There will be erosion throughout the entire beat up, beat on and beat down remainder of the "system" including that inaccessible leak. The same erosion I spoke about in the first post is still present and has never stopped, cannot be stopped, is impossible to stop and will always be present in and acting on anything that is left which has crude oil "Product" rushing through it. There are abrasives still present, swirling flow will create hot spots of wear and this erosion is relentless and will always be present until eventually it wears away enough material to break it's way out. It will slowly eat the bop away especially at the now pinched off riser head and it will flow more and more. Perhaps BP can outrun or keep up with that out flow with various suckage methods for a period of time, but eventually the well will win that race, just how long that race will be?...no one really knows....However now?...there are other problems that a down hole leak will and must produce that will compound this already bad situation.
This down hole leak will undermine the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area. It also weakens the only thing holding up the massive Blow Out Preventer's immense bulk of 450 tons. In fact?...we are beginning to the results of the well's total integrity beginning to fail due to the undermining being caused by the leaking well bore.
The first layer of the sea floor in the gulf is mostly lose material of sand and silt. It doesn't hold up anything and isn't meant to, what holds the entire subsea system of the Bop in place is the well itself. The very large steel connectors of the initial well head "spud" stabbed in to the sea floor. The Bop literally sits on top of the pipe and never touches the sea bed, it wouldn't do anything in way of support if it did. After several tens of feet the seabed does begin to support the well connection laterally (side to side) you couldn't put a 450 ton piece of machinery on top of a 100' tall pipe "in the air" and subject it to the side loads caused by the ocean currents and expect it not to bend over...unless that pipe was very much larger than the machine itself, which you all can see it is not. The well's piping in comparison is actually very much smaller than the Blow Out Preventer and strong as it may be, it relies on some support from the seabed to function and not literally fall over...and it is now showing signs of doing just that....falling over.
If you have been watching the live feed cams you may have noticed that some of the ROVs are using an inclinometer...and inclinometer is an instrument that measures "Incline" or tilt. The BOP is not supposed to be tilting...and after the riser clip off operation it has begun to...
This is not the only problem that occurs due to erosion of the outer area of the well casings. The way a well casing assembly functions it that it is an assembly of different sized "tubes" that decrease in size as they go down. These tubes have a connection to each other that is not unlike a click or snap together locking action. After a certain length is assembled they are cemented around the ouside to the earth that the more rough drill hole is bored through in the well making process. A very well put together and simply explained process of "How to drill a deep water oil well" is available here.
The well bore casings rely on the support that is created by the cementing phase of well construction. Just like if you have many hands holding a pipe up you could put some weight on the top and the many hands could hold the pipe and the weight on top easily...but if there were no hands gripping and holding the pipe?...all the weight must be held up by the pipe alone. The series of connections between the sections of casings are not designed to hold up the immense weight of the BOP without all the "hands" that the cementing provides and they will eventually buckle and fail when stressed beyond their design limits.
These are clear and present dangers to the battered subsea safety structure (bop and lmrp) which is the only loose cork on this well we have left. The immediate (first 1,000 feet) of well structure that remains is now also undoubtedly compromised. However.....as bad as that is?...it is far from the only possible problems with this very problematic well. There were ongoing troubles with the entire process during the drilling of this well. There were also many comprises made by BP IMO which may have resulted in an overall weakened structure of the entire well system all the way to the bottom plug which is over 12,000 feet deep. Problems with the cementing procedure which was done by Haliburton and was deemed as “was against our best practices.” by a Haliburton employee on April 1st weeks before the well blew out. There is much more and I won't go into detail right now concerning the lower end of the well and the troubles encountered during the whole creation of this well and earlier "Well control" situations that were revieled in various internal BP e-mails. I will add several links to those documents and quotes from them below and for now, address the issues concerning the upper portion of the well and the region of the sea floor.
What is likely to happen now?
Well...none of what is likely to happen is good, in fact...it's about as bad as it gets. I am convinced the erosion and compromising of the entire system is accelerating and attacking more key structural areas of the well, the blow out preventer and surrounding strata holding it all up and together. This is evidenced by the tilt of the blow out preventer and the erosion which has exposed the well head connection. What eventually will happen is that the blow out preventer will literally tip over if they do not run supports to it as the currents push on it. I suspect they will run those supports as cables tied to anchors very soon, if they don't, they are inviting disaster that much sooner.
Eventually even that will be futile as the well casings cannot support the weight of the massive system above with out the cement bond to the earth and that bond is being eroded away. When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP will collapse the well. If and when you begin to see oil and gas coming up around the well area from under the BOP? or the area around the well head connection and casing sinking more and more rapidly? ...it won't be too long after that the entire system fails. BP must be aware of this, they are mapping the sea floor sonically and that is not a mere exercise. Our Gov't must be well aware too, they just are not telling us.
All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit...after that, it goes into the realm of "the worst things you can think of." The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out...as I said...all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn't any "cap dome" or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?....is the only real chance we have left to stop it all.
It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo.
We are not even 2 months into it, barely half way by even optimistic estimates. The damage done by the leaked oil now is virtually immeasurable already and it will not get better, it can only get worse. No matter how much they can collect, there will still be thousands and thousands of gallons leaking out every minute, every hour of every day. We have 2 months left before the relief wells are even near in position and set up to take a kill shot and that is being optimistic as I said.
Over the next 2 months the mechanical situation also cannot improve, it can only get worse, getting better is an impossibility. While they may make some gains on collecting the leaked oil, the structural situation cannot heal itself. It will continue to erode and flow out more oil and eventually the inevitable collapse which cannot be stopped will happen. It is only a simple matter of who can "get there first"...us or the well.
We can only hope the race against that eventuality is one we can win, but my assessment I am sad to say is that we will not.
The system will collapse or fail substantially before we reach the finish line ahead of the well and the worst is yet to come.
Sorry to bring you that news, I know it is grim, but that is the way I see it....I sincerely hope I am wrong.
We need to prepare for the possibility of this blow out sending more oil into the gulf per week then what we already have now, because that is what a collapse of the system will cause. All the collection efforts that have captured oil will be erased in short order. The magnitude of this disaster will increase exponentially by the time we can do anything to halt it and our odds of actually even being able to halt it will go down.
The magnitude and impact of this disaster will eclipse anything we have known in our life times if the worst or even near worst happens...
We are seeing the puny forces of man vs the awesome forces of nature.
We are going to need some luck and a lot of effort to win...
and if nature decides we ought to lose, we will....
Reference materials
Hafle said he made several changes to casing designs in the last few days before the well blew, including the addition of the two casing liners that weren't part of the original well design because of problems where the earthen sides of the well were "ballooning." He also worked with Halliburton engineers to design a plan for sealing the well casings with cement.What could have happened
Confidential Treatment Requested BP-HZN-CEC 018892
Confidential
Additional References
Doug R. (the author) - I used to cover the energy business (oil, gas and alternative) here in Texas, and the few experts in the oil field -- including geologists, chemists, etc. -- able or willing to even speak of this BP event told me early on that it is likely the entire reserve will bleed out. Unfortunately none of them could say with any certainty just how much oil is in the reserve in question because, for one thing, the oil industry and secrecy have always been synonymous. According to BP data from about five years ago, there are four separate reservoirs containing a total of 2.5 billion barrels (barrels not gallons). One of the reservoirs has 1.5 billion barrels. I saw an earlier post here quoting an Anadarko Petroleum report which set the total amount at 2.3 billion barrels. One New York Times article put it at 2 billion barrels.
If the BP data correctly or honestly identified four separate reservoirs then a bleed-out might gush less than 2 to 2.5 billion barrels unless the walls -- as it were -- fracture or partially collapse. I am hearing the same dark rumors which suggest fracturing and a complete bleed-out are already underway. Rumors also suggest a massive collapse of the Gulf floor itself is in the making. They are just rumors but it is time for geologists or related experts to end their deafening silence and speak to these possibilities.
All oilmen lie about everything. The stories one hears about the extent to which they will protect themselves are all understatements. BP employees are already taking The Fifth before grand juries, and attorneys are laying a path for company executives to make a run for it.
The stuff from dougR has been chopped into trash by others on the oil drum.
Read this before you get sucked into his theories:
Reading for comprehensionhttp://geophysics.vox.com/library/post/reading-for-comprehension.html
Thanks for sharing this Duffminster. I ahve no idea is all you highlight is true, but it provides a lot of food for thought. I could not understand how it could take the combined resources of BP and U.S. Industry THREE MONTHS to build an effective cap. Your work suggests they didn't want to; until most hope was lost, and then it was for appearance.
What do we know for sure about the status of the relief wells? If this BAD case is correct could they still work far enough down what is left of the well?
Thanks again.
What we know about the relief wells is that BP stated at the begining that they would be the most likely way the gusher would be controlled. At the beginning, they stated it would not be until mid-August at the earliest that the relief wells would intercept the main well. In the meantime, they tried different things rather than simply sitting on their hands. They did not know, at the beginning, that the top of the well would survive any attempt to unscrew the bolts and place something different on top of the flange. Various things they did eventually gave them the confidence to try it. Putting the cap on worked - so it becomes tempting to say they should have done this months ago. But they didn't know months ago what they know now that gave them the confidence to put the cap on.
Problem-solving is like that. You learn a little, then advance. Then you learn a little more, and advance again. And so on, until you reach a solution, or don't.
Unbelievable.
The rate at which Simmons is spewing bullshit exceeds the rate at which the riser was spewing oil.
He is talking his book--nothing more, nothing less.
I can only imagine the shitstorm we'd see on ZH if major media outlets gave free reign to Lloyd Blankfein to talk the Goldman book...LOL! Yet some of you fuck-tards lap this shit up simply because it fits within your confirmation bias.
Pull your heads out of your asses, morons. Simmons is a tout, just like CNBC, Goldman, and virtually every other talking head on tv these days.
BP has shut in the well now for a few days. Of course Simmons disputes this and claims that there is still 100,000 bopd comming from "the other well" somewhere out there that he won't disclose where it is. Why be secretive Matt? His well is still flowing, I suppose.
Anyway, this is the report on slicks:
Gulf boats having trouble finding any oil: US official
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Gulf_boats_having_trouble_finding_a_07212010.html
Some 750 boats drafted in to scoop up oil from the Gulf of Mexico are having "trouble" finding any crude in the sea, a top US official said Wednesday, almost a week after a busted well was capped.
"We are starting to have trouble finding oil," US pointman Admiral Thad Allen, who is in charge of handling the government's response, told reporters.
The boats, which have been drafted in to skim oil off the surface of the Gulf, are "really having to search for the oil in some cases" around the area of the capped well, he added.
That was just about the most shady article I've read today.
That's because Corexit has broken up the oil plumes into smaller clumps that have sunk - out of sight, out of mind!
None of us can ever fully escape confirmation bias. You seem to be embracing it. How well can you back up your accusations against Simmons, or are you going on something like your gut? Anybody got anything bad on Simmons? I'm really asking because I don't know and will listen.
I like that he's walking his book and shorted BP. Awesome.
When someone says something as grandiloquetly stupid as "We have killed the Gulf," they cannot be taken seriously.
Simmons is short BP.
That's pretty much all you need to know.
That's it? That's all I need to know? Should I now go back to the regular programming?
I'm long gold and silver, so no one listen to me about why, nope. I'm obviously too invested to be a good source of information.
Anyone else getting in line to support one of Dubya's right-hand men (who's short BP)? God I hope Simmons is wrong. Maybe so, maybe not.
I read a lot of Matt Simmons' presentations on Peak Oil, and he seemed factually driven and presented it in a calm, rational, well-thought out manner. Whether right or wrong, time will tell, won't it?
The most recent statements indicate that either:
1)Matt had an aneurysm burst in his head, causing a stroke.
2)We are in some deep shit.
Question is, could a well blowout one mile deep result in large quantities of oil that DON'T rise to the surface, but rather reach neutral buoyancy at some deeper depth?
Also, gamma ray imaging was used to determine that there are two (2) pipes stuck in the middle of the BOP, that prevented it from closing.
Vinz
In addition to the information in message 482115, I found this information to be very interesting as well:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6753
Your credibility would be higher if you pulled up the more recent releases from the White House stating that the leak 2 miles away is not connected to the well that has just been capped.