When this blew out there had to be resevoir pressures of 40-50,000 pounds per square inch other wise the fire wouldn't have been so intense and what would have come out first is the blowout preventer would have popped out of the water more like a cork. And then what would come out second is the casing. [...] And so we have an open hole that's spewing I would guess somewhere between 100-150,000 barrels a day of oil which is why you now have over a hundred mile oil lake at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico that's apparently 4-500 feet deep. [...]
I would think by the end of the week we will discover that we have an open hole with no casing in it which sits about seven miles away from where BP had been trying to fix these little tiny leaks in the drilling riser. I bet where (inaudible) of the drilling riser is still connected to the (inaudible) of it and so they've done everything wrong. [...]
They basically are trying to patch a little leak in the drilling riser. You've got to remember that what we're seeing on television, the drilling riser is 22.5" in circumferance. Most of it is a elastomers to make it bouyant. In the middle is a 7" column with the annulus where the drill bit goes down, so coming out of that is a little plume of gas. It's not oil and it's only about four feet high.
That could not by any way have actually covered 40% of the Gulf of Mexico, so what we're going to find when the Thomas Jefferson finishes its work is we have an open hole with no casing in it and the only way we'll shut it off is either let it complete which might take 30 years, which could maybe not only poison the Gulf of Mexico but maybe the Atlantic Ocean, or to put a nuclear device down the hole like the Russians did in the 70's and actually encase it by turning the turning the rock into (inaudible).
"A hundred mile oil lake at the bottom of the Gulf that's 500 feet deep."
Open Hole Spewing 100-150,000 Barrels a Day
Tags: bp, doomed, grim meathook future
14 Responses:
What is the deal with these morons and their huge raging boners for nuking it?
Because all of our other science has failed and there's reports that the Soviet Union did this successfully this way back when? (I no idea if those reports are true, but "things that have worked before" tend to get the blood in an engorging mood)
I'd love to see the wikipedia article on this. I've done some casual reading about the whole deepwater thing yet nobody has linked to said article, despite the fact that " Russia had successfully used nuclear weapons to seal oil spills on five occasions in the past".
I was able to track down some decent references for it happening. (Including video!) What no one mentions is that they were all above-ground wells, it only worked 4 out of the 5 times it was tried, and they had to drill a secondary well in which to place the nuke. That last point, particularly, is rather important here.
Video! Egads! Please share, or hit me up with a good google search term or two.
Check my LJ, there are two posts from about two weeks ago with the links and an inlined Soviet propaganda film.
Indeed; it's taking them months to drill the "relief wells" in the Gulf, and if they work then the nuke question is moot anyway.
Although, about the only thing this disaster has been lacking is deadly radiation. So at least we'd be completing the circle.
I talked to somebody who has worked on oil wells and he mentioned that the relief well was the only thing his circle of friends think will work. A completely different friend who is an marine engineer (although not connected to oil platforms) talked to some peers (who know about such things) and they said the same thing.
So two of the three people I know who actually move in such circles say the relief well is pretty much the only bet. I have an old friend who did work for Exxon for quite awhile telling them where and how to drill whom I should probably call. Interestingly, he is now involved in collecting samples and monitoring pollution in the Florida coastal shelf (and prior to that did inspection for pollution cleanup at Miami International Airport).
Anecdotes and opinions, of course... but I think it's just about as good as anything from official channels on this topic.
Fire ants. No fire ants yet. Least of all irradiated.
I don't know why you're linking to this bozo. Matthew simmons has a long history of making totally bogus claims, and I'm not aware of any significant prediction he's made that has been proven true.
In this case, he alleges that a 100,000 barrel a day leak has created an oil lake with a volume of 10^13 barrels. (someone double check that figure, I got it from google calculator using my phone. ). So his story is already inconsistent to the tune of about 7 orders of magnitude.
I get the same numbers. There's a lot of wiggle room in the volume of a "100 mile lake", but not a factor of 107, I think.
This so called oil industry expert appears to be throwing his hat in the ring for his 15 minutes of fame. Before it was nukes he wanted to sink an oil tanker or an aircraft carrier on top of the well head. Next week it will be some other half-cocked idea, as long as it gets him onto radio and TV.
If you want a better perspective on this disaster than main-steam media is providing take a look at the items posted on The Oil Drum and read the discussion. That site has real professionals who actually work in the oil industry lending insight on the technical challenges BP and the US face in this disaster.
Now just because this talking head is spouting nonsense doesn't mean we're not screwed. The more realistic numbers of 15,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil per day that have been spilling into the gulf are going to leave it and the people who live and work around it screwed for a long long time.
Before it was nukes he wanted to sink an oil tanker or an aircraft carrier on top of the well head.
My god, we already dropped an oil rig on it, what's a tanker gonna do?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU