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Gulf of Mexico oil spill

Interesting interview with Matt Simmons here, in which he exposes BP's lies, deceit and news "management" throughout this disaster.

He also claims that methane is toxic, which is news to me. I don't think I'm the first to wonder whether he's losing the plot?
 
there's a 'seep' discovered in the ocean floor apparently.
The federal government's oil spill response director says testing has revealed that there is a "detected seep a distance from the well" and has ordered BP to quickly notify the government if other leaks are found.

"When seeps are detected, you are directed to marshal resources, quickly investigate, and report findings to the government in no more than four hours," retired Adm. Thad Allen said in a letter to BP Chief Managing Director Bob Dudley. "I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed."

BP spokesman Mark Salt said Sunday night that he had no information about the leak mentioned in Allen's letter. The letter does not provide further details about where the leak was spotted or how big it is.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/07/18/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html?video=true&hpt=T2&fbid=a_z_cT0848G
 
xes said:
There's a load of them (been known for some time, spotted by posters on ATS no less, about 3 weeks ago) Now BP are saying that these seepages are nothing to do with them. The fucking lieing cunts.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20100719/twl-oil-seepage-unrelated-to-bp-well-41f21e0.html
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innit.

basic logic dictates that there can be no natural seepage from an oil reservoir, otherwise over however many hundreds of millions of years the oil's been stuck there it would all have seeped out, and there'd not be any oil in the reservoir.

their only possible argument would be that it's either coming from another well nearby, or that it's somehow something to do with the relief wells, neither of which would be particularly good news either.

that said, as long as the leak is from higher up the well shaft than the point where the relief wells are aimed at coming in and permanently sealing the well, I don't see it as being necessarily that bad an idea to keep the well capped and accept this relatively small level of seepage until the relief wells come into play. Particularly given that the other option involves removing the cap, replacing it with the old leaky one, and pumping oil to the surface to be contained in boats through half of the hurricane season.
 
free spirit said:
innit.

basic logic dictates that there can be no natural seepage from an oil reservoir, otherwise over however many hundreds of millions of years the oil's been stuck there it would all have seeped out, and there'd not be any oil in the reservoir..
Click to expand...
Nope natural seepage has been known for thousands of years. There are temples in Iran where methane seepage was discovered as being flamable and have had burning flames for millenia. The La Brea Tar Pits are another globally famous seepage, although thats from pretty heavy oil. Cantarell oil field was discovered when Pemex investigated constant complaints by fishermen of oil leaks.

http://www.tdi-bi.com/our_publications/WorldOil2008-a.pdf
 
whilst it may be possibly for there to be natural oil seepage, BP are still lieing out of their fucking arses. It's a little bit too close for comfort, that this is unrelated. I hope that it's signs that there's massive fractures at the top of the reserve, and it's going to collapse. Call me a bastard if you like, but I'm gagging for a mass die off :D
 
I just don't think we deserve a place on this planet anymore. Humans are a shit race, so fucking selfish and greedy. Killing anything and anyone which gets in the way of profit. It just makes me feel sick, and ashamed to be part of the human race. Kill us all off NOW!!
 
xes said:
I hope that it's signs that there's massive fractures at the top of the reserve, and it's going to collapse.
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The reservoir is merely a layer of permiable rock capped by a layer of impermeable rock. A fracture in the cap rock would only be of any significance if it penetrated the whole way through the impermiable layer above it into another permiable layer that had outlets to the surface. However it would seem unlikely in the exteme. Going from memory many reservoir layers can often be only a few centimeters thick, although over a wide area.

My hunch is that you are not a geologist?
 
ferrelhadley said:
Nope natural seepage has been known for thousands of years. There are temples in Iran where methane seepage was discovered as being flamable and have had burning flames for millenia. The La Brea Tar Pits are another globally famous seepage, although thats from pretty heavy oil. Cantarell oil field was discovered when Pemex investigated constant complaints by fishermen of oil leaks.

http://www.tdi-bi.com/our_publications/WorldOil2008-a.pdf
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that's cheating, using research to poo poo my logic... but I'll concede the point as I'm obviously wrong.

Thinking about it, I was assuming that any seepage spotted now would have been happening for millions / hundreds of millions of years in which case the reservoir would have been empty by now, but that doesn't need to have been the case - the seepage could have begun at any point between now and when the reservoir was formed caused by seismic movements etc.
 
xes said:
I just don't think we deserve a place on this planet anymore. Humans are a shit race, so fucking selfish and greedy. Killing anything and anyone which gets in the way of profit. It just makes me feel sick, and ashamed to be part of the human race. Kill us all off NOW!!
Click to expand...

Have some patience, ffs!
:rolleyes:


Savour the flavour of Doom: an exquisite cocktail of greed, stupidity and futility, with a sprinkling of shitty bits.
:)
 
free spirit said:
that's cheating, using research to poo poo my logic... but I'll concede the point as I'm obviously wrong.

Thinking about it, I was assuming that any seepage spotted now would have been happening for millions / hundreds of millions of years in which case the reservoir would have been empty by now, but that doesn't need to have been the case - the seepage could have begun at any point between now and when the reservoir was formed caused by seismic movements etc.
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Your not wrong though, it is taken for granted that most of the worlds oil will have either leaked out to the surface or been buried so deep it eventualy breaks down to methane or just pure carbon. The conditions for an oil field are rather rare.

Samples from this leak though seem to indicate it is from another source than the Mocando oil field. Perhaps a much smaller field that is not physically connected to Mocando.
 
How much are BP making by selling the oil that they manage to capture from this leak ? Maybe they should donate these earnings to the people affected.
 
handyman121 said:
How much are BP making by selling the oil that they manage to capture from this leak ? Maybe they should donate these earnings to the people affected.
Click to expand...
I think they're likely to be better off doing what they're doing now and chasing BP for damages from it's overall profits, as I doubt they'd be making anything at all from the oil syphoned off once their costs were factored in;)
 
So Thad Allen says to BP,

"When seeps are detected, you are directed to marshal resources, quickly investigate, and report findings to the government in no more than four hours," retired Adm. Thad Allen said in a letter to BP Chief Managing Director Bob Dudley. "I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed."
Click to expand...
 
EPA Whistleblower Accuses Agency of Covering Up Effects of Dispersant in BP Oil Spill Cleanup
"With BP having poured nearly two million gallons of the dispersant known as Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico, many lawmakers and advocacy groups say the Obama administration is not being candid about the lethal effects of dispersants. We speak with Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response and a leading critic of the decision to use Corexit." [includes rush transcript] http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/20/epa_whistleblower_accuses_agency_of_covering
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And below, James Howard Kunstler (author of 'The Long Emergency') on the largely unexamined and scientifically unquantified possible risks in the public sphere from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, highlighted by veteran oil industry expert, Matt Simmons. I am no expert on this either, but it seems to me that the risk he describes is not outwith the bounds of possibility. Given that scientists have previously described sections of sampled water in the Gulf as being "saturated" with methane, having levels a million times higher than background, there could be enormous and even dangerous quantities of methane just waiting for something like the hurricane season to come along and churn it all up. How enormous and how dangerous would require further evaluation. But you only have to look at the displacement and release of CO2 dissolved in a deepwater volcanic lake in Cameroon a few years back, that seeped out killing thousands of people over an area of tens of square miles, to understand that this sort of thing can be a real and tangible risk to people living within a wide radius.

What If He's Right?
By James Howard Kunstler
on July 19, 2010
"Just when America was celebrating the provisional end of BP's Macondo oil blowout...along comes Matthew Simmons with a rather strange and alarming outcry on doings in the Gulf of Mexico that contradicts the mood of renewed festivity, as well as just about every shred of reportage from any media outlet, mainstream or otherwise...From the beginning of the BP Macondo blowout incident in April, he's taken the far out position that the well-bore is fatally compromised and that BP has been consistently lying about their operations to stop the flow of oil. Perhaps most radically, Simmons claims that an oil "gusher" is pouring into the Gulf some distance from the drilling site itself....Simmons's current warning about the situation focuses on the gigantic "lake" of crude oil that is pooling under great pressure 4000 to 5000 feet down in the "basement" of the Gulf's waters. More particularly, he is concerned that a tropical storm will bring this oil up - as tropical storms and hurricanes usually do with deeper cold water - and with it clouds of methane gas that will move toward the Gulf shore and kill a lot of people. (I really don't know the science on this and welcome any reader to correct me, but I suppose that the oil "lake" deep under the Gulf waters contains a lot of methane gas dissolved at pressure, and that as the oil rises toward the ocean's surface, and lower pressures, the gas will bubble out of solution....Simmons makes two additional points that are pretty radical: he says that several states along the Gulf ought to begin systematic evacuations in counties along the shore now....Matt Simmons is taking a position so "out there" that even the radical peak oil website TheOilDrum.com won't comment on his remarks (at least not as of early Monday morning July 19). I don't know how to evaluate Simmons's contentions myself, except to say that I don't believe Simmons is a nut, or that he's lost his marbles. We also must suppose that someone in his position is able to talk with an awful lot of the best people in the oil industry. Simmons has put his reputation on the line. A lot of bystanders and commentators are treating him as a fool. Simmons himself is painfully aware of his lonely stance and seems, in his public appearances, to be a very regretful messenger.
In the past twenty-four hours, BP has reported some possible leaks coming out of the seabed some distance from the well-bore. Nobody has been able to confirm yet exactly what is happening down there. One other thing Simmons said is that BP should be barred from the media airwaves since, he says, they have lied consistently in order to cover up their criminal negligence and culpability. The company itself cannot be saved because the claims against it are much greater than the value of its assets - but the people running the company could be sent to jail, so the incentive to keep lying remains high...Jesse at the Jesse's Café Américain website makes an excellent point that if Matt Simmons is correct, and it turns out that the US government has been played by BP, then remaining public trust in the competence and legitimacy of government could evaporate. This is not a happy thing to contemplate at a time when the state of the nation and its economy are so fragile. What follows could make the current political situation seem like little more than, well, than a tea party, compared to the politics-to-come. Readers here...are probably well aware of my past declarations of being allergic to conspiracy theories and crazy ideas generally. I'm not really equipped to evaluate Matt Simmons's warnings about the exact nature of the Macondo blowout and what might happen in the months ahead. But I am confident, having met the guy and corresponded with him and read his books, that he is a straight shooter." http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/07/what-if-hes-right.html
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OR...nothing like that could happen...

Just one quick question - couldn't all that methane simply be ignited over the sea before it hits land?
 
kyser_soze said:
Just one quick question - couldn't all that methane simply be ignited over the sea before it hits land?
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WE used to do this as a party trick in the bay off Baku, although strictly speaking it was surface liquids we were igniting rather than gases.

I suppose you could, but the whole thing is a bit screwy. The theory being posited here is that the methane is currently remaining dissolved because of pressure at that depth. A really juicy hurricane would disturb this equilibrium and cause large quantities of methane to be released. These large clouds would migrate inland and asphyxiate thousands.

The problem I have with that is that one of the defining features of a hurricane is lots of wind, blowing very fast. I get being asphyxiated by volcanic CO2 emerging from lakes under zero wind conditions in hollows. I don't get being asphyxiated by a gas cloud travelling at 120mph and diluted through the process of being blown a hundred miles by a hurricane.
 
Two further points, hurricanes to not stir water all that deep: a few tens of meters at best. And the process of a hurricane is not only the wind speed that will prevent axphysiation but the structure of a hurricane itself, once a cluster of thunderstorms has obtained the circular motion and the sea waters are warm enough it drives itsself by drawing in fresh warm moist air that is sucked up to the top of the thunderheads the change of water from vapor to liquid at the top that realeses heat and reduces air pressure drawing up huge amounts of air into the low pressure. This creates the low pressure at the center of the hurricane that sucks air into the hurricane (which become the destructive surface winds) that air will be fresh air untainted by the methane.

 
Here's a petition to sign, to stop the "chem spraying" of Corexit.
Millions of gallons of the dispersant, Corexit, have been released into the Gulf of Mexico in order to disperse the massive oil spill caused by the explosion and sinking of the BP Deepwater Horizon. The rationale behind the use of the dispersant is to keep oil from the sensitive wetlands and coastlines. However, by dispersing the oil throughout the water column, this practice is making it impossible to recover the dispersed oil at the surface while plumes of the dispersed oil remain at depth, entering the food chain at many levels where it will bioaccumulate as it moves up the food chain. Dispersing the oil means more of it will likely travel with prevailing currents to destinations downstream, including Cuba, Mexico, the Florida Keys, and the eastern seaboard of the United States.

Corexit is one of the most toxic dispersants and one of the least effective on Louisiana crude oil. However, it is the mixture of Corexit and oil that represents an even greater threat as the toxic effects are magnified. Corexit, designed to break down lipid layers, facilitates the movement of toxic materials across the membranes of wildlife and human beings. The dispersant-oil mixture is killing marine wildlife, including dolphins, whales and fish, while also causing a range of serious human health effects to those who have been exposed.
Click to expand...
http://1planet1ocean.org/petition-to-halt-the-use-of-chemical-dispersants-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/

http://www.examiner.com/x-10438-Hum...-scientists-plublic-action?cid=examiner-email


dispersants-gulf-of-mexico-aerial.jpg
 
Falcon said:
The problem I have with that is that one of the defining features of a hurricane is lots of wind, blowing very fast. I get being asphyxiated by volcanic CO2 emerging from lakes under zero wind conditions in hollows. I don't get being asphyxiated by a gas cloud travelling at 120mph and diluted through the process of being blown a hundred miles by a hurricane.
Click to expand...

That's a very good point. Plus the incident in Cameroon happened after a landslide which seemingly disturbed all the dissolved CO2 at the bottom of the lake, and sent it skywards. Would the churning waves of hurricanes etc be sufficient to replicate that kind of effect in the Gulf with methane? Just a guess, but I would have thought too that the ability of the wave energy on the surface to penetrate thousands of feet down to be pretty minimal. Plus, rocks falling to the bottom of a volcanic lake within a confined space seems to me to be a quite a different sort of disruption to deepwater stasis than a hurricane churning over a large ocean area. Also seemingly CO2 is heavier than air (combined with hollows and zero wind) meaning it stayed at ground level. Isn't methane (CH4?) lighter than air, meaning it would float away?
 
ferrelhadley said:
The EROI is irrelevant in this case, the oil has to be collected irrespective. They are not collecting it to earn money from it but to meet the demands of the government and reduce the public outrage at this spill.
Click to expand...

Quite.
I was being sarcastic.
 
Well at least the workers got nice snoozes while they were on the rig - shows that Transocean is a compassionate employer.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/23/deepwater-horizon-oil-rig-alarms

"Vital warning systems on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were switched off at the time of the explosion in order to spare workers being woken by false alarms, a federal investigation has heard.

The revelation that alarm systems on the rig at the centre of the disaster were disabled – and that key safety mechanisms had also consciously been switched off – came in testimony by a chief technician working for Transocean, the drilling company that owned the rig."
 
According to what it said on radio 4 this morning, Hayward is going to be sent to Siberia. It sounds like a harsh punishment but really he will be overseeing the work of a Russian oil company that is in partnership with BP. The story should give the Americans some satisfaction. They think that BP is still a British company even though they own about 40% of the multinational.
 
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