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BP's Gulf Oil Well May Be Leaking AGAIN: "The Oil May Be Coming From Cracks And Fissures In The Seafloor"
As I noted last year, the seafloor under BP's leaking Gulf oil well cracked, and could leak for years.
Successful New Orleans attorney Stuart Smith - lead counsel in a lawsuit that resulted in a $1.056 billion dollar verdict against ExxonMobil for contaminating land and attempting to cover it up - says that it is leaking again.
Smith wrote yesterday:
No, this isn’t a post from last year. Oil from the Macondo Well site is fouling the Gulf anew – and BP is scrambling to contain both the crude and the PR nightmare that waits in the wings. Reliable sources tell us that BP has hired 40 boats from Venice to Grand Isle to lay boom around the Deepwater Horizon site – located just 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. The fleet rushed to the scene late last week and worked through the weekend to contain what was becoming a massive slick at the site of the Macondo wellhead, which was officially “killed” back in September 2010.
The truly frightening part of this development, as reported in a previous post (see below), is the oil may be coming from cracks and fissures in the seafloor caused by the work BP did during its failed attempts to cap the runaway Macondo Well – and that type of leakage can’t be stopped, ever.
Catch up on how this could possibly be happening – again – by reading or re-reading my July 25 post below. Stay tuned as we will be all over this story as it continues to develop.
Is BP’s Macondo Well Site Still Leaking? Fresh Oil on the Gulf Raises Concerns and Haunting Memories
Fresh oil is surfacing all over the northern quadrant of the Gulf of Mexico. Reports of slicks that meander for miles and huge expanses of oil sheen that look like phantom islands are becoming common, again. Fresh oil, only slightly weathered, is washing ashore in areas hit hardest by last year’s massive spill, like Breton Island, Ship Island, the Chandeleurs and northern Barataria Bay. BP has reactivated its Vessels of Opportunity (VoO) program to handle cleanup. It’s a sickeningly familiar scene that has fishermen, researchers and public officials searching for answers, as haunting memories of last year’s calamity come roaring back.
The fifty-thousand-dollar question, of course, is where is all the new oil coming from?
One theory: The Macondo Well site, located just 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, is still leaking untold amounts of oil into the Gulf. Some argue that the casing on the capped well itself is leaking. Others believe oil is seeping through cracks and fissures in the seafloor caused by months of high-impact work on the site, including a range of recovery activities (some disclosed, some not) as well as the abortive “top kill” effort.
In January 2011, a prominent “geohazards specialist” wrote an urgent letter to two members of Congress – U.S. Reps. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and John Shimkus, chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment and Economy – suggesting that the Macondo site is leaking oil like a sieve. Here’s an excerpt from that letter (see it in its entirety at link below):
There is no question that the oil seepages, gas columns, fissures and blowout craters in the seafloor around the Macondo wellhead… have been the direct result of indiscriminate drilling, grouting, injection of dispersant and other undisclosed recover activities. As the rogue well had not been successfully cemented and plugged at the base of the well by the relief wells, unknown quantities of hydrocarbons are still leaking out from the reservoir at high pressure and are seeping through multiple fault lines to the seabed. It is not possible to cap this oil leakage.
BK Lim, the letter’s author, has more than 30 years of experience working inside the oil and gas industry for companies like Shell, Petronas and Pearl Oil.
More from Mr. Lim’s letter:
The continuing hydrocarbon seepage would have long term, irreversible and potentially dire consequences in the GOM (Gulf of Mexico)…
The letter is dated Jan. 14, 2011 – and we’ve been seeing more and more evidence that the scenario Mr. Lim describes is indeed taking place deep below the Gulf’s surface.
For example, on March 28, 2011, Paul Orr and his team from the Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper – an organization I’ve worked with frequently over the course of the last year – conducted a 50-mile boat patrol and sampling tour of Breton Sound, which lies just off the southeast coast of Louisiana. The excursion was prompted by multiple, increasingly frantic, reports of oil in the area by fishermen and others, including On Wings of Care pilot Bonny Schumaker, who has dozens of Gulf flyovers under her belt.
Mr. Orr took a sample from the southern end of Breton Island National Park – and sure enough, lab-certified tests results established a fingerprint match to BP’s Macondo Well (see link to my previous post and test results below).
The most alarming part of the finding was not simply that the Breton Island sample had BP’s fingerprint on it, but that the test results were nearly identical to those from the fresh oil seen in the early days of the BP spill – instead of the heavily weathered and degraded oil we’ve come to expect in recent weeks and months.
Those test results seem to disprove the other theory surrounding this spate of recent “fresh oil” reports. That is: All the oil BP strategically sunk to the seafloor with nearly 2 million gallons of toxic dispersant is beginning to break free and rise to the surface en masse, and in turn, blacken the coastline with fresh oil. According to civil engineer and petroleum expert, Marco Kaltofen, oil that has been lying on the seafloor for several months would be much significantly more weathered than the fresh oil we’re seeing more and more of.
As you’ll notice from the histograms, the Breton Island sample mirrors the submerged oil sampled from Pensacola Bay on Nov. 5, 2010 (see link to original post with histograms below) and a sample taken from Panama City Beach on July 14, 2010. You don’t have to be a marine biologist to see that this is the same oil with nearly identical weathering.
So we had fresh oil with BP’s signature on it coming ashore in March – more than eight months after the Macondo Well was capped. And since then, members of my team and other researchers have reported fresh oil, of the “only slightly weathered” variety from Grand Isle to Pensacola. One charter boat fishing captain, who frequents the waters around Louisiana’s barrier islands, is describing the current, hauntingly familiar situation on the Gulf as the “second wave” of the BP disaster.
Read my entire July 25 post (with referenced documents) here: http://www.stuarthsmith.com/is-bps-macondo-well-site-still-leaking-fresh-oil-on-the-gulf-raises-concerns-and-haunting-memories
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Speaking of nonsense, with an argument like that, how can I be anything but convinced?
Exactly what I was thinking
wow...could today possibly get any better?
Thank you for your work... and for weathering the troll attacks.
like an old smelly turd that just won't go down... just in time for the election season as well. obummer should vacation down in the gulf. I hear that core-exit does wonders for one's health.
Most likely it never stopped leaking.
Could it possibly be that the cortex effect is wearing off and the oil plumes are starting to rise to the surface?
Not according to this article, no. Have you read it?
You obviously have not, as you would have seen that it said "one theory is". So I'm am proposing another theory.
dum, dudum dum, ddduuuuummmmbbbb!!!!
There's that fact about the oil not being weathered, which refutes your other theory, which was also proposed in the article and refuted by this fact.
I was left to wonder whether oil sitting on the seabed under a mile of water at a temp of about 33 degrees would exhibit "weathering." Doesn't sound to me like conditions much different from what you have when it's underground . . . just a relatively few feet further down.
Can anybody speak knowledgeably to that?
Thanks, GW. No doubt we will witness another government cover up to protect the 'economy'.
This is horrible.
But at least the BP managers are handsomely paid.
What more do we want - out of sight, out of mind.
It meets the new Great Test of Government Reason: Compromise.
And Barry Obama is the Living God of Compromise.
Or a fucking oreo/house negro with a title.
Same as the banks?
Shit, ruins my confidence in big oil companies.
Julia, the new field to watch, where Exxon and the US interior department fight it out for a new find which is deep and full of drilling/recovery problems but potentially very promising in volume terms (10 billion barrels potential). So the ecological threat in the region continues. The lease has run out, for two thirds of the field whence the litigation.
Just put in a new well next to the old one...suck out that oil before it leaks out...at least bring down the pressure.
Actually that is the only way that it will ever be solved. You have to reduce the pressure gradient by pumping. Of course, politically drilling several new wells in close proximity to the Macondo is untenable.
No way that would happen, even though it is the best long term solution. Oil companies would not want to do that either, as they would not pump oil out until a static pressure is reached, they would want to keep going.
pods
No hate here, honest question: Does more drilling make the seabed more vulnerable to fracturing further?
Not a geologist, so I truly don't know. Just looked at it from a pressure differential perspective.
pods
No trolling here GW, just another post about how much this whole thing reeks, not unlike Fuckyoushima. We will live with the consequences for generations.
...and thousands, may be thousands square will die, and I don't mean the birds or fishes.
B-Pacman churning. Damn virus refuse to die after a nuke device?
Jet stream, gulf stream all ruined...ELE?
I'm cool with ELE's
Me too as long as I get to watch everyone else go first.
"What do you want for Christmas, Tom Servo?"
"I want to decide who lives and who dies."
-MST3K
MST3K!
exactly
ZERO,
Have you ever tried report a good news??
PS The first rule of Bitchclub is to not Bitch about Bitchclub.
Illiterate.
Did you miss the Bang Dae-Ho stories?
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/zero-hedge-impacts-world-makes-bang-dae...
@oo92000...
Have you ever tried construct a good sentence?
Here's something to soothe your troubled brow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkZ2_nKo7II
Cheers!!
That's what CNBC is for.
And Ophra (reality), Ricki Lake (births, christenings, weddings and obituaries), Drs. Phil and Oz (medical), Jerry Springer (education), Jersey Shore (diversity) and Dancing with the Stars (astronomy).
Plenty of that shit around abouts.
Here's some good news:
http://www.gulfcoastwx.com/ipb/index.php?showtopic=10596&st=400
There is an ample supply of bubble gum news reporting agencies in the world, TYVM.
WTF?
Troll attack in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
You rang? Ahem, is this thing on? Test, testes, 1,2,3 ok We're on!
If this ain't Obie's last-best-chance, I don't know what will be: Nationalize the Mercondo Area, declare a National Emergency, and DRILL at least 12 "relief wells" in the general area of the leaks. There is SOOoooo much oil& gas down there, its rediculous not to grab it and sell it and put the proceeds towards the National Debt. O-debt-Brother, Scam-alamm-aramm.....
I'm with you here, it's fucked up anyway! Might as well (get it, well, duh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh). Nothing to lose!! Don't tell me you've been eating the shrimp...and crawfish...and, well, seafood, have ya?
After all that work, why the heck don't they just tap the well and relieve the pressure? I hear that stuff's useful.
Unfortunately it is not that simple; the existing Well Casing is Blown and not intact - meaning that it cannot be put into production in any reasonable means. The problem is they pushed beyond the extent of available technology and the Genie cannot be put back in the box. Read as Matt Simmons explanations as to why it is a hopeless situation due to Human Hubris.
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/06/17/simmons-says/
http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/072310-2010-07-19-is-the-bp-macondo-well-cap-a-hoax-matt-simmons.htm
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/matt-simmons-claims-bigger-gulf-leak-in-progress.html
Stale dated nonsense that will remain stinking bull crap for as long as it exists on the internet.
Don't make yourself seem more foolish by bringing it around again.
Soon you will have the same reputation as Geo Wash.
Apparently BP still has trolls on payroll.
Finally: a rational mind that understands how simple the world really is.
The corexit "air force" is taking off as we speak. "A force for regional good"
when do they finally use the safe products of www.oti.ag to clean up this mess?
I LOVE YA! GEORGIE!!!
FUCKEM IF THEY HAVE NO COMMON SENSE!!!
LET THE IDIOTS PRAY TO THE FOX / CNN CORPORATE OWNED NEWS!! THEY NEED HEAVY ROTATION STUPIDITY TO WASH OVER THEM!!
Surely evolution will root out these fuckers...
"let the dead, bury the dead"
Delusional Economics
http://verbewarp.blogspot.com/2011/08/delusional-economics.html
As in 3...2...1...Gasminder?