Tag: Deepwater Horizon

Just when you thought we were up to our a$$es in oily alligators,  the Obama Administration Department of the Interior announces plans to open 1.8 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve to bidding on 190 new tracts for NEW OIL AND GAS DRILLING.   Bidding will open Aug 11.

Gotta Love Grist. Called it The Dept of Not Learning.      http://www.grist.org/article/2…

It’s only another 1.8 million acres.

http://interior.gov/news/press…

Increases number of oil/gas wells by 60% from 310 to 500.

Increases number of acres under drilling  by 60% from 3 million  to 4.8 million

Teshekpuk Lake is 80 miles east of Point Barrow on the northern Alaska coastline, which is already being damaged by the warming climate and melting arctic sea ice.  Up to 90,000 geese use the area to molt every summer, and the Indigenous people use part of the local caribou herd to survive by subsistence hunting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T…

____

The BP Oil Slick is Blowing Towards Texas.  Here’s the satellite image from NASA, Friday, July 9th,  from 1 km up in space

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa…

Friday, July 9, 2010.  Oil slick heads west towards Texas coast. photo NASA

Oil Slick now extends south all the way to the east of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.  This is the bottom half of the same image of the Gulf of Mexico on 7/9/10 as above. photo NASA

photo from today, Saturday July 10, 2010

Today, July 10, 2010, Gulf of Mexico.  Winds are now shifting to come out of the west/southwest again after an east wind drove this oil towards Texas earlier this week.    But the oil to the south near the Yucatan peninsula,  is probably going to continue to go west, then north again,  with the natural Gulf clockwise current.   photo, NRL Monterey, biomass, satellite Aqua

Something we have all suspected as being true is now being admitted publicly by a whistle-blower.

“In a shocking interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on June 29th, Allegiance Capitol Corporation V.P. Fred McCallister said that BP is deliberately sinking oil with the toxic chemical disbursant Corexit, to hide the size of the oil spill. By sinking the oil before it can be collected, BP won’t have to pay fines on it.

McCallister said, “Everybody in Europe, where the standard practice is to raise the oil and collect it, is scratching their heads, and quite honestly laughing at what’s happening in the Gulf.” He added, “Everyone is looking at us and wondering why we’re allowing this to happen.”

http://videocafe.crooksandliar…

AlJazeeraEnglish | 30 June 2010

Hurricane Alex, with winds of up to 100km an hour, is hampering efforts to clean-up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The state department has welcomed help from 12 countries offering to assist with the clean-up. And there has been a rare offer of support from an indigenous community from Ecuador for another indigenous tribe in Louisiana that has been affected by the spill.

Al Jazeera’s Scott Heidler joined the Ecuadorians in Louisiana’s Bay Baptiste. They underwent a long and tough journey in a boat to visit the oil-tained wetlands.

On June 15, 2010 the US Department of Energy announced that a group of federal and independent scientists convened by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and Chair of the National Incident Command’s Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG) Dr. Marcia McNutt (Director of the U.S. Geological Survey) had developed a new estimate for the amount of oil gushing from the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico that indicated the leak could be spewing up to 2.52 million gallons of crude oil per day into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico from British Petroleum’s Macondo Well.

“This estimate brings together several scientific methodologies and the latest information from the sea floor, and represents a significant step forward in our effort to put a number on the oil that is escaping from BP’s well,” said Chu, who then expanded with “As we continue to collect additional data and refine these estimates, it is important to realize that the numbers can change.  In particular, the upper number is less certain – which is exactly why we have been planning for the worst case scenario at every stage and why we are continuing to focus on responding to the upper end of the estimate, plus additional contingencies.”

Estimates from both BP and from the US Government of the amount of oil gushing from the blown out wellhead on the gulf seabed have been almost continually revised upwards since the well blowout and leak began on April 20, with widespread suspicions that BP has deliberately understated the leak rate in attempts to limit liability for the company.

It now appears that Chu may have been somewhat prescient with his statement that “it is important to realize that the numbers can change”, and that the estimate of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico may need to be increased again, since an undated internal BP document (.PDF) obtained by Chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) was released by Markey on Sunday June 20 showing that BP’s own internal analysis believed that a worst-case scenario, based on damage to the well bore, could result in a leak rate from the well of 55,000 to 100,000 barrels of oil per day.  

For weeks now, I’ve seen the same discussion over and over again at the Oil Drum.  Somebody looks at the picture of the sawed off riser pipe with what looks to be 2 drill pipes stuck inside of it, when they were trimming the bent over riser off the Blow Out Preventer, before they put the LMRP Oil Sucking Cap on it,  and they ask,

“what is that second pipe inside the riser ?”

And the answer is, “oh, that can’t be a second drill pipe, it must have been crushed when they cut the riser off with the pipe shear.  It’s a figure eight, it’s not two pipes, it’s one pipe, crushed.”

“But it looks like 2 pipes. the diameter looks too big for one pipe. ”

“yes, but it’s one. it’s crimped. ”

Guess what.

http://www.latimes.com/news/na…

The gushing BP oil well is a mystery still unfolding, and late last month, a team of scientists from the Energy Department discovered a new twist: Their sophisticated imaging equipment detected not one but two drill pipes, side by side, inside the wreckage of the well’s blowout preventer on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

BP officials said it was impossible. The Deepwater Horizon rig, which drilled the well, used a single pipe, connected in segments, to bore 13,000 feet below the ocean floor. But when workers cut into the wreckage to install a containment cap this month, sure enough, they found two pipes.

Fancy that !  Bp Tony Deepwotter Spinmeister Hayward never mentioned this before, did he ?

Warning.  Heartbreaking.  

BP Oil Slick Covers Dolphins and Whales, by hccreekkeeper, John L Wathen.  June 21, 2010.  

BP slick Covers Dolphins and Whales.mov    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

video by hccreekkeeper   aka John L Wathen , with Tom Hutchins of SouthWings, flight pilot, and author Roger David Helbar  (author of Saved By the Sea, A love story with fish) who on  June 21 2010 flew over the Gulf to find the source of the BP slick

My imperfect transcript.  (not exact, few words skipped. minute numbers added for reference)

“It didn’t take long after leaving the shore,  to find our first oil.

In the mouth of Mobile Bay, there were patches of light sheen seen behind the islands.  oil you couldn’t see it from the beach  but

there was a solid mass of oil  

on previous flights all, behind safeway ? island,  we’d seen was light sheen

now it was turning into the darker  pink mass,….     the farther out into the Gulf we got, the more consistent it became

at 17 mile out  it was obvious the entire Gulf was covered at this point.  there was no more clean water. heavy layers of oil covered the entire horizon

as far as you could see

the bands were getting thicker

at 23 miles out we encountered the heaviest sheen yet, the dark pink and purple

it was obvious this was coming to our beaches there was nothing we could do about it

at  23 mi out, we encountered the heaviest sheen yet,  the water there was a deep purple maroon blue, it looked almost like a rainbow,  boats on the surface looked tiny on the compared to the horizon

the scope of this is beyond belief.

After a video was released on June 13th recorded from BP’s underwater Viking Poseidon ROV 1 operating in the Gulf of Mexico near the blown out Macondo Well site showing what appeared to be oil leaks from gulf seabed cracks around BP’s well site, it seemed that it would be only a question of time before an oil saturated gulf seabed turning to wet slippery jello would no longer have the structural strength to support the weight of BP’s large steel 450 ton Blow Out Preventer (BOP) apparatus sitting on top of the well pipe projecting from that seabed.

“http://www.antemedius.com/files/images/BOP.jpg

Posted to youtube June 22, 2010 by user HistoryTours

…………………………

Qualification: I have no way of knowing if that video is of a current event or if it is raining in the video scenes. Although I suspect undecomposed oil is probably too heavy to evaporate, I think that strong storms (hurricanes, etc) can probably physically transport crude oil and spread it inland, and I would imagine that some of the products of chemical breakdown of oil, and reaction products between oil and corexit, the dispersant BP is using, can evaporate and produce toxic rain. Some of those reaction products I imagine might cause ‘rainbow’ slicks on streets like what is shown in the video.

Crude oil contains the powerful cancer-causing chemicals benzene, toluene, heavy metals and arsenic.

(hat tip to Washington’s Blog: Health Risks from Oil Spill: “Some of the Most Toxic Chemicals that We Know” ,  “Every Place Can be Ground Zero”, CDC Advises “Everyone” to Avoid Oil)

See the following links to and excerpts from Oil in the Sea III: Inputs, Fates, and Effect (2003), a paper produced by the Committee on Oil in the Sea: Inputs, Fates, and Effects, Ocean Studies Board (OSB), the Marine Board (MB), and the Transportation Research Board (TRB)

Last week on June 15 the US Department of Energy announced that a group of federal and independent scientists convened by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and Chair of the National Incident Command’s Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG) Dr. Marcia McNutt (Director of the U.S. Geological Survey) had developed a new estimate for the amount of oil gushing from the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico that indicated the leak could be spewing up to 2.52 million gallons of crude oil per day into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico from British Petroleum’s Macondo Well.

“This estimate brings together several scientific methodologies and the latest information from the sea floor, and represents a significant step forward in our effort to put a number on the oil that is escaping from BP’s well,” said Chu, who then expanded with “As we continue to collect additional data and refine these estimates, it is important to realize that the numbers can change.  In particular, the upper number is less certain – which is exactly why we have been planning for the worst case scenario at every stage and why we are continuing to focus on responding to the upper end of the estimate, plus additional contingencies.”

Estimates from both BP and from the US Government of the amount of oil gushing from the blown out wellhead on the gulf seabed have been almost continually revised upwards since the well blowout and leak began on April 20, with widespread suspicions that BP has deliberately understated the leak rate in attempts to limit liability for the company.

It now appears that Chu may have been somewhat prescient with his statement that “it is important to realize that the numbers can change”, and that the estimate of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico may need to be increased again, since an undated internal BP document (.PDF) obtained by Chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) was released by Markey on Sunday June 20 showing that BP’s own internal analysis believed that a worst-case scenario, based on damage to the well bore, could result in a leak of 100,000 barrels of oil per day.

BP has a collection of ‘bots’ or ROV’s, remotely operated vehicles, tethered underwater robots operating in the Gulf of Mexico near the blown out Macondo Well site, while they attempt to either plug the leak or at least find ways to recover and siphon off the leaking oil.

Sitting on top of the well pipe projecting from the seabed is the BOP, or Blow Out Preventer, the large steel 450 ton apparatus that you may have seen in various photographs and videos from BP’s Live Feed as they recently cut off the top of the riser pipe that ran from the BOP to the Deepwater Horizon platform before it burned and sank.

There has been much speculation lately that the well bore is damaged below the seabed and that oil is leaking out of the well into the seabed underneath and around the BOP.

Keeping in mind that the BOP weighs 450 tons it would seem that if the seabed is becoming saturated with oil leaking through it that is only a question of time before the seabed will no longer have the structural strength to support the weight of the BOP and that it could fall off the top of the well pipe it is sitting on, releasing an uncontrolled and uncontrollable flow of oil into the gulf with no way of plugging or stopping it.

BP denies that oil or gas are leaking from cracks in the sea floor on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

This video was recorded from the Viking Poseidon ROV 1 on June 13th, 2010, and appears to show bursts of oil leaking from cracks in the seabed.

BP’s live feed from the Viking Poseidon ROV 1 is here, with the disclaimer ” Please be aware, this is a live stream and may freeze or be unavailable from time to time.”