Supermac34, You are very knowledgeable about this case. Can you remind me of where they thought the leak(s) were coming from? Is it thru the BOP itself or the casing?
Initially, there were three leaks. One in the bent riser right on top of the BOP. This is the one that you see the mud blowing out of during the live camera shots of the top kill procedure. This has been, without the huge pressure from the mud, a fairly small leak, putting out about 10-15% of the oil. The big leak was the one that you've been watching for 2 weeks. The "plume". It is coming out of the riser on the sea floor a few hundred feet away from the BOP. Estimates have varied widely about how much oil has been leaking, but today they released probably the most definitive estimate. The 21" riser is crimped, and there is a large drill pipe inside of there holding back a lot of the oil. The third and smallest leak was somewhere else on the riser, and I think it was out of the drill pipe. It was a small amount of oil that they were able to seal in very early May. The actual leaks did not start until the Horizon actually sank, taking the riser to the bottom with it. Allegedly, Transocean has guaranteed that their rigs will not sink, even with explosive blowouts, and this initially was the case. However, since the first few days of the explosion was actually a rescue mission, the Coast Guard loaded down the rig with water in a rescue effort. It is this water weight that actually capsized the rig and sank it. Nobody can really blame them, however, because there was hope that survivors may have been on board in safety zones on the rig. If they had let it burn, its very possible that the rig would not have sank and we'd be fighting a fire that would actually be easier to put out and cap with very little actual oil leakage. The BOP itself is not leaking, the riser off the top is where all the leakage has been coming from.
The idea of using super tankers to vacuum up oil has been used in the Persian Gulf on much, much larger spills. It is usually used in cases where you have a lot of heavy oil in small amounts of places to get maximum effect. This oil is very light, and for the most part is breaking apart over a wide range, which is a positive, because it leads to much faster evaporation and natural dispersment. The number 1 cleaner of this oil is the Gulf of Mexico itself, and its breaking it up fairly quickly. What you are seeing washing up in Louisiana is not large thick amounts, but rougue "ribbons" of oil in fairly small parts. This is also positive, because it assists clean up efforts to go clean up these 50-100 barrel ribbons as they come ashore, rather than huge single amounts washing ashore like with Exxon. In answer to your question, I'm not sure the supertanker idea is an effecient enough idea, and you can accomplish the same amount with lots of skimmer boats, rather than a couple super tankers due to the very thin, yet spread out nature of this spill.
One more little comment, and this is more of a political one, but I thought I'd share. This is getting more D&D, and feel free to disagree, but please if you disagree, let's hold discourse and not flame. The environmental impact of this spill, will actually in all likelihood (especially if they can cap it today/tomorrow) will run its course in a couple of years. There is room for argument on this, but if what we've seen in past spills in the Gulf, it truly does clean itself up very well. The economic impact to the fishermen that depend on this area will indeed be a touchy subject and will require BP to pay out a lot of money. The BIGGER impact of this spill will be in the offshore industry, and the political fall out of the earth movement vs. the energy industry. Before this spill, there was more movement in offshore drilling around the US than in the previous 30 years. New fields were being explored and being opened up, from Alaska, to the Gulf, to the East Coast. The dependence on foriegn oil was probably going to have an actual dent put into it for the first time in decades. Alaska, which just had the moritorium on its drilling put back in place today, was gearing up to explore and produce some fields that would probably employ tens of thousands of people and drive economic growth in that state for the next decade or two. Now, that is at risk. People have argued back and forth about oil, but let me please let you know that for the near to mid term future (10-50 years) we will still be required to use it for huge portions of our energy needs, regardless of alternative spending and innovation. The political and social movements need to be very, very careful about how the handle the fall out. More regulation, steeper oversight and safety, and all that business are well and good, but reblocking all the offshore resources of the US that have recently opened up is a huge risk for our energy independence and many, many local economies. Whether you agree with me or not, please just consider this for the future.
Great post...my family among many Houstonians have a very vested interest in the oil industry. The companies themselves emply thousands of people as well as the contactors that do work with them employ just as many people. As bad as this spill seems, it would be unwise to over react with messures that hamper their ability to do buisiness. From things being discovered about what caused this accident, its seems that it was in fact preventable if correct procedures would have been taken. I believe once the price of oil starts creeping up durnig the usual summer months there will be tremendous pressure to back down from this block on new drilling.
What do you base this on? Have other spills affected such a wide range of area and have so much toxic dispersants ever been used? Also just to add that a lot of the oil may very likely be suspended in the water column at various depths. Is there any knowledge about the effect of that much oil in the water column?
This comes back to the too big to fail argument that we have to keep these industries going even if they are mismanaged. Obviously any major change in energy supply and consumption will have economic impacts but those need to be weighed against the costs of environmental damage both short and longterm.
Yes, but if you had a Supertanker that could effectively act as a SUBMARINE and go underwater to get the oil at the source of the leak, you would have to rethink this answer wouldn't you? It sounds like basso's idea has some merit after all.
how does it come back to the "too big to fail" argument? it's a discussion of whether it makes sense to expand our own energy options, as opposed to greater reliance on importing. it's a discussion of balancing security, economics (jobs) w/ the (potential) environmental impact, but it has little to do w/ whether BP or some other oil company (or the industry itself) is too big to fail.
I think the impact of this will not be to cut down on oil exploration in the gulf or alaska but to put more regulation and safety in place. This was not an accident of oil drilling but of gross incompetence. And the lesson here is that without sufficient oversight and regulation, bad things WILL happen. It's true for the oil industry, it's true for the nuclear industry, and it's true in the financial industry. It's true for every industry. There is a balance between regulation and free enterprise that you can't go too far in the direction of regulation without hampering industry but at the same time you can't go the opposite direction without risking meltdowns, massive oil spills and global recessions. That's the problem with the whole less gov't ethos from the Tea Partiers - getting rid of gov't regulation has consequences of enormous catastrophic proportions that imbeciles like Sarah Palin can't even begin to comprehend. And they can't just beg for "where's the gov't" when they advocate getting rid of it and handing it to industry. Well guess what - that's exactly what happened and here's the result. I'm all for more drilling, but only if the regulations are put into place that make it safe. Why companies that make billions upon billions need to cut corners to save money on drilling mud is just completely disgusting and greedy.
Is it true that Canada requires all offshore drilling to have a relief well in place before drilling begins?
do you have a link to where palin has advocated turning the energy industry over to the oil companies? if so, i'd appreciate seeing it. you might be surprised by her actual record on this score.
Because the argument presented by Wesneked was about how many jobs are provided by the oil industry so we should be careful about doing things that will hamper their ability to do business, ie cut back or ban off shore drilling.
So there is already fall out from the President's comments. He shut down 33 already drilling exploratory rigs in the Gulf of Mexico until the safety commision can finish. The 6-month moratorium on new expolration has also stopped perhaps another 50 or so projects. This will hurt, but not stop the large oil companies, but it will probably put tens of thousands of machinists, small drillers, contract firms, food service folks, air/sea transport companies out of business. This decision very well could lead to a mini-recession in the Gulf Coast states that are already affected by the well. You'll probably also see lay offs and business go under in the Houston area as well. This is why you have to be very careful with this thing. Real jobs and a very fragile economy are at risk when these arbitrary deadlines are thrown out there. Its not just the industry itself, but all the businesses that depend on the industry. I'm not sure its even about "too big to fail" even though it might be a little bit. We need the oil anyways, if the dollar wasn't so strong oil would already be closer to $90 right now.
There was once a good job that could be had in just about every community across the United States. The people working those jobs were called Telephone Switchboard Operators. Now, telecom still provides jobs in just about every community, but the industry has changed such that switchboard operators are obsolete. The energy sector will always employ people. It may be highly skilled technicians who can fix a wind turbine instead of an Alaskan roughneck or a a solar panel manufacturer instead of a pipe maker, but there will be jobs. As Obama noted, the fact that we're drilling so deeply in such deep water is prima facie evidence that the current industry model cannot last. Time to change I hope.
Are you kidding? We're talking about a woman who is against gov't regulations - and believes industry should be in charge of self-regulating itself. She said after the oil spill that we should "Trust the oil industry"! Do you not remember that? She was against safety proposals in both shipping and off-shore drilling while she was part-time acting governor of Alaska before she couldn't hack the job anymore. Her record is abysmal - and she is ludicrous - accusing Obama for being in bed with big oil when Republicans get 75% of the oil money and her own presidential campaign with McCain took in over double the oil money...is crazy! Yes, just crazy! If she were president, you'd be given a permit to drill for oil basso - anyone would be. It'd be deregulation city and getting rid of anything that stands int he way of industry. She'll do anything to help a company make a buck...whether it be to kill off some wolves via helicopter or let the oil industry rape her state. Doesn't matter. This woman is dangerous for the welfare of America.
The issue is that wind turbine and solar panel can NOT produce enough energy for the foreseeable future. You will need oil in vast quantities no matter what. This decision merely shifts the aquisition of that oil back to overseas suppliers. We just increased money/employment in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia and decreased money/employment in the United States for the next six months for a commodity that will be needed for the next 100 years. In the mid 90s, the Gulf of Mexico was considered the "dead sea" due to the fact that the easy oil was basically gone. By about 1998-2000, the deep water reserves were discovered and they are VAST. Possibly Persian Gulf vast, possibly enough to decrease our overseas imports by huge amounts. Be very careful cutting that off because of one accident in 30,000 rigs.
