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Potential Second Spill Found Near BP Blown Out Oil Well, As BP Evaluates Potential Break Up Opportunities
In case you missed George Wahsington's update, here it is straight from the AP horse's mouth. And, if this story is true, we can only hope one is not long BP stock or short the CDS.
NEW ORLEANS — A federal official says scientists are concerned about a seep and possible methane near BP's busted oil well in the Gulf of Mexico
Both could be signs there are leaks in the well that's been capped off for three days.
The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Sunday because an announcement about the next steps had not been made yet.
The official is familiar with the spill oversight but would not clarify what is seeping near the well. The official says BP is not complying with the government's demand for more monitoring.
And if that wasn't enough, some more bad news from Sunday Times, via Reuters:
Under-fire oil company BP Plc (BP.L) has started canvassing shareholders about a restructuring in the wake of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill which could include a break up of the business, the Sunday Times reported.
The newspaper, citing unnamed BP insiders, said options included selling the group's refineries and petrol stations, scaling back its U.S. operations and ramping-up in-house engineering instead of outsourcing.
These are on top of the sale of about 10 percent of its assets, including its stake in the giant Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska, the Sunday Times added.
A BP spokesman said it did not comment on rumour and speculation.
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This is interesting:
What Does 184 Million Gallons of Oil Look Like?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38294088?slide=9
okay, and what does 650 quadrillion gallons of water look like?
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_gallons_of_water_are_in_the_Gulf_of_M...
it looks like this:
http://media.mlive.com/photogallery/photo/fd295c815c624c334c1af5dc300301...
TD:
If this is the case and the well is leaking (because its somehow bypassed the casing higher up in the well) this will have little to no effect on the Relief Well - Which is ultimately the only thing that they were depnding on to kill the well in the first place.
To sum up:
- If Well leaks: couple more days of oil until relief well kills it.
- If well doesnt leak: no more oil until relief well kills it.
Kind of none news at this point - But as you say it might cause some movement in the share price - But I think the smart money would be paying really smart people that actually know stuff about oil and gas to figure out if this is material or not.
If relief wells are our only hope, then we're doomed, says my spider sense.
And you're hijacking the top of this page because... why?
Quit taking those pills and maybe the spiders won't bother you after a few months.
Careless Whisper....
I bet you don't live near the Gulf? Don't be so dismissive. Many are unemployed becuase of this and some are sick. Oh, and eleven are dead (+2). And more to come.
And while we're at it: there are over 6 billion people in the world so we shouldn't be concerned about the ones starving to death; there's more.
I don't know, but it will be unique for me to go to my white sandy beaches, drop a match in the ocean and make smores in January.
Pick your evaluation spot:
http://www.webenet.com/receivingfacilities.htm
I have heard of the Baker Act being invoked from two people in 50 years; Joe Pulli and, as of last night, Douchinger. Which one are you?
Good one dude. How about a graphic like: "What do 2740 Americans look like?", then you could show how so few people dying compared to 308 million makes people a bunch of crybabies. Obviously since the spill hasn't completely destroyed the planet, it's all good and people should relax.
Or maybe we should all overreact and make the matter worse, just like we did after 2740 Americans died.
Let's end all deepwater drilling, increase regulation, and fan the flames of mass hysteria. It worked so well after 9-11 when we invaded two countries.
Douche.
We are all so lucky to benefit from the depth of your spoiled 20-something view of the world .. "Mom! Somebody said mean things to me!"
you people are fkin foooling yourselves.
The venereal disease your mother gave you was but a speck relative to your whole body system, but your dick still fell off…
+1
Good luck convincing the hysterical nutters! They're convinced that the entire world is going to die, while they sit safely in their compounds meting out shavings of (rusty) gold in exchange for slave labor and sanitary napkins. Lol.
Given that the Gulf is not a self-contained lake but part of the larger network of oceans, your coke can in a stadium analogy actually OVERSTATES the impact by several orders of magnitude.
.
http://leanenergy.ldeo.columbia.edu/docs/UltraDeep%20Prosp%2010-22-02.pdf
"The Sigsbee salt sheet (white) defines the ultra-deepwater at the boundary of the continental margin
and deep basin of the northern Gulf of Mexico. It’s southern terminus is marked by an 800 meter escarpment,
and the whole salt sheet is moving downhill to the south at several cm/yr."
What happens when you drill through a moving geological formation??
Ummm ... I'll try. It could move your drillpipe south several centimeters? OH THE HUMANITY!!
You are correct Jimmy, the formation cap moves, taking along your well casing, except for the lower well casing that extends into the deposit, which gets left behind.
Good catch! What were those engineers thinking?
lol
Oh, Hugh, the Manatee!
Wow, I nearly fell out of my chair!
They can still open it up, (reducing the pressure), then finish the kill with relief wells. No big deal. Now ya'll go nuts w/ the junk.
BP to zero, no big deal.
unless the pattern continues and the relief wells don't work either. I'm confused how the relief wells are supposed to help in this case, anyway, since they need pressure to work and wouldn't that pressure then NOT be relieved. No expert, but each step looks like a sideshow.
So sad that so many ZH people lack the basic mechanical and engineering basics and their default is set to catastrophy. While I have the years of experience in the oilfield and the engineering degree, I get junked by political science, bachelor of the arts types because their feelings get in the way of LOGIC.
Well here's some logic for you.....
Granted that it may be unfortunate that more people aren't like you, I'm sure that would make the world a better place....but it should be noted, empirically of course, that most engineers I've met are adequate in logic but aspiring in "dickness". The more they aspire to higher levels of logic, the less logical they become because their "dickness" gets enlarged by their arrogance.
So then logic would dictate to be less like an engineer and reduce your level of "dickness" and perhaps gain some sympathy for others.
Two posts referring to the plight of others and one overreactive post to that misidentified as catastrophic.....??? Did they teach logic where you went to school....?
C'mon, dummies, what happens is: the deep oil reservoir slowly fills all those other shallow wells over time. If BP plugs their deep well hole, the shallow wells start to fill up. It's simple. Can the world wait for the shallow wells that are still "producing," or shan't we just go for the deep stuff?
Of course, if we can get the deep stuff, that just puts off cap and trade, and Obama and Soros.............and we'll just go to the next paradigm.
Screw those who would subjugate the American middle class.
You, sir, apparently didn't get the memo.
What middle class?
And you, sir, get a big thumbs up.
What do any of these buyout or break up rumors mean for Joe common share holder ?
I'm kind of curious about BPT and what would happen to it. Do a 10 year comparison of BP to BPT. Then factor in the yield of BPT.
CHART
I was skeptical about this cap working because it sounds like the sea floor is so soft that the only solution may be to nuke it to turn it to glass and harden it up. Looks like that may be the case.
but what if that creates the problem of having brittle glass surrounded by a moving sea floor... but if we don't, the action from erosion caused by the leak will continue to open up those leaks... what to do?
BAGHDAD (MarketWatch) -- U.K. oil major BP PLC , along with its partner China National Petroleum Corp., plans to increase production from Iraq's Rumaila oil field by more than 100,000 barrels a day at the beginning of next year, a BP executive said Sunday.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bp-to-raise-iraq-output-by-100000-bpd-2010-07-18
Could this be the technicality that lets BP litigate this to eternity?
"The worst oil spill in U.S. history was triggered by firefighting boats that flooded the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig with water, causing it to sink into the Gulf of Mexico and damage BP Plc’s well, a lawsuit claims."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-15/gulf-oil-spill-caused-by-firefighters-flooding-deepwater-rig-suit-says.html
What's the figure for heat electrolysis? I was told that the water sprayed on the rig got cracked by the intense heat, from H20 to 2h2 + 02, i.e., into hydrogen-oxygen fuel for the blaze. Can that be true?
No for a bewildering number of reasons. Further, even if possible, the energy absorbed to crack H2O would be equivalent to the energy released on burning. No net energy release = no net increase in temperature.
Shoot em.
Bleed em.
Skin em.
Gut em.
Split em.
Part em out.
Toss the offal in Chap 7/11.
What liability?
You can pretty much call BS on most all of GW's posts regarding BP, as much as I think BP f'd up the original downhole, the posts only serve to undermine the credibility of this blog, the tin foil factor runs high in them.
Evidence? There's on thing for certain - if BP was more candid, honest, and forthright, there would be a lot less speculation or the need for it.
But your assertion lacks basis and evidence. And since no one actually has any facts, it would be impossible to assert the veracity of any particular claims - for or against.
Several people have been pointing out the utter lack of fact checking in GWs posts. It's all well documented in the comments sections for you to read.
Ah yes. Yet another looking out for the "credibility" of this blog. Riddle me this. Why the ------ would this blog be interested in "credibility"?
Riddle me this. Why the ---------would you be posting on a blog that has no "credibility?
Cog Dis - you missed it. I was pointing out to the OP that it's ridiculous to object to content at ZH.com by asserting it is "hurting the credibility" of the site, because, IMO, this site does not need "credibility". In fact, if you look at the folks who have all the credibility in the world, most of them are part of the system.
So, aspiring to credibility is not, IMO, what ZH is about.
Aspiring to share the truth and foment discussion thereof is. Credibility be damned.
Credibility≠Truth.
@anony +1
Yes, I have noticed that all the 911 Truther whack jobs have a lot of street cred here at ZH.
A couple of them are even exalted contributors, which allows them to insert images to comment threads that usually signify absolutely NOTHING.
I only junked one of your posts because you had some good points the other night. You may have potential, but the odds still favor you're being just the the MSM troll that I, at this point, still think you are.
Yeah, I'm the "MSM troll" that outed the obvious fucking CNN lie that all you retards had swallowed hook line and sinker. For the nth time dummies, CNN IS THE MSM! You people are hilarious.
Jim,
You didn't like your ZH birthday cake?
by Cognitive Dissonanceon Sat, 07/17/2010 - 14:56
#475407
I guess Jim_Rockford doesn't recognize humor when he trips over it. See the little smiley face at the end? That's the sign that Humor might be employed, though I guess for the humor impaired the <humor alert> tag should also be used.
BTW Jim boy, happy 1 year ZH anniversary, considering you've been registered here for exactly 1 year and 1 hour. We're so very glad you decide to pop in on ZH every few weeks and whip us loony tin-foil hat wearing crazies into line. We just couldn't get along without you. :>)
<HUMOR ALERT>
You want street cred here you have to be rational. You can't embrace bizarre unscientific opinions that don't fit reality and that you only hold because it's the only way you can contort the observable facts into the scads-of-Apple Pie-up-your-ass fraudulent paradigm within which you operate.
Here's an example - ancillary, confined diesel fires don't cause complete, even, gravitational-speed collapse of steel-framed buildings, like WTC7. Ever. Not now. Not 100 years ago. Not 1000 years from now. And the reason you don't have street cred, brother, is because you run around here trying to convince us that we can weaken steel - perfectly, easily, uniformly, and at the same rate . . . by simply burning a C8-C21 fossil fuel for a few hours in open-air conditions. Ahahhahahahahaha. Now that's funny.
Actually you're wrong Francis. I never tried to convince anybody about anything in regards to 911. I asked a question once, and got junked for asking the question. Here, have some apple pie.
It is indeed telling that you still choose to hang out here. And yes, anybody not agreeing with the official and "accepted" version of events - a version supplied by none other than the most corrupt and mendacious entity on the planet i.e. US Govt. no less - is a "whackjob".
Gekko, you dissapoint me. I was hoping for some pretty (although irrelevant) photos.
Really intrigued why overnight futures are up, especially compared to fair value. Not a big move, but with BP, Hungary, and the Chinese discussions suggesting a lack of additional stimulus (and a Chinese econ prof suggesting less Treasuries in an op-ed - see Reuters), that we'd be off at least 40-50 Dow fair value points or more.
Don't worry, the US Government will soon own the US bits of BP - TBTF.
Oh yes, the FIRST thing, the absolute FIRST thing I was worried about was whether I was long or had the wrong side on the CDS.
Sorry, but my priorities here are not the material.
My priorities here are:
Methane. As in the 20 mile wide sub-sea floor bubble, which is theorized to have caused the species ending events 250 and 50 million years ago. This gas (as summarized in the KWN interview of the now vindicated Matt Simmons) is the cause of the marine life deaths as it is incredibly toxic. In fact Matt recommends evacuation of a portion of the gulf states.
Benzene. A toxic oil fraction.
Propylene Glycol. A consituent of Corexit that is toxic at levels of 25ppm and has been found 20 miles off shore at levels of 400ppm.
This impact to the biosphere and its continuing fallout is much closer to FIRST on my priority list. A few bucks on a long or debt bet position? Yeah, sure.
@ LeBalance - This should help. http://zapatopi.net/afdb/
Deep water marine exploration in the gulf in the nineties revealed that there are in fact eco-systems using undersea methane deposits as their chief energy source.
This disaster saddens me deeply, I can only hope that the planet is capable of handling the fallout.
A second spill ? Say it ain't so.
Comes totally as a surprise for me ,because it's not like Matt Simmons said this several months ago </sarcasm off>
Don't worry, gas will disappear with Obummer's carbon tax
So what exactly is Fitch referring to when mentioning “Informal Securitization”?
The trust products that Fitch is referring to are investment products that are sold by the banks, and packaged by the trust companies. There are two kinds of trust products, the first being products that are sold by the bank to local investors and represent loan that the bank has made directly to homebuyers. In fact, a lot China’s local government debt were packaged in as well. Up until two years ago most of the products were of this nature.
The second type started to be popular at the later part of 2009. In essence, this type is a high interest loan (often 15% plus annual rate) to real estate developers. Since the real estate developers have difficulty to raise funds through offering, they began to work with the banks in order to sell these products. The 10 fold growth in trust products that Fitch referred to came mostly from these kind of loans.
China’s Shark Loan Ponzi Finance- Understanding China’s Shadow Banking System
Here's a bold suggestion.. let's drain the gulf of mexico. Think of the job creation !
You forgot to mention that as good Keynesians, we should then fill it back in again! Just a bigger version of paying people to dig and then refill ditches! Good idea. ;)
getting more sleepless nights thinking aout that last methane explosion which killed off a lot of earthlings
Damned Mexican food.
the cap and all the 'top kill' plans have been a diversion..the spill has been coming from the ocean floor all along. see Simmons videos from May. Gives the boyz time to make plans, sell holding etc.
Ok. At least discuss the possibility that there's a major rift between the government and BP during this operation. This is an unsubstaniated AP article. And it's newsworthy that someone in the government is planting a story in the AP, but that does not make it true.
Riddle me this, bitches. Why the fuck would BP reopen the well? So Thad Allen sends a letter to BP saying they may have detected bubbles away from the well. Then demands a plan for going forward in writing in the next 24 hours. It's obvious these government douchebags are protecting their asses and planting the potential for a blowout to justify ordering BP to reopen the well. But BP are the ones that have to pay the cleanup. They're ultimately responsible, not the govt.
Tiny bubbles and a wimpy natural seep are anti-climactic to THE OILCANO.
death to simmons and may his earlier work be reviewed more carefully.
There seem to be two camps present in the above posts; a. 200MM gallons of oil in the GOM is a problem, and b. every thing is fine and anyone saying otherwise are a bunch of alarmists. Fact is, this has not reached the conclusion stage. Pretty much sorts out who is long and who is short (or has some non-market interrest). Buy bitches, buy.
What BP, Haliburton, and other co-conspirators intentionally drilled into was an Asphalt Volcano. Sounds scary doesn’t it? It really is not. In fact, after you read the above link you’ll know that the Gulf of Mexico is literally coated in oil, tar, and methane hydrate at the bottom. The study went on to find that massive aquatic life has specifically adapted to living off of the hydrocarbons. That in fact these asphalt volcanoes are a natural part of the ocean ecology, and their eruptions actually benefit the sea life over the long duration of time.
Another aspect to what I was directly told is that BP, Haliburton, and other co-conspirators drilled intentionally into the ‘mid side’ of this particular asphalt volcano. Basically from what I understand, it is a soda bottle effect. If they had drilled into the top of the volcano, then all the gas would rise out, and explode as would bottled carbonated liquid. The effect of drilling into the side permits a safely controlled release of gas, tar, liquified asphalt, and other related gases. What was done is a more or less controlled release; almost natural in fact!
http://bphoax.com/the-event/its-an-illusion/
I love the date over the article. Thursday 15, 2010. I guess we can expect the web site to only be around for July 2010, which will reduce confusion. No comment on the article. The quality of the article mirrors the quality of the dating.
People need to quit freaking out about a seep in the ocean floor that is leaking oil and/or methane and the federalies need to quit looking for ways to soak BP for more coin.
A NASA study several years ago identified hundreds of NATURAL oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico that collectively leak TWO Exxon Valdez's worth of crude into the ocean every YEAR!
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=20863
The sky is not always falling.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100719/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill
Late Sunday, Allen said a seep had been detected a distance from the busted oil well and demanded in a sharply worded letter that BP step up monitoring of the ocean floor. Allen didn't say what was coming from the seep. White House energy adviser Carol Browner told the CBS "Early Show" the seep was found less than two miles from the well site.
Good luck convincing the hysterical nutters! They're convinced that the entire world is going to die, while they sit safely in their compounds meting out shavings of (rusty) gold in exchange for slave labor and sanitary napkins. Lol.
Given that the Gulf is not a self-contained lake but part of the larger network of oceans, your coke can in a stadium analogy actually OVERSTATES the impact by several orders of magnitude.
Pardon me for not posting this(20min) interview with Matt Simmons on Saturday on another article thread.
http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2010/7/17_M...
Jim Rockford, Broken Trades, Megatoxic, Augustus, Others,
I appreciate your presence here. I try hard to keep an open mind and consider all the possibilities. You are helpful in that regard. You want to keep the conversation grounded in reality. I give you credit for that. There are regular posters here like Cougar_w who stomp out what looks like bad science to them, too. We need dialog. There is not enough transparency and the imagination can go wild. Again, thanks for your presence here.
Here is the kicker. It seems that the "nutty" interpretations for things keep coming true. BP claims 5,000 barrels a day coming out, ends up much higher, like the nuts were saying. Some "nuts" were talking about another leak in the sea bed, now it is being officially acknowledged. This is a macro pattern that seems to be consistent in terms of how the information emerges into public consciousness. First introduce the lesser assumption, then slowly own up to things being worse than they were at first. I am trying to get a grip on what this pattern means:
1. The government is using our fears (gleaned from the Internet) to manipulate public opinion and thus policy somehow (the idea that this is a crisis Rahm would be loathe not to exploit). They are Rupal, the cover girl, they're workin' it baybee.
2. Government officials learn and understand what is going on and respond to it a whole lot slower than ZH readers. We are some how magically ahead of the curve in terms of interpreting information. They catch up slowly, and adjust in an ad-hoc, flying-by-the-seats-of-their-pants, manner. They are slow because they are too big, too moribund with bureaucracy.
3. Government officials have known about the higher volume spill and other leaks in the ocean floor from the get-go. They are buying time for solutions to work and trying to keep people from panicking by releasing the information in a slow, gradual, get-used-to-reality kind of way. Cultivating a new normal.
4. Every player involved is competing with each other and out of control. Some care about what is going on but don't have good info. Some want to be honest with the public from the get go, but do not have the means do so in competition with other powerful players who don't want the truth out there. The gradual release of the info and ownership of just how bad everything is with the Deep Horizon Oil Spill (TM) is the organic result of this power struggle.
I bet there are other ways to interpret this pattern of information release. The pattern itself troubles me. It makes me not trust any of them. Do you have any thoughts regarding this? None of this looks good, and if the pattern were to continue, there are plenty of "nutty" stories out there that could become tomorrow's normal.
My thoughts are that the only thing that came true was the increased flow of the well.
Pretty much everything else is complete junk science and sensationalized. Anyone with the most basic background in drilling or oil and gas should be able to debunk the theories here with only a cursory look at the facts.
ie GW says that theres going to be a huge mud slide and that the well is in a canyon. I look at the topographical map he posts to support this. The grade is less than 7%. A marble wouldn't even roll down than slope.
ie OilPrice.com says theres a giant 'cavern of oil the size of mt everest' thats going to explode... This is complete nonsense
ie Everyone freaking out at everything for the last 3 months when the different containment strategies fail... No Kidding. The only thing that ever works consistently and predictably is to kill the well by drilling a relief well.
You say that ZH is ahead of the curve in some regads, which is true. Thats why I read the forum - For the finance and politics and talk about gold and trading and banks and derivatives. But all the oil and gas commentary thus far has been made by people who have no background in oil and gas. I can't sit by and read this and not at least try to balance some of it out with a little reality - Because I believe this is harming the credibility of an otherwise informative blog.
I assumed from the beginning that BP was lying about spill volume. An hour or so perusing www.theoildrum.com was enough to convince me.
And I'm not denying that the spill is bad--very, very bad.
What troubles me is the tendency for people on this site to glom onto the worst conceivable possibilities and take them for certainties. That, along with a general lack of perspective, is leading some to flap their arms about wildly claiming that the end of the world is nigh. This is not a helpful approach.
The coke bottle in a football stadium analogy is apt. This spill will not end "life as we know it" in the Gulf. It will not poison the oceans. It will not lead to a mass extinction event. It will not, in fact, lead to any of the various doomsday scnenarios people are pimping.
Surely you realize the reductio ad absurdum implications of your argument (specifically, that ZH is always ahead of the curve vis a vis the scope of the disaster). That may have been true in the early stages, but it does not mean that the most outlanding predictions are set to come true once the rest of the world catches up with us...
@MsCreant,
There's a discussion on another thread about similar themes:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/bp-moves-goalpost-oil-well-integrity-te...
Moved...Wrong thread.....
Information is power, that's why you don't get any. Unfortunately for the "people who matter", the internet leaks information like a rusty sieve. So when you can't conceal information, you hide it in plain sight by creating and/or fostering disinformation and misinformation campaigns.
It's up to each one of us to figure out the real information from the fake information. Zero Hedge has a high signal-to-noise ratio, but there's still plenty of noise. And as Ms Creant pointed out, a definite pattern has emerged in the last 10 years, and that is, the pessimistic news is usually a lot more reliable than the optimistic news.
There's a perfectly logical reason for that if you think about it.
I can't speak to the credibility of any particular poster on this forum but I will say that it is difficult for a regular guy like myself to have verifiable facts about any one subject discussed here, therefore I appreciate honest and accurate information.
Those willfully acting as tools to spread misinformation, in my opinion, are excellent candidates for shock therapy. I recommend the careless application of one of these to various parts of the body of any apprehended lying corporate tool by two large individuals who have spent time in a federal detention facility.
Satisfying entertainment!