This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
New BP Insertion Tube Isn't Working
BP's new insertion tube inside the leaking oil pipe - unfortunately -
isn't doing very much.
Specifically, the Miami Herald points
out that - according to the Coast Guard - the spill is getting worse in spite of the insertion
tube:
The
massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill is growing despite British Petroleum's
effort to siphon some of the spewing crude from its ruptured deepwater
well, the U.S. Coast Guard official leading the cleanup warned Tuesday.
BP
doubled its estimate of the amount of crude being captured by a
mile-long recovery tube to 2,000 barrels per day - but what percentage
of the spill that is remains uncertain. BP has said it thinks that 5,000
barrels of crude a day are leaking from the well, but a video made
public Tuesday after the tube was placed inside the broken pipe showed
clouds of crude oil still billowing into the sea.
Another video
provided the first public view of a second leak much nearer the runaway
well's failed blowout preventer spewing oil, too. A BP robot took that
video on Saturday and Sunday.
The Coast Guard commandant, Adm.
Thad Allen, said that despite the siphoning, the spilled oil is
spreading and now stretches from western Louisiana to Florida's Key
West. The extent of the spill was straining even the substantial
resources deployed for one of the worst ecological disasters in recent
history, he said.
Kevin Grandia explains:
Two new videos
have surface showing footage of the BP oil leak at the source 5,000 feet
down at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
These new video are
important because they show footage (if the time stamp on the video of
May 17th is correct) taken after the oil company responsible for
stopping the leak - British Petroleum (BP) - had
inserted a tube into the leaking pipe in an attempt to
siphon off some of the oil and pump it up to an awaiting ship on the
surface.
Looking at this video there remains serious question
about the exact
amount of oil that is actually flowing from the burst pipe as well
as how much is being captured by the inserted siphon:
***
Another video has also been released showing the leak from the
riser that is described on US
Senator Bill Nelson's website as video footage of the plume "after
the intervention" - you can clearly see in the video a large kink in the
riser that is spewing oil. The first half of this video is marked May
15th - the day before the insertion tube was placed in the leaking pipe.
The video then switches (at about the 2 min. 30 sec. mark) to a
close of shot of the leak time stamped the next day, May 16th after the
insertion tube was put in place:
Compare
this to similar footage posted last week:
Indeed, BP either doesn't know or
won't tell how much oil is leaking. As the Miami Herald notes:
Under
sharp questioning from Nelson and other lawmakers, Lamar McKay, the
head of BP America, said the company was focused on sealing off the
spill but couldn't offer estimates of how much oil was flowing into the
ocean.
And see this.
BP has refused to let independent scientists inspect the site so that
they could estimate the rate of the oil leak.
BP's next plan is to try to seal the leak
using heavy
drilling fluids and then cement:
BP likely
will try to shut down the well completely late this week using a
technique called “top kill,” BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles
said at a news conference Monday. The process involves
pumping heavy drilling fluids through two 3-inch lines into the blowout
preventer that sits on top of the Macondo wellhead a mile underwater.
This would first restrict the flow of oil from the well, which then
could be sealed permanently with cement.
»
- advertisements -
I visited this page first time and found it Very Good Job of acknowledgment and a marvelous source of info.........Thanks Admin!
http://www.reverse-phone-look-up.net
http://www.reverse-phone-look-up.net/phone-lookup/
http://www.taipanpublishinggroup.com/taipan-daily-051910.html
Bit of background on the events leading up annddd... if there's criminal charges there is no limit on damages.
If I understand this right, Treme should have Antione Baptiste hacking his lungs out in about five more years.
"Fuck you, you fucking fucks" will be take on a whole new meaning.
I had previously contacted www.ecofuel.com regarding the conversion of my 2007 Chrysler 300c, which they listed on their site (http://www.ecofuel.com/ConversionsMakeYear.aspx?make=Chrysler). Well, almost. I remember reading that every vehicle conversion plan has to be approved by the EPA at a significant cost (couple hundred thousand?).
They informed me that they are a vendor of the technology and instead directed me to a list of shops that use their products (http://www.ecofuel.com/ServiceCenters.aspx).
Texas had no vendors, but Oklahoma just to the north did. Depending on your state, you might be able to sop some otherwise pissed away tax dollars from the state regarding various clean energy initiatives <stares at California>.
I might also direct you to a semi-recent TOD post on CNG (http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5615) which is where i get my hard core fossil fuel science. I highly recommend the Tech Talk series.
Along your comments, my GF on my mom's side installed butane conversions for vehicles after WW2. This is not, nor never has been, a technology problem. A factory could easily provide a bi-fuel CNG option to any vehicle line at a much lesser cost. If you price out 127 cubic feet == gallon of gas, I think this would be a hell of a marketing campaign. A NatGas compressor in the garage of a customer with a residential line is trivial when the spread between NatGas and Gas is 100% in some places.
Americans are being fleeced.
This is my basic thesis on energy independance. Numbers may float depending. Anyone that can school me on my foolishness, please do so constructively with basic math/common sense. I am all ears.
God bless ZH should they decide to tar-and-feather me in the public forum for my tom foolery or better yet validate the basic concept/math. I am here to learn, not for a hug. This humility is a basic premise of any engineering.
That said, reality is, our elite prefer to keep us on the oil diet.
Do your homework, price a conversion for your vehicle (or a readily available vehicle of an inlaw/family member) and do what makes sense for you. Some vehicles might be MUCH cheaper than others that might otherwise appear equivalent.
And the shit in the gulf looks really, really bad to me. The only option is drilling mud, and that is just a question of flow. If it doesnt work, they are lying on an order of magnitude.
To quantify, I recall reading that a well head can support the inflow of 300 barrels of mud per minute. In order to outrun the well, the well has to flow LESS than 300 barrels per minute. This is a simplification because the weight of the mud matters as does many other variables at the depth/pressure.
Regardless, ya'll captcha before you post, so enough said.
Cooter
Fascinating eh? Clearly a crime scene, but on a scale that needs 20-30 million dollars a day to cover up. Imagine the crime itself. An ongoing crime scene at that.
Said it on another thread earlier, but the scale of general callousness (in all fields, financial, health-care, war, war-crimes, atrocities, all being committed by govt. and their sponsors) should make it abundantly clear to us that they (the big THEY) know that a game changer is around the corner.
A big old reset button with a fat (probably oily and full of Fiat) hand is just waiting to plunge the plunger.
And that button is war Laydies and Roughmen.
The end-game of the oil driven, supply side, over-burdened everything is NOW. No Other Way!
We All Reset!
War resets everything. War is the quantum leap to the new normal. Terrible but true and you don't have to go too far back in our sordid history to know it is all too true.
Meanwhile, the tech-no-logical answers to the new new post-modernist society, where human power is supreme again, before a tech-no-logy is ever allowed to get ahead are forming in the minds of a currently opposed collective of engineering shamans.
Laugh if you may but I'd rather say pray for their efforts to bear fruit.
Oh regional Indian
Dude, you know what that game changer is? Biomedicine. Someday someone somewhere will be unlocking the dreamed of Life Extension cell/gene/protein trigger. About the same time the old regeneration trigger will be found.
Ever read Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs books?
Pretty much what the future holds.
See po' people not be affordin the GOOD care. Who be wantin po' peoples livin long as us nice Rich peoples?
The boot comes down. The money gets syphoned off.
No threat in their foreseeable future.
Gully, always good to hear from a fellow bibliophile.
And no, have not read Morgan, but again looked up the thesis.
Interesting, but bio-med is hype and far away, in my opinion.
Plus, there is the fact that the so called 100 year cycle was programmed into us for a reason and unless the fountain of youth was found from within, not extrenally administered or induced, it would lead to a pretty horrendous life-extension.
A long hollow existance.
Don't see it happening. It might happen in some uber-rich enclave, where they are caught in a long-play versionm of a Dorian Grey existances.
Sounds awful.
The Kovacs sound like the Bene Gesserit(sp!).
The Dune series (multiple rereads) filled my sci-fi brim happily, along with my mytho-history brim and my techno-potential brim. :-)
"A long hollow existance." that won't stop them from trying. they've already got the mentality of vampires, might as well have the lifespan too, no?
A little perspective here. I was in Key West in the 80's and I saw oil blobs/gobs on the beaches then. Mother Nature knows what she's doing and she will squash we puny humans whenever she cares to.
yes, where were are sitting will be a subduction zone in tens of millions years from now... Earth will persist and do just fine.
it's we that are in danger and yes, 4 billion people can disrupt the earth, in human time and scale.
We may just be a temporary, annoying skin disease that leaves no permanent harm to the earth, on earth time and scale not...but for us, we could really harm ourselves, our food, our air, our drinking water
Yes oil naturally occurs, as does water...but it is question of scale, if water suddenly covered 90 percent of the earth...would that natural material not be an issue for our survival...
MM,
Maybe we're not as necessary as we think we are. Or as important.
I do think we are as dumb (at least collectively) as many of here know we are.
Moneymutt
That is evolution for ya.
Adapt or die.
I hope that you know evolution is mostly passive (if not fully passive)
Adapt on an imperative mode suggests evolution as an active phenonemum.
So better to say
either you will be adapted or you will disappear.
So my predictions for rest of 2010-
oil particles everywhere - global health and environmental disaster
more terrorism from ticked off US citizens
financial mayhem
corruption in all sectors of society revealed - church, state, businesses
revolution in the streets
gang wars in the streets
war
oh...that's already happened in LA, NY, Europe, Greece, Thailand, Mexico, Iraq/Af/Pak....what a year
You mean someone will drive a plane into BP headquarters instead than into an IRS office?
Then he will too be hailed as a hero............
Good. lets get it over and done with.
Crude oil is natural and organic. Therefore, it cannot be bad for the environment.
Why don't you go take a "natural and organic" mercury bath!
just another day at the Spa resort :)
water is natural and kinda organic...therefore floods can do no harm to environment
lava is natural...
sunlight is natural...
BP self insures right? I also saw an piece on here somewhere that the maximum they can be help liable for was recently increased to about $100mill.
Anyone got any more info on this?
It'd be a damn shame if could only be held accountable for a capped amount.
I'd say screw it and just sieze their US assets and nationalize them...but what a bunch of idiots...I guess we could shut down some of the rigs and sell rest to Exxon...use the proceeds to pay for all the people harmed..
Thanks GW
"Federal law requires companies to pay for all environmental damage, but economic damages are now capped at $75 million. Some Democrats want to raise the cap to $10 billion, and a few want to take it off completely."
So the fully liable for clean up and capped for reimbursing fisherman & tourist operators etc. Still gonna be a wipeout for them i'd imagine.
I wonder what the implications within the context of regional & international legal frameworks?
70,000 barrels a day? WHOLLY FUCKFUCK!
Duplicate
A cut here, a slice there, a tear, a slash, and the final RIP. What a fucked up way to treat a lady. Slowly we kill the host. Morons.
Al Gorerhythm
George Carlin!
We’re so self-important. So self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven’t learned how to care for one another, we’re gonna save the fucking planet?
I’m getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I’m tired of fucking Earth Day, I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. They don’t care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.
Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we’re a threat? That somehow we’re gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun?
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles…hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages…And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet…the planet…the planet isn’t going anywhere. WE ARE!
We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.
You wanna know how the planet’s doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet’s doing. You wanna know if the planet’s all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kilowaia, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Plastic…asshole.
So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that’s begun. Don’t you think that’s already started? I think, to be fair, the planet sees us as a mild threat. Something to be dealt with. And the planet can defend itself in an organized, collective way, the way a beehive or an ant colony can. A collective defense mechanism. The planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet? How would you defend yourself against this troublesome, pesky species? Let’s see… Viruses. Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And, uh…viruses are tricky, always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps, this first virus could be one that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus, making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along. And maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction.
Well, that’s a poetic note. And it’s a start. And I can dream, can’t I? See I don’t worry about the little things: bees, trees, whales, snails. I think we’re part of a greater wisdom than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you want. Know what I call it? The Big Electron. The Big Electron…whoooa. Whoooa. Whoooa. It doesn’t punish, it doesn’t reward, it doesn’t judge at all. It just is. And so are we. For a little while.
This has to be the longest, serpentine maze of pot addled, acid enhanced shit I have ever read. I don't know what the fuck message he is trying to get across as I can't quite come to grips with the conscious planet thing and the vengeful planet concept that conjures up a farting volcano of death or a tourette twitch of the plates to destroy us. If that is as good as it gets, pass me that roach, slip me a tab of that acid ............ and may The Big Electron watch over us all.
That piece isn't meant to be "read", as its a George Carlin stand up comedy routine. This is classic Carlin. Sometimes we need a court jester to tell it like it is.
Plastic bitches
been around these parts longer than most and have to say, that is the most incoherently coherent rant i've read here (or anywhere else for that matter). after reading this thread from top to bottom, i concur completely. cheers to you dear gully foyle.
"I've got one word for you Ben. Just one word. Plastics."
Simply as good as it comes.
The guy was brilliant!
Awesome read.
Yeah.
It only takes a relatively small amount of velocity to push a helluva lot of fluid through a 21" pipe. Here's a sample comp I did last week, after seeing the original video:
Area of 21" pipe = 2.4sf; volume per linear ft. of pipe= 2.4cf(cubic feet); gallons per linear ft.=18 gallons
So, assuming a velocity of 1ft/sec flowing through the pipe, we come up with 18 gallons x 86,400 sec = 1.555 million gallons per day. The real question here is what the true velocity is, based on said video? Here's a suggestion to give you a real-world guide:
Measure off 10' on the driveway/floor. Using a watch, slowly walk across the 10' section over the course of 10 seconds. You may have to do this 2 or 3 times to get a steady velocity. The point here is to illustrate how slow that 1ft/sec comp used above actually is. Now go back and look at the original video. There are other extenuating circumstances at play - like the additional natural/methane gases, and the expansion coming out of the pipe which makes the flow look more impressive than it actually is - but without question, any question at all, the velocity is much more than 1ft/sec.
2ft/sec is a reasonably conservative estimate; and if we cut the amount in half to account for the additional gases, that still leaves us at 1.5 million gallons per day.
Also keep in mind that we now have a 4 mile pressurized hole in the earth that is slowly sandblasting itself into an ever larger bore. It may be minimal, but if anything, I would expect the natural flow to increase each day as a result.
Feel free to check my numbers, as I'm old and rusty!
I've already heard it a few times about that sandblasting. How does that work? Isn't just oil and gas that comes out?
velocity
beautiful word.
being used by the economists to describe the potential financial crisis loses.
now your addressing the oil leak, similarly.
velocity the speed of something in a given direction :
the velocities of the emitted particles.
stoneleigh on the velocity of money says no gold, bitchez....or not much.
Looks fairly accurate to me. Nice job Thoreau !
Govt. coverup after govt. coverup. When will it ever end ! All hail the TEA PARTY . Time to clean up Washignton .
5000 barrels a day ? Right. I would hazard a guess after watching that video that the leak is a minimum 20 barrels a minute or appox 1000 barrrels an hour....and I am being VERY conservative. Therefore, we are looking at closer to 25,000 barrels a day or 1,000,000 gallons a day. SHAME on BP , and shame on the government for trying to cover this up.
We have shat in our own kitchen! I am ashamed of us humans and what we have done to our ONLY home.
They know exactly how much oil is really coming out and the govt. knows too. I guarantee you that its alot worse than what is bieng said or hinted at. After looking at that 20 miles at least wide oil highway that is going into the loop current, it tells me that florida and the rest of the atlantic seaboard and the rest of europe is going to see major problems from this. Also by this reaching as far as it did it tells me two things. One, the current is acting differently deeper in the ocean and could be literally pulling the water to the current loop. And two, once this thing gets completely into the current it will pull the oil like a freigh train, because the oil is bonding to itself so once the first oil fingers get into the current the rest will increase in speed that direction.
We are done.
Rusty Shorts------- The link was good info. If you look at the compression and fold aspect of this, lord only knows what kind of pressures they are attempting to deal with. An on- land field has pressure. Depending on the formation, you may have salt water, gas, oil, any and or all. Now, if you compress that with 5,000 or 10,000 feet of water with water at 10 pounds or so per gallon you get super pressure. One thing is sure; the word leak that is applied to this is grossly out of place. This is a Blow Out that may be beyond comprehension. Then they are dealing with unknown faults. With the size in the Gulf of the escaped oil, the flow rate may be in huge numbers of barrels per minute rather than the traditional barrels per day. This is not a leak and the idea that they can plug it with mud is beyond lame. If there was any way to plug this, they would have done it. This is indeed a mile stone for the oil industry and life, that looks like a grave stone. As a disclaimer, let me state that I am 3rd generation oil people and have worked on rigs that had problems. I am not anti-oil, but what we have here boys and girls is a show stopper.
I don't normally do caps but I feel this is important.
WHY COVER THIS UP IF IT IS NOT A MAJOR FUCK UP? IF IT IS NOT A MAJOR FUCK UP, THEN YOU CAN STOP ALL THE TALK THAT IS GOING ON LIKE THIS (GUESSES AND SPECULATION) WITH TRANSPARENCY AND THE TRUTH.
THEY ARE AFRAID OF HOW WE WILL REACT IF WE KNOW THE TRUTH.
Speaks volumes as to where we are in this whole process.
good point, do they think we will never find out? what good is delay? is the govt secretly hoarding shrimp before they tell us how bad this is?
A prof of mechanical engineering estimates 70,000 barrels a day.
As I wrote on May 2nd:
The Gulf oil spill is much worse than originally believed.
As the Christian Science Monitor writes:
CNN quotes the lead government official responding to the spill - the commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Thad Allen - as stating:
Indeed, an environmental document filed by the company running the oil drilling rig - BP - estimates the maximum as 162,000 barrels a day:
Not knowing a thing about drilling let me ask. Are you saying this may not be able to be stopped?